NSA Is Just Collecting Metadata, No Worries, Right? Wrong!

For all those who think collecting Metadata is no biggie, I urge those people to read this article from Wire magazine and rethink their position.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think-again/

The Wired article is correct about the meta data, but they leave out some important information — meta data is more valuable than the actual content of phone calls and email. Yes. It’s true.

Meta data is structured information. This means field values across different datasets will either be identical, or so similar as to need only a minor adjustment to be normalized. Time. Location. Phone number. Phone owner. Length of call. Number frequency. All these and more are highly structured pieces of data, and the more you have from different sources, the possibility of deep and meaningful insights increase.

Call content, email content, tweets, text messages, web page content, etc. are all unstructured data — language. While we might have a billion phone call transcripts in english, each will be formatted differently, use different syntax/slang, have varying levels of literacy, and so on. Normalizing this unstructured data for big-data analysis requires expensive (in terms of processing power) and slow natural language processing. Keyword and entity extraction can be performed fairly well, but even then, the all-important context or meaning will be missing.

Pattern-matching meta data in trillion-record datasets is the big-data analyst’s wet-dream. It’s highly plausible that such a system, with all data from everywhere, could identify that a new burner phone is being used by criminals or terrorists within 2-3 days using just the meta data. The same pattern matching could also identify that a burner is being used by a journalist — or — using the journalist’s known number, determine what potentially damaging story a journalist is currently investigating. Once pattern-matching flags something, then the available unstructured data is examined.

Oh, and don’t presume that the typical methods of encrypting or protecting your privacy will thwart this. Even if you use TOR for browsing, and the NSA/FBI takes an interest in what sites you visit — if they have your ISP logs and that of upstream Internet providers (it has been reported that they do), it only makes it about 5% harder to nail down where you went online.

Is Mass Spying Being Used to Make Some People Rich?

The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions.  Many other agencies are doing the same. In fact, virtually all U.S. intelligence agencies – including the CIA and NSA – are going to spy on Americans’ finances. The IRS will also be spying on Americans’shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files from other government investigators.

Not only can the NSA intercept and store virtually all digital communications on the Internet, butprivate contractors can also view all of your data (and the government isn’t keeping track of which contractors see your data and which don’t). And because background checks regarding some contractors are falsified, it is hard to know the types of people that might have your information.

In an articled entitled “How Much Are the NSA and CIA Front Running Markets?”, Naked Capitalismreports:

A 2008 paper [which was subsequently published in the prestigious Oxford Quarterly Journal of Economics] by Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu  …  found evidence that the CIA and/or members of the Executive branch either disclosed or acted on information about top-secret authorizations of coups. Stocks in “highly exposed” firms rose more in the pre-coup authorization phase than they did when the coup was actually launched.

Here’s how the dataset was developed:

We selected our sample of coups on the following basis: (1.) a CIA timeline of events or a secondary timeline based upon an original CIA document existed, (2.) the coup contained secret planning events including at least one covert authorization of a coup attempt by a national intelligence agency and/or a head of state, and (3.) the coup authorization was against a government which nationalized property of at least one sufficiently exposed multinational firm with publicly traded shares.

Out of this, the authors found four coup attempts that met their criteria: the ouster of Muhammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, two programs in Guatemala in 1952 and 1954 that eventually removed Jacobo Arbenz Guzman; the unsuccessful effort to topple Castro in 1961, and an operation that began in Chile in 1970 and culminated in overthrow of Salvador Allende. Then they chose companies:

We apply 3 criteria to select our sample of companies. First, a company must be publicly traded, so that we can observe a stock price. Secondly, the company must be “well-connected”, in terms of being linked to the CIA. Finally, the company should be highly exposed to political changes in the affected country, in the sense that a large fraction of a company’s assets are in that country.

They used these criteria to devise two samples (based on different definitions of “highly exposed”) and tested both.

Their conclusions:

Covert operations organized and abetted by foreign governments have played a sub- stantial role in the political and economic development of poorer countries around the world. We look at CIA-backed coups against governments which had nationalized a considerable amount of foreign investment. Using an event-study methodology, we find that private information regarding coup authorizations and planning by the U.S. government increased the stock prices of expropriated multinationals that stood to benefit from the regime change. The presence of these abnormal returns suggests that there were leaks from the CIA or others in the executive branch of government to asset traders or that government officials with access to this information themselves traded upon it. Consistent with theories of asset price determination under private information, this information took some time to be fully reflected in the stock price. Moreover, the evidence we find suggests that coup authorization information was only present in large, politically connected companies which were also highly exposed.

We find that coup authorizations, on net, contributed more to stock price rises of highly exposed and well connected companies than the coup events themselves. These price changes reflect sizeable shifts in beliefs about the probability of coup occurrence.

Our results are robust across countries, except Cuba, as well as to a variety of controls for alternate sources of information, including public events and newspaper articles. The anomalous results for Cuba are consistent with the information leaks and inad- equate organization that surrounded that particular coup attempt.

Now sports fans, given the fact that there’s reason to believe that people in the intelligence with access to privileged information weren’t above leaking it to people who could take advantage of it, why should we expect things to be different now? And given what has already been revealed about the NSA’s data gathering, if you were a clever trader and had access to this information, how would you mine it? How would you go about finding patterns or events to exploit?

Given that the U.S. has been recently been involved in military actions and/or training exercises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and up to 35 African nations (and see this), there is  opportunity for people who know what military forces will be deployed where to make money.

And because companies will pay a lot of money to get financial data early, information gleaned through spying could be very valuable.

And someone who knew (one way or another) what the Federal Reserve was going to do could make a bundle. Indeed, even knowing what powerful government officials are reading could be valuable.

And since data on consumers is worth a lot of money, someone who had access to consumers’ spending patterns, habits, preferences and other private data could sell the information.

And due to the fact that large companies spend huge sums of money to conduct industrial espionage on their rivals, information gained through spying could be invaluable. Especially since the NSA closely spies on  the European Union, the European Parliament, Germany,  the G20 summit andChinese universities.

And several financial and economic experts – such as Jim Rickards, Max Keiser, German central bank president Ernst Welteke, Swiss economists Remo Crameri, Marc Chesney, Loriano Mancini and Bill Bergman (senior financial markets policy analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for 13 years) – also say that there were insider trades right before 9/11 by people who knew the attacks were coming … people  with “no conceivable ties to al-Qaeda” according to the 9/11 Commission.

You don’t have to believe that 9/11 was an inside job to believe that this theory is at least possible. After all, 9/11 was foreseeable to people in intelligence services worldwide … as was Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

FBI Planned to Kill Occupy Leaders

According to journalist David Lindorff, the FBI planned to assassinate the leaders of the now moribund Occupy movement “via suppressed sniper rifles.”

Lindorff cites a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington, DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund.

The redacted document obtained from the FBI in Houston states:

An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.

The FBI confirmed that the document is legitimate.

For the astute student of history – real history, not the massaged version proffered by the ruling elite – news of an FBI plot to murder political activists does not come as a surprise.

Recent history provides numerous examples, most notably during the 1960s and 1970s when the FBI’s COINTELPRO was in full swing.

“When congressional investigations, political trials, and other traditional legal modes of repression failed to counter the growing movements, and even helped to fuel them, the FBI and police moved outside the law,” writes Brian Glick in his book, War at Home. “They resorted to the secret and systematic use of fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. Their methods ranged far beyond surveillance, amounting to a home front version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.”

In addition to psychological warfare and dirty tricks, the government engaged in extralegal force and violence. “The FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings,” Glick writes. “The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks-including political assassinations-were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can accurately be termed a form of official ‘terrorism.’”

“The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life,” adds Tom McNamara.

COINTELPRO terrorism “enabled the FBI and police to eliminate the leaders of mass movements without undermining the image of the United States as a democracy, complete with free speech and the rule of law,” Glick continues. “Charismatic orators and dynamic organizers were covertly attacked and “neutralized” before their skills could be transferred to others and stable structures established to carry on their work. Malcolm X was killed in a ‘factional dispute’ which the FBI took credit for having ‘developed’ in the Nation of Islam. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him to suicide and replace him ‘in his role of the leadership of the Negro people’ with conservative Black lawyer Samuel Pierce (later named to Reagan’s cabinet). Many have come to view King’s eventual assassination (and Malcolm’s as well) as itself a domestic covert operation.”

According to the official narrative, COINTELPRO was terminated in 1971, but this is obviously not the case (see my The Son Of COINTELPRO from 2002).

In regard to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) FOIA documents reveal the program is alive and well. The “FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat,” writes McNamara. The close collaboration between the Department of Homeland Security and officials in 40 different cities – first disclosed by Oakland mayor Jean Quan – in the determined (and ultimately successful) effort to destroy the largely peaceful movement demonstrates how serious the federal government is about deflecting any challenge to its monopoly on political power.

The assassination of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and other activists and political figures considered threats to the status quo demonstrate the viability of murder as a political tool for the elite. As Brian Glick notes, the CIA has used assassination abroad for decades and its importation into the United States simply reveals how serious they are to control any effective political opposition, especially when activism has the potential to effectuate political change or, as in the case of OWS, result in a political awakening of millions of people.

Related Articles

• FBI Document—“[DELETED]” Plots to Kill Occupy Leaders “If Deemed Necessary”

New Statement from Edward Snowden

In a statement issued through WikiLeaks, Snowden claims that President Obama revoking his passport without a judicial order, leaving him a stateless person. The following has been posted on Wikileaks by Edward Snowden:

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

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Appearing on Fox and Friends Tuesday, Greenwald told Eric Bolling that more revelations are forthcoming regarding “vast programs of both domestic and international spying that the world will be shocked to learn about that the NSA is engaged in without democratic accountability.”

“You’re going to have to wait along with everybody else until our stories are published,” Greenwald said. Although he did not provide an exact timeframe, Greenwald added “just wait a little bit and you’ll have it.”

The reporter also accused the President of making an example out of Snowden in order to deter potential future whistleblowers.

“I think what the Obama administration wants, and has been trying to establish for the last almost five years now with the unprecedented war on whistleblowers that it is waging, and to make it so that everybody is petrified of coming forward with information about what our political officials are doing in the dark that is deceitful, illegal or corrupt,” Greenwald said.

“They don’t care about Edward Snowden at this point. He can no longer do anything that he hasn’t already done. What they care about is making an extremely negative example out of him to intimidate future whistleblowers because they think they’ll end up like him.” the reporter added.

While revealing that he had not had contact with Snowden since he left Hong Kong, Greenwald insisted that the leaker was eager to remain part of the debate surrounding government surveillance.

“Obviously he wants to stay out of the clutches of the U.S. government given the way that they’ve persecuted whistleblowers. He’s obviously trying to find a place where he can do that but his real goal is to continue to try to be part of the conversation about why he did why he did, what it is that he saw in the NSA, how these spying powers were being abused and to continue to make people around the world and his fellow citizens aware of what his government is doing,” said Greenwald.

Addressing claims from other so called journalists that he should be prosecuted for his role in outing Snowden’s secrets, Greenwald cited Thomas Jefferson.

“Jefferson, 250 years ago, said those who most fear investigations are the ones who attack free press first,” Greenwald said. “This is what journalism is about, shining a light on what the most powerful people in the country are doing to them in the dark. So we’re going to continue to do that no matter what David Gregory and his friends say.”

According to the latest reports, Ed Snowden is still stuck in “no man’s land” as it were in Moscow. After applying to 21 countries for political asylum, only 11 remain possibilities, with Venezuela looking the most sympathetic to his plight.

“[Snowden] deserves the world’s protection.” Venezuela’s new president Máduro told Reuters during a visit to Moscow.

“We think this young person has done something very important for humanity, has done a favour to humanity, has spoken great truths to deconstruct a world that is controlled by an imperialist American elite.” Máduro added.