NSA -- Back to Basics

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In every Terrorism awareness training session in the 1980's was a block of instruction called "Legal Aspects of Terrorism," taught by a qualified lawyer in the field and often complemented by an FBI Counterintelligence specialist.

The FBI presence was essential since their counterintelligence function was connected to the criminal nature of Terrorism. The FBI was a law enforcement agency that also used intelligence to counter the threat, but the intel function served to bring criminal activity to court for a judicial determination before a jury.

This function of law enforcement (LE) is the basis of our judicial system. Warrants are issued to LE under probable cause, in accord with the 4th Amendment. The Constitution does not provide for the issuance of warrants to anyone but LE for anything except the investigation of reasonable allegations of a crime. Again, the warrant is issued in order to collect evidence to present to a courtroom to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused (and or course, innocence is presumed.) 

So how does an intelligence analyst operating outside of the LE community usurp the right to request warrants and collect evidence that does not support LE? Why are we ignoring this important fact in the current National Security Administration (NSA) discussions?

Neither the NSA nor the Central Intelligence Agency are anything but intel functionaries separate from LE. The NSA and CIA are intel, classified, closed, interbred and are trained to manipulate and cherry pick data for support of policy. How have intel analysts acquired the right to request warrants separate from LE purposes? Further, since they are contravening the legal procedures accorded the Constitutionally authorized agencies, how will the data they collect be used?

 

Terrorism is a crime and the collection of evidence to prove such should follow established legal procedure. Analysts are not police and do not serve police functions UNLESS they are working in a LE organization. While all LE agencies utilize intel analysts, those analysts operate under the LE aegis in order for their data collection to support an arrest capacity. 

 

Do NSA analysts need search warrants? Why issue a warrant if the information gathered will never reach a courtroom? Why has the U.S. created a Terrorism response that is not 100% tied to our legal system? The data gathered by these non-LE agencies may result in actionable evidence, but not prosecutable, so why the legal aura granted by issuance of a non-necessary warrant? 

As RangerAgainstWar has written before, all Terror events like those of 9-11-01 give off indicators of the activity, and shotgun policies are not the best way to counter the threat. The disconnect is the interface between LE -- whose data need not be classified -- and intelligence agencies. The two organizations operate in separate, non-mutually supportive, spheres. To date, there has not been a court case adjudicated on NSA-gathered evidence. 

There are things worse than Terror incidents, and one of these is the disconnection of the citizen from the information he needs in order to be an informed member of his nation who can vote responsibly. If our votes do not direct policy then the concept of voting is meaningless.

Think: Has there ever been a U.S. national leader who was elected on the platform of promising to make our government "more secretive"? If we do not buy into secrecy before the election, why do we accept it afterwards?

If our government prioritizes secrecy over transparency, we have moved from a democracy into the realm of autocracy.

Bradley Manning Trial

--Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on 
 --What's Going On, Marvin Gaye 

I'm as mad as hell
and I'm not going to take this anymore! 
--Network (1976)
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The National Security Agency moved swiftly and forcefully today to remind its employees of its longstanding zero-tolerance policy on conscience, warning that any violation of that policy would result in immediate termination. 

“When you sign on to work at the N.S.A. you swear to uphold the standards of amorality and soullessness that this agency was founded upon,” said N.S.A. director General Keith B. Alexander. “Any evidence of ethics, decency, or a sense of right and wrong will not be tolerated. These things have no place in the intelligence community.” 

To enforce the policy, General Alexander said that once a month all N.S.A. employees will be wired to a computer to take full inventory of what is going on in their minds: “We want to be sure they are spending their free time playing Call of Duty, not reading the Federalist Papers.” 

-- fr. N.S.A. Enforces Zero-Tolerance Policy on Conscience, Andy Borowitz

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The Bradley Manning trial which began this week is not getting much press; some 75% of mainstream news outlets will not be covering the trial, and the press gallery remains mostly empty.

Meanwhile, the United States government continues perfecting its adversarial electronic surveillance posture against both the press and the rest of us. It is apparent that secrecy and the diminution of our privacy rights are a daily event in our brave new world, and we the marching morons continue in lockstep throwing our rights away by the fistfuls.

As Juan Cole wrote, "The US Government has been gleefully getting access to your private correspondence and that gave the Government Class an inherent superiority over ordinary Americans. Manning announced that turnabout is fair play, and we should be able to see their correspondence, too, especially given the war crimes in Iraq. That's why they're trying to execute him."

But as U.S. intelligence agencies perfect their methods of spying on us -- with our complicity -- there will always be the few like Edward Snowden and Manning who refuse to forbear their part in the voyeurism. Adrian Lamo who turned Manning in, under oath described Manning as having a sort of oceanic moment of awareness in which he realized the brutality we do to others, we do to ourselves. At this thought Manning felt suicidal, but instead of acting on that he revealed to us the source of the impulse to self-immolation.

We did not do much with the data other than to shuffle it off with a time-worn, "Things happen in war."

Once in a while there's a Howard Beale who dares to yell out the open window, but we don't mollycoddle our whistle blowers. Most of us go along to get along, just so happy for the Costco membership, the (hopefully one) mortgage and the 10-day family vacation. But there is another Bradley Manning out there now releasing secret court orders and PowerPoint presentations showing government tendencies to overreach its constitutionally-mandated boundaries.

To that person, whomever he may be -- we will say, "thank you for your service."