The very real POWER of the NSA

[Pithy Cherub]

is not known or even guessed at by most Americans. The NSA is an abstract construct that does not fit into the conceptual framework of the ordinary lives of Americans trying to live or get their share of the American Dream. The current lying leader of the American national security pipedream states humbly that it is for our protection from the vicissitudes of the world and the NSA assets and resources are securing us from more harm. That is much easier to swallow than the truth, especially since it can be stated in one easy McSoundbite. The NSA inhabits the dark recesses of the planet AND space far away from the latest conventional wisdom or those without an unfettered imagination.

The premise of the NSA takes a scope of imagination that is exceedingly rare. Regular folks use the constructs of their normal everyday lives to try and conceptualize. The current Bush regime relies on that type of limited thinking to the world's detriment. Condi said "mushroom clouds" -we couldn't imagine the planes..., Powell said "UN, Iraq has WMD's" - holds up vial, Bush and Cheney tied their war agenda to 9/11, all of which are visual constructs that the average American can relate to and not have to stretch or do hard work to imagine. The NSA is exponenetially more powerful than your worst imagination and fears, ever. Now, it is without oversight because Bush, "The Decider", has decreed he's personally watching the watchers.

The NSA is oft written about, but James Bamford remains without peer in trying to understand its scope. He was summarily sued by the NSA when The Puzzle Palace debuted in the early 80's because it contained classified material about them. Today, it is required reading for NSA new hires. The Body of Secretsfrom May 2001, draws back the curtain a very tiny bit more with the assistance of Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden who is the first to be acknowled by Bamford. General Hayden, NSA Director 1999 - 2005, received his fourth star while working at the NSA. It hasn't dawned on most people that the NSA, the most powerful SPY AGENCY of them all, has consistently been under the direction of military officers. The NSA began as the Armed Forces Security Agency in 1949 and became the the NSA in 1952. Mainly, the Director of the NSA has been an Admiral of the US Navy or a General of the US Air Force. Sea and sky are vital to the NSA.

In any enterprise who is hired matters to the long term success of the operation. Take an organization with unlimited funds, the best technology and offer the very best and brightest a chance to work on their pet projects with the only catch being it has to remain a secret you take to your grave and don't share with your family, ever. Allow them their vivid imaginations, fully armed and educated IQ's and set before them the challeneges of cryptology, linguistics, technology, science, math, and counterintelligence so that you pit the very best against the very best. The secrecy is beyond paranoid at the NSA. They have their own private freeway offramp and once leased an entire building in Maryland so no one could accidentally take pictures. Welcome to the NSA, you are amongst tens of thousands employees the world over.

If you have heard of an NSA program chances are its now obsolete and several generations past its original conception. Think about how fast innovation in technology moves from a brick-like cell phone to one that takes pictures or video today and fits in a shirt pocket. Echelon allowed America and some pals (UK, Canada, Austrailia, New Zealand)to intercept phone calls and email and share it with each other. Echelon tied to a "dictionary" program that allows the UKUSA pals to almost instantaneously sort and categorize phones and email with key words or numbers determined to be of interest. That was the brick cell phone version of Echelon from many years ago.

The book Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping by Patrick Radden Keefe takes you through the people who are doing the listening and how many NSA installations are within the US and globally. He writes of Echelon's offspring, Echelon II & Carnivore and traces the perilous journey of several people from the NSA stationed in the US and globally. General Hayden appears in this book as well. But in his last paragraphs he writes this; "In December 2003, the NSA won the authority to automatically turn down requests by citizens, pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, for records on the Agency. The agency argued that this was a "'labor saver'", because agency officials were wasting too much time processing requests about the NSA's operations, only to reject them anyway."

The techonology of the NSA defies imagination. An intelligent computer that can process 64,000,000,000 individual instructions per second is par for the course. The in-house NSA innovations are for the use of communication and cryptography for the military and certain elected officals. They leave the guns and daggers to the CIA while they just exist to collect as much data as possible and turn those bright folks loose on what to do with it all for either a miltary reason or a high level political request. Now back to the Uniform Military Code of Justice and lawful orders. If you receive an order and it is deemed lawful, then you are obliged to follow it. Where do you go when Congress has abdicated its oversight duties, you work for the Commander in Chief and you are bound by the UMCJ, just who do you take issues up with? Who determines when the line has been crossed from security into civil liberties? There is no one watching the watchers, now let your imagination soar.

[DS1]

1. *pfft* *scoff* 64,000,000,000 a second? Is that it?

The Playstation 3 will be doing 256,000,000,000 a second, and that's for 600 bucks.

[Pithy Cherub]

4. Super holographic video?

:P

[DS1]

6. With Feel-Around Technology

/Fried Movie

[Tuesday_Morning]

2. K & R

We only know about the tip of the iceberg

[HereSince1628]

3. We brave vets from the ASA know all about NSA. Semper Vigilantes!

There are a bunch of us here at DU.

[shance]

10. What is the ASA?

n/t

[Stockholm]

5. Fear is truly a double edged sword

The fear that has worked so well for the administration after 9/11 can so easily be turned against them.

The United States of America will not be whole again until that fear is removed. Uniting America and removing fear should be on the democrats to do list after 2008. Until then there must be only one goal. To remove the dividers of your great nation from their offices.

[Robbien]

7. The ex-NSA agent says so much more is happening

A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said Thursday he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens. …

said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden. … “I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe,” Tice said. “I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now.” …

Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said. … He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he “will not confirm or deny” if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/12/more-unlawful-activity/

His testimony next week is something we should all watch very closely.

[Pithy Cherub]

8. How about this for an appetizer?

Satellites are basically in two groups in space, public and classified. They are in different orbits. Part of the NSA SIGINT charter is to get all of the information going from everyone's satellite and collecting it. As an American would it disturb you to know that by willingly using GPS technology that goes through space and the signal goes to the right satellite but because of the laws of physics some of the "extra" continues on right into a classified satellite orbit that catches the transmission from the car's GPS, internet, phone or any other technology that uses space? Now, because you know where someone drove to and which tower the cell phone is in you could train a classified satellite on them anywhere on the planet. Yes, he's very right, it is just the very tip of the iceberg.

[ArbustoBuster]

9. This doesn't make any sense.

A GPS receiver - the device that you carry in your hand or install in your car - doesn't transmit. There's nothing for an NSA satellite to capture and use to determine where you are. A GPS receiver works by receiving signals from GPS satellites in orbit. Those satellites belong to the US military, and their position is always known to within a few centimeters, so there's no reason for the NSA to listen in to learn where they are.

[Pithy Cherub]

11. From the book Chatter by Patrick Radden Keefe

Page 4,..."Some are spy satellites, which take photographs, intercept communications, and use Global Positioning Systems to pinpoint the locations of various individuals or vehicles around the planet. And some of the satellites are regular commercial communications satellites, the kind that transmit your telephone calls and Internet traffic across oceans. The first two varieties of satellite were built specifically to correspond with the base. The third kind, however, was not. These satellites are managed by a company called Intelsat, and the signals they receive are private, civilian communications. But the base collects these signals, too, soundlessly and ceaselessly intercepting great flows of private communication every minute of every hour..."

That is the NSA base at Menwith Hill in England.