LOVEINT

Times like these make me think of Spirit

We got nothing to hide
We’re married to the same bride
She eats way from inside
No, we got nothing to hide

And the Who

You can hear it in the street
See it in the dragging feet
The word is getting out about Control

Every single dream
Wrapped up in a scheme

Dishes are being done. Trust me.

@4 “Polygraph tests have all of the reliability of drug sniffing dogs (proven beyond a doubt to respond strictly to the movements of their handlers) and witch sniffers in Africa”.

Not so wrt sniffer dogs. They do indeed respond to their handlers’ unconscious cues, which causes false positives. But their false negative rate is very low, when properly trained.

This article from 1983 was doing the rounds on twitter recently

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

The final para is most relevant

“No laws define the limits of the N.S.A.’s power. No Congressional committee subjects the agency’s budget to a systematic, informed and skeptical review. With unknown billions of Federal dollars, the agency purchases the most sophisticated communications and computer equipment in the world. But truly to comprehend the growing reach of this formidable organization, it is necessary to recall once again how the computers that power the N.S.A. are also gradually changing lives of Americans – the way they bank, obtain benefits from the Government and communicate with family and friends. Every day, in almost every area of culture and commerce, systems and procedures are being adopted by private companies and organizations as well as by the nation’s security leaders that make it easier for the N.S.A. to dominate American society should it ever decide such action is necessary. “

FWIW, the use of polygraph screening isn’t an NSA thing, it’s a security clearance thing. If you have a special access program or sensitive compartmented information clearance (aka “above top secret”) your periodic investigation will include a polygraph exam. Polygraphs will also be used in in counter-espionage investigations. More broadly polyagraphs are used for pre-employment screening for all federal security and law enforcement, so in addition to DOD programs like NSA you also have CIA, FBI, Secret Service, DEA, DOE and US Customs and Border Patrol doing it on prospective hires. I don’t know about the others offhand, but Customs in particular is required by statute to use polygraph screening in hiring . Polygraphs are also fairly popular among local law enforcement agencies; if you want to join LAPD you’ll have to take one.

“I think the revelation that they’re all stupid enough to believe in polygraphs worries more than anything else I’ve heard so far”.

Really Tim? I thought you were quite the fan of the NSA?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/nsas-prism-sounds-like-a-darn-good-idea-to-me-this-is-what-governments-are-for/

I think the OP missed a step:

4. Obviously this happens all the time. We’ve known about it forever. Nothing new here.

You have to pity control freaks. They never understand, and therefore can’t ever truly control, the internal dynamics of their own systems. Chins up, medals all in a row, they introduce a massive disequilibrium into human affairs, and somehow persuade themselves that they’re smart enough to keep the accidental at bay forever. As a wiser person might predict, the more the tendency back toward equilibrium erodes what they’ve created, the more panic appears in their ranks. Out come the lie-detector tests, the cudgels, the disappearances, the life sentences, the shameful resignations, the public mea culpas, etc.

It’s only what they deserve, but God, what a waste. And speaking of God, if having assumed many of the powers we once ascribed to him, we at some point intend to accept his responsibilities as well, stewardship, not control, has to be the proper path. If General Keith Alexander is intended to be the proper model for that, then I’d say we’ve already screwed the pooch. How many chances to get it right do you suppose even a benevolent universe will allow us?

Aside from the obvious problem of relying on polygraphs, how can information gleaned from them be described as self-reported, in a manner meant to reassure? People who admit wrongdoing under polygraph, which they did not admit before, have been caught in an exercise of deception. They haven’t ‘self-reported’.

It seems to me what’s called for here is some sort of double-secret agency with the job of monitoring what NSA does in the same manner NSA monitors what we do. Maybe the National Security Agency Agency? NSAA can collect data on what NSA employees and contractors do when collecting data on what we do; and then analyze it, and catch the evildoers hiding in NSA. Of course, it’s turtles all the way down from there…

@17

Yes isn’t it funny how the saying ‘If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear’ only apparently applies to the powerless and weak? If you are powerful and strong (like the NSA) then apparently quite different rules apply. They are allowed to hide everything (from the taxpayers who fund them), even though, they say, they have done nothing wrong and therefore have nothing to fear.

Funny, that.

The Guardian is now reporting that companies like Google have secretly been paid ‘millions’ to cover the cost of complying with NSA’s programs. I imagine it isn’t simply cost; that those companies are profiting on the work. In any event, I wonder how it gets accounted for at Google. Is this the ubiquitous ‘other program revenue’? I’ll never look at that phrase the same way again!

LOVEINT happened despite the fact that the NSA and other government agencies take significantly more privacy precautions than the Web 2. giants. They wrote their own database (Accumulo) because none of the NoSQL databases in use in Silicon Valley had sufficient permission control; Palantir has made a lot of money from providing auditing along with its data analysis platform.

So if NSA employees still carry out abuses like LOVEINT, what are Facebook and Google employees doing with all that data they have access to?

“LOVEINT”? More like “STALKERINT”.

That “first principle” is kooky.

4. *feint* “Should [insert journalist/whistleblower] be arrested for espionage/aiding the enemy/[??]”

This is the first principle of even having a State in the first place: to make sure that the populace is protected from the depredations of the foreigners who would do them harm.

The matter is entirely different when such a State uses the same methods to look at its own citizens: this is a gross abuse of power and a serious threat to any form of liberty or freedom.

Those two principles together led to the NSA spying on Brits and the GCHQ spying on Americans and then exchanging information. It also led Brazil to unveil plans for new satellites and optic cable lines to bypass the Five Eyes spying machine altogether.

Martin Bento #29: My first reaction to your idea of Google/NSA cooperation was to think “You’re being paranoid. That can never happen, thanks to our marvellous checks and balances”.

“The purpose of the State, the first job it is tasked with, is the protection of that State from external enemies.”

I think you mean “internal enemies.”

“may I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount, more than we are prepared to admit, but all new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they’re to tell me immediately so that I can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up. ”
Python

This post changed my life. Until this day, I never realized what enormous hands Senator Feinstein has.

Also, what about what we have learned about so far would make us thing this is a cast of ex-stalking.

I am sure no analyst had used these database tools to find out information about a woman he or she had wanted to date. That’s a different type of stalking.

CIA agents are actually taught how to evade polygraph tests. (IME DEA agents…can evade polygraphs but I’m not sure if this is because someone was taught to do so by the DEA and then put to a polygraph or just because he was taking advance precautions.) But then, after moving to the even darker side of the dark side of the force: training in polygraph evasion! But then sometimes (honest not shitting you) subjected to random polygraphs!!! I can only imagine that the CIA thought, well our agents get captured sometimes, and our enemies may use polygraph tests, we should make sure our guys can evade them if needed–maybe they will pass as whatever bogus identity we have given them. But then someone else thought, “hey, those black hat CIA fuckers could be up to anything, seriously, we have no idea. They could be killin’ people lef’ and right!! Hand over fist! [no shit Sherlock–ed] Let’s institute a precautionary measure of subjecting them to random polygraph testing when they ever come back to lovely Langley, VA. Thus, a veritable Klein bottle of asshole and stupid.

This is an interesting new argument, at least I had not read it before.

From the LA Times:

No evidence has emerged in the Snowden leaks indicating that the NSA is intentionally spying on Americans or meddling in domestic politics. The agency’s defenders argue that the disclosures actually prove how hard the NSA works to protect Americans’ privacy.

So if Snowden has not yet revealed a particular wrongdoing, that is evidence that said wrongdoing is not taking place.

‘So if Snowden has not yet revealed a particular wrongdoing, that is evidence that said wrongdoing is not taking place.’

From the NSA’s perspective, Snowden himself was engaged in wrongdoing, and the NSA didn’t know about it until Snowden went public. Therefore, if we’ve learned nothing else, we’ve learned that the NSA does a crap job monitoring itself.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57600000/edward-snowdens-digital-maneuvers-still-stumping-u.s-government/

We’ve also learned that NSA officials are nonchalant about foreign governments spying on Americans (and expect foreign governments to grant the same indulgence to American spying). Michael Hayden tells us “Any European who wants to go out and rend their garments with regard to international espionage should look first and find out what their own governments are doing,” Which might well be true, but if foreign governments are spying on Americans, isn’t it the job of the NSA to warn Americans and help them avoid that spying? To protect us from foreign enemies? Foreign surveillance of Americans (or vice versa) is certainly not harmless–at risk are trade secrets and the potential for blackmail of political and business leaders. But there are tradeoffs between protecting Americans from foreign surveillance and maintaining America’s own spying/hacking capabilities.

The core countries can spy on each other all they wish but what about their spying on Latin American countries? Quid pro nihilo? That may be translated as abuse.

Oh come now don’t be so cynical about the NSA and their use of polygraphs some people think they’re wonderful deterents to lying, er eh
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/09/25/nsa-whistleblower-reveals-how-to-beat-a-polygraph-test
NSA Whistleblower Reveals How To Beat a Polygraph Test

Russell Tice, the National Security Agency whistleblower who blew the lid open on warrantless wiretapping conducted by the federal government on U.S. citizens post-9/11, says that he took between 12 and 15 polygraph tests during his nearly 20-year-long government career.
The tests mellowed over time, Tice says, and they may have also gotten easier to beat.
Tice, who is no longer at the NSA, says he, along with those still in contact with at the agency, marvel at how easy it is to beat the lie detector.

Oops

” For example, despite being close allies countries like Israel and France spy on the US, and I’d be rather surprised if MI6 wasn’t quietly running around Boston in the 80s and 90s.”

It’s pretty exciting to see Americans (I presume you are American) adopt such a nonchalant tone about people spying on them. ‘Such is life’ would seem to be the approach adopted, or so it would seem.

As I say it’s pretty exciting and indeed a bit of a surprise, as I seem to recall Americans getting terribly terribly anxious about such things back in the day. Indeed, if you will recall, the whole McCarthyite madness was caused by McCarthy claiming that Russians were spying on the US, and the whole (official) raison d’etre of the CIA and other intelligence agencies was allegedly to prevent the Russians and the Chinese spying on ‘us’ . And when Russian spies were caught, by these agencies I don’t recall anyone going ‘hey ho so it goes’, but instead, such people were thrown in jail, sometimes for a very long time (when American spies were caught by the Russians on the other hand, it was all a bit different).

In any case, there is the pesky issue of what is and what is not legal. For example: ‘In the latest claims that will likely further complicate relations between Washington and its allies, Germany’s Der Spiegel, a weekly publication, says documents obtained by former contractor Edward Snowden showed the NSA bugged the United Nations’ New York headquarters. If confirmed, the spying would be illegal because the United States has a long-standing agreement with the United Nations regarding covert operations, notes Deutsche Welle. According to the German weekly, the NSA appears to have been able to access the video conferencing system used at the U.N. headquarters.

And it doesn’t stop there. Der Spiegel says it has seen documents showing how the NSA also spied on European Union diplomats in New York. The U.N.’s Vienna-based nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency was also targeted by U.S. spies, according to the Reuters report on the German story. Der Spiegel claims the NSA has eavesdropping programs in more than 80 embassies and consulates across the world. “The surveillance is intensive and well organised and has little or nothing to do with warding off terrorists,” wrote Der Spiegel.” ‘

If these claims are true, this indicates, yet again, evidence of vast and uncontrolled law breaking by US agencies, not to mention that these agencies have been systematically lying to the American people. Now if you are fine with that, then that’s fine. But you should at least have the balls to come out and state openly ‘I approve of law breaking as long as it is done by the rich and powerful’, rather than adopt a faux blase ‘seen it all before’ facade of indifference.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/25/der_spiegel_report_claims_nsa_bugged_united_nations_headquarters.html

But then someone else thought, “hey, those black hat CIA fuckers could be up to anything, seriously, we have no idea. They could be killin’ people lef’ and right!! Hand over fist! [no shit Sherlock–ed] Let’s institute a precautionary measure of subjecting them to random polygraph testing when they ever come back to lovely Langley, VA. Thus, a veritable Klein bottle of asshole and stupid.

This has a fractal dimension to it too, as of course the “How To Fool A Polygraph” training is itself often the most amazing pile of poorly-researched and pseudoscientific bollocks. And of course, how could it be otherwise, since in order to do proper research on how to fool a polygraph, you would need to stipulate the existenace of an at least reasonably consistent and reliable polygraph test to compare it with.

It’s entirely legal for the United States to conduct espionage within the United Nations HQ, a practice engaged in by every other government capable of it (and one reported on, moreover, w/r/t to various governments, frequently over the decades). Hell, foreign governments use the UN to place intelligence officers within the US (and to spy on one another as well, of course). The United States explicitly attached a reservation to its 1947 agreement with the UN noting that nothing in the 1947 agreement shall be construed as weakening or diminishing, in any way, the right of the United States to safeguard its national security. “Safeguarding national security” includes intelligence activities, as has been the common and recognized practice of nations for centuries.

Either Snowden or Der Spiegel, or both, have once again received some very bad legal advice.

It’s also entirely legal for the United States to collect signals intelligence from foreign embassies, a practice also engaged in by every other government capable of it, and one reported on for decades (probably centuries if we include all forms of intelligence).

Not only does this story reveal NOTHING in the way of illegal activities, but it simply reveals recent specifics of legal US intelligence activities. And while mildly amusing, the portion about the NSA detecting Chinese eavesdropping at the UN, and then eavesdropping on the Chinese eavesdropping to see what the Chinese were interested in listening to, is simply another example of Snowden revealing operational information without any understanding of what methods he may be compromising.

If Snowden wants to continue using the “exposing illegal activity” justification, then he needs to retain competent attorneys with thorough knowledge of US law governing US intelligence activities. At present I can only conclude that he is either being misled by some truly awful advice – the legal equivalent of Ron Paul’s investment advice (buy gold, and only gold) – or he is simply lying about his motivations.

I don’t wish to discount the effects of one’s social contacts being limited entirely to one organization in an alien and siege atmosphere of intense pressure. Snowden’s sense of being uprooted and adrift would surely make him more susceptible to the influence of the group that claims to have been with him 24/7 for months now. Given the past conduct of Wikileaks, this is in itself cause enough for worry. Worse, the Russian Government likely views with favor the interests of Wikileaks in having all of Snowden’s material exposed, and so may be acting to facilitate Snowden’s isolation from all those once close to him.

Snowden may not understand that with each release of material like this – which doesn’t come close to revealing any illegal activity and which indisputably reveals important operational details – it becomes less possible to defend him against espionage charges, and makes treason charges much more plausible. He may not understand that with each step in that direction, he only strengthens the leverage Wikileaks – and the Russian Government – have over his activities, as return to the US to fight legally becomes less and less attractive.

Snowden’s assessment of his own leverage probably presumed that his judgment would remain rational throughout, not subject to the distortions of thought that isolation and social control can bring, and otherwise immune to social and economic context. In one respect, this is a presumption that has much in common with libertarian views of human beings; it’s an error in planning one would expect a libertarian to make. And there is a sorrowful poetry in all this, that the libertarian presumption of atomistic individual freedom might be the flaw in his thinking that led to the erosion of his actual individual freedom.

Cranky, above: Applying the categories of the post would make any allegation of abuse into a truth not yet fully revealed. It’s simply a formulaic way of begging the question – or a recipe for paranoia. William James once attempted to replicate the experience of the paranoid by strolling about the city and forcing himself to imagine that every act, every glance, every spoken word, was somehow maliciously about him. He cut short the experiment after a few hours, when he caught himself musing about whether a horse was looking at him strangely. Follow the categories in the post, and you’ll soon find yourself in Alex Jones territory.

Re: US tolerance of spies and Pollard:

Distinguish between foreign intelligence officers, who when caught are usually under diplomatic cover and are simply expelled from the country, and “agents” i.e. persons who spy on their own governments while being run by – sometimes nominally, often not – a foreign intelligence officer.

Pollard is an example of an agent – he was an American defense analyst being run by Israeli military and intelligence officers. Pollard was arrested, and convicted. His handlers were allowed to leave for Israel; his recruiter was later promoted to brigadier general.

Well, they don’t detect lies and “polygraph” sounds like 19th century snake oil tech so it fits quite well to me.

Dr Klein’s Trust-o-matic?

Omega Centauri@50

The non-core countries are in the same boat as the ordinary citizens of the core countries, spied on with little recourse.

When a state spies on its citizens, it is an issue of the relationship between state and individuals, one of privacy. When a state spies on another state, it is an issue between states, one of sovereignty.

The outrage in Latin America, voiced by presidents (at the UN), foreign ministers (directed at Kerry when he went to Brazil) and the media, has been towards the US for trampling on both national sovereignty and individual human rights. In the US and UK, (see the editorial in The Guardian “Surveillance and the state: this way the debate goes on” and Snowden’s justifications), the outrage is directed exclusively at violations of individual rights. It cannot be a coincidence that, instead of the concept of sovereignty, there is a hole in the brains of journalists and individuals of precisely the two states that built and control the biggest and most intrusive spying machine in the world.

It seems to me that failing to acknowledge and debate how the NSA revelations impact the sovereignty of foreign states, particularly weaker ones that cannot stand up to the US/UK, and their impact on international relations, is a way for the populations of the US/UK to support American hegemony without having to come out and say it. There is the new social contract in the US/UK: the people support imperialism in exchange for the respect of individual rights.

John Quiggin @ #60:

Shouldn’t we call these things “lie detectors” rather than “polygraphs”?

No, unless you’re willing to use scare quotes every time. The point is that they’re not lie detectors; they’re devices for simultaneously recording several different physiological responses. The notion that there’s a direct connection between those responses and truth-telling is the magical aspect.

And a hearty F@ck You! to all those who say it’s cool to spy on people as long they’re foreigners (or “bad people” – yeah right…) .

Afaict a lot of these anti terrorism measures (including the terrorism act) poll pretty well among the UK public.

novakant, I don’t think the Convention prohibits signals intelligence collected from diplomats. I do think it prohibits physical invasion of embassy and consulate premises. That said, the Convention doesn’t cover international organizations such as the UN.

And I also don’t think it’s appropriate to violate a person’s privacy simply because he is not a US citizen. We agree on that much.

@65 “The point is that they’re not lie detectors”.

But they ARE lie detectors, or, to be more specific, liar detectors.

For example when a guy comes into the room with a polygraph and states ‘with this machine I can tell whether or not you are lying’… I know straight away that he is a liar.* And I wouldn’t have known that without the machine.

A pretty amazing device, when you think about it.

* or possibly an idiot, to be fair.

Andrew F misses the point (surprise!). Other countries and their citizens don’t care whether US actions can be found legal under US law. They care that the US does not ride rough-shod over their interests, and acts internationally in accord with its agreements. Yes there is grey area, but the US has pushed the boundaries in intelligence collection, in finance, in sanctions against Iran, in the war on terror. My intuition is that the US is not in a strong enough position to withstand the inevitable reactions.

Polygraphs enable a form of interrogation where more is revealed than without them. Obviously it’s not perfect, it doesn’t allow you to see into someone’s innermost soul, but it allows you to detect someone’s emotions even when they’re very good at suppressing their facial expressions and controlling their tone of voice. Making use of that capability is more art than science, but it’s not hocus pocus smoke and mirrors.