So now RWNJ's hate secret spying and anti-terrorism activities and loss of privacy because it is happening under President Obama's administration (never mind GWB got the "odious" Patriot Act signed nto law, waterboarded suspects, opened Gitmo, etc. etc.)
Immediately upon publication of Glenn Greenwalds'
bombshell story revealing the extent of NSA spying, the
New York Times and
Reuters dutifully reported that this spying prevented the 2009
terror attack by Najibullah Zazi on the New York subway system.
NYT:
WASHINGTON — In early September 2009, an e-mail passed through an Internet address in Peshawar, Pakistan, that was being monitored by the vast computers controlled by American intelligence analysts. It set off alarms. The address, linked to senior Qaeda operatives, had been dormant for months.
What followed in the next few days was a cross-country pursuit in which the police stopped Mr. Zazi on the George Washington Bridge, let him go, and after several false starts, arrested him in New York. He eventually pleaded guilty to plotting to carry out backpack bombings in the city’s subway system.
Reuters:
(Reuters) - A secret U.S. intelligence program to collect emails that is at the heart of an uproar over government surveillance helped foil an Islamist militant plot to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009, U.S. government sources said on Friday.
The sources said Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, was talking about a plot hatched by Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident, when he said on Thursday that such surveillance had helped thwart a significant terrorist plot in recent years.
President Barack Obama's administration is facing controversy after revelations of details of massive programs run by the National Security Agency for collecting information from telephone and Internet companies.
The surveillance program that halted the Zazi plot was one that collected email data on foreign intelligence suspects, a U.S. government source said.
A 'lone government source' is repeatedly cited as the source. Rep. Mike Rogers has now
appeared in numerous media outlets praising the spying and referring to this single instance of a thwarted terrorist plot as and undeniable fact andjustification for it, worthy of sacrificing personal privacy for.
But did it stop this terror attack? Likely not, according to Buzzfeed:
But public — though not widely publicized — details of the Zazi plot cast into doubt the notion that a data mining program had much to do with the investigation. Zazi traveled to Pakistan in 2008 to train with al Qaeda. He was charged in 2009 with leading two other men in a plot to detonate suicide bombs in the New York subways.
The path to his capture, according to the public records, began in April 2009, when British authorities arrested several suspected terrorists. According to a 2010 ruling from Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission, one of the suspects’ computers included email correspondence with an address in Pakistan.
The details of terror investigations are not always laid out this clearly in public; but they appear to belie the notion, advanced by anonymous government officials Friday, that sweeping access to millions of email accounts played an important roil in foiling the subway attack. Instead, this is the sort investigation made possible by ordinary warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; authorities appear simply to have been monitoring the Pakistani email account that had been linked to terrorists earlier that year.
This was, in fact, reported at the time. That November, British authorities were bragging to the Telegraph about their role in arresting Zazi.
They further conclude:
The existence of PRISM was revealed Thursday by the Washington Post and the Guardian. Authorities are now scrambling to justify the program.
And who is now the biggest opponent of the sweeping surveillance program PRISM? None other than Breitbart, who just discovered 'some blogger called
emptywheel and quotes her to support their newfound hatred of the global war on terror. Maybe they should look up who they're quoting before using it to back up this newfound hate for the GWOT.
(I'll spare you clicking on a link and quote from the website, which came up in a search for terrorism being thwarted by PRISM).
A blogger at a site called emptywheel raised questions about the Reuters story yesterday. Ben Smith built upon that in a piece at Buzzfeed.
This is not the mass collection of email, it was ordinary police work which identified a significant email address which authorities were then able to monitor. And as Ben Smith also notes, even the specific email appears to have been intercepted by Scotland Yard which continued to monitor the account.
It seemed fairly obvious yesterday that leaks about the Zazi case were designed to provide a defense of the NSA's sweeping email dragnet. Reuters and especially the NY Times took the bait uncritically and published misleading stories which were discredited quickly. It is hard to imagine the NY Times in particular being this gullible if the PRISM revelation had come under a Republican President.
Ah, ok. It's the dreaded liberal media carrying water for the liberal administration by reporting that spying worked. Yes, they still hate terror and love the global war on terror, but just conduct it the old-fashioned way (before GWB was in office, pre-Patriot Act I guess). Do they have any idea they're siding with the majority of progressives by taking this position? Make up your mind!
As Bill Kristol pointed out today on Fox News, the Republicans are in a real pickle finding a way to hate Obama while loving the policies they have heartily supported in the past and brings in the IRS 'scandal' to help define the proper position conservatives should be having. The directive: IRS poking into people's lives: BAD, NSA poking into people's lives: GOOD.
The surveillance programs are causing a fissure on both sides of the aisle, with Republicans in favor of stronger national security measures finding themselves in the odd spot of supporting President Obama’s programs, which are a direct continuation of Bush-era policies. These conservatives, of whom Kristol is a spokesman, see the IRS scandal as indicative of an intrusive and aggressive government, but support extensive surveillance to fight terrorism.
“National security is different from internal matters of the government,” Kristol said. “We’re dealing with foreign threats here
The essential Republican mantra.