By now, we are all familiar with the "revelations" from Glenn Greenwald in connection with Edward Snowden's theft of documents related to NSA surveillance and data-collection programs. As Snowden first put it in an interview with Greenwald:
“I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal e-mail.”
Greenwald, as we all know, has now expanded with this characterization:
“All they have to do is enter an e-mail address or an IP address, and it does two things, searches the database and lets them listen to the calls or read the e-mails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories and Google search terms.”
“It’s done with no need to go to court, no need to get approval. There are legal constraints for spying on Americans, you can’t target them without going to the FISA court. But it allows them to listen to whatever e-mails they want, telephone calls, browsing history, Microsoft Word documents.”
Just two days ago, appearing on
This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Greenwald suggested that the NSA has been engaging in widespread illegal surveillance, citing eavesdropping on calls home from soldiers overseas and a citing a 2009 report in the
New York Times.
But are Greenwald's "shocking revelations" accurate? Does it give a true picture of constraints on these programs? Or is it based on half-truths and glaring, material omissions?
In his column, "Greenwald’s Shocking Bombshell: NSA Analysts Can Analyze NSA Intelligence," blogger Bob Cesca shreds the credibility of Greenwald's reporting on these issues.
http://thedailybanter.com/...
Addressing Greenwald's latest "revelations" step-by-step, Cesca reveals the inherent dishonesty in Greenwald's latest claims, not just by the dubious manner of what he does say, but even more by the dishonest manner of what he doesn't say.
For example, from reading/hearing Greenwald's latest assertions, which strongly suggest that near-universal surveillance on Americans occurs without any barriers, did you know that the NSA programs include front-end data-filters to prevent surveillance from going outside what is permitted? In other words, there are, in fact, technological barriers to what Greenwald claims. Now, who knows, perhaps we need to have a discussion about the sufficiency of that filter technology, but it's funny, isn't it, that Greenwald's "shocking revelations" never even mention it? From his scary "revelations" so far, would anyone know these safeguards even exist?
Would you also guess, from his quote above, that it is still highly illegal for the NSA to conduct any surveillance of an American without first going to the FISA court and obtaining a warrant, and that anyone doing so would be breaking the law? Amazing how he tried to bury and minimize that fact among the hysteria, no?
Likewise, closer examination of Greenwald's claims of abuses further reveals his dishonest narrative. For example, he notes, correctly, that operators intercepted and listened in on calls home from U.S. service members. But what he didn't say is that the eavesdropping he references occurred six years ago, in 2007, under the Bush administration, and prior to the 2008 FISA Amendments. It also solely involved calls originating from military bases in the Middle East, which are not entitled to the same privacy rights as domestic, civilian calls. Funny that Greenwald failed to offer those important caveats when asked if the NSA programs at issue today are being abused, isn't it?
Similarly, Greenwald cited a 2009 report to suggest that the NSA is committing unrestrained abuse. But, strangely, Greenwald failed to mention that it was the Obama DOJ which uncovered the abuse in that case during a comprehensive audit, and then enacted new safeguards against it. Hmmm . . . an audit . . . sounds like a safeguard, no? But again, no mention of this from Greenwald. Why, if one were a cynic, one might be tempted to suggest that Greenwald is solely interested in creating a narrative of ever-worsening abuse no matter how much material information he has to omit.
Now, what do we call someone who repeatedly and deliberately leaves out material pieces of critical information in order to create a mistaken impression? Do we call them a liar by omission, or just a propagandist?
More of the step-by-step shredding of Greenwald's credibility below the fold.
Let's start with a look at the crux of Greenwald's shocking revelation [emphasis mine]:
It’s done with no need to go to court, no need to get approval . . . [I]t allows them to listen to whatever e-mails they want, telephone calls, browsing history, Microsoft Word documents.
Ooooooh!
Scaaaary! They can spy on all of us, all the time, and they don't even need to go to court or get approval! Aaaaiiiigh! The sky is falling!
But look closer at the sentence Greenwald sneaks in between those two assertions.
There are legal constraints for spying on Americans, you can’t target them without going to the FISA court.
Um, wait --
what? Why is that sentence hidden between the two doomsday comments? And doesn't that completely contradict his first sentence? First, he claims that "it's done with no need to go to court, no need to get approval, yet in the very next sentence, he says, "you can't target [Americans] without going to the FISA court" for a warrant. Um,
what??? It's done without the need to go to court or get approval, but you have to go to court and get approval? What is that even supposed to mean? And then these conflicting statements are immediately followed by another, even scarier proposition -- that they can "listen to the whatever they want"? Oh, no! The sky is falling again! Why, geez, it's almost like he's
deliberately trying to create a false impression, isn't it?
Cesca sums up this deliberate creation of a false impression perfectly:
Greenwald['s] statement could be referred to as an outrage sandwich: two outrageous claims surrounding a throw-away mention of delicious, meaty truth that mitigates the outrageousness of the two claims . . . In the midst of inciting outrage, these mitigating news blips manage to pop up in nearly every article. But the blips are considerably out-gunned by all of the bloated hyperbole preceding and following each one.
As for the need to get a warrant, Cesca nicely sums up the false impression created by the hyperbole and carefully-crafted language spouted by Snowden and Greenwald [emphasis mine]:
Whenever the government determines there’s probable cause for targeting American citizens or “U.S. persons” with surveillance, requests are submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Court (FISC or “FISA Court”) and warrants are issued. This is standard operating procedure as sanctioned by Congress. Warrants are likely the “policy protections” that Snowden hedged about in his online Q&A. But the hyperbole has led many Americans, and even members of Congress, to believe that NSA is eavesdropping on all of us without cause or judicial oversight . . . It’s sad that we have to remind Greenwald’s disciples that from low-level deputies on up, the law requires similar orders in order to conduct a search, per the Fourth Amendment, and those orders can only be attained if there’s a suspicion that an American citizen might be breaking the law.
But you’ll never hear it described this way by Glenn Greenwald because it renders his bombshells impotent.
Perhaps most notably, on the critical issue of safeguards against abuse, Cesca reveals further dishonesty-by-glaring-omission from Greenwald regarding Snowden's claim that any analyst like him could access and eavesdrop on anyone's calls and emails, anytime:
Later, during an online Q&A with Snowden, a reader asked Snowden about the line, to which Snowden replied:
“US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it’s important to understand that policy protection is no protection – policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection – a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points.”
So not only is it a matter of policy that warrants are required for NSA analysts to wiretap Americans and foreigners living in America, but there’s actually a digital “filter” to prevent it. Nevertheless, he didn’t clarify whether he could wiretap in real time from his desk, with or without warrants, which is indicative of the routinely coy behavior that’s become synonymous with Snowden and Greenwald.
Wait -- what? There's a technological barrier and safeguard to
prevent analysts from doing what Snowden and Greenwald suggested is a free-for-all? Snowden himself now admits that there are data-filters on the NSA programs to
prevent abuse? In other words, not only would one have to
break the law to engage in surveillance of Americans without a warrant, one would have to
actively go around the existing filters on the technology to do it! Hardly the unrestrained surveillance free-for-all that Greenwald suggests, is it? But where is mention of this from Greenwald? Nowhere so far. Just the false impression that any analyst can spy on whatever he or she wants, whenever he or she wants. Again, if one were cynical, one might start to question the honesty of Greenwald's reporting, no?
Greenwald's dishonest narrative continues with his examples of supposed abuse of the NSA's programs. As noted above, the example of eavesdropping on military members cited by Greenwald is completely irrelevant to the current legal framework and programs. Likewise, Cesca reveals the dishonesty inherent in Greenwald's other example [emphasis mine]:
In this case, NSA “exceeded legal limits,” according to the Wall Street Journal, and was caught by the Obama Justice Department which enacted new privacy safeguards. Greenwald conveniently and predictably never mentioned the part about the Justice Department because a central thread in Greenwald’s narrative is that the Obama administration is making things worse, not better.
So, thus far, what has Greenwald actually revealed? Nothing new at all, it appears. These programs have been known and in use for at least a decade, they still require a warrant if Americans are targeted, and there are both legal and technological barriers to the kind of surveillance Greenwald implies is occurring. All he has done is dress up the already-known information with scary hyperbole, while ignoring material facts that are contrary to his narrative. Ultimately, it appears that his determined narrative -- no matter how misleading the impression it gives -- is more important than completeness for Greenwald [emphasis mine]:
The only way that mundane news about NSA software can achieve big headlines and big traffic is for it to be packaged in sensationalism and misleading claims delivered with frantic urgency and melodrama. That’s Greenwald’s con. If nothing else, he knows how the internet works and he routinely exploits the idea that most online and social media observers only read headlines and excerpts. From there, misinformation spreads virally and a tsunami of outrage sweeps over the internet. Again and again, with more to come this week.
So again, I will ask: What do we call someone who willfully paints a misleading picture by deliberately failing to include relevant information? Is that person completely dishonest, or just a propagandist?
**UPDATE: There has been much speculation about the next "bombshell" due from Greenwald this week. Early indications are that it will reiterate and expand on the claim that analysts have "access" to all phone calls and emails. This raises an interesting question: Will Greenwald continue to misleadingly conflate "access" in the sense of having the technological capability to gain access to calls and emails, on the one hand, with "access" in the traditional sense of actually illegally eavesdropping without a warrant, on the other? If it's anything like all of his "bombshells" so far, I expect the misleading conflation to continue.