In the New York Review of Books, James Bamford (who’s been on this beat for some time) has a nice succinct history of our government’s Orwellian tactics:
… Looking back, the NSA and its predecessors have been gaining secret, illegal access to the communications of Americans for nearly a century. On July 1, 1920, a slim balding man in his early thirties moved into a four-story townhouse at 141 East 37th Street in Manhattan. This was the birth of the Black Chamber, the NSA’s earliest predecessor, and it would be hidden in the nondescript brownstone. But its chief, Herbert O. Yardley, had a problem. To gather intelligence for Woodrow Wilson’s government, he needed access to the telegrams entering, leaving, and passing through the country, but because of an early version of the Radio Communications Act, such access was illegal. With the shake of a hand, however, Yardley convinced Newcomb Carlton, the president of Western Union, to grant the Black Chamber secret access on a daily basis to the private messages passing over his wires—the Internet of the day.
For much of the next century, the solution would be the same: the NSA and its predecessors would enter into secret illegal agreements with the telecom companies to gain access to communications. Eventually codenamed Project Shamrock, the program finally came to a crashing halt in 1975 when a Senate committee that was investigating intelligence agency abuses discovered it. Senator Frank Church, the committee chairman, labeled the NSA program “probably the largest governmental interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken.”
As a result of the decades of illegal surveillance by the NSA, in 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was signed into law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) came into existence. Its purpose was, for the first time, to require the NSA to get judicial approval for eavesdropping on Americans. Although the court seldom turned down a request for a warrant, or an order as it’s called, it nevertheless served as a reasonable safeguard, protecting the American public from an agency with a troubling past and a tendency to push the bounds of spying unless checked.
For a quarter of a century, the rules were followed and the NSA stayed out of trouble, but following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration decided to illegally bypass the court and began its program of warrantless wiretapping….
At the same time, rather than calling for prosecution of the telecom officials for their role in illegally cooperating in the eavesdropping program, or at least a clear public accounting, Congress simply granted them immunity not only from prosecution but also from civil suits. Thus, for nearly a century, telecom companies have been allowed to violate the privacy of millions of Americans with impunity….
During the past decade, the NSA has secretly worked to gain access to virtually all communications entering, leaving, or going through the country. A key reason, according to the draft of a top secret NSA inspector general’s report leaked by Snowden, is that approximately one third of all international telephone calls in the world enter, leave, or transit the United States. “Most international telephone calls are routed through a small number of switches or ‘chokepoints’ in the international telephone switching system en route to their final destination,” says the report. “The United States is a major crossroads for international switched telephone traffic.” At the same time, according to the 2009 report, virtually all Internet communications in the world pass through the US. For example, the report notes that during 2002, less than one percent of worldwide Internet bandwidth—i.e., the international link between the Internet and computers—“was between two regions that did not include the United States.”…
Much more at the link.
As a sort of (possibly unintentional) coda, the NYRB blog has also posted historian Natalie Zemon Davis’ story about having her passport confiscated by the FBI, at the behest of the House Un-American Activities Committee, back in 1952:
… This episode also expanded my notions of human response to situations of constraint, both my own and that of people in the past. I realized that between heroic resistance to and fatalistic acceptance of oppression, there was ample space for coping strategies and creative improvisation. Much of human life was and is carried on in this fertile middle ground. I am seeing this still in my current research on four generations of a slave family in colonial Suriname. One of the men escaped to the Maroons and led uprisings, but most stayed put, helping set up secret slave courts to have some control over their lives. The women used their liaisons with white men to advance their own kin, but also to win favors for their fellow slaves.
I have wanted to be a historian of hope. We can take heart from the fact that no matter how dire the situation, some will find means to resist, some will find means to cope, and some will remember and tell stories about what happened.
Regnad Kcin
it is a difficult day and age in which to raise children now reaching the age of reason.
for they ask questions, and damn good ones at that.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
I read the whole damn thing and it doesn’t comport with Martin said was going on so I don’t know what to believe now.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: Wait, so you’re not the ‘thought leader’? Martin is? Now I’m confused.
Dolly Llama
I had several classes with Loch Johnson at the University of Georgia that revolved around Johnson’s work as a staffer with Walter Mondale during the Church hearings. It was fascinating at the time, but distant to me then. I had not had a chance to mature and “turn that page,” and very, very few people could have foreseen how consumer-technology level has evolved. I never knew the kinds of things I learned about then would seem so relevant now. I guess in advancing from age 19 to 43 I have finally “lived a cycle” and seen shit come full circle.
maven
Does this long article have cat photos? Otherwise…….
cathyx
I hope that in the fallout from all of this is that it will hurt these corporations internationally in their wallets. They deserve at least that for their compliance.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader:
I choose Martin. I stand by Balloon Juice.
cathyx
@Baud: Who are you supposed to follow when Martin is off duty? The Obama administration only pays 9-5 mon thru fri.
Baud
@cathyx:
Ha. I wish. Obama is a cruel taskmaster. Always on call with that one.
Ted & Hellen
Rarely if ever mentioned in any of this is the fact that the Bush administration and U.S. security agencies had all the information they needed in hand to prevent 9/11. Between bureaucratic rivalries, incompetence, and a curious unwillingness to act on the part of the WH, we know what happened next.
The idea that a LACK of information is what led to 9/11 is just complete bullshit, so of course this corrupt, incompetent government in the form of both parties has spent the 12 years since the attacks focusing on acquiring MORE information while pretending such will prevent future attacks.
God, I hate these people.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: JIT scheduling strikes again.
fuckwit
I’m still having trouble getting outraged about this.
It reminds me of people freaking out about how biased the media is. A neutral, objective, fair-handed media was an anomaly of the mid 20th century, and has never been the norm. Newspapers were always partisan and shrill and often the propaganda peices of the rich and powerful. That’s always been the norm, up until a bubble in the 50s-70s. People pining for that bygone era seem… naive to me.
Let’s step back to the 18th century or so. Newspapers were clearly partisan, there were broadsheets, it was more like blogs and the internet than like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.
Now with this privacy thing, I think the idea of electronic privacy was an anomaly of the maybe the same period, maybe a little later, and leading up to the early internet era. Privacy is only possible in a large society where people are anonymous. That’s a new-ish thing, huge cities where you could really disappear. Most of human life has been not like that at all.
In the 18th century, everyone knew everyone’s business. There weren’t really secrets. You could keep secrets by whispering, but mail was opened and read (it went on ships), and even people would listen at the keyhole to hear what others were saying. Hell, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia hired horses and carriages to drive up and down the street around the hall they were meeting to make noise to attempt to prevent people outside from listening in to what they were doing. Having “secret” meetings meant slipping out in the middle of the night, and being anonymous meant wearing disguises, etc. Governments had agents and snitches everywhere, and of course there was so much gossip. There was very little privacy.
So we had this window where we had some measure of electronic privacy, even the illusion of it. Had we implemented encryption everywhere then we really could have had privacy; could still do it now with the tools available (TOR, PGP, OTR, SSL) if we really wanted to, at least to prevent casual massive-dragnet snooping.
And now we’re getting back to the era of being completely open all the time, everyone knowing everyone’s business. The “global village” people talked about in the 90s is here, and it’s Facebook/Twitter/Google. And it is like a village, a gossipy, out-in-the-open village. And of course governments are using that to spy on people.
I don’t think it’s a good thing, but I can’t get bent out of shape about it either.
Ramiah Ariya
Remember the argument against religion and blasphemy laws? Why should a set of people’s “faith” deserve special respect? Isn’t the question the same for surveillance?
If a bunch of gangsters set up shop in a country, and managed to tap into all cable communications, how would we respond? Would we then say “spying is always going on”? Would we then say “Everybody in the world should be prepared to be spied on”? I bet most of the arguments that claim Snowden “revealed nothing” and so on would collapse in light of such a group of gangsters.
Yet, when a government does the same thing, why are most people willing to accept it? Or advance cynical arguments unwilling to address the morality of it?
Mnemosyne
@Ramiah Ariya:
Huh? There is no argument about blasphemy laws in the US, because we don’t have them.
The First Amendment means that everyone’s “faith” — even small groups — must be respected by the government, and no one group is allowed official supremacy over another (though obviously the US is culturally dominated by various forms of Christianity). So I’m not getting what your argument is in US terms since we have no legal concept of “blasphemy” like they do in countries that have official religions.
MomSense
Since we are on the subject of creepy technology. Anyone else a bit weirded out by 3D printing? WTF is it??
I feel like we are not far off from telling the computer ” tea Earl Grey, hot” And how expensive will the “printer cartridges” be at that point?? I can’t afford them now.
JWL
The republican party deliberately, with malice aforethought, big lied Americans into unleashing the 2003 Iraq War. That treason was aided and abetted by the democratic party. We were then counseled to “look forward, not back” by democrats, while the republicans assured the simple minded that “only time will tell” if indeed it was a honest misjudgment. The political status quo was maintained, even before the United decision by those people, on that court.
The two party’s now insist that Americans trust them about the creation of a surveillance state.
The odds of a viable third party emerging in the near future is virtually nil.
Is this a great country, or what?
Sad_Dem
Anyone see the news story about the family in Long Island that got a visit from the police after researching pressure cookers and backpacks?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Sad_Dem: LGF has been all over that one. Seems someone at a local computer company did an audit on a former employee’s computer and found the search terms in the browser history. Given that it was a former employee, I don’t blame them for being weirded out and calling the police.
Such audits are often a routine part of clearing out the former employee’s computer in preparation for assigning it to another employee. Don’t want to chance a new hire stumbling across porn, after all.
FlipYrWhig
@Sad_Dem: Edroso on the story: Edroso. Includes a snippet of this person’s warblogger past.
dollared
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Really? Why not a simple wipe and reload? Simpler, faster, more completely erases the history.
handsmile
Just now reading through (some of) today’s threads….
Anne Laurie: I’m very glad you “front-paged” this invaluable essay by Bamford whose several books on the history and operations of the NSA are as close to authoritative as the subject permits. (Top Secret America by the Washington Post’s peerless investigative reporter Dana Priest is another essential work on the burgeoning American national surveillance regime.)
I first linked to this NYRB essay yesterday in a comment on Betty Cracker’s “New Snowden Bombshell?” post. Corner Stone was the only person who replied to it. Regrettably here as well, it seems to have generated little interest.
Corner Stone
@handsmile:
As I snarkily tried to suggest previously, Bamford’s information doesn’t comport with the overwhelming attempts of BJ commenters to push this under a rug somewhere. And instead of relentlessly linking to someone who’s spent a lifetime researching and writing about this subject, and reporting on it in a fairly clinical manner, they instead choose to link to LGF over and over and over. Because somehow Charles Johnson is now a trustworthy authority figure.
Rex Everything
@Corner Stone: I love how these guys rail endlessly against Cole and GG for having supported the Iraq war, but lionize Charles Johnson without qualm.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I would not say that “Balloon Juice commenters” as a whole are trying to sweep this under a rug. Yes, a significant group are entirely blasé about it. Another group is completely outrage about every aspect of it. And the third group, obviously the most sensible, welcomes the attention brought to privacy and surveillance issues by Snowden/GG without necessarily accepting their revelations at face value.
Epicurus
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: George Effing W. Bush; Worst. President. Ever. Period, end of story. Sadly, we will be trying to repair the damage he wreaked on this country for many, many years. My sincere hope is that the history books tell the REAL story; my brain tells me they will not.
cvstoner
Information is power. When you place near-infinite information in the hands of a closed group of secretive people, there is no such thing as oversight.
The only way to ensure a modicum of privacy is to encrypt and anonymize as much as possible.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think the word “significant” is ummm significant here. And the group that is “outrage(d) about every aspect of it”, IMO, is outraged not only by the alleged deeds themselves, and the potential deeds available, but also significantly by the fucking loyalists here who are indeed blasé about it. The effort put forth to avoid the critical analysis that the so-called third group is interested in, is mindblowing to some who are “outraged”. And no, by critical analysis I do not mean the recaps by Martin here after he’s spoken with 4 or 5 expert IT people who all seemed to agree with him and all also seemed to focus on the same 1 number on 1 slide of 1 PPT. And I sure as fuck do not include Charles Johnson in any partial analysis of this situation. If I wanted rigorous analysis from Charles Johnson I would ask him to write a whitepaper on how to be a ratfucking, warmongering Bush cheerleader for 7 years. That subject I will accept him as an expert on.
No, the effort by a significant group of BJ commenters is to tell us what a jerk Snowden is, or how he’s significantly damaged human rights in Russia, or how they’d really, truly and honestly respect his actions if he’d march arm and arm across the bridge knowing a white cop was waiting to crack his skull on the other side.
And there simply is no way to get to the legitimate discussion the alleged third way people want to have without first, and repeatedly, rejecting the premise that the significant group of commenters is desperate to put forth.