Posts Tagged ‘FBI’
Drones Are Used For Domestic Surveillance, FBI Director Admits
Wednesday, 19 June 2013 10:04
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Not sure if this one fits with the “fairness doctrine” or the “inconvenience” paradigm (where the government is here to protect you in exchange for ceding all those pesky constitutional amendments), but moments ago yet another “conspiracy theory” become fact when the FBI director Robert Mueller admitted to the domestic use of drones for surveillance purposes.

From RT:

The FBI uses drones for domestic surveillance purposes, the head of the agency told Congress early Wednesday.

(Read more…)

 

Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed to lawmakers that the FBI owns several unmanned aerial vehicles, but has not adopted any strict policies or guidelines yet to govern the use of the controversial aircraft.

 

“Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on US soil?” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Mr. Mueller during an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

 

“Yes,” Mueller responded bluntly, adding that the FBI’s operation of drones is “very seldom.”

Well as long as it’s very seldom… The good thing about the rabbit hole is, it never really ends.

    



 
No, NSA Spying Did NOT Prevent a Terror Attack on Wall Street
Tuesday, 18 June 2013 22:11
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In response to the revelation that the NSA has been illegally spying on all Americans for more than a decade, NSA chief General Keith Alexander claimed that the spying prevented a terrorist attack on Wall Street and the New York subway.

There’s only one problem: the claim is completely false.

The Christian Science Monitor notes today:

(Read more…)

According to officials at the House Intelligence hearing, this plan was caught when the NSA was using its Internet intercept authority to monitor the communications of a known extremist in Yemen.

 

This suspect, in turn, was in contact with an individual in the United States named Khalid Ouazzani. Thus warned, the FBI investigated Mr. Ouazzani through traditional law enforcement methods, and discovered a burgeoning plot to bomb the NYSE.

 

“Ouazzani had been providing information and support to this plot,” FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce told lawmakers.

 

However, Mr. Ouazzani pleaded guilty to providing material support – in his case, money – to Al Qaeda, not to terror planning. His May 2010 plea agreement makes no mention of anything related to the New York Stock Exchange, or any bomb plot, notes David Kravets in Wired magazine.

 

Plus, Ouazzani’s defense attorney said Tuesday the stock market allegation was news to him.

 

“Khalid Ouazzani was not involved in any plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange,” attorney Robin Fowler told Wired.

How much did this bad guy give Al Qaeda? $23,000 total.

The other publicly-discussed disrupted terror plot – on the New York subway – was also not really due to government’s overbroad spying program.

The Associated Press reports:

Little was offered to substantiate claims that the programs have been successful in stopping acts of terrorism that would not have been caught with narrower surveillance. In the New York subway bombing case, President Barack Obama conceded the would-be bomber might have been caught with less sweeping surveillance.

The Christian Science Monitor notes of the New York subway case:

As to the New York subway plot, it was discovered not by analysis of vast amounts of Internet data of foreign users, but rather by old-fashioned police work, according to The Guardian ….

In addition, the Guardian pointed out:

Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA’s vast data-mining activities have questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role ….

Indeed, top security experts say that mass surveillance does not help keep us safe.

Glenn Greenwald notes:

This is just the same playbook that U.S. government officials have been using for the last five decades whenever anything gets done that brings small amounts of transparency to the bad conduct that they do in the dark. They immediately accuse those who brought that transparency of jeopardizing national security. They try and scare the American public into believing that they’ve been placed at risk and that the only way they can stay safe is to trust the people in power to do whatever it is they want to do without any kinds of constraints, accountability or light of any kind.

Postscript: Mr. Ouazzani giving $23,000 to Al Qaeda is indeed a crime. He supported Al Qaeda, and was rightly prosecuted and convicted for that crime. But given that the American government has been providing arms, money and logistical support to Al Qaeda in Syria, Libya, Mali, Bosnia and other countries – and related Muslim terrorists in Chechnya, Iran, and many other countries – Mr. Ouazzani’s support for terrorism seems rather small in comparison.

    



 
NSA Foiled NYSE Terrorist Plot, We Now Learn
Tuesday, 18 June 2013 10:59
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To think it only took the world’s most (in)famous whistleblower to get the NSA to disclose that it had heroically managed to prevent terrorist attacks involving the New York Stock Exchange (we supposed they refer to the Manhattan-based TV studio and not the actual exchange where the servers are now housed in Mahwah, NJ) and the NY Subway. Because whereas there was a time in the past when the various US secret services would scurry at the opportunity to disclose their expertise to the general public, now it is a false negative that is supposed to disprove a positive (pervasive spying on the US population is good for you because…). Of course it takes one non-false positive to disprove a false negative, namely the Boston Bombers, who as far as we recall, used cell phones to communicate. (Read more…) so much for details: now please praise the NSA, and also comply with the Administration’s push to rescind the second amendment. Or is Obama no longer pushing for “arms control”?

From NBC:

National Security Agency surveillance programs helped disrupt plots to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and the New York subway system, an FBI official told Congress on Tuesday.

 

The official, Deputy Director Sean Joyce, said that the programs also linked an American citizen in Chicago to the 2008 terror attacks on hotels in India and to a plot to bomb the offices of a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad.

 

Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, told the committee that the programs had helped stop more than 50 “potential terrorist events” since the Sept. 11 attacks. He said he would provide classified details of all of them to the committee Wednesday.

 

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” Alexander said.
Joyce gave limited details on the foiled plots. In the stock exchange plot, he said, the NSA monitored an extremist in Yemen who was in contact with an operative in the United States.

 

In the subway plot, he said, the NSA intercepted an email from a terrorist in Pakistan in 2009 who was talking with someone in the United States about perfecting a recipe for explosives. He said that person turned out to be Najibullah Zazi, who later pleaded guilty in the plot and is in federal prison.