Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher, hacker, human rights activist, privacy advocate, Tor developer and WikiLeaks supporter was once called the "most dangerous man in cyberspace" by Rolling Stone. Yet many people would call Appelbaum, aka @ioerror, an Internet freedom fighter. He recently tweeted about the possible domestic NSA capture/interception points that were disclosed at the Whitney Museum's "Surveillance Teach-In"
Then Public Intelligence posted the NSA possible domestic interception/collection points map with seven AT&T locations and one Verizon location as listed below.
- AT&T located at 2651 Olive St, St Louis, MO 63103.
- AT&T located at 420 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90071.
- AT&T located at 611 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94107.
- AT&T located at 51 Peachtree Center Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30303.
- AT&T located at 10 S Canal St, Chicago, IL 60606.
- AT&T located at 811 10th Ave, New York, NY 10019.
- AT&T located at 12976 Hollenberg Dr, Bridgeton, MO 63044.
- Verizon located at 30 E St SW, Washington, DC 20003.
You may choose not to believe it, since not too long ago NSA chief General Keith Alexander denied the Orwellian surveillance nightmare of Total Information Awareness to Congressman Hank Johnson. The "NSA does not have the ability to do that in the United States," Alexander testified. Here's a link to the video and below is a partial transcript of Alexander's testimony:
Rep. Johnson: Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens’ emails?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cell phone conversations?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Google searches?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Text messages?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Amazon.com orders?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Bank records?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: What judicial consent is required for NSA to intercept communications and information involving American citizens?
Gen. Alexander: Within the United States, that would be the FBI lead. If it was a foreign actor in the United States, the FBI would still have the lead and could work that with NSA or other intelligence agencies, as authorized. But to conduct that kind of collection in the United States, it would have to go through a court order, and the court would have to authorize it. We are not authorized to do it, nor do we do it.
Point blank, however, is a conflicting report from a Democracy Now! interview with ex-NSA official and whistleblower William Binney:
Amy Goodman: Do you believe all emails, the government has copies of, in the United States?
William Binney: I would think—I believe they have most of them, yes.
Amy Goodman: And you’re speaking from a position where you would know, considering your position in the National Security Agency.
William Binney: Right. All they would have to do is put various Narus devices at various points along the network, at choke points or convergent points, where the network converges, and they could basically take down and have copies of most everything on the network.
According to the transcript of this Democracy Now video interview, "More Secrets on Growing State Surveillance," Goodman asked Binney to compare today's surveillance to Total Information Awareness (TIA) which was allegedly shut down after the public freaked out about such spying on citizens. Binney said when Poindexter spoke about developing TIA, he was testing the waters to see if Congress "would be receptive to something they were already doing. In other words, that process of building that information about everybody getting total information was already happening." The point is that it wasn't being developed; it was already being used covertly to spy on all of us.
Lastly, in a WNYC podcast with Appelbaum, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Binney, Poitras said all three are "targets of surveillance and government harassment and abuse." And sadly America is an out-of-control surveillance state. Interviewer Brian Lehrer mentioned Jack Goldsmith's book "Power and Constraint" which talks about how Obama and Bush, "two presidents with starkly different views about executive power and proper counterterrorism tactics" ended up on the same page when it comes to surveillance issues like wiretapping "because constitutional forces more powerful than the aims of the presidents were at work."
As we continue to see, we have no rights to our own digital communications that go through the dreaded Third Party service. The NSA repeatedly says "No" about domestic spying . . . precisely as the NSA denied warrantless wiretapping even though the agency was later caught like a fly entangled in a spider's sticky web of lies. Binney has apologized for creating the mass monitoring "ThinThread" program for the NSA which was turned on American citizens after 9/11. Democracy Now! has interviews claiming the NSA is lying again about capturing and storing all of our emails and other electronic communications. Are you going to believe the NSA turned over a new truth-telling leaf, or believe an NSA whistleblower? So now I ask you, how probable does the reality seem to you now of the NSA possible domestic interception/collection points map?
Have you called, emailed or tweeted your congressman to object to CISPA yet? While it seems the NSA is still covertly operating some form of TIA, if CISPA legislation passes, digital privacy will be tossed back to the dark ages and the NSA can legally vacuum up our emails and other electronic communications.
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