Bugging Quotes

Many politicians were arguing that giving the intelligence agencies more power to wiretap, bug and hack into personal communications despite the 4th Amendment’s strictures argued that the public was in rational fear of terror attacks and had a right to be protected.

The call for embedding the balance in the law is in contrast to the past where the balance was left to the discretion of the intelligence agency leadership but technological limitations curtailed their ability to unbalance things too much.

The reason this quotation is famous is that Clapper answered “No, Sir”. 3 months later Edward Snowden disclosed the fact that the NSA was collecting some information from EVERY telephone call and e-mail made or sent in the United States. The colloquy became famous when the government tried to capture Snowden and try him for illegally revealing classified information when others saw him as a whistle blower who had told the truth and the guys who lied to Congress and the American people wanted to prosecute him.

Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.

at the NSA collection of every American’s private e-mails, phone calls, and other digital communications. Referring to the NSA program of collecting information on all electronic communications of all American Citizens. See {636963} for more on the case.

The first non-PRI President in over 70 years.

Here is an example of the mental set of NSA regarding electronically capturing information. It is easy to see why the agency got into a position where they were castigated by groups throughout America for the large scale gathering of even Private communications.

It is onerous for most governments to have one of their secret programs exposed by the press. But what is much worse for the government is the exposure of a secret program whose legality is not on a firm foundation.

For example, most of the documents that are classified as secret in the CIA are so classified because the censor thought the information might be damaging to the CIA’s interest, not the American citizen’s. However, there is a strange logic that is sometimes given to justify censoring material that would embarrass the agency: If the agency is embarrassed, public support and confidence in the agency will be eroded, and that in turn will cause investigations, reviews, and possible diminished budgets. This would be distracting from the agency’s mission of keeping Americans safe, so the public should be kept in the dark about embarrassing material.

He had developed a mathematical algorithm for a computer encryption that would take years to break even for the most powerful supercomputers. The U. S. Government tried to prevent him from publishing the technique and formula, but he went ahead anyway. They then tried to accuse him of violating an Arms Export Control Act for allowing people in other countries to see it, but there were no legal grounds for indictment. The strong encryption method, PGP, can be used with almost any PC and internet transmission of files.

the name of the judge or senator XXKEYSTORE is an NSA Secret Database. This quotation is very important because after Snowden had stolen some secret files to disclose the CIA practices to the Congress and public, many of the NSA and other government officials stated that Snowden was a very low level person. They accused him of aggrandizing his role and importance to the agency. The also claimed that NSA only captures meta data, not the data content of the documents or messages they intercept. Snowden’s quote casts suspicion on the first and belies the second. If Snowden were such a low level employee, why did he have access to the data base that stores the content of the e-mail (and attachments) of the Congress and many other public officials. For the second, if only meta data was captured and stored, how could Snowden see the e-mails which he then disclosed to the press.

He was explaining his reasons for resigning in 2005 from the number two position in the Justice Department. The George W. Bush administration had implemented a program of secret wiretapping and surveillance of American citizens in America which required the authorization of the Justice Department which had determined that the program as it was being implemented violated the law. The Attorney General was ill in the hospital but had told Comey that he would not sign the authorization. The White House then pressured Comey to sign and he refused, and in a similar replay of the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre”, the number three man at Justice would have been ordered to sign. His resignation convinced President Bush to alter the program to take account of the Justice Department objections.

The nation was in the midst of a national scandal when it was revealed that the National Security Agency was wiretapping and hacking into all telephone calls, e-mails, and other files for every single American. Hayden was typical of many in the intelligence agencies who didn’t even recognize that this was excessive as most Americans thought. The disconnect was at the heart of the problem which the nation was debating. Hayden’s argument was that the collecting of everyone’s private communications data was not an excess; what would be an excess is the abuse of how that data was used by the intelligence agencies which he claimed that other than some administrative errors had not taken place. Most people thought that the hacking and wiretapping without a warrant violated the 4th Amendment to the Constitution even if none of the data were kept permanently. However, the NSA was keeping all the meta data—the person, date, person called or e-mailed, the location of the communication sender and receiver, the time, and the length of the communication and analyzing it constantly tracking the networks of who each American communicated with. Hayden and other intelligence officials, including the President, claimed that the government was not reading (or listening to) the actual text of the messages and conversations without a warrant. However, those same officials had denied that they were collecting anything on large numbers of Americans and they deliberately lied about this even to the Congressional oversight committees. It took a major leak to disclose the truth. Many thought that even the claim of the minimum usage might also be a lie. The record demonstrated that intelligence officials had frequently lied to the President so even his statement was in question. Additional leaks also showed that the intelligence agencies had lied to the FISA courts to get warrants. Critics asked if collecting information on every single phone call and e-mail and internet communication was not excessive, what could possibly be excessive.

This quotation provides insight into the mentality of the senior administrators of NSA. See {637046} for another quotation by Alexander showing the predilection for massive, 100% surveilance.

He was trying to assuage the anger and anxiety when it became public that the NSA had been monitoring all the calls of American citizens and not only suspected terrorists. He made the distinction between metadata and content. He claimed NSA was gathering the phone numbers of the parties on the call, the time and duration, but not listening in to the contents. Critics asked how he could be sure and that if the agency were gathering all the data, they could easily listen to any. Later the agency admitted that it had “inadvertently” examined the content of some communications.