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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Steve Kornacki
Host, Up with Steve Kornacki
MSNBCW 07/06/2014
Kornacki: The Washington Post lead story this morning is a big investigative report that is certain to prompt a lot of discussion and reaction in the days to come. The newspaper reports the NSA is intercepting data from many more ordinary users than from its intended targets. Nine out of every ten account holders were not the people the agency was trying to target. In nearly half of their surveillance files are from Americans. Former NSA analyst Edward Snowden provided the documents to the Post. However, the article also points out how much valuable intelligence has been picked up in the sweep. Quoting from the article here, there are discoveries of considerable intelligence value in the intercepted messages. Among the most valuable contents which the Post will not describe in detail to avoid interfering with on-going operations, are fresh revelations about a secret overseas nuclear project, double dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell another friendly power, and the identities of aggressive intruders into U.S. Computer network.
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Ray McGovern
Former CIA Intelligence Analyst
ALJAZAM 07/07/2014
McGovern: As has been pointed out the very close relationship of intelligence sharing is something that goes back many decades. As a matter of fact, Tom Drake the Senior Executive who testified before the Bundestag on Friday evening talked about the BND for example as being an appendage, Anhang (sp?) is the German word to the NSA and the U.S. Intelligence establishment. So with that kind of history, it's going to be very difficult for Mrs. Merkel to assert her authority, and i see this as a kind of a metaphor for the Anhang (sp?), the appendage relationship that has existed between Germany and the United States since the end of World War II really.
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Ray McGovern
Former CIA Intelligence Analyst
ALJAZAM 07/07/2014
McGovern: The fear in Germany of course is that Washington knows a lot more about what the BND, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the CIA equivalent in Germany, what the BND is doing. And that's altogether possible. Dual haus merlic (sp?) could one say. This parliamentary Bundestag Ausschüsse, the committee that is looking into this going to really have to decide whether it really wants to learn these things or whether like the U.S. so-called oversight committees which really are overlook committees, whether they really want to know what the BND was doing. Because Thomas Drake said on Friday night, all or virtually all the data that goes through Germany is accessed by the NSA and by the BND.
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Ray McGovern
Former CIA Intelligence Analyst
ALJAZAM 07/07/2014
McGovern: Some of that traffic, some of that data is used for drone strikes in Pakistan. That's big. If the German government wants to duck that, hopefully there's enough democracy in Germany, hopefully enough time has gone by since World War II that the German leaders can stop acting like Anhang (sp?), with all connotation of what a hanger-on looks like and stand up for their rights
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Alex Wagner
Anchor of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: The latest installment of the Snowden files published in the
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Keith Alexander
General, Director of the National Security Agency, Chief of the Central Security Service and Commander of the United States Cyber Command.
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: NSA officials who have asserted for over a year that this type of internet data collected under section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act was limited to foreign nationals outside the U.S. Rogers: Is the NSA have the ability to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their e-mails under these two programs? Alexander: No, we do not have that authority. Rogers: Does the technology exist at the NSA to flip a switch by some analysts to listen to Americans' phone calls or read e-mails? Alexander: No. Rogers: So the technology does not exist for any individual or group of individuals at the NSA to flip a switch to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their e-mails? Alexander: That is correct. Wagner: Administration officials had repeatedly ridiculed Snowden's claims that he had access to such content. As recently as May, the former NSA chief assured the “New Yorker” that he didn't get that database, he didn’t have access to.
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Alex Wagner
Anchor of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: In an awkward bit of timing, the post report was published days after the president's privacy and civil liberties oversight board released a report supporting the internet data collection methods it was impressed with the rigor of the government's efforts to ensure it acquires only those communications it is authored to connect and owes those persons it is authorized to target.
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Alex Wagner
Host of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Wagner: The Washington Post report over the weekend that nine out of every ten people caught up in the NSA’s internet dragnet are regular internet users with no ties to terrorism, comes another NSA revelation. This one is courtesy of a Snowden leak to Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. And it shows that from 2002 to 2008, the NSA and FBI spied on the e-mails of five high profile Muslim Americans, the 5 include Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations or CARR the country's top Muslim civil rights organization. Also included is Faisal Gill , a former Bush Administration official who held top secret security clearance while working at the Department of Homeland Security.
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Faisal Gill
Former Intelligence policy Advisor in the Dept. of Homeland Security in the Bush Administration
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Gill: I was a very conservative Reagan loving republican. I just don't know what's in my background. And if somebody like me could be surveilled, then some other people out there, I can only imagine. Wagner: None of five have a criminal record or any known ties to terrorists. According to the report they were likely targeted because of their Muslim background. Today the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department rejected that allegation saying in a joint statement “It is entirely false that U.S. intelligence agencies conduct electronic surveillance of political religious or activist figures solely because they disagree with public policies or criticize the government or based on their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. But the targets of that surveillance aren't buying it.
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Nihad Awad
Exec Dir. Of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR )
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Awad: I feel I'm being targeted because of my religious identity and my First Amendment activities that are protected under the Constitution. Ghafoor: I believe I was targeted because of my name is Ashim Ghafoor, yes, absolutely, I believe that had something to do with it because there were former Bush administration officials representing Saudi entities and I doubt their e-mails were tapped. Wagner: Not helping the government’s argument that this had nothing to do with ethnicity, race or religion, an NSA training document from 2005 that uses the fake name Mohammed Raghead as a place holder for a target’s name. Today a spokeswoman from the NSA would not comment on that document’s authenticity but “… said the NSA has not and would not approve official training documents that include insulting or inflammatory language…”
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