05/29/14 – Joshua Eaton – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here.
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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
And hey, it worked.
I got Joshua Eaton on the line.
And he's the guy who, well, one of the two guys who put together this great timeline of all the Snowden revelations at america.aljazeera.com.
Just Google Al Jazeera NSA timeline, and it'll come right up.
And it's links to all the stories.
And then, of course, all the stories linked to all the documents.
Welcome back to the show, Joshua.
How are you doing?
Welcome back.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great to be on.
Very good to have you here.
And so if you could, I know it's a very short notice kind of an interview here, but I hope that we could start with the original Verizon metadata story and the Prism story.
And then you could, you know, hopefully take us through about 10 minutes here and highlight the most important things that we have learned about the abuse of our rights by the National Security Agency in the last year since the Snowden revelations came out.
And I sure do appreciate it.
Yeah, so the original story was on, it was a FISA court order.
And it was the first FISA court order that had ever been leaked.
And that was a court order actually from the FBI requiring Verizon to hand over customer metadata on U.S. customers on a daily, ongoing basis to the NSA.
So that was obviously a huge bombshell that was followed next day by the Prism story, which revealed that the NSA has access to, sort of direct access to user data from some of the biggest, the biggest tech companies in the United States.
Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype as well, which is owned by Microsoft.
Well now, so there was some controversy about, oh, you got the Prism story all wrong.
What was that and how did that iron out there?
And I guess it was the Washington Post that took the criticism more than Greenwald.
Is that correct?
Yeah, the Washington Post and Barton Gellman took the criticism.
And this is something that's been bumping around for a while.
Glenn Greenwald addresses it in his new book, No Place to Hide.
It's one of the things he addresses.
He also addresses the relationship between the FBI and the NSA a lot more carefully.
So what people were saying was this was just sort of like a convenient way for companies to respond to court orders.
So if a company got a court order or got a national security letter asking for a particular user's data, compelling them to hand over a particular user's data, they would just put it in this kind of like electronic lockbox that NSA would then have access to.
So there's still this sort of confusion bumping around.
There's still arguments about it.
But in the case that Greenwald's made, this is really – it's more than that.
This is a database of user data.
And it's much more direct access than what the critics are arguing.
It sort of sounded like – and I'm no computer genius at all here, and I'm not certain of your level of expertise either, so I don't mean to put too much on you as far as the explanation of how it works or anything here, Joshua.
But it sounded to me like the critics were saying, well, it's sort of like an FTP program.
But the government says, hey, upload us this and upload us that, would you?
But the argument was, no, it's much more like a two-way street, and the NSA really does have FTP access and can root around on the other side of that wall, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's the basic argument.
And to be fair, I haven't looked in really close detail.
I've been sort of tracking the leaks broadly, so I haven't looked in really close detail.
I understand.
Yeah, I mean, and it is all very complicated stuff.
So when it comes to that kind of thing, it's perfectly fine to pass on.
So can you tell us then, what about X-Key Score?
I know what it sounds like it means.
Yeah, so X-Key Score is a series of, I think, when the slides were made, 500 servers around the world that are collecting data mostly from fiber optic networks, these huge backbones, fiber optic backbones that carry a lot of the world, and not just Internet data and telephone data, but also things like financial transactions, so like ATMs communicating with one another, things like that.
And so they tap these, and X-Key Score sorts it into these various databases that the NSA has.
And the databases, they sort of get more and more fine-grained.
There's some of them that have full-take data, which is just sucking up everything, vacuuming up everything from these cables.
Some of them have content.
Some of them just have metadata.
And then some of them have data from particular, what they call strong selectors, which is targets, those particular people they want to look at.
And then, now, it seems like they sort of made PRISM beside the point, right, when they figured out how they could just hack Google's servers and Yahoo's servers, and I guess whoever else, as they transfer, you know, it's all automated kind of processes, right, Amazon or whoever, they keep their data backed up in different places around the world, and then they're constantly transferring information back and forth, and maybe changing which server, which data is sitting on at any given time or whatever.
And it turned out that the NSA was just reaching right in and scooping up all of that traffic from those gigantic networks of the kings of the Internet, Google and Yahoo, right?
Yeah, so they were tapping into, so there's the links between customers and the companies, which are, with Google especially now, not, I don't think with Yahoo, but with Google by default is encrypted with SSL.
So when you see HTTPS in your address bar, that S means it's a secure encrypted connection.
But what wasn't encrypted is Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, which is the three companies that were involved, they have these data centers all over the world, and the data is, you know, your email inbox isn't just stored at one data center.
That data is stored at multiple data centers, and it's a weighted network.
So, you know, the information doesn't exactly take the most direct geographic route.
It's not like you get the information from the data center that's physically closest to you.
It takes whatever route, fastest or whatever route has the least activity on it at the moment.
And so this information is always traveling back and forth between these Google data centers, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and for a long time that wasn't encrypted.
It was carried over these fiber optic cables that these companies leased, and the NSA tapped those, which is sucking up full take information.
And they're doing it out of the country because that allowed them to avoid some of the legal restrictions that they've done within the U.S.
But there's almost certainly American data scooped up in that.
Please stay through the break and give us one more segment.
Joshua, can you or do you got to go?
No, I can do that.
Okay, great.
Thank you so much.
I'm sorry.
We've got to take this break.
It's a hardwired thing, but it's Joshua Eaton.
He helped to create the timeline of all Snowden NSA revelations and stories since last year.
It's at aljazeera, america.aljazeera.com.
We'll be right back.
All right, you guys.
Welcome back to The Thing Here.
I'm Scott Horton, and this is my show.
And I'm talking with Joshua Eaton, and he and a guy named Ben Piven put together this thing at america.aljazeera.com.
It's the timeline of Edward Snowden's revelations.
And, you know, as you know, a great many of these stories have been reported in The Guardian, but also in The Washington Post, The New York Times, ProPublica, The Intercept, obviously, but also El Globo down in Brazil and who knows what, how to say it in Norway and all over the world.
These stories have been reported.
Most of those, you know, the publications around the world are byline by Glenn Greenwald there.
And so it's a whole hell of a lot to keep track of.
And the Electronic Frontier Foundation also has a really great list of all the documents and all the news stories here.
But they got this great timeline at, just type in aljazeera NSA timeline.
It'll come right up, and then you can pick and choose.
They got them all here for you.
It's just great.
And I have Joshua Eaton on the line, and we cannot possibly go through them all, but we're trying to go through, you know, what are the most notable of these.
And in fact, I think I probably need to quit interrupting and actually let you answer the question of which ones do you think are the most notable ones, Joshua, because I keep coming up with basically the names of the programs and the ones that stuck out most to me, but I didn't put together the timeline of all of them, so there may very well be some good ones I'm skipping, and God knows what.
So the floor is yours.
It's important to focus on some of the big issues we've learned about from the leaks.
One is we know that, and probably we could have guessed this, but we've learned a lot of details about U.S. NSA espionage against our allies, like foreign diplomats, embassies in the U.S., including embassies of our allies, international organizations like the European Union, the U.N., even international nonprofit organizations, like there's a story that they've been surveilling UNICEF, some private nonprofits, some suggestion that maybe some more revelations are going to come out about that.
And we've also learned a lot about not just U.S., but British and Canadian and Australian surveillance against industry, a lot in the tech industry, including informants in the tech industry, really targeting telecom companies because they want to get access to their networks, really targeting systems administrators, targeting technology manufacturers, intentionally weakening encryption standards, other technology standards, finding out about serious security flaws and withholding that information, which of course puts everyone at more risk.
And then these stories that came out in Oak Global about Canada spying on Brazilian mining interests, for example, the U.S. through, I think it was Norway, spying on Russian energy companies, including government-owned energy companies and private energy companies.
And then there was a story that hasn't gotten much play in the U.S., that the U.S. and Australia monitoring some trade disputes that were going on with Indonesia, trade disputes the U.S. was having with Indonesia, Australia was passing signals intelligence to the U.S. about it, and this U.S. law firm got swept up in the dragnet.
But there's this throwaway paragraph in the middle, nobody talked about much.
And it just said, oh, some other documents provided by Edward Snowden show that the NSA regularly shares information with the Department of Agriculture.
I mean, this is so far from counterterrorism.
And of course, but it's extremely important, right?
We're talking about bazillions of dollars worth of global trade in agricultural products, and this means a lot and two specific interests.
And it's funny that once you get talking about economic espionage here, you've got so many examples, you just can't stop.
That's what the empire is all about at the end of the day, isn't it?
Or halfway, anyway.
Well, you know, I wrote a piece for Al Jazeera America back in, I think it was February, looking back at eight months of the revelations, this analysis piece.
And what I said was, you know, a lot of people were wondering before, but have really started to wonder now, looking at these leaks, you know, is this about national security or is it about national dominance?
Is it about sort of hegemony?
And I think that's really, really the key question, right?
It's about sort of maintaining economic, political, military superiority.
Full spectrum dominance, that's the name of the game.
Benevolent global hegemony.
That's what Robert Kagan says.
And yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
And that's part of the problem is it's still too damn, after all the progress we've made on this front, it's still just too politically incorrect to use the word empire.
And just admit that there's something corrupt going on around here.
You know, it used to be people would be proud of their empires, but Americans have a different legacy.
And so they have to deny that this is one.
But if they could just use the E word in context of the revelations that we're learning about the NSA, I think you're right.
You know, it would go a long way toward, you know, getting people to understand the difference between national defense and, you know, the Pentagon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I think Snowden has said this point blank that we really have to distinguish between national security and national interest.
And, you know, when you start talking about instead of what's in the national security, what's in the national interest, that's such a broad category.
I mean, it clearly includes what's in the interests of some politically connected people at the expense of others in America and around the world.
There is no national interest.
And there's certainly not one that any of these people believe in.
It's, you know, look at the Trailblazer Thin Thread thing inside the NSA that we've already known about where, yeah, Thin Thread may be great, but we want to waste a lot of money on this thing.
That's not because of the money because they're all a bunch of criminals.
Simple as that.
You know, it is it's a corrupt empire.
Anyway, here's the one that is still, you know, if I had feelings, this is the thing that would really get to me.
And that is that they keep the location data from everybody's cell phone going back five years.
Do I have that right?
Because I saw Bill Maher call Edward Snowden crazy for saying what I thought he was referring to this when he said they know all of your associations and relationships.
All of them, you know, going years back.
And Bill Maher goes, oh, what is he talking about?
The guy sounds like a lunatic.
But he didn't let Greenwald respond to that specific point.
But I thought what he meant was they know if Joshua Eaton and Scott Horton ever ride in a car together, ever sit in a living room together, ever attend an event together.
And if they want to go back and check, they can go back and check because both of us keep our cell phone in our pocket all day and all night long.
And everybody does.
And they know it.
Is that really right that they have that data on all of us?
Well, so they're definitely keeping they're definitely keeping location data outside the US.
There are specific countries where they're keeping.
They just have huge databases, location data.
And it's really, really fine grained so that they even they even have tested using it to tell if if U.S. diplomats or intelligence agents are being followed because they can see using the location data.
OK, these are the diplomats cell phones.
This is another cell phone that is tailing them.
And so it's that fine in a busy city.
They can tell if two people are walking side by side.
All right.
I'm sorry we got to leave it there, but everybody, please go and check out this great timeline.
Just type in Al Jazeera Timeline NSA.
You'll find it.
It's put together by Joshua Eaton.
Thank you very much for your time on the show.
I really appreciate talking to you again.
Thank you so much for having me again.
All right, everybody.
See you tomorrow.
Thanks.
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The military industrial complex, the disastrous rise of misplaced power.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here.
I'd like for you to read this book, The War State by Michael Swanson.
America's always gone to war a lot, though in older times it would disarm for a bit between each one.
But in World War Two, the U.S. built a military and intelligence apparatus so large, it ended up reducing the former constitutional government to an almost ceremonial role and converting our economy into an engine of destruction.
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We should take nothing for granted.
Phone records, financial and location data, PRISM, Tempora, X-Key Score, Boundless Informant.
Hey, I'll Scott Horton here for OffNow.org.
Now here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the national surveillance state.
Now they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress.
And the courts, they betrayed their sworn oaths to the Constitution and Bill of Rights again and again and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
We've got to do it ourselves.
How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy, but the OffNow project of the Tenth Amendment Center has gotten off to a great start.
I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their model legislation introduced all over the place.
And state after state, I've lost count, more than a dozen.
You're always wondering, yeah, but what can we do?
Here's something, something important, something that can work if we do the work.
Get started cutting off the NSA support in your state.
Go to OffNow.org.
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Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is Scott at Scott Horton dot org.