02/28/14 – Marcy Wheeler – The Scott Horton Show

Hey y'all, Scott here.
Ever wanted to help support the show and own silver at the same time?
Well, a friend of mine, Libertarian activist Arlo Pignatti, has invented the alternative currency with the most promise of them all, QR silver commodity discs.
The first ever QR code, one ounce silver pieces.
Just scan the back of one with your phone and get the instant spot price.
They're perfect for saving or spending at the market.
And anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton Show at scotthorton.org slash donate gets one.
And if you'd like to learn and order more, send them a message at commoditydiscs.com or check them out on Facebook at slash commodity discs.
And thanks.
All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton and this is my show, the Scott Horton Show.
Next up is the great Marcy Wheeler, Empty Wheel they call her on the internet.
That's emptywheel.net and also at Empty Wheel there on Twitter.
A lot of fun to follow.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
I'm doing all right.
How are you Scott?
I'm doing real good.
Uh, Hey, do me a favor and put in a good word for me with Jim White cause he's really good on Iran and I want to ask him about it.
I will do.
Cool.
Thank you.
Hey, listen, uh, what I meant to say before that was first of all, congratulations.
Not so much to you though, but to Glenn Greenwald and to, uh, whoever's in on this scale and whoever all is in on this, uh, intercept project and a first look media.
Congratulations to them for hiring you.
Uh, I don't know exactly what your title is, but I imagine your job is making sure that they're right about everything.
And so I hope they're paying you a million dollars a year.
You're certainly worth it and, um, is gotta be the best move they could have possibly made was bringing you on board there.
That's what I think.
That is an amazing statement.
It is at this point a limited relationship, but, uh, I'm really excited about it.
There's so many great people over there.
Cool.
And I sure hope that, uh, well, I hope they run everything they published by first.
That's what I would do if I could, you know?
Um, anyway.
Um, so good deal.
Welcome back to show.
Uh, congrats to you and to them.
Now tell me this.
Uh, there's a lot of things to talk about and I should, uh, you know, let you pick a lot of the priority, but one of the things I wanted to ask you about, uh, first of all here was about the claim made by the state back in, uh, a couple of weeks ago, I guess now.
Uh, I forget in USA today or whatever it was where they says, you know what?
Everything you've heard up until now is wrong anyway.
We have not been collecting all your metadata.
We've only been collecting about 20% of the metadata anyway.
And I'm wondering if you think that maybe that's right or if it's not, what's the significance of that either way?
I think it could be narrowly correct.
And by narrowly correct, I mean, I think that it is possible that right now under the section 21 to 15 program, the providers, there were three in July.
Let's assume there are still three, but even that may not be true.
The providers, if they were providing just their own, the phone calls of their own customers might only be providing 30% of the calls in the United States.
So, um, and the numbers varied actually, I, you know, the, the, there was 20, there was 30.
Um, Keith Alexander has since said, no, that's not true.
Um, so, so in other words, if you time delimit it, if you say right now they're only getting 30%, if you, uh, assume that none of the providers, not AT&T and not Verizon are also providing the other calls that transit their backbones, which we know in the past they were doing.
If you, um, assume that, um, we're only talking about section 215 data and not the larger phone dragnet of which section 215 is a tiny bit.
Um, and if you're also talking, um, I think that, um, there are a number of legal issues that have happened since the Snowden leak started on, on July 19th, um, one of the judges in the FISA court said, you can't collect location data with this.
And at that point, any, any provider who didn't want to have to play anymore could just say, sorry, I can't give you my data except with the location, with the cell location data.
And then they could stop providing.
Um, and I, and if I were Verizon, that's what I would have done.
Um, another interesting thing is that since the Snowden leak started Verizon and Vodafone have decided to, and have effectively split up.
And so it's possible that the government was getting a lot of the data that it did get from Verizon, but offshore, um, cause Verizon was part of the Tempora program, which GCHQ required because Verizon had, you know, could require a Verizon's involvement because they were a UK company and they were getting massive amounts of metadata.
That's not true.
I mean, it may not be true anymore because Verizon is no longer a UK company.
Um, and then there are a couple of other issues, but so that's the point is, is, um, it is, um, and, and, and it cannot be true.
It is, it is probably impossible to be true for the life of the program.
And just as an example, they say one of the providers that is not providing data, um, is T-Mobile.
And the only person they have ever busted using section 215, the only one, the Sally Mullen, who's a Somali American out in San Diego uses T-Mobile.
Most likely person between him and the Somali warlords that they, that they contact trained on also uses T-Mobile.
So if they weren't getting T-Mobile call data, they would never have found the Sally Mullen or maybe they found the Sally Mullen using, um, data from another source.
And so I think that's part of what's going on.
And I think that that's the case that they cite as the one time that they caught a terrorist with this thing.
And he was really just sending some money back to Somalia was all.
And not even to support terrorism.
I mean, he was, he basically was trying to fight a US backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.
So, yeah, I mean, that's the, that, so, but, but there, you know, there are a bunch of things and I haven't written them all up into a post, but I think it is possible legally possible narrowly.
Um, just as another example, there's, there's zero reason to believe they've got Skype data yet.
And, and that's going to be a lot of international phone calls.
That's how I call my mother-in-law in Ireland.
So, um, so you know, that, that, but, but we're talking section 215, we know that we have no reason to believe Microsoft has been part of section 215, but you know what?
Microsoft is part of, um, FISA amendments act prison and they could get the data that way.
So in other words, there's a lot of other ways they can get this data.
And, um, and it is impossible to believe that they're only getting 30% of the US phone records because we know they're getting so much data overseas that involves us person.
Well, their whole excuse here, there's so many issues here to discuss.
But their whole excuse is that, listen, we have to collect it all or else we won't have the haystack to go and dig through.
And so, um, they're really undermining their entire argument.
If they're, you know, really, if they really want to claim that this is true, that somehow they can only data mine 30% of us and, and, and then, uh, that qualifies somehow.
Um, And, and then conveniently, the other thing that's going on is that, um, in a couple of the lawsuits, so for example, Larry claimant, the head of judicial watch who, um, won his suit in, in DC and it's being appealed.
He's not a Verizon landline subscriber.
He's a Verizon cell phone subscriber.
And so the convenient thing about this week is that, um, now they're going to challenge claimant standing.
They're going to challenge the standing of some people in the suit in California.
So in other words, it's, it's a really convenient explanation.
And if, if, if, um, everything was honest, then I think we could also go to them and say, look, you know, either they're doing it with, with section two 15 or they're doing it with FAA or they're doing it with, um, other authorities, all of which are possible, but the point is they have this drag net that they're collecting.
And if they're doing it with other authorities, they're even legally more suspect than they are with section two 15.
And I think there's, you know, there's, there's increasing reason to believe that that's true.
Well, and at this point we can pretty much take it as kind of a rule of thumb that if they ever say that we are not doing X, Y, or Z under section two 15 of the Patriot act, that all they really mean to say is they are doing it under section seven Oh two of the vice amendments act, or they're doing it over, uh, under executive order 12, three, three, three, or some other thing maybe that we don't even know about yet, but there's virtually no line that they haven't, that we've found them to, to refuse to cross yet.
Right.
Right.
I mean, uh, there was an interesting, this is not actually new, but it's new to me.
Um, after, so there's a woman, Caroline craft, who is right now the acting head of OLC at DOJ.
So she's the one who tells Obama whether he can kill somebody with a drone, um, kill an American with a drone, which is, you know, the other big question.
Um, she's, she's also, uh, up for being the general counsel of CIA and Ron Wyden asked her a really, you know, one of those classic Ron Wyden questions, uh, following up on her confirmation hearing in December, he, you know, he, he said, look, um, so, uh, there was this, uh, May 6th, 2004, Jack Goldsmith opinion.
Um, can you tell me whether it authorized phone drag net collection, not under section two 15.
And, and we know it did.
We know that for two years, you know, from, from, uh, from May, 2004 until July, 2000, uh, sorry, may of 2006, we know that the phone drag net continued.
Um, based only on that opinion that Jack Goldsmith wrote and it continued without the, the, the FISA court approval that it subsequently got.
So we know that he makes some argument in there, which remains classified.
Um, that basically says the executive branch can approve getting phone drag net, uh, without any kind of court review whatsoever.
That's it.
And so by now, Caroline cross, he says, well, is that still active?
She's like, well, we can't withdraw it.
There's no reason to withdraw.
So it's an active OLC memo.
She's like, but don't worry, we're not relying on it.
And then earlier this week, there was a hearing for, for somebody else.
It doesn't matter who, but, um, both Diane Feinstein, you know, it's serious.
Diane Feinstein says that both Diane Feinstein and Mark Udall are like asking the, um, the, um, the nominee, they're like, uh, can I tell me about your oversight role, DOJ person, tell me about your oversight role on 12 triple three, which is the stuff collected overseas.
It's like, uh, no, we don't have one.
You know?
So she wouldn't know, like there's this whole area where DOJ doesn't have visibility into what NSA is doing.
And it's precisely that area where there's this still active, um, uh, memo saying that the executive branch doesn't need any of this, you know, legal authorization.
Yeah.
And that's because of the original authorization to use military force or no, this, this executive order goes back to Ronald Reagan.
So this is just the plenary power of the inherent authority of the president as David Addington would put it or something like that.
Right.
Excellent.
David Addington interpretation.
I love it.
Yeah.
It's a little like that.
So, uh, yeah.
In other words, we can't find it in article two, but all you need to know is the president is the commander chief.
And so that's all you need to know.
He could do whatever he wants and no one.
And what are you going to do?
Stop them.
That's what I thought.
That's exactly what comes down to that.
What are you going to do?
Stop them.
Yeah, exactly.
Like a schoolyard bully.
What are you going to do about it?
Uh-huh.
Just like when Bush, when the New York times finally published the story in December of five by lip long rising about, um, the, the Bush program, he gave a speech the next day or, uh, you know, went out and did a press conference the next day where he goes, yeah, I'm guilty of millions of counts of violations of the felony FISAC.
What are you going to do about it?
And the Congress was like, nothing.
You're the boss, dude.
You're the decider.
And that was it.
That's all he had to do was just say what?
All right.
Anyway, I'm sorry.
I'm just running out the clock.
Cause we're going to take this stupid break and then we'll be back with the heroic Marcy Wheeler, empty wheel.
They call her on the internet, empty wheel.net and also on Twitter.
We'll be back in just a sec.
Hey, y'all Scott Horton here for cash into coins.com.
So you want to buy some Bitcoins cash into coins.com makes it fast, easy, and safe to get Bitcoins.
Just deposit the money into their account at any of the major banks they support, and then just email them a picture of the receipt in your Bitcoin address.
And you get your Bitcoins almost always the same day it clears in a tough competitive new market.
Cash into coins.com has the advantage.
A great system and great customer service to keep you coming back.
That's cash into coins.com.
Just click the link in the right margin at Scott Horton.org.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show.
Scott Horton show.
I'm on the phone.
Marcy Wheeler from empty wheel.net.
And you follow her on Twitter to empty wheel there.
Uh, and now, um, let's see, there's so much to talk about.
Well, let me make sure that, uh, uh, you didn't have anything else to, to finish up on the prior topics there on the, the, uh, different authorities that these, uh, you know, different spying against the American people is carried out and that kind of thing before we move on.
Is there anything there?
No, no, I'm good.
I'm good.
All right.
Um, uh, I'm never sure cause this stuff is so complicated.
Uh, you know, who knows?
Um, you tell me, cause I, you know, I don't even know what I can't even see anymore, you know what I mean?
Right.
Yeah.
No, I could understand.
You might need to take a vacation, go parasailing or something a little bit, come back fresh perspective.
Um, but no, I mean, you, you do a bang up job here.
I don't know anybody who's, uh, as good at it.
So, uh, let me ask you about this.
Um, this, uh, latest Greenwald piece at the intercept that's first look.org slash the intercept, of course, how covert agents infiltrate the internet to manipulate, deceive and destroy reputations.
And I was hoping you could, well, fisk it in a good way.
You know what I mean?
Kind of take us through here cause it's a pretty long, complicated thing.
Um, and so I was hoping you could explain, you know, what it is they're doing.
And, and then as far as we know so far, to what extent they're doing the horrible things described in these documents and in this article, well, and I should say that I haven't gotten any more access into those particular documents than, um, anybody else has.
So I, you know, I can't pretend to have read everything in, although I mean, they published a whole slideshow.
I don't know if you read the whole thing.
I didn't, but I mean, they published quite a bit there about it.
I mean, I think what's really important about that story is that, um, we expect the CIA to do stuff like that.
We expect the CIA to go overseas and, and, um, infiltrate groups and, um, carry out kind of covert things to get people to, you know, to, to, to, to win elections that otherwise wouldn't be one and so on and so forth.
And what we're seeing really is not only the NSA setting up that possibility online, I should say GCHQ cause that's actually GCHQ, although, um, some of the other, I mean, remember we, we saw, um, months ago, it was a Greenwald story, but it was at Huffington post where they talked about collecting data on people perceived as enemies of the United States, but not terrorists.
Um, although they were kind of, uh, radical Muslims, they, they didn't, they had kind of tangential ties to terrorists, but the NSA was collecting this information to discredit these people that, you know, we're going to find out how much porn they view online.
Now we know they can do it by the, by their webcam.
We're going to find out, uh, what kind of speaking fees they're getting, we're going to find, you know, so we've seen that in operation already at the NSA and what the, um, what the story that Glenn did kind of shows in more detail is, is the degree to which, I mean, they're, they're basically throwing lots of social science at it.
They're throwing old by techniques and they're bringing it all online and they're bringing it, you know, they're bringing it online.
You know, I think this has been clear for quite some time that, um, you know, Twitter, especially, and how many people do you interact with on Twitter who are clearly, you know, paid shills or, or moles or what have you, um, and people who are trying to cyber instigate.
Right.
And they're trying to, to sow dissension among the left or among the libertarians or among what have you.
Um, and so we've seen that for quite some time.
And I think what, what that document showed is, is the behind the scenes, the, the, the confirmation that behind the scenes, they are doing just that.
And, and that, um, it's no longer, it's not like NSA sets up a neat network and CIA does it, NSA is doing it itself.
So this notion that, and I, and I think that's one of the things we're seeing more generally is NSA, you know, once upon a time break the Soviet codes and try and keep us safe.
And as their role has become amorphous, they're doing all this kind of creepy stuff and, um, and they have access to all our personal data, um, which is, which is the really dangerous.
Well, and they seem to have shown numerous ways that they're willing to conflate just about anything with terrorism.
I mean, if you participate in politics in any way, other than just going and joining your local branch of the democratic or Republican party, then they very well may consider, uh, whatever it is that you're doing a crime under, you know, whatever perversion of law.
Right.
And it's not just terrorism because they're going to go after, after anonymous, after hacker, after people deemed to be hackers.
And there's a lot of people, um, Jeremy, Jeremy Hammond, there's a lot of people on the borders of hacking culture who play a very different role and they've already been prosecuted and you have to wonder to what degree was NSA involved in collecting the data to what degree is NSA involved in, um, sowing dissent in anonymous, um, you know, we've seen that they do go after anonymous and there's a lot of, there is a, I mean, even if you agree that anonymous should be thrown in jail tomorrow, there's a lot of legal behavior that gets dubbed as anonymous as well.
And the, you know, the NSA is not, they're, they're applying this, um, guilt by association that they adopted in the terrorism context.
And frankly, to a large degree in the drug war context.
And they're applying it now with new, um, with new kinds of applications and hacking is, I think a particular, I mean, I don't, I don't want to say hacking's worst because white people, you know, it's, it's almost like more white people are going to be affected when they start going after hackers then, um, when they're going after Muslim terrorism or the drug war, um, because the white people in the drug war always get, you know, never get prosecuted.
But, but, but, uh, but I also think there's another dangerous side to it because it's so much, um, it's not, it's not necessarily so much push of the speech than, than a lot of the Muslims they're going after, but it can be.
And so we're seeing this morph and it's morphing at the same time as the NSA just continues to collect all of this data about all of us.
And we never know at what point sometime in the future, stuff we do now is going to be deemed illegal and therefore, you know, the networks that we have now are going to criminalize us.
Yeah.
Boy, two or three hops can mean just about anything, right?
I mean, yeah.
I mean, geez, if you know Steve Clemens, then you know, a guy who knows a guy who once met with Osama bin Laden himself.
Yeah, exactly.
Or, you know, I can't count the number of ways I'm two degrees away from Edward Snowden now, who, you know, is a subject of a spy investigation.
And therefore, um, and, and Bart Gelman has said that he was told that his phone records were collected using a national security letter.
So, you know, um, it's, you get, you get swept up there pretty easily.
So, um, and you get swept up, you know, I've never talked to Edward Snowden.
I've never, you know, but I'm still going to get sucked up into this.
Dragnet.
I'm sure.
Don't be afraid.
You're doing the right thing.
But yeah, I mean, the point is, if you were, you know, X, Y, or Z other journalists too, or anybody else that they've got no right to do that to you.
You know, not whatsoever to, uh, to ever try to criminalize what it is you're doing for straight up Benjamin Franklin work, first amendment work here now.
And you know, what's funny too, is I always hear these conspiracy theories saying, oh, the whole Edward Snowden thing is a modified limited hangout.
Cause all he's doing is proving that every suspicion we ever had about these guys in our most fevered nightmares was true.
And so therefore, uh, we already knew all this.
It's that no, what he's doing.
I mean, he's really putting, here's the slide about how they fracture your political movement, identifying and exploiting fracture points.
Let's make a little flow chart of how to list the things people disagree about, how to rank them in priority of importance, and then how to make, you know, the mad at each other and no longer cooperate here it is right here in PowerPoint for you.
Your, your worst conspiracy theories about what the state has in store for you in this so-called democracy right here in pastels and living color.
And at that level, I mean, uh, you know, we talk, we being the Royal, we talk a lot about, um, American constitutional guarantees and what have you, but at that level, I really think that's where a lot of Americans miss the impact of this, which is that the U S is the hegemon.
It is the most powerful country in the world is the richest country in the world, although, you know, with shoddy finances, it is, um, structurally the best situated country to spy in the world.
And it's not just our distance.
It's not just our political organizations that they are going to go in and corrupt.
It's the, it's the opposition, the legitimate opposition to us power in other countries in Mexico and Venezuela and, um, you know, France in, in Africa and, and, and do we, you know, do we really want the NSA to be doing what the CIA could do a much more limited fashion and always botched anyway, um, and do it all online and poison the, on the, the international online community in doing stuff.
And, and that's, I think the other question that really needs to be asked.
Right?
Yeah, it does.
You're right.
It gets lost in what they're doing to the Americans, which they always try to argue as technically legal, even though they're obviously stretching the definition of collect and relevant and imminent and whatever other word they want to destroy.
But, uh, clearly it's all unconstitutional on American behavior and it's affecting us and we're the Americans.
And so that's the part that we pick on the most.
And for me, it's really annoying to hear them making such a scandal about tapping Angela Merkel.
Screw her.
She doesn't have any rights.
She's a head of a state.
I'm not worried about her, but yeah, the people of Germany, they have a right to be secure in their person's houses, papers and effects too.
And they should not have to live under the tyranny of the American panopticon just because they're not from here.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and then, you know, the notion that, um, James Clapper can decide globally what the legitimate bounds of dissent to us power is, is, is terrifying because I don't, you know, the guy has a tenure, he doesn't, you know, he doesn't even understand American politics from everything I can see, much less, you know, I don't know.
Yeah, no, you're clearly right.
I mean, he was the hack pushing the Saddam's chemical weapons are in Syria line back then.
He may have even believed that he's so dumb.
I'd believe he believed it.
Stupid lie.
Anyway, thank you so much for your time, Marcy.
It's great to talk to you as always.
Great to talk to you.
I appreciate it very much.
That's Marcy Wheeler, everybody.
Empty wheel.net.
Read that blog all day, every day.
Today's show is brought to you in part by audible.com.
You can get a free audio book download at audibletrial.com slash Scott.
Audible has over a hundred thousand titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player for Scott Horton show listeners.
Audible is offering a free audio book download with their free 30 day trial.
I personally recommend dirty wars by Jeremy Scahill.
It's great for anyone wanting the inside story on the cruel and counterproductive terror war of the Obama years.
You can sign up for a free 30 day trial and download dirty wars at no charge by going to audibletrial.com slash Scott.
That's audibletrial.com slash Scott.
Don't worry about things you can't control.
Isn't that what they always say?
But it's about impossible to avoid worrying about what's going on these days.
The government has used the war on guns, the war on drugs, and the war on terrorism to tear our bill of rights to shreds, but you can fight back.
The 10th amendment center has proven it racking up major victories.
For example, when the U S government claimed authority in the NDA to have the military kidnap and detain Americans without trial, the nullifiers got a law passed in California declaring the state's refusal to ever participate in any such thing.
Their latest project is off now.org nullifying the national security agency.
They've already gotten model legislation introduced in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas meant to limit the power of the NSA to spy on Americans in those States.
We'd be fools to wait around for the U S Congress or courts to roll back.
Big brother.
Our best chance is nullification and interposition on the state level.
Go to off now.org print out that model legislation and get to work.
Nullifying the NSA.
The hero Edward Snowden has risked everything to give us this chance.
Let's take it off now.org.
On March 7th at the national press club in Washington, DC, the council for the national interest is co-hosting the first ever national summit to reassess the U S Israel special relationship.
Confirmed speakers include Walt Shoyer, Giroldi, McGovern, Katowski, Porter, McConnell, Weiss, Raimondo, USS Liberty survivor, Ernie Gallo, as well as co-sponsors, Alison Ware of if Americans knew, and the great Grant Smith of the Institute for research Middle East policy.
That's the national summit to reassess the U S Israel special relationship.
Friday, March the 7th, all day at the national press club in Washington, DC.
Nat summit.org.
Hey, I'll sky here.
First, I want to take a second to thank all the shows, listeners, sponsors, and supporters for helping make the show what it is.
I literally couldn't do it without you.
And now I want to tell you about the newest way to help support the show.
Whenever you shop at amazon.com stop by scott Horton.org first, just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page.
That way the show will get a kickback from Amazon's end of the sale.
It won't cost you an extra cent.
It's not just books.
Amazon.com sells just about everything in the world except cars, I think.
So whatever you need, they've got it.
Just click the Amazon logo on the right side of the page at scott Horton.org or go to scott Horton.org slash Amazon.