The Edward Snowden Affair (31 page)

It was also a prime example of why politicians hate amendment riders. Piggybacked legislation frequently puts them in a difficult position with their party, campaign donors and constituency. In the case of Amash’s proposal, a lose-lose scenario ensued. If the amendment was attached, a House member would be simultaneously voting for and against national defense, and the press and public rarely issued benefit of the doubt after final votes were cast. Because of this, leaders of the House started humoring the unthinkable. The amendment process was a liberty which assured all voices were heard. Talk about limiting the number of amendments to a bill began to circulate. Democracy remained intact for one reason. If an actual move toward blocking a vote on the amendment ensued, Amash’s legislation had enough support for the entire Defense bill to be held up.
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Republicans reluctantly consented. The amendment was ruled to be in order on Monday, July 22.
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It was then scheduled to be debated on Wednesday evening, July 24, before going up for a tentative vote the next day.

The White House was so nervous, it broke character. Carney publicly denounced the pending legislation during a press conference on Tuesday, “[ … ] we [the White House] oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community’s counterterrorism tools. This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process. We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.”
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The White House chose to ignore the irony of the statement being made moments after another closed-door briefing had come to an end.
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The White House and intelligence community knew that little could be done about Monday’s ruling. It was a mere technicality. The day after the amendment was declared legal and could therefore proceed, amid promises of greater transparency, invitations to a top secret meeting with General Alexander were extended to select members of the House.
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The Republicans had a right to be worried. After 15 minutes of debate the day before,
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Amash’s amendment was narrowly defeated 205-217 on Thursday.
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Ninety-four Republicans and 111 Democrats voted in favor, 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats had been against the legislation. Surprisingly, the author of the PATRIOT Act, James Sensenbrenner, voted for Amash’s law.
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He said he had done so because, “The time has come to stop it.”
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Since a majority of Democrats supported the amendment, it would have likely passed in the Democratled Senate. Aside from what might have been said by Alexander, a look behind the campaign contribution curtain suggests Lon Snowden was right. The 217 “nay” voices received 122 percent more money from the intelligence and defense industries than the 205 “yea” voters.
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The $594 billion Defense bill was passed with over 60 amendments
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by a vote of 315 to 109.
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The tab was five billion dollars below current spending and the White House threatened to veto it in order to continue to fund the Pentagon. Its emotional appeal was that the reduced budget would force compensatory cuts to other programs such as health research and education.
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However, one of the amendments that did pass relates to U.S. government surveillance. It was put forth by Mike Pompeo of Kansas and declares that the NSA cannot use its budget to “acquire, monitor, or store the contents [ … ] of any electronic communication” of a U.S. citizen.
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It passed by a vote of 409-12.
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The reason Pompeo’s law was met with little fanfare and passed by an overwhelming margin is because it is essentially flaccid. It prohibits what the NSA stated it was not doing and currently steering around. Pompeo’s legislation does not ban the bulk collection of metadata.

As Congress, the White House and the intelligence community continued to fight against and amongst themselves, the press sallied forth. It seized every opportunity to pounce upon a corporation’s whitewashed statement or an exaggeration by Washington, all the while further displaying the depth and range of American and international surveillance.

A
FTER GIVING SNOWDEN HIS ASYLUM PRESENT
of XKeyscore, Greenwald’s exposés became sporadic. He had signed a book deal in the middle of July to produce an entire volume of new surveillance revelations. However, in a matter of weeks he—and not his writing—would make headlines. Poitras dutifully fed and explained classified data to the German press as she worked on the final chapter of her post-9/11 trilogy. Her last installment focuses on how the War on Terror was brought home to American soil. One of its themes is United States surveillance. Gellman even resurfaced to contribute one of the better, more penetrating, vital and timely post-asylum disclosures.

The day Snowden was granted asylum,
The Guardian
celebrated with another exclusive: “NSA pays £100m in secret funding for GCHQ.”
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It proudly proclaims “Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden.” The article answers the question left from the June 21 Tempora report of which intelligence agency calls the shots.

Largely because Britain’s comparatively lax surveillance laws are a “selling point,” the U.S. government started financially supporting many of GCHQ’s intelligence stations and programs after GCHQ suffered substantial domestic budget cuts. One such British spy project hopes to ultimately “exploit any phone, anywhere, any time.” Having poured over 100 million pounds into contracted British intelligence services from 2010-2013, the NSA is allowed to prioritize surveillance affairs at some of Britain’s spy stations. Half the cost of GCHQ’s Cyprus station is paid by U.S. taxpayers. But Washington is not always happy with what it gets for its citizens’ money. Internal, classified documents comment, “GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight” because the U.S. government had “raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA’s minimum expectations.” This is perhaps because 60 percent of Britain’s filtered data still comes from American intelligence. It is obvious a portion of the nine-figure paycheck, revealed in GCHQ’s “investment portfolios,” was for foreign surveillance of U.S. citizens and subsequent data-swapping services. One classified review brags of how GCHQ made “unique contributions” to the NSA investigation of the American citizen behind the failed 2010 Times Square car bomb attack. The plot by Faizal Shahzad was foiled by a T-shirt vendor who noticed that a suspiciously parked car happened to be smoking.
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A companion article titled, “GCHQ: inside the top secret world of Britain’s biggest spy agency”
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appeared the same day. Its focus is largely on the daily life within GCHQ, its history, but also its plans. The report admits, “Of all the highly classified documents about GCHQ revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, this has to be one of the least sensitive.” The exposé discusses the nuances of working inside the world’s largest surveillance facility whose annual budget is one billion pounds. (The NSA’s yearly allotment is 17 times greater.)
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Employees have bake sales, annual in-house sporting events, team vacations and chat using an internal networking site sardonically named “SpySpace,” a titular mockup of Facebook’s predecessor, MySpace.

But the article moves to more substantial matters by grabbing the loose thread of cellular phone surveillance that its bookend report left dangling. The British intelligence agency seeks to “[collect] voice and SMS and geo-locating phone” data and “intelligence from all the extra functionality that iPhones and BlackBerrys offer.” A classified document recognizes the technological climate and sets the agenda: “Google Apps already has over 30 million users. This is good news. It allows us to exploit the mobile advantage.” As with telecommunications providers’ government compliance, on February 8, 2011, it was noted that “Legal assurances [by cell phone manufacturers were] now believed to be good.”

In its conclusion—a review of GCHQ’s contribution to American intelligence—the report states that the British intelligence agency “[ … ] had given the NSA 36% of all the raw information the British had intercepted from computers the agency was monitoring. A confidential document declares new technological advances permit the British to “[ … ] interchange 100% of GCHQ End Point Projects with NSA.”

Also on August 1, NGB
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expanded on British communication providers’ roles in government surveillance. It was another joint feature with
Süddeutsche Zeitung
, which would release “Snowden revealed names of spying telecom companies”
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the next day.

Together the news sources report that not two but seven major domestic telecoms, alongside their respective code names, provided GCHQ with access to their fiber-optic cables in 2010: Verizon Business (“Dacron”), British Telecommunications (“Remedy”), Vodafone Cable (“Gerontic”), Global Crossing (“Pinnage”), Level 3 (“Little”), Viatel (“Vitreous”) and Interoute (“Streetcar”). The British spy agency used Tempora to hack the various data backbones across Europe. GCHQ has 102 “points of presence” over Europe, 15 of which are in Germany.

The British communication companies’ involvement with GCHQ is of particular interest to Germany, because Level 3 owns data centers in Berlin, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich. Global Crossing and Interoute are also major German communication distributors. For readers familiar with the American surveillance story, Viatel’s response was predictable as well as somewhat laughable: “We do not cooperate with the GCHQ or grant access to our infrastructure or customer data.” The company representative continues, “Like all telecommunications providers in Europe, we are obliged to comply with European and national laws including those regarding privacy and data retention. From time to time, we receive inquiries from authorities, [which are] checked by our legal and security departments, and if they are legal, [they] will be processed accordingly.” The reports also reveal that the Five Eyes, whose acronym is revealed as “FVEY,” operate a “ring of satellite monitoring systems around the globe.” The group project is code-named “Echelon.”

Epoca
’s sophomore disclosure effort appeared on August 2. Greenwald is the first credited writer of “Letter from the American Ambassador in Brazil thanks the NSA for its Support.”
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He presents a classified missive dated May 19, 2009, addressed to General Alexander thanking him and the NSA for their work with SIGINT. The top secret document was written by Thomas Shannon, who at the time was assistant secretary to the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. Shannon states he was impressed by the quality of information provided by the spy agency during the Fifth Summit of the Americas. The Summit of the Americas, originated by Bill Clinton, occurs every few years and brings together the leaders of the Western Hemisphere to discuss chosen themes. Topics for 2009 included the economic crisis, environmental issues and alternative energy. Shannon proudly announces, “We succeeded and our rivals failed, and our success owes in good measure to the abundant, timely, and detailed reporting that you [Alexander and the NSA] provided.” Over 100 reports had been received which revealed the “plans and intentions of the other Summit participants.” Seven months after he penned the thank you note, Shannon was appointed ambassador to Brazil.

Poitras’ return to the printed page after Snowden stepped freely onto Russian soil, “Mass Data: Transfers from Germany Aid US Surveillance,”
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conveniently, implicitly and thematically follows
The Guardian
’s discussion of GCHQ and the NSA’s relationship. Though her report substantiates an assumption any regular reader of the Snowden affair would have about the BND’s kinship with American intelligence, it also provides a vital piece of the surveillance puzzle.

Working in adjoining buildings, the NSA receives intercepted data from the BND on a daily basis. But the German foreign intelligence agency paradoxically assures its citizenry the information it gives to U.S. intelligence is not only wiped clean of any identifying features, it does not include any domestic data. In turn the NSA claims it complies with the rules and regulations of the country in which it is operating. Under Germany’s G-10 Law, domestic surveillance is illegal. However, an accompanying Boundless Informant graph shows daily reports of telephone and Internet traffic in Germany from December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013. Though the information could have been retrieved and transferred as foreign intelligence by the NSA from U.S. soil or by another surveillance organization such as GCHQ, the revealed code or SIGINT Activity Designator (SIGAD) for one interception site is “US-987LA.” This is strongly believed to be one of two domestic outposts. The numeric suffix is also indicative of a third-party contractor, implying the BND was spying on its own people for the NSA. The report suggests either German foreign intelligence is lying to its government, or Germany’s representatives are feigning ignorance.