Christians and Muslims alike targeted and killed by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, a country under constant seige by terrorists. This is why the NSA keeps extremists under surveillance.
Readers of this blog know that my biggest critique of the fugitive Snowden and his adversarial journalist friends Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and others -- along with their hacker helpers Jacob Appelbaum and others -- is that they never come up with concrete, specific cases.
They never have an individual name and face to put to their sweeping, hysterical claims.
They claim that there are millions of phone conversations or social media communications screened and even stored, with terrible implications for human rights, but they never come up with a single case of actual human rights violation.
They never get an individual file, a person whose rights are actually violated that you can point to, a name and a face -- as we could in the days of COINTELPRO, when US intelligence targeted individual activists for surveillance and persecuted them in various ways, including gathering dirt on them to discredit them or disrupting their personal relations.
But now, low and behold, on the eve of a long holiday when nobody is going to be paying attention in the US, Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher and Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post have posted a story claiming just that -- reportedly six Muslim leaders have been targeted by the NSA for discrediting by having their online porn reading habits or other private information that conflicts with their public pious reputations scooped up by the NSA.
Here's the thing, though. They won't tell us who the people are. The names are "redacted" although supposedly they know them.
They aren't telling us the names, they say, because the individuals aren't charged with any crimes, least of all terrorism, although they espouse jihadism. They think that because they aren't suspects in criminal investigations, such adverse information will harm them.
And perhaps that's the case, but unless and until they do in fact show us these names -- apparently of Muslims overseas -- none of us can judge whether Greenwald and co. are correct or whether in fact the NSA has a case for keeping such activity lawful.
Once again, it's one of those frustrating stories where enough of a skeleton or scaffolding is revealed to discredit the NSA, but not enough meat on the bones to really be persuasive and back up the claims of critics or give credence to the claim reform is needed.
This seems to be the first time the Huffington Post has been given an exclusive from the Snowden trove of stolen NSA documents. Huffpo, the quintessential lefty "progressive" newspaper which used to have the highest traffic of online publications (probably Buzzfeed beats it now), has written stories about Snowden and done some of its own analysis, but I don't think they've ever broken news before.
QUESTIONS TO RAISE -- WHY THIS PIECE, WHY NOW, AND WHY HIDE NAMES?
So naturally I have quite a few questions about this supported batch of cases that might be what I've long insisted is required to bolster the case for reform, including discontinuation of some needed forms of surveillance.
1. Why this story only now?! Cases have always been what has been missing -- and it isn't just me who says that, the New Yorker says this and lots of other people have wondered about it. Supposedly, all Snowden documents were turned over to Glenn and company in June in Hong Kong, and nothing new has been hacked or released that wasn't given before -- or hey, the terms of Snowden's refugee status given in Russia would ostensibly be violated (not that the Russians seem to be policing this at all, since Snowden's releases and daily -- we're told by Greenwald -- consultations with Glenn mean that essentially he is deliberately launching damaging actions against the US all the time. So why sit on this for six months?! Why were geeky stories on supposed subversion of algorithms at the NIST beating out *this* story on the schedule?!
2. Why Huffpo? This is a very big story, if true, and deserves the greater gravitas of the New York Times or the Washington Post, both of which have broken Snowden stories (and don't seem to have even referred to this one yet). Obviously, Greenwald doesn't work with the Guardian anymore, and it's not clear what kind of Snowden stories they will continue to have, if any, given that Rusbridger, the editor, is being questioned now by the British authorities for aiding and abetting espionage -- in ways that would be harder to do in the US. Was the purpose merely to get a wider readership because Huffpo has more traffic than the Times or Washpo? Even so, it's odd. (And I think the first time).
3. Say, since when are these kinds of journalists in the business of trying to protect public figures' reputations when they are charged with discrediting information of a sexual nature?! That never, ever stopped them from covering every sordid detail in the cases of the left fighting the left, as with the discrediting of John Edwards, or the cases of the left fighting the right, as in the case of the scrutiny of Sarah Palin's unwed pregnant daughter or Senator Sanford's affair, or in the case of the right fighting the left, with Anthony Weiner. We were not spared even pictures in some of these cases. So why is it that politicians in a democratic country, either religious conservatives or secular liberals must have all their sexscapades spilled out in the press, whether true or not (and the way you find out if they are true is in fact by publicizing them), but we can't even heard about some Muslim leaders who merely read porn but didn't take their unclean thoughts offline? Why this gingerly protectiveness?
4. Are these "progressive" journalists afraid if they do give the names, the public will basically conclude that the NSA was doing the right thing, because they will be rabid anti-American jihadists who will be implicated in incitement by some?
THE LIKELY REPERCUSSIONS
So let me point out a few prognoses of this story;
1. The names are likely to come out eventually. Someone will work at it. Won't they?
2. Meanwhile, they might not, which will then entitle every single Muslim activist to lay the victimology on thick and claim they, too, are targeted (because we just won't know who is or who isn't) and in any event, imply that they could be at any minute, even if they aren't on the list of "the six".
3. The chief function of NSA espionage really -- the chief priority -- is anti-terrorism. While fortunately (likely due to their work!) there have been few jihadist attacks on America since 9/11, there have been some -- Ft. Hood (which I refuse to categorize as "work-place violence" and the Boston bombing being two major ones that immediately come to mind. Meanwhile, the claims of the left that therefore there's nothing to worry about are utterly false, as all over the world, there have been awful terrorist attacks by extremist Islamists in other countries: Kenya, just recently with the attack on the mall, where Americans and other foreigners were killed; Nigeria; Russia; England; Spain; India; and of course Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan where large suicide bombings happen practically every week with no one caring in the West.
So the way to continue to discredit, paralyze and severely cripple the NSA's work against Islamist terror is to imply that they've gone overbroad in over-targeting Muslims who are innocent, who may espouse a brand of ideology that isn't exactly peace-loving liberalism, but which isn't a crime.
4. Some (whom I've been debating about this extensively offline) will point to these cases as "proof" that all NSA programs "violate all rights of terrorist suspects" by definition. I don't think we've seen any proof of this, and these six cases might amount to this, but we really can't tell when we don't hear the names. Are there only six? And can we be sure that the information was going to be used, but wasn't just gathered in the course of lawful profiling?
ZEALOUS ACLU LAWYER AND WILD CLAIMS
Jameel Jaffer, the crusading ACLU lawyer whose influence is all out of proportion on this issue and who is behind a lot of the main litigation related to protests against US intelligence after 9/11, makes the usually wildly overbroad and unfounded claims for this article:
Yet Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these revelations give rise to serious concerns about abuse. "It's important to remember that the NSA’s surveillance activities are anything but narrowly focused -- the agency is collecting massive amounts of sensitive information about virtually everyone," he said.
"Wherever you are, the NSA's databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online," he added. "The NSA says this personal information won't be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines 'abuse' very narrowly."
But this is crazy, as the NSA doesn't keep files on every person, and machine-scanning of data is not the keeping of a coherent, human-read and human-analyzed file, as I've often pointed out. We've never had a single story from Greenwald about a program "to scan for political views" and we haven't had a single one claiming a scan "for medical information' -- neither of these are in phone metadata fields, obviously. While the NSA may define abuse narrowly, Jaffer defines it so hysterically and wildly broadly that he is simply not credible. More people should confront him with this.
But few people take Jaffe on -- Benjamin Wittes has on a few narrow legal points, and of course the right wing commentariat tries to find some kind of "Shariah law in America" type of hysteria around his persona as a Canadian Muslim who came to this country and pursued civil rights litigation, by his own admission, because he loves to argue. The case that conservatives point to is the anti-Muslim hate video that sparked the demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere last 9/11 and even the terrorist attack on the American compound in Benghazi; they point out that only under intense pressure did the ACLU express "concern" about the suppression of this video and the seemingly opportunistic prosecution of its producer (i.e. behaving cautiously in ways they never did for Ku Klux Klan marches or the antisemitism of Palestinian activists on campuses.)
Jaffer appears to be a secular Muslim -- his family was from the Ismaili Muslims and was originally from Tanzania and emigrated to Canada, where he grew up and studied in prestigious schools before getting into Harvard. He was invited by Obama to the White House for Ramadan -- he would be the perfect liberal professional figure Obama would want to have at such an occasion meant to build bridges with an antagonistic community.
But Jaffer is the one who fought for Tariq Ramadan, the European writer who is usually described as having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist-funding charities, to be able to come to his country -- he had been banned.
If he really can't be tied to groups funding terrorism, I'm all for Tariq Ramadan not having a visa ban and being allowed to speak at universities (he was invited to Notre Dame, for example). But I'm also for having someone counter him -- for getting others to push back against his very cunning and duplicitious act. That's just the trouble -- few have the tenacity and historical scholarship and attention to take him on, as Paul Berman, for example, has done. And more of that is needed, but it just never happens -- in part because he is cloaked in victimhood that people fear to probe.
And that's exactly what prevents people from taking on Jameel -- that aura of fear of appearing to be anti-Muslim, or racist, or "Islamophobic". It means that people like this have very long runs without anybody ever calling them on the most obvious bullshit like "files kept on virtually everybody" including "medical data and political views."
ACLU Gets Grilled
Jaffer is also the lead litigator in the highly-watched ACLU v. Clapper case in Manhattan court right now, which has adjourned -- and it's not clear when it will re-open or where it will go.
The Verge, oddly enough, turned in a very thorough piece that actually covered some of the trouncing of Jaffer by the judge on Section 215, even if they likely take the other side and favor Jameel's own grilling.
The problem with antagonists like Jaffer, who see their job as always and everywhere to be in opposition, is that they never have to come up with their constructive vision of government or explain where they would positively and definitively draw the line for civil rights balance. And that's fine, I don't believe oppositions should be required to do that -- they should exist as they please.
Except Jaffer is supposedly not in the political opposition, but in a nonprofit law group dedicated to "the Constitution". And that's why I think there should be more pressure on him and his colleagues to spell out whether they support intelligence and information gathering or not -- they really do not seem to -- and where they'd draw the line on the balance of rights. They aren't trustworthy in this endeavour, of course, because of these wild exaggerations.
I was once in a meeting with Jaffer years ago, and he came across as soft-spoken but earnest, even zealous, and one of those people who seemed one-sided not necessarily out of any hard ideology (his parents were middle class business people, not socialists and he's too young to have been in DSA), but out of various personal experiences. He was involved in the noble work of helping numerous South Asian and other Muslim detainees after 9/11 who were swept up and kept for long periods on vague suspicions. That shaped his understanding of the issues. I remember discussing the torture of Central Asia (it was a meeting with various human rights groups working on a post 9/11 network about torture) and came away feeling he didn't find any of this worse than America's problems because it just wasn't in his range of view. This happens all the time, I'm used to it, and I never thought anything specific about it at the time. That is, at that time I thought what the ACLU and Jaffer were doing was perfectly fine and necessary and I even paid dues to the ACLU -- I never dreamed he would come to support a wanted felon who fled into the arms of the Kremlin after executing the greatest damage on our intelligence in hsitory. He wasn't so well known then, but even after he became prominent it did not seem to me that the ACLU would go so far hard to the left on Internet ideology. I completely refuse to support them now.
THE COMFORT LEVEL
I don't really understand how the ACLU became this wild about the Internet, but of course, they had a lot of help from agitation from EFF, which still thinks they don't do enough. But if I had to pin down what I think Jaffer's all about, it's this: the desire to find a comfort level in America which he doesn't feel exists for him personally and for other Muslims and other minorities. That desire to feel as if one isn't hounded, as if one fits in, was a powerful driving force for many waves of immigrants, whether Jewish or Irish or Polish or Korean or Indian or Hispanic. And I think that is a good thing -- the drive to create a society where people's pasts, and their religious backgrounds, and their races, don't make them stick out, don't subject them to harassment, don't make them suspicious. I respect that; obviously it's necessary in a multi-ethnic diverse society. Indeed, if many crusading litigants from all ethnicities and races hadn't bothered to fight discrimination, we wouldn't have the tolerant -- and therefore free -- society we have today, more receptive to immigrants than any in the world.
ANTITHETICAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS
But here's the problem. Some ideologies and belief systems really are antithetical to all the liberal values of America that make you seek it instead of even Canada, let alone England (where Jameel also studied). That would be jihadism and Islamism, of course. You have to push back against them or they suppress your rights and take away your freedoms. And that's just what Jaffer doesn't do -- he fights to bring Tariq into the country, but doesn't ensure that he is on a diverse panel where people will argue against his notions. He'll complain about these six being targeted, and he may indeed have a civil rights case, but he'll be the last one to argue against their extremist beliefs such as suppressing the rights of women and gays and to free speech and choice of one's religion or no religion -- let alone their concessions to violent jihadists. He will not confront them, just as Amnesty didn't confront Cageprisoners. And then nobody will, as the cowardly or cowed "progressive" human rights movement fears to appear discriminatory. Then they leave it to the right to discredit themselves as overbroad in their attack, and the Ramadans of the world live another day to triumphantly spread their influence.
SHOULD EXTREMISTS BE PUT UNDER SURVEILLANCE?
So what about keeping people like these six under surveillance?
Oh, I'm all for that. I don't think public figures espousing extremist views that take away other people's rights and freedoms should get a hands-off attitude.
I'd be happier if this monitoring were done publicly and openly with open sources by non-governmental groups and therefore be part of the debate. I don't think the government is particularly good at it, although I respect that counter-terrorism requires it.
But here's the thing. Leftists are happy to have the Southern Poverty Law Center monitor any rabid right-wing or extremist movements among conservatives, obviously white supremecists or anti-government militias and anti-gay hate groups and even those espousing a critique of "cultural Marxism" (I don't allign with those people, BTW, although I oppose Marxism, because they tend to see everything as all related and all a conspiracy). But who monitors the left? There isn't anybody, except various conservative groups that groups like SPLC then discredit. Yet the job has to be done in society and it's a real gap.
Think about it. Who produces good scholarship and accessibly written materials on terrorism and extremism? I can think of Jamestown as one of the few to produce regular bulletins on groups like Al-Shabaab -- the liberal monitors like Intelwire's J. M. Berger is too busy having Twitter friendships with some of the terrorists to produce criticism of them. There are some universities with scholarship but it's cautious and tends toward the minimizing of terrorism in the belief that somewhere, some evil neo-cons are over-hyping it. (As if there was a danger, given the capitulations Obama has made to Russia, Syria and Iran.)
So yes, precisely because the media and Thinktankistan won't do this job, the FBI really does have to do this, because there simply have been too many cases where people with radical views have committed violent acts. They take their virtuality off-line into real life, so they must be monitored online and offline. I'm for the FBI monitoring Occupy, CODE Pink, Anonymous or any other group of the extreme right or left that not only advocates overthrow of the government but incites or even practices violence. When was the last time you saw anybody get up in a room where Medea Benjamin was bursting in with slogans and posters about evil American drones and confronted her about the Taliban's far, far worse crimes she never discusses? It's just never done, ever.
And yes, indeed, that means monitor more than anything "direct action," which these groups try to pretend is not violent, even though a) it is indeed coercive b) they often trigger violent responses in a craven bid to make themselves victims. I'm not for letting them get away with these tactics, ideologically or practically. I think credible social movements should reject these tactics and the exculpatory argumentation that goes with it. I think unless and until they do, no group that embraces direct action can expect anything but FBI surveillance -- and they should definitely get it.
I think it's more than fine for the FBI to monitor social media and open sources in the news and even have its people go into meetings and watch people. I'm not at all certain that the current NYPD program that monitors mosques and Muslim communities is violating civil rights, but maybe it is. It would be better if there was a different kind of approach of community involvement and community liaison with police, but that's wishful thinking. The reality is, if you are in a community with people that espouse violent jihad -- think of the mosque attended by the Tsarnaev brothers and their mysterious mentor Misha -- then I'm sorry, you need to be watched and you're going to be watched. I like my legs attached to my body, and mourn for the people of Boston who no longer have theirs, as I mourn for the 3,000 people who lost their lives in my city. The NYPD program works. It's not the Russians in Dagestan, which doesn't work. Debate it all you like, litigate it all you like -- we live in a free society where this is possible, unlike Russia.
"LIKE" THE CALIPHATE
But then who will push back against the violent, oppressive ideology? Who, indeed? The other day, a Facebook friend published a comment to the effect that "like Zionism, the ideology of the caliphate draws Muslims together all over the world." Immediately, he got dozens of likes from various Muslims in his and my friendship list, some secular, some religious. They just loved this open expression of admiration of the caliphate, and even more, loved the moral equivalence that they saw with Zionism and even Judaism, which they were likely to have only negative views of. (In other words, what animated them was a triumphalism in being able to say, they felt, "We get to have Caliphatism the way you Jews have Zionism.")
So wait a minute, I said -- because nobody else would. It's not like Zionism. Because Zionism involves Jews going to one country, Israel, and supporting the identity of that one country. Meanwhile, the caliphate goes all over the world, encompassing numerous Muslim and non-Muslim countries with Muslim populations of all kinds. It's clear who is going to run Zionism -- Jews in Israel, with a liberal democratic state (ever harsh critics would have to concede it is certainly liberal by contrast to Iran or Saudi Arabia). But...Who would run the caliphate? It would make a big difference if it were Iran or Morocco.
My friend answered that it was only in a spiritual sense, not meant to be in reality. Well, wait, then, why invoke Zionism? Zionism is about a real country with a real government and an explicitly Jewish ethnic and religious identity in that country. That means it is not like the caliphate, if the caliphate is only spiritual, and in fact those invoking the caliphate want more -- they want theocratic governments.
With Christians, the "kingdom of heaven" is something that Christians are mandated by the religious precept itself not to establish or expect on earth, as it is "within". The Pope in the Vatican might command the obedience of Catholics all over the world, but he doesn't have an army. If the caliphate were like the Pope and the Vatican, mainly a spiritual form of allegiance, perhaps it might have more supporters. But too many factions are for establishing it by force, and making unbelievers convert or leave. I'm quite certain I don't want a caliphate telling me what to do or wear or who I can talk to or what I can read. And neither do you -- and yet you aren't the one who pushed back on that Facebook comment, are you!
WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
Huffpo tells us:
None of the six individuals targeted by the NSA is accused in the document of being involved in terror plots. The agency believes they all currently reside outside the United States. It identifies one of them, however, as a "U.S. person," which means he is either a U.S. citizen or a permanent resident. A U.S. person is entitled to greater legal protections against NSA surveillance than foreigners are.
But you can't wait until you have obvious, open proof that someone is involved in a terror plot befor you start putting them under surveillance -- that will be too late. As indeed it was for the Tsarnaevs (which I view as a problem not of the FBI dropping the ball, but the Russians criminally never passing it -- Tamerlan was in Dagestan for nine long months, meeting with three people who were all assassinated by Russian forces during that time, and they couldn't tell us THAT?!)
ARE DIRTY TRICKS EXCUSABLE BECAUSE THEY'RE BETTER THAN DRONES?
There's an argument to be made that because these suspects might become dangerous that any lawful means should be used to diminish their risk:
Stewart Baker, a one-time general counsel for the NSA and a top Homeland Security official in the Bush administration, said that the idea of using potentially embarrassing information to undermine targets is a sound one. "If people are engaged in trying to recruit folks to kill Americans and we can discredit them, we ought to," said Baker. "On the whole, it's fairer and maybe more humane" than bombing a target, he said, describing the tactic as "dropping the truth on them."
I'd be for discrediting them with open, public sources through polemics, and polemicizing with their bad ideology -- we just don't have the universities and nonprofit think-tanks doing anywhere near enough of this! -- but I'm not for scanning their private email and Google searches to accomplish this. And I don't see how this program, if it involves delving into recognizably private information as opposed to metadata, could be constitutionally lawful.
Baker implies this is legal, but I'd like to find out whether he means the content of an email, or the meta data, and the search histories (which in some cases appear to be part of meta-data -- I'd like more clarity on that, too).
So IF the NSA has spied on these six people's internal communications to find out their "discrediting" information, that does appear to be a civil rights case.
Of course, like the HBGary story, what we have here is a gathering of information with intent, but we don't have any proof whatsoever that the plan was carried through. Where is the Muslim leader who was discredited with porn? There doesn't seem to be one. And Huffpo is coy about telling us how far along this plan was actually going toward fruition.
Then the names should be revealed and the cases litigated to see if they are cases. Truly, that has to be how it is. Otherwise, it remains shadowy and speculative and grounds for antagonistic speculation. Curiously, even though even worse was done with COINTELPRO, i.e. not just monitoring but interfering with personal relationships with spreading of disinformation and gossip, we were told the identities then. So we should be now, too. It should be litigated and those responsible sanctioned. We should determine if the monitoring of search terms and specific gathering of pornography information is a legalized practice or not. It may not be. It may have been tailored for these particular six.
If you don't think these identities should be revealed through litigation because that would essentially effect the discrediting intended by the NSA ostensibly in gathering it, then you'll have to concede that there is no case here.
Ultimately, I have to wonder what the game plan here was. The NSA was going to ensure that the press, especially in oppressive countries where this is easier to do, like Pakistan, was going to leak the porn-reading habits of these people? They were just going to try to use it privately, possibly through interrogations or direct contact where they would attempt blackmail? Is there evidence they followed through?
But wouldn't it be more effective to leak their associations with extremists? Says Huffpo:
In particular, “only seven (1 percent) of the contacts in the study of the three English-speaking radicalizers were characterized in SIGINT as affiliated with an extremist group or a Pakistani militant group. An earlier communications profile of [one of the targets] reveals that 3 of the 213 distinct individuals he was in contact with between 4 August and 2 November 2010 were known or suspected of being associated with terrorism," the document reads.
The document contends that the three Arabic-speaking targets have more contacts with affiliates of extremist groups, but does not suggest they themselves are involved in any terror plots.
The concept of leaking porn habits doesn't strike me as very effective, because most people reading it will have looked at porn themselves and won't find it so terribly shocking, or if they do, will be more impressed by the NSA finding it out and exploiting it than the actual clash with their religious beliefs. Therefore it's not a very effective program and one that seems to violate civil rights.
I'd much rather see more HUMINT at work -- much more staff dedicatd to it -- and much more counterintelligence of the polemical kind in debates. Otherwise I think we will lose the battle.
Finally, I'll say this: very few of the people debating this and invoking civil rights abuses and drones and America's war victims will think of the devastating terrorist attacks really going on in the world with tens of thousands of victims particularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. It's as if they don't exist, like the victims of Stalin and Lenin. They are off-screen. They don't count. But the US intelligence community knows about this and knows that it has to be fought abroad and at home, and they are doing their jobs -- jobs they have been authorized to do by Congress.
If you think they are breaking the Constitution, you need a valid case to prove it in a court of law.
This isn't one yet.
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