http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-primer-on-global-listening.html

SATURDAY, JUNE 08, 2013

A PRIMER ON GLOBAL LISTENING

By Loring Wirbel (Citizens for Peace in Space, Colorado Springs)

When the UK Guardian published direct orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to Verizon on June 5, many readers did not have the slightest idea what they were looking at. The methodology used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct domestic surveillance is not new - what was new in the story was the direct proof that presidents from Reagan to Obama have consistently lied about what the NSA does, domestically and internationally. <snip>

The United States exited World War 2 with plenty of new global bases, acquired in some cases from the UK, or established as U.S. forces drove the Japanese west across the Pacific. British authorities were worried about having signals intelligence (SIGINT) fall out of the hands of Anglo-Saxon nations, so they talked the U.S. into signing the UKUSA Treaty in 1946, which apportions signals intelligence duties across U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand -- and no one else. UKUSA remains highly classified today, 67 years later.

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NSA got caught up in the mid-1970s probes of intelligence agencies, and was forced to reveal domestically-aimed programs like SHAMROCK, <snip> The so-called reforms Congress put in place created a new top-secret court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. <snip> The public learned for the first time in 2005 that there is also a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Appeals Court, but it did not convene until the 21st century, because the FISC never rejected an NSA request until the post-9/11 period.

When FISC began rejecting some Bush administration requests, forcing the convening of FISAC, George Bush issued executive orders that allowed NSA to bypass FISA requirements and conduct domestic surveillance as it saw fit. Congress codified this procedure in its 2008 FISA "reforms."


<snip> new satellites were fielded in the 1980s that allowed real-time digital delivery of images and electronic intelligence from phone calls and computer messages, directly from geosynchronous orbit to ground stations. NSA and NRO worked together to define new satellites such as Jumpseat, Ranger, and Advanced Orion, some of which sported unfurlable antennas as large as two football fields! <snip>

Two policy changes took place during this time without input from the public or Congress: Because satellites in geosynchronous orbit cover the planet in an RF footprint by their very nature, interception within the domestic U.S. became the rule, not the exception. FISA rules or no, NSA was collecting everything globally - it simply could never acknowledge doing so. Also, the agency established to intercept military communications of adversaries slowly was tasked with intercepting all commercial and consumer/civilian communications on the planet. This was a massive expansion, requiring many more employees and facilities in the U.S. and abroad.

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