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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Saxby Chambliss
U.S. Senator R-Georgia, Vice-Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
KYW 08/03/2014
Chambliss: He called Senator Feinstein and me and came to us and he sat down and said here is what happened. Well, the fact is we now know he didn’t have all the facts. Once he got all the facts he came back and he did apologize. He was wrong. Senator Feinstein was right. O’Donnell: But when you hear that the C.I.A. is spying on Senate computers? Chambliss: These are their computers that were on their premises but they were being dedicated to Senate staff. And I‘m going to tell you, this is very, very serious. If I thought John Brennan knew about this, then it would be, certainly we’d be calling for his resignation. But the OIG made a specific finding that he did not. But I will tell you these five staffers that did this, if they worked for me they would be gone now but the accountability board has been convened and they will be looking into this and they will be dealt with accordingly.
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Anderson Cooper
Host of Anderson Cooper 360
CNNW 08/06/2014
Cooper: Another national security leak possibly inspired by Edward Snowden. Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald hinted at his or her existence. And today officials confirmed it. We’re talking to Justice Correspondent Evan Perez who joins us now. So how concern are government officials about this new leaker of any information that he or she may have had access to? Perez: Anderson, they're very concerned. The issue here is obviously we've only seen one document or a couple documents that were published today by “The Intercept,” on Greenwald's website. The person who leaked this document obviously had access to a pentagon computer system, which is the same computer system that Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning had access to. That as you remember caused the leak of hundreds of thousands of classified documents which the U.S. says caused a lot of damage to national security. So far we don't know how serious the damage is. They're obviously very concerned though, Anderson.
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Anderson Cooper
Host of Anderson Cooper 360
CNNW 08/06/2014
Cooper: Didn't the government improve security after Snowden? Do we know how this happened again? Or did it happen before Snowden and it's only now coming to light? Perez: Well, it's not clear exactly when this document was leaked. We do know that it was dated from August of 2013, which is after Snowden fled the United States to avoid criminal charges. And yes, the U.S. Did improve its computer security system because obviously Snowden exposed a huge vulnerability. But problem is that there is still about three million people that have access to secret documents in the U.S. government. That's a lot of people who could easily get access to this stuff and leak it at any time, Anderson.
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Ezra Klein
Editor-In-Chief VOX.com and Policy Analyst at MSNBC
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Klein: The story the government is so interested in getting out before The Intercept published, was a bombshell report based on documents obtained by a source in the Intelligence Committee, not Edward Snowden, it should be said. These documents revealing there are a million people being monitored as part of the U.S. government database of terror suspects. And 680,000 people, 680,000, on the government watch list of people suspected of having links to terrorism. Of the people on that list, more than 40% are described by the government as having, quote, no recognized terrorist group affiliation. That is 280,000 people, more than the number of people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined. The report notes, quote, since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no-fly-list more than tenfold to an all-time high of 47,000.
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Jeremy Scahill
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Scahill: The fact is that Umar Farouk, the so called under wear bomber, was in the U.S. Intelligence community’s, he was on their radar, but he wasn't on the no-fly list. And so what I think happened was, there was in massive overreaction where Obama personally issued orders that this is not going to happen again. And if we don't expand these lists radically, then I'm going to hold you all personally accountable for this. So I think that that caused a reaction where they started just pouring names into the database, based on the most frivolous evidence. You know, the standard used to get on to the list that will categorize you as a known or suspected terrorist can be as flimsy as an uncorroborated posting that you put on Facebook or on twitter. So they just inundated the system, if part out of fear.
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Jeremy Scahill
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Scahill: What I think they're using these bloated lists for in part, is to try to force people primarily in the Muslim Arab communities to be informants for the government. And they use the fact that they are designated as known or suspected terrorists to try to make them informants. So it's a combination of these two things. And on the one hand, the ACLU makes a very strong civil liberties argument, that the reasonable suspicion standard, and not reasonable doubt, or not probable cause, is used to put people on this list. It's essentially like a global stop and frisk program. There are civil liberties issues. But the FBI people that we've talked to also are against the bloating of this list, because they say that they're just getting inundated with names of people that really don't have any known links to terrorism, and it's causing real terror investigations to be flooded with meaningless, frivolous information that ultimately hinders the ability to root out actual terrorists in our society.
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Jeremy Scahill
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Scahill: In June, a federal judge ruled a portion of this system unconstitutional. And the portion of that system was the fact that you, as an American citizen, not to mention, you know, a foreigner, have no right to know whether or not you're on this list, why you've been put on the list, and if you challenge a status that you think you may have. In other words, if you think you've been watch listed or if you're on the no-fly list, or the selectee list, which means you get stopped every time you try to check in for your flight and pulled aside for extra screening, the policy is they won't confirm or deny it, and then it goes through a secret process where the actual agencies that nominated you, whether it's the CIA or the NSA or the FBI, have the ultimate veto power to keep you on the list or to adjust your status. so a judge has said that that is unconstitutional.
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Jeremy Scahill
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Scahill: What this really boils down to I think a very, very serious issue is the fact that the evidence that's used against people to put them on this list is completely flimsy. And would not hold up in a court of law. In fact, one of the documents we obtained said even if someone that we have on this list is acquitted of a terrorism-related crime, that doesn't necessarily mean we should take them off the list, because we don't have to meet the reasonable doubt standard.
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Jeremy Scahill
Co-Founder, The Intercept
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Klein: Are those people suspected under reasonable rationales or are they just completely random, they put up something on Facebook? Scahill: Well, in all likelihood, it's both or it’s either of those. What we know, based on the watch list and guidance that we published two weeks ago and the documents that we just published this week is that there are some people, without a doubt, who are on that list because of something that they put on Facebook or something they put on twitter, or because their phone number popped up in the phone of someone that we think may be in touch with someone whose cousin may be a suspected terrorist in Pakistan. And then there probably are people on that where they have actual evidence, and these are dangerous people. And so part of the point, beyond the civil liberties argument, is that if your goal is to actually try to prevent acts of terrorism against the united states, you're doing a heck of a job making it more difficult to root out potential terrorists by having so many people who have no connection to terrorism in your lists.
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Dianne Feinstein
U.S. Senator (D-CA), Chairman of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
MSNBCW 08/06/2014
Kornacki: yesterday, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who's the chair of the Intelligence Committee, said the CIA has taken this report and over-redacted it. That it has abused its power to redact. That it is trying to keep too much secret. She said the redactions, quote, “obscure key facts that support the report's findings and conclusions.” And now, she's vowing not to release that final report until and unless the CIA and her committee can come up with some compromise. She's also sent a letter to the White House registering her complaints. Democratic Senator Carl Levin called the CIA's redactions totally unacceptable. quote, “the classification process should be used to protect sources and methods where the disclosure of information that could compromise national security, not to avoid disclosure or improper acts or embarrassing information.”
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