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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

Gwen Ifill
Co-Anchor and Managing Editor, PBS NewsHour
KQED 01/15/2014
Ifill: Since at least 2008, the national security agency has been using secret technology to hack into and take control of computers not connected to the internet. These revelations come from the trove of documents leaked by former N.S.A contractor Edward Snowden. Late today the N.S.A said in a statement, “continuous and selective publication of specified techniques and tools used by the NSA to pursue legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental to the security of the United States and our allies”
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David Sanger
New York Times, Chief Washington Correspondent
KQED 01/15/2014
Sanger: Most of its cyberactivity is through those big optical telephone cables that run across the Atlantic and Pacific or through regional networks. But what do you do with a compute their separated from all networks, that an intelligence agency or some other agency of government or a company might separate out to keep all the data secret? And that's a problem that the NSA has had for years. And they had it in particular with the Iranian computers that were running the nuclear enrichment program.
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David Sanger
New York Times, Chief Washington Correspondent
KQED 01/15/2014
Sanger: and so this technology puts a small radio transmitter into say a thumb drive or sometimes even into a circuit board in the compute that can broadcast back to a facility called a night stand. It's basically the size of a briefcase that would pick up the data and also allow the NSA to insert malware as they did in the Iranian case. Ifill: Physically insert, presumably in the production process or at some point like that.
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David Sanger
New York Times, Chief Washington Correspondent
KQED 01/15/2014
Sanger: In the production process or maybe in the shipping process or you know, a scientist is at a trade show or a scientific conference and gets a thumb drive or there is a maintenance person who comes in. And in the course of my reporting on Olympic games, the program against Iran, it was clear that some device like this had been used back and forth. We withheld a few of the details at that time at the government's request but then the papers came out and Der Spiegel published some of the details of this several weeks ago. Ifill: In fact Der Spiegel published an actual catalog of these kinds of devices.
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Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.)
Former air force intelligence officer and deputy training director for the NSA
KQED 01/15/2014
Leighton: For the most part it is simple surveillance, but it can also be used in, as a means, as a precursor really to an attack. So for example, if the United States decides to go into what is known as computer network attack, then they could use the information that is gleaned through technologies like this to serve as the pathway in order to conduct an attack of that type. So that's what they're doing. They're looking at, they're recoinoutering the network, they’re doing a reconnaissance mission and then if they need to attack for whatever policy reason then they can do so based on the information they gain from techniques like this.
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Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.)
Former air force intelligence officer and deputy training director for the NSA
KQED 01/15/2014
Ifill: Are techniques like this only limited to potential warfare or are they limited to keeping an eye on foreign governments or is it also applicable domestically? Leighton: It is, technically it would be applicable domstically, but policy wise and from a legal standpoint it is not used domestically. These techniques are only used for foreign intelligence purposes. Now, at least by the NSA. Now when it comes to the targets itself, that is based on intelligence priorities and those intelligence priorities are decided not only by the Director of National Intelligence but also in the White House by the President.
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Terry Martin
Political Correspondent, Moderator and News Anchor of Journal, DW-TV (Deutsche Welle)
LINKTV 01/15/2014
Martin: German News Magazine der Spiegel says there are more than 200 U.S. diplomats working as intelligence officers in Germany. A deal signed in 2002 by the German and U.S. intelligence services reportedly allows them to monitor German terrorist suspects from this station in Bavaria. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden says the intelligence gathered by U.S. agents in Germany resulted in the arrest or killing of at least 40 terrorists between 2002 and 2005.
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Richelle Carey
News Anchor, Al Jazeera America
ALJAZAM 01/17/2014
Carey: We're talking about a lot of data, in fact, thanks to another bit of information that Edward Snowden has revealed. This is some of the numbers we're talking about. This is from a program, an NSA program called Dishfire. This is what we’re finding out. More than 5 million missed call alerts, which are used to analyze a person's social network. That is some of the data the NSA is collecting. Details of 1.6 million border crossings a day. That is pulled from the network roaming alerts. And listen to this. More than 800,000 financial transactions through text to text payments are linking credit cards to phone users. That's the type of data that the NSA has been collecting. What does that tell you about the NSA? Sanchez: They have certainly adapted an attitude that they never saw a piece of data they didn't want to collect. It’s true, the attitude really does seem to be getting now it may come in handy for something down the road.
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Daniel Ellsberg
Author of
ALJAZAM 01/17/2014
Ellsberg: What various reports have shown and the President has not contradicted at all is, they’ve been unable to come up with one terrorist event of the last eight or nine years that has been prevented by this metadata program which has been there all the time. First, they claim 57 events then they came down to 1. The 1 turned out to be, by the way, not a terrorist plot but a – some money that a cab driver sent to an alleged terrorist group at one point. That's the one thing they came up with. The President wasn't able to come up with any other example. His own review board recommended dismantling of this entire bulk program on the grounds that it was clearly unconstitutional and had no justifying effect in terms of protecting our security. He’s now talking about where to store all this data which he’s continuing to collect.
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Daniel Ellsberg
Author of
ALJAZAM 01/17/2014
Ellsberg: They put so much emphasis on, its only metadata. Why should we believe that? As a matter of fact, Russell Tice, who was involved in these programs when he was in the NSA, a few years ago, some years ago, says they were lying then and are lying now. I heard him say that today when he says they are not taking content. Actually,
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