Wednesday, July 10, 2013

297 John Pilger: Bernays, Ellsberg, Branfman, Manning and Snowden.

John Pilger: NSA-lekken tonen nieuw oprukkend fascisme

In zijn bekende recht-toe-recht-aan stijl klaagt de Brits-Australische journalist John Pilger het sluipend fascisme aan dat door de recente NSA-lekken werd blootgelegd. Dit is echter al veel langer aan de gang. Aan ons om ons er bij neer te leggen of er iets aan te doen.
propaganda
Hou je mond. Wij bombarderen wie we willen. Je staat aan onze kant of aan die van de terroristen.
In zijn boek Propaganda, gepubliceerd in 1928, schreef de Amerikaanse psychiater Edward Bernays: “De bewuste en intelligente manipulatie van de gevestigde gewoonten en opinies van de massa is een belangrijk onderdeel van een democratische maatschappij. Zij die dit onzichtbaar mechanisme van de maatschappij manipuleren, vormen een onzichtbare regering die de echte heersende macht van ons land is”.

Propaganda wordt ‘public relations’

Bernays was een neef van Sigmund Freud. Hij vond de term ‘public relations’ (PR) uit als een eufemisme voor staatspropaganda. Hij waarschuwde er voor dat personen die deze waarheid aan het licht brengen en een geïnformeerd publiek een permanente bedreiging zijn voor deze onzichtbare regering.
In 1971 lekte klokkenluider Daniel Ellsberg gegevensbestanden van de Amerikaanse regering, bekend als de Pentagon Papers, die onthulden dat de invasie van Vietnam gebaseerd was op systematische leugens. Vier jaar later hield senator Frank Church sensationele hoorzittingen in de Amerikaanse Senaat: dit werd één van de laatste opflakkeringen van de Amerikaanse democratie.
Dit onderzoek legde de volledige omvang van de onzichtbare overheid bloot: de binnenlandse spionage, de ondermijning van elke vorm van dissidentie en de permanente oorlogstaal van zogenaamde intelligentie- en veiligheidsbureaus en de steun die ze krijgen van grote bedrijven en de media, zowel de conservatieve als de liberale.

Geen weg terug

Over de National Security Agency (NSA), zei Senator Church toen: "Ik weet dat de mogelijkheid om tirannie in Amerika alomvattend te maken reëel is en we moeten ervoor zorgen dat deze organisatie en alle agentschappen die beschikken over deze technologie opereren binnen de grenzen van de wet... zodat we nooit de afgrond oversteken. Dit is een afgrond vanwaar er geen weg terug is. "
Op 11 juni 2013 heeft Daniel Ellsberg, naar aanleiding van de onthullingen in de Guardian door NSA-medewerker Edward Snowden, geschreven dat de VS nu in die ‘afgrond’ is beland.
De onthulling van Snowden dat Washington Google, Facebook, Apple en andere reuzen van consumententechnologie gebruikt om zowat iedereen te bespioneren, is nog maar eens een bewijs van de hedendaagse vorm van fascisme - dit is die ‘afgrond’. Na het opleiden van ouderwetse fascisten over de hele wereld - van Latijns-Amerika tot Afrika en Indonesië - is de geest terug uit de fles. Dit begrijpen is net zo belangrijk als het begrijpen van het criminele misbruik van technologie.

Obama’s politiestaat

Een andere voormalige klokkenluider, Fred Branfman, die de ‘geheime’ vernietiging van het kleine Laos (buurland van Cambodja en Vietnam, nvdr) door de Amerikaanse luchtmacht in de jaren ‘60 en '70 ontmaskerde, geeft het volgende antwoord aan zij die zich nog steeds afvragen hoe een ‘liberale’ Afro-Amerikaanse president, hoogleraar in staatsrecht, zo een wetteloosheid kan bevelen: "Geen president heeft meer gedaan dan Obama om de infrastructuur te creëren voor een mogelijke toekomstige politiestaat."
Waarom? Omdat Obama, net als George W. Bush, begrijpt dat het zijn taak niet is om toe te geven aan zij die op hem gestemd hebben maar om "de machtigste instelling in de geschiedenis van de wereld, die sinds 1962 meer dan 20 miljoen mensen, voornamelijk burgers, heeft gedood, gewond of dakloos gemaakt verder uit te breiden".
In deze nieuwe Amerikaanse cybersupermacht, zijn alleen de sluizen langswaar de informatie passeert veranderd. De directeur van Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was adviseur van Condaleeza Rice, voormalig minister van buitenlandse zaken tijdens de regering van W. Bush die loog dat Saddam Hoessein de VS met kernwapens zou kunnen aanvallen.
Cohen en Googles directeur-generaal, Eric Schmidt - ze leerden elkaar kennen in de ruïnes van Irak - hebben samen een boek geschreven, The New Digital Age (Het Nieuwe Digitale Tijdperk), dat door de voormalige CIA-directeur Michael Hayden en de oorlogsmisdadigers Henry Kissinger en Tony Blair als ‘visionair’ wordt aangeprezen. De auteurs maken daarin geen melding van het Prism-spionageprogramma, recent onthuld door Edward Snowden, dat de NSA toegang levert tot ieder van ons die Google gebruiken.

Controle en overheersing

Dat zijn de twee begrippen die dit enigszins begrijpelijk maken. Ze worden uitgeoefend door politieke, economische en militaire instrumenten, waarvan massale observatie een essentieel onderdeel is, maar ook door propaganda te suggereren aan het publieke bewustzijn. Dit was net Edward Bernays' punt van hierboven.
Bernays’ twee meest succesvolle PR-campagnes hadden als doelstelling de Amerikaanse bevolking te overtuigen naar de oorlog in Europa te gaan in 1917 en de Amerikaanse vrouwen er van te overtuigen om in het openbaar te gaan roken. Sigaretten werden ‘toortsen van vrijheid’ die de bevrijding van de vrouwen zou bespoedigen.

Propaganda-abteilung Hollywood

Het was in de populaire cultuur dat het frauduleuze ideaal van Amerika als moreel superieur, als 'leider van de vrije wereld' het meest effectief is geweest. Zelfs tijdens Hollywoods meest chauvinistische periodes waren er echter nog altijd uitzonderlijke films, zoals die van de in ballingschap levende Stanley Kubrick, en gewaagde Europese films vonden Amerikaanse verdelers. Vandaag is er geen Kubrick meer , geen Dr. Strangelove, en de Amerikaanse markt is bijna volledig afgesloten voor buitenlandse films.
(Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was een geniaal filmregisseur. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Came to Love the Bomb kwam uit in 1964, in volle Koude Oorlog, en vertelt het verhaal van een krankzinning geworden Amerikaans generaal die zijn vliegtuigen bevel geeft hun atoombommen op de Sovjet-Unie te werpen. Dr. Strangelove is de bizarre ingenieur van het kernprogramma in de film. Nog steeds een meesterwerk, nvdr.)
Toen ik mijn eigen film, The War on Democracy, aan een grote, liberale Amerikaanse verdeler liet zien, kreeg ik een waslijst van verplichte veranderingen overhandigd om ‘ervoor te zorgen dat de film aanvaardbaar is’. Die verdeler deed me een volgens hem betekenisvolle toegeving: "OK, misschien kunnen we Sean Penn erin zetten als commentaarstem. Zou dat je tevreden stellen?" (De Amerikaanse acteur Sean Penn is ook politiek actief, dat doen wel meer acteurs in de VS. Alleen verdedigt hij een duidelijk anders links discours, nvdr)

De waarheid, u gebracht door …

Recent werden films uitgebracht als Katherine Bigelow’s 'Zero Dark Thirty' die foltering goedpraat en Alex Gibney's 'We Steal Secrets', een verfilmde afbraak van Julian Assange, gedraaid met royale ondersteuning van Universal Studios, waarvan het moederbedrijf tot voor kort het Amerikaanse energiebedrijf General Electric (GE) was. GE produceert ook wapens, onderdelen voor gevechtsvliegtuigen en geavanceerde observatietechnologie. Het bedrijf heeft ook winstgevende belangen in het 'bevrijde' Irak.
De kracht van klokkenluiders als Bradley Manning, Julian Assange en Edward Snowden is dat ze die hele mythologie ondergraven, die zorgvuldig geconstrueerd wordt door de commerciële filmindustrie, de commerciële academici en de commerciële media. WikiLeaks is juist daarom zo gevaarlijk omdat het die klokkenluiders voorziet van een platform om de waarheid bekend te maken.

Informatie over onze oorlogsmisdaden

Dit werd bereikt door 'Collatoral Murder', de cockpitvideo van een Amerikaanse Apachehelikopter, die naar verluidt werd gelekt door Bradley Manning. De impact van deze video brandmerkte Manning en Assange als doelwitten voor weerwraak van de Amerikaanse staat.
Die video toonde immers Amerikaanse piloten die journalisten vermoorden en kinderen op straat in Bagdad verminken, daar duidelijk pret in hebben en hun wreedheid als ‘leuk’ omschrijven. Maar toch zijn ze door één specifiek aspect daar niet mee weggeraakt, namelijk omdat wij daar nu getuigen van zijn.
Het hangt nu van ons af.
John Pilger
Vertaald door Bavo Vanoost

296 Michael Hastings was liquidated.

This blog: http://tiny.cc/jc13dx

How do we know what is true and what are lies?

Well, if the source doesn't benefit from what he says, there is a higher chance that  he speaks the truth.
Another rule:   Miracles are really really rare.  Too many miracles on one day: don't believe the story.

Let's count the number of miracles on the day Hastings was killed in a road accident.

Te situation:
1. Hastings was on to 'some big new case'.
2. He planned to go 'off the radar' for a while. ( See below, or look here)
3. The FBI was trying to get information from his close friends, so he advised his friends not to say anything without a lawyer.

This  is what Hastings emailed his friends.
Only 22 hours later:

3. Hastings drives at 4 am and at very high speed through a red traffic light.
4. A few seconds later he drives against a tree.
5. A photographer from 'Breaking News' happens to be parked at the crossing where Hastings drives through the red light and his windshield-camera films Hastings as he drives through the red light, and also proves that Hastings was not followed by another car.

How often does a person drive through a red traffic light, at very high speed?
Not very often, as people who do so will not get the chance to make it a habit: it will kill you.
And ìf this happens, how often is it filmed by a camera, so that we can be sure that Hastings was not followed ?

This is the official story.
Police give no information, but very quickly said that there was no reason to suspect any thing else than a normal accident.
( How can they know? They did not take the time for an investigation.)

My first conclusion: 
Even with only the information as given above I suspected a liquidation:
- the motives were there: a journalist who was able to get a very high general ousted, and now is 'on to a big case' :  'They' must know what he is 'on to ' ( PRISM ?)  and don't want it to be publicised.
 - To drive through red light:  a rare thing.
- To drive through a red light at high speed: a very rare thing.
- Then to hit a tree and get on fire:  a very very very rare coïncidence .

                     -------------------------

On 9 july an investigative journalist Kimberly Dvorak was in L.A. to find out.

She came with more facts:

- Nobody has been granted the police-report yet.
- Police and firemen 'could not comment' or said they were told 'not to comment'.
- The fire was extremely hot, as military personnel said to Dvorak. Not normal for a car like this. The car was brand-new.
- The car drove from north to south, but its motor was found to the  north of the wreckage. At 50 meters distance.  University professors that Dvorak asked about this are puzzled.

What could have happened?  Could he be drunk? 
Dvorak:
- He could be drunk, but there were zero skid-marks. Hastings did not try to use the breaks.

Could the car have malfunctioned ?  Exploded from itself?  Or was an explosive put on board?
Dvorak:
Mercedes makes their car in such a way that they will never blow up. They take great care for that.

Could controle over the car be 'hijacked', could it be remote-controled ?
Dvorak:
That could be. The University of San Diego gave out a report in 2010 in which they took a normal car like a Nissan Centra, and took a normal  iPad and with that were able to hack into the cars system and operate: - the accellerator, steering,  breaks, windshield-wipers, lights..

                        ---------------------------------

Here are some interesting reactions that appeared on ICH:
Bob· ..hours ago
I smell a rat with the "roving" camera operator who just happened to be awake, in his vehicle and with his camera on at roughly 4 a.m. so as to coincidentally catch Hastings' vehicle speed past and then catch the burning vehicle moments after it exploded into flames. Oh, and to also make sure to put that beer bottle in frame despite there being absolutely no indication it came from Hastings' car. Someone digging into that creep's background?!!!
Frank· 13 hours ago
You know it's dodgy when the police or other authorities quickly put out the "no foul play" / "nothing to see here" statement. Investigations of this nature take a long time.

"As to what “upcoming disaster” the US is preparing for, this report continues, appears to be “strongly related” to last weeks assassination of American reporter Michael Hastings who was killed while attempting to reach the safety of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, and as we had reported on in our 20 June report Top US Journalist Attempting To Reach Israeli Consulate Assassinated.

Further to be noted about Hastings assassination by the Obama regime is the continued US mainstream propaganda news cover-up of it, though many freelance reporters continue to uncover the truth, such as Jim Stone whose investigation noted that the rear portion of Hastings car was blown open and shredded with the rest of the car nicely intact, which runs counter to the “official” story that this vehicle has hit a tree."

from:
Obama Requests 15,000 Russian Troops
For “Upcoming” Disaster http://www.eutimes.net/2013/06/obama-requests-150...

Then there is this, written by the controversial character Sorcha Fal, so why is it the only story I can find on line about a drone hitting his car?:

"Interestingly, this report says, GRU “electronic assets” reporting on the assassination of Hastings were conducting “routine operations” in the Southern California region monitoring the US Navy’s testing of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) known as the ShadowHawk® [see video HERE] [photo 3rd left] manufactured by Vanguard Defense Industries.

While performing what GRU analysts say in this report were “routine night flight observations” of a small fleet of ShadowHawks® at the US Marine Base Camp Pendleton in Southern California during the early morning hours of 18 June, a single ShadowHawk® broke formation and “sped” towards the Los Angeles whereupon it fired upon a vehicle nearing the intersection of Highland and Melrose avenues at around 04:15 PDT destroying it and, presumably, killing its sole occupant Michael Hastings.

Upon the ShadowHawk® destroying this vehicle, described by eyewitnesses as a Mercedes Benz, this report continues, GRU signal intelligence analysts (SIGINT) identified “at least” 4 cellular communications between this vehicle and the Israeli Consulate located at 11766 Wilshire Blvd, and which further GRU GPS and cellular data analysis revealed Hastings was headed towards at a “high rate of speed.”

"...As the ShadowHawk® attack upon Hastings’s vehicle occurred with his being only 14.3 kilometers (8.9 miles) from his presumed safety under Israeli protection at their Los Angeles consulate, this report says, even at that early hour many residents were awakened by the explosion providing “excellent” eyewitness testimony which “severely” conflicts with Americas mainstream propaganda organs.

Where the US mainstream media is reporting Hastings’s vehicle was destroyed after it slammed into a tree, this report continues, these eyewitnesses say otherwise, and as has been further noted by the InfoWars News Service who write:

“Photographs of the crash scene… reveal that the car Hastings was in did not experience a high-speed crash. “There is no impact damage to this car. The only damage there is BLOWN OUT in the back, not smashed in the front and it obviously missed the tree as it rolled to a stop,” writes Jim Stone. “This was a Mercedes, not a Pinto, which means it did not burst into flames on its own. One (seldom quoted) eyewitness said the car ‘exploded.’”.."

Top US Journalist Attempting To Reach
Israeli Consulate Assassinatedhttp://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1687.htm

See also:
Michael Hastings OBVIOUSLY murdered by bomb on gas tankhttp://jimstonefreelance.com/hastingsmurdered.htm...
Share/Save/Bookmark


An excerpt from the LA Times article: 
In an email sent hours before his death in a single-car L.A. crash, journalist Michael Hastings wrote that his “close friends and associates” were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to “go off the radar for a bit.”
According to the email, sent to KTLA, Hastings wrote he was working on a “big story” and was going to disappear. He told his colleagues that if the FBI came to interview them, they should have legal counsel present.
Update:  here is an article from Veterans Today, covering the same subject: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/07/13/boston-brakes-no-skidmarks-in-the-sky/

UPDATE 23 OCTOBER 2013:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36657.htm

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

295 How to conquer the world ( without the world knowing about it). PRISM, Snowden etc.

This blog: http://tiny.cc/yuzqzw  or  tiny.cc/yuzqzw

Snowden told the world that the Americans  Neocons are taping every phone call made in the western world, and that they store all emails and blogs we write. 

I have my own view why they do this, and it has to do with the very old idea of the Jewish people that one day they must (and will)  rule over all the people in the world.  


I think the easiest way to clarify this is as I do it below:

------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, suppose I was a religious jew.

Then my ultimate goal in life would be:
Do everything necessary for the jewish Messiah to come to Earth.

I quote Wikipedia:
The main tenets of Jewish eschatology are the following, in no particular order, elaborated in the Books of IsaiahJeremiah and Ezekiel [1]:

So the Jewish people are waiting for the Messiah.
The Messiah will not only rule over the Jewish people, but over the whole world.

All peoples of the world will recognize the Jewish Messiah as their leader. 

Now, wouldn't it be natural that the Jewish Messiah only comes when 'All peoples' of the world are already under Jewish rule, so that the Messiah doesn't have to do any dirty work himself? 

That would be the perfect time for God to send 'The Messiah'. 

As  Adiel Schremer, of Bar Ilan University, Israel, wrote 
[T]he construction of the eschatological redemption in terms of the total eradication of the nations, or at least in association with such an expectation, has a potential of shaping a violent personality and might contribute to. . . a violent mind-setting

For if one is hoping for God’s redemption soon to come, and is inspired by the idea of a total vanquish-ing of Israel’s enemies as an essential part of that redemption, one’s violent inclinations are not entirely suppressed and in a sense they are being fostered.
( Translation in Dutch: see below *) 

So if the jews can get rid of their enemies, the conditions for the coming of the Messiah, and thus for resurrection of the dead, and a new heaven and earth, are met. 

Very tempting idea, isn't it ? 

Was that why there were so many attempts to organise a World Government , all by jewish people?  ( See: blog 178)  

But how can we get rid of our enemies? 

You would need an awful lot of arms and fighting to conquer 7 billion unwilling people.
The motto of the mossad is: "By way of deception thou shalt make war."

If you could convince people that they are their own bosses. That they vote for their leaders, then what reason would they have to rebel? 

So we need democracies ?   YES !  
Real democracies?   NO ! 
Of course not. 
We need democracies with Media that give the impression that all things can be said,  but that are, nevertheless, censored. 

Whaauw. But that seems impossible to me....?
How do you mean, impossible?  
Look at the reality on the ground, right now:  : "There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action". ( Bertrand Russell) 
For example: Everybody believes that building  WTC7  fell down with the speed of free fall because a thousand huge bolts snapped one after another, exactly in time, to the milli-second.  Because of burning furniture on some floors !  

Every opinion you have of peoples ability to think is too high an estimate..
People are unable to think.  Professors, journalists all of them. 

May I quote some other people:
Edward Bernays: 
"The intelligent manipulation of the masses is an invisible government, which is the true ruling power in our country."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask: by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

So it is not so difficult to manipulate almost all people into believing whatever you want to tell them. 
And as you can read in a very interesting book : 'We can cause so much horror on the world that people will come running to us and beg us to take the government o the world upon us.'  

But there is more ! 
Now that almost all people in the world have a computer and write whatever they think,  we can easily scan all written texts they produce and thus find out how much a person understands of what is really happening in the world. 

So we can easily filter out all our ( future ) enemies. 
We will give them a hard time. They will not be promoted. Their company will be black-listed and will loose customers.   They will be punished for things that almost everybody else does, like tax-evasion etc.  

We can also filter out all our future collaborators. Not people from our tribe, of course. Intelligent men,  but by nature naïve enough to further our agenda.

That's how simple it is, really. 

You don't have to kill anybody. 
Just create a world view in everybody's head, using our MSM,  which is favorable for us, and  declare all dissidents to be idiots.  
They are loosers already, as we sabotage their careers and companies. 
And when its really necessary they can always have an accident.  

But: There are so few religious jews in the world, and so many liberal jews. 

True. 
So what's the problem if  we have controle over the world and we discover that the Messiah doesn't show up, simply because he doesn't exist ? 
Its fine with me. 
As long as we can create anti-semitism (**)or at least suggest anti-semitism, jews will always be loyal to the jewish case.  
                   
                    -----------------------------------------------

So far my take on PRISM and Snowden. 

( Update from 11 sept 2013:  Israel gets all PRISM info  unfiltered from the USA: Volkskrant or Guardian or: see the article below. 

Far fetched you say ? 

That may be because you are 'uninformed'.
It is exactly the way Aipac works in the USA, for years already. They note exactly what every politician votes for and against. If he is so stupid as to be a little critical to Israel, they will immediately make sure that with the next elections  a competitor will win the elections. End of story.
Read what Tony Judt ( famous Jewish historian) said about it. Read what others  said: blog 9 
In this way they make the USA taxpayer pay 3 to 5 billion $ to Israel, every year, an another 2 billion to Egypt ( as long as it will not criticise Israel).  Also in times of crisis. About 7 billion $, each year.




Het geloof dat aan het einde der tijden alle ‘naties’ (landen en volken) zullen zijn weggevaagd c.q. overmeesterd, kan leiden tot een gewelddadige persoonlijkheid of een neiging tot geweld.
Want als men hoopt dat God’s verlossing snel zal komen, en geïnspireerd is door het idee dat het verdwijnen van alle vijanden van Israel daar een onderdeel van zijn, dan worden daardoor iemand’s neigingen tot geweld niet onderdrukt maar in zekere zin juist gestimuleerd.

(**) Diverse oude en nieuwe Israelische en joodse bronnen verkondigen dat het nuttig is voor het joodse voortbestaan om te haten en gehaat te worden: Rabbi Simeon, David M Weinberg, Rabbi Soloveichik, Rabbi Dr. Dan Cohn-Sherbok , Schneur Zalman en ook Theodor Herzl.

                                             ---------------------------------------

                  
Toevoeging: 
De NRC heeft een interessant artikel gewijd aan het geval Snowden: NRC.

In de discussie schreef een reageerder, Michiel Jonker,  een stukje tekst dat mij aan,oedigde bovenstaande blog te schrijven.

Jonker schreef o.a.:
Het gaat niet om de vraag of Snowden die de informatie lekte, of de journalisten die over de informatie publiceerden, helden zijn of niet.
De kern van het probleem is ook niet of de onthullingen van Snowden “schade” aanrichten. De kern is welke conclusies en consequenties we moeten trekken uit de feiten die Snowden heeft onthuld.
Het gaat veel verder dan het risico dat de door geheime diensten (en grote bedrijven zoals Apple, Microsoft en Google) verzamelde informatie wordt gebruikt voor strafvervolging op politieke gronden. “Strafvervolging” wordt op deze manier bijna overbodig gemaakt.
Het is ook mogelijk lastige mensen (bijvoorbeeld activisten of aankomende politici die opkomen voor burgerlijke rechten en vrijheden) uit te schakelen door ze uit te sluiten van het maatschappelijke verkeer. Om te beginnen kunnen er op basis van algoritmen in de getapte en gelabelde informatie patronen worden “herkend” (d.w.z. gedefinieerd) op grond waarvan mensen vervolgens op geheime lijsten geplaatst worden die ertoe leiden dat ze niet in aanmerking komen voor verantwoordelijke banen. Zo kunnen ze ook financieel worden afgeknepen, zodat ze alleen nog maar bezig zijn met hun eigen overleving en geen energie meer hebben om misstanden aan te kaarten.
Ook maakt de heimelijk verzamelde informatie het mogelijk om, zodra iemand “moeilijk” doet of een machthebber om andere reden onwelgevallig is, snel sleaze te produceren om iemand in publieke ogen af te branden nog voordat hij de kans heeft gekregen zijn boodschap over te brengen.
Het gaat hier dus om het heimelijk verzamelen van informatie die politiek en crimineel gebruikt kan en zal worden. Nu al zie je dat patroon in de sleaze over het verleden van journalist Greenwald van de Guardian, die plotseling opduikelt bij Amerikaanse journalisten. Door wie is deze info aan hen toegespeeld?

------------------------
Here is the Guardian article about tne NSA giving all info to Israel :

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel
• Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis
• Only official US government communications protected
• Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy
• 
Read the NSA and Israel's 'memorandum of understanding'

·         Glenn GreenwaldLaura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill
·         The Guardian, Wednesday 11 September 2013 15.40 BST
·         Jump to comments (3397)


The agreement for the US to provide raw intelligence data to Israel was reached in principle in March 2009, the document shows. Photograph: James Emery
The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data withIsrael without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administrationthat there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.
But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadataand content."
According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.
Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.
"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law," the document says.
In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.
"Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA'ssurveillance activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights," the spokesperson said.
The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.
The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain "any files containing the identities of US persons" for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA's special liaison adviser when such data is found.
Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".
It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on "the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip".
The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans' emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.
Moreover, with much of the world's internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency's surveillance programs.
The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will "regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons' identities". It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a "strict need to know".
Israeli intelligence is allowed "to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA" on condition that it does so "in a manner that does not identify the US person". The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to "outside parties, including all INSU customers" with the NSA's written permission.
Although Israel is one of America's closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.
The relationship between the US and Israel has been strained at times, both diplomatically and in terms of intelligence. In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post, Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.
While NSA documents tout the mutually beneficial relationship of Sigint sharing, another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.
"Balancing the Sigint exchange equally between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge," states the report, titled 'History of the US – Israel Sigint Relationship, Post-1992'. "In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA's only true Third Party [counter-terrorism] relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner."

In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. "On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems," the official says. "A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US."
Later in the document, the official is quoted as saying: "One of NSA's biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel. There are parameters on what NSA shares with them, but the exchange is so robust, we sometimes share more than we intended."

The memorandum of understanding also contains hints that there had been tensions in the intelligence-sharing relationship with Israel. At a meeting in March 2009 between the two agencies, according to the document, it was agreed that the sharing of raw data required a new framework and further training for Israeli personnel to protect US personinformation.

It is not clear whether or not this was because there had been problems up to that point in the handling of intelligence that was found to contain Americans' data.
However, an earlier US document obtained by Snowden, which discusses co-operating on a military intelligence program, bluntly lists under the cons: "Trust issues which revolve around previous ISR [Israel] operations."

The Guardian asked the Obama administration how many times US data had been found in the raw intelligence, either by the Israelis or when theNSA reviewed a sample of the files, but officials declined to provide this information. Nor would they disclose how many other countries the NSA shared raw data with, or whether the Fisa court, which is meant to oversee NSA surveillance programs and the procedures to handle US information, had signed off the agreement with Israel.
In its statement, the NSA said: "We are not going to comment on any specific information sharing arrangements, or the authority under which any such information is collected. The fact that intelligence services work together under specific and regulated conditions mutually strengthens the security of both nations.
"NSA cannot, however, use these relationships to circumvent US legal restrictions. Whenever we share intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including the rules to protect US person information