That's the only way to fight politicians who know how the news-cycle work: just sit tight for a couple of weeks and anything will be forgotten. By "refreshing" every few months, they kept the issue on the agenda. Recent legislative wins in this area are almost entirely due to this strategy: in the first month after release, there was massive support behind Feinstein and her likes; now that side has slowly been eroded down to a few securocrats and the usual hawks, which is why wins are happening in courts and in Congress.
> It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations
We really don't know how "legitimate" those descriptions of people hacking equipment in transit were. Besides, there is a world beyond the US -- Greenwald publishes from Brasil, he doesn't have to follow the wishes of the US government. Would you have kept quiet on the Bay of Pigs operation just because it was a "legitimate" foreign operation from a US-gov perspective?
Journalism is not about covering government press releases.
That's actually a perfect example of what I was talking about. When Greenwald initially published the short blurb talking about intercepting routers, he didn't say who they were being used against, implying that anyone's router might be intercepted and backdoored - maybe even your own! When the full document was released sometime later, it was revealed that the NSA only used it for hard targets; in this case, targets in Syria[1].
Greenwald does this all the time - he cuts down documents to just a sentence, paragraph or picture. When the full documents come out later on, it turns out that he was selectively quoting to fit with the message he wanted to convey.
But that's exactly the point -- it could be. We now know that a body with almost no oversight not just can but does backdoor US-produced equipment. This is not conspiracy-theory territory anymore, it's hard fact and anyone making decisions on procurement from now on will have to deal with it, not just "hard targets" -- because you never know when you will become a "hard target" for a body with basically no oversight.
So in that sense, there is nothing wrong with Greenwald's reporting.
If you report that a specific thing is being done, that isn't the same as reporting that it "could be" done. If you don't know what I'm doing in my basement, it doesn't make it responsible to report that I am making bombs on the grounds that I "could be" doing so as far as you know.
None of these things are actually happening, though...
For the NSA, that's not the case. Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"? Who decided about that? Why did they need to do it, considering Google was already cooperating? Why did they lie about what they were doing even to the authorities they supposedly answer to? They basically dished "network brutality" with impunity, and now there is no process to hold anyone accountable.
With the NSA, we now know that what they "could" do, they actually did do, and unlike all those other corps, now there is no way to hold anyone accountable.
So does the NSA through both the FISC court and the Congressional Intelligence and Judicial Committees. As much as people like to gloss over them and brush them off as rubber stamps, if you actually read the released FISC opinions you'd see there was a good deal of pushback (see [1] as an example of the NSA overstepping their bounds and being forced to stop by the court). Likewise, you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other. Right now we also have a major disagreement between the Judges on the FISC and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the phone records program, which likely won't be resolved unless the law is renewed and it's appealed to the Supreme Court.
There is oversight. Yes, it is done in secret for the sake of protect intelligence sources, but it does in fact exist. And, frankly, I think the Snowden disclosures themselves show that they largely work. Before the Church/Pike reforms back in the 70s, the NSA was specifically targeting anti-war protesters, civil rights activists and even congressmen[2]. Now, despite his best efforts, Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
> Do you think cracking Google networks and the likes were "legitimate actions"?
I would probably be really pissed off if that's actually what they did. I'm assuming you're referring to this[3], in which the authors start off trying to suggest that the NSA is breaking into Google and Yahoo data centers, but when you read further and look at the source documents it becomes apparent that what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted, and GCHQ was picking it up on one of their fiber taps. Now stop and consider that every other country that those leased fiber lines passed through was probably doing the exact same thing. I don't see this as NSA abuse, I see this as Google getting caught not protecting its customers' information.
And in line with my complaint in my above comment, the article finishes with "It is not clear how much data from Americans is collected and how much of that is retained." So what kind of data is collected? Who is being targeted? Why are they being targeted? What is the data being used for? Am I being targeted? Are other Americans being targeted? The article doesn't answer any of these questions, nor does it give me any indication as to who else might be listening in and what data they're collecting.
If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care - good for them. If the NSA was using that access to collect data on the Russian government, and now that intelligence source has dried up, then the Washington Post has just done disservice to the American people. If the NSA is using it to collect American data, or if the Russians are listening in on American communications using similar techniques, now that's newsworthy.
[1] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/the-nsa-documents-part-ii...
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/25/secret-cold-war-documen...
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...
... that in practice amounted to absolutely nothing, because the NSA kept doing what it wanted pretty much all the time. They just lied a few times more here and there, like Clapper did. It took Snowden to show that they were lying through their teeth.
> you can look at the in-fighting between Sen Feinsein and former Sen Rogers on one side with Sen Wyden and former Sen Udall on the other.
That's not oversight, that's 4 people deciding what is kosher and being totally forbidden from discussing it in public anyway, as they themselves made clear. That's not how it should be.
> Greenwald has yet to show evidence of a single American that was targeted by the NSA.
All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough, to be honest. It's not in Greenwald's docs, but if you sum it to the capabilities that Greenwald reported, it's pretty damning.
> what was actually happening was that Google and Yahoo were sending their international data-center traffic across the globe unencrypted
In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it. Or rather it should be -- it took Snowden to discuss what the NSA should and should not do at the political level.
> The article doesn't answer any of these questions
If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure that will harm people on the ground etc etc etc. From your POV, Greenwald is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't; but it's clear from the subsequent fallout that Greenwald was right to publish what he did and how he did it.
> If the NSA is using that access to gather information on, say, Russian targets, I don't care
As I said, there is a world beyond the US border.
Did you read the article I linked to? If so, how does your statement mesh with the fact that, based on the order issued by judge discussed in that article, the NSA was forced to change their collection and minimization procedures and delete all of the data that had been previously collected under that program[1]? This was all very much pre-Snowden.
> They just lied a few times more here and there
Like where? I keep seeing this argument - Clapper said something in a Congressional hearing that turned out to not be true, therefore everything anyone in the government says is a lie. Greenwald has documents on everything the NSA is doing; why haven't I seen any other documents catching officials lying to the public?
> That's not oversight, that's 4 people...
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence currently has 22 members; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has 19 members; the FISC has 11 judges. That doesn't include their any of their staff.
> All the stuff about "parallel construction" is enough
When Reuters broke the parallel construction story, they mentioned this in the reporting[2] (emphasis mine):
"Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE."
...
"Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst."
> In that case, the responsibility of NSA and GCHQ was to alert Google of the vulnerability and ask them to fix it, not abuse it.
The NSA has a responsibility to protect US national security; it is under no obligation to protect to security of foreign communications. Like I mentioned in my comment, if groups outside the US were taking advantage of this to spy on Americans, then that's something I'd like to see in the headlines. If that's the case, the NSA would need to justify prioritizing its foreign spying over protecting US interests.
> If it did, you'd be screaming that it's irresponsible disclosure
I think disclosing how the NSA conducts its operations without any further justification is irresponsible. If a news agency (especially an American one; I can understand why a foreign one wouldn't care) goes and tells the world exactly how a US intelligence agency is collecting information without showing me evidence of abuse, all they're doing is tipping off legitimate intelligence targets on how to avoid being spied on. In order to show evidence of abuse, you need to answer at least a few of those questions that I posed. I want abuse stopped, not legitimate intelligence work. This article doesn't show abuse.
> As I said, there is a world beyond the US border.
Which is exactly why we have spies. Do you think the NSA has no legitimate purpose?
[1] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/the-nsa-documents-part-iv...
[2] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc...
Indeed, the document you link to says "our targets throughout the world". Your characterization of the program/document as "only used for hard targets in Syria" is just an outright lie.
This is true. You'd have have no idea about the full scope of the extent of the NSA's activity and this whole thing would have just blown over. For several weeks after the first leak the US or UK government denied something one day and the next day another leaked document was published showing that they were lying. They would have found a cover up much easier if only one document had been released. Or even if all had been released at once.
Regarding pronouns. Just use she. Manning has made it clear that she thinks of herself as a woman at least give her that.
I'd be interested in seeing some links.
Be careful where you get your leaks from. If "a news outlet" isn't the Washington Post, The Guardian, or The Intercept, then it's not a primary source. In particular, if it's a 'leak' that hasn't even been reported by any of those three, then you're actually reading propaganda and not news.
It seems quite unbelievable, but we actually have proof that NSA/GCHQ are willing to leak their own legitimate activities to the media, provided they are reported as being leaked by Snowden:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-gove...
I strongly suggest you read at least the first paragraph of that article and ask yourself "where did The Independent get that 'leak', and why did they attribute it to Snowden when that's clearly a lie?"
Then there's the issue of the reporters he chose to give the documents to, who I think have been sensationalizing the issues in order to milk these documents for as long as possible. If Snowden had stopped at the first document that was released, I'd probably have a different opinion. It seems like just about every release following has been purely about legitimate foreign intelligence operations, with some language thrown in to say "there is no indication as to how many Americans or innocent civilians have been targeted under this program," with the implication that you, your family and loved ones may have been spied on by the NSA. It's a scare tactic to bring in more viewers and more advertising dollars. Every time a news outlet does actually reveal groups actually being targeted (like Russia, China, Al Qaeda, etc.), I tend to think that it's exactly the kind of people I want the NSA to be spying on.
[1] Preemptively: yes, I am aware of the Bradley/Chelsea thing. No, I am not trying to make a statement. At the time that Pvt Manning plead guilty, he was known as Bradley. Now she is known as Chelsea, and it just gets confusing trying to figure out which pronoun to use when referring to events in the past.