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If true, perhaps some international standards on communicative
freedom may even help Americans as well?<br>
<h1 class="txttitle">Are All Telephone Calls Recorded and Accessible
to the US Government?</h1>
<p class="txtauthor">By Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UK</p>
<p class="date">05 May 13</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote><strong><em>A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims
on CNN that this is the case</em></strong></blockquote>
<br>
<p><img src="cid:part1.03050902.07050006@gmail.com" border="0">he
real capabilities and behavior of the US <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/surveillance" title="More
from guardian.co.uk on Surveillance">surveillance</a> state are
almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most
things of significance done by the US government, it operates
behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly
spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism
agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast
and invasive these surveillance activities are.</p>
<p class="indent">Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid
shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been
excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston
Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American
widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their
relentless stream of leaks <a
href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/26/the-awlaki-connection.html">uncritically
disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps</a>, anonymous
government officials <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/investigators-sharpen-focus-on-boston-bombing-suspects-widow/2013/05/03/a2cd9d28-b413-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story.html?">are
claiming</a> that they are now focused on telephone calls
between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after
the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or
participated in any way.</p>
<p class="indent">On Wednesday night, <a
href="http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html">Burnett
interviewed Tim Clemente</a>, a former FBI counterterrorism
agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the
contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite
clearly insisted that they could:</p>
<blockquote>BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a
voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up
at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation.
There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right,
unless she tells them?</blockquote>
<blockquote>CLEMENTE: "No, <em>there is a way. We certainly have
ways in national security investigations to find out exactly
what was said in that conversation.</em> It's not necessarily
something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but
it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of
her. We certainly can find that out.</blockquote>
<blockquote>BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are
saying, look, that is incredible.</blockquote>
<blockquote>CLEMENTE: "No, <em>welcome to America. All of that
stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like
it or not</em>."</blockquote>
<p class="indent">"All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone
conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or
without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak". </p>
<p class="indent">On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on CNN,
this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those
remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added
expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are
recorded and stored:</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><object width="560" height="315"><embed
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vt9kRLrmrjc?version=3&hl=en_US"
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height="315"></object></p>
<p> </p>
<p class="indent">Let's repeat that last part: "no digital
communication is secure", by which he means <em>not</em> that any
communication is susceptible to government interception as it
happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital
communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and
the like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to
the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what
a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.</p>
<p class="indent">There have been some previous indications that
this is true. Former <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html">AT&T
engineer Mark Klein revealed</a> that AT&T and other
telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National
Security Agency full and unfettered access to data about the
telephone calls and the content of email communications for all of
their customers. Specifically, Klein explained "that the NSA set
up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from
ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" and that
"contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance
program as aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data
sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic." But his
amazing revelations were mostly ignored and, when Congress
retroactively immunized the nation's telecom giants for their
participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein's claims
(by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court. </p>
<p class="indent">That every single telephone call is recorded and
stored would also explain this <a
href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/">extraordinary
revelation by the Washington Post in 2010</a>:</p>
<blockquote><em>Every day</em>, collection systems at the National
Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone
calls and other types of communications.</blockquote>
<p class="indent">It would also help explain <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us">the
revelations of former NSA official William Binney</a>, who
resigned from the agency in protest over its systemic spying on
the domestic communications of US citizens, that the US government
has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US
citizens with other US citizens" (which counts only communications
transactions and not financial and other transactions), and that
"the data that's being assembled is about everybody. And from that
data, then they can target anyone they want."</p>
<p class="indent">Despite the extreme secrecy behind which these
surveillance programs operate, there have been <a
href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/new-nsa-whistleblowers">periodic
reports</a> of <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/16nsa.html?pagewanted=all">serious
abuse</a>. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall,
have been <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html">warning
for years</a> that Americans would be "stunned" to learn what
the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance.</p>
<p class="indent">Strangely, back in 2002 - when hysteria over the
9/11 attacks (and thus acquiescence to government power) was at
its peak - the Pentagon's attempt to implement what it called the
"Total Information Awareness" program (TIA) <a
href="http://www.cato.org/publications/techknowledge/pentagons-total-information-awareness-project-americans-under-microscope">sparked
so much public controversy</a> that it had to be official
scrapped. But it has been incrementally re-instituted - without
the creepy (though honest) name and all-seeing-eye logo - with
little controversy or even notice.</p>
<p class="indent">Back in 2010, worldwide controversy erupted when
the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10830485">banned
the use of Blackberries</a> because some communications were
inaccessible to government intelligence agencies, and that could
not be tolerated. The Obama administration <a
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/02/us-uae-blackberry-usa-idUSTRE67144P20100802">condemned
this move</a> on the ground that it threatened core freedoms,
only to turn around six weeks later and <a
href="http://boingboing.net/2010/09/27/obama-administration.html">demand
that all forms of digital communications allow</a> the US
government backdoor access to intercept them. Put another way, the
US government embraced exactly the same rationale invoked by the
UAE and Saudi agencies: that no communications can be off limits.
Indeed, the UAE, when responding to condemnations from the Obama
administration, noted that it was simply doing exactly that which
the US government does:</p>
<blockquote>"'In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and
is asking for exactly the same regulatory compliance - and with
the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight - that
Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more,'
[UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. 'Importantly,
the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same
reasons: to protect national security and to assist in law
enforcement.'"</blockquote>
<p class="indent">That no human communications can be allowed to
take place without the scrutinizing eye of the US government is
indeed the animating principle of the US Surveillance State.
Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single
telephone call made by and among Americans is recorded and stored
is something which most people undoubtedly do not know, even if
the small group of people who focus on surveillance issues
believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello were
shocked to hear this). </p>
<p class="indent"><a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/05/01/encouraging-polling-on-civil-liberties/">Some
new polling suggests</a> that Americans, even after the Boston
attack, are growing increasingly concerned about erosions of civil
liberties in the name of Terrorism. Even those people who claim it
does not matter instinctively understand the value of personal
privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors and vigilantly
safeguard their email passwords. That's why the US government so
desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their surveillance
capabilities: because they fear that people will find their
behavior unacceptably intrusive and threatening, as they did even
back in 2002 when John Poindexter's TIA was unveiled. </p>
<p class="indent">Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical
political culture. But whatever one's views on that, the more that
is known about what the US government and its surveillance
agencies are doing, the better. This admission by this former FBI
agent on CNN gives a very good sense for just how limitless these
activities are.</p>
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