Feinstein has been one of the biggest apologists[0] for violations of civil liberties, government surveillance, and (both) executive and judicial overreach. Suddenly, the tables are turned on her (however briefly) and she's not so happy with the way it feels.
Call me a cynic, but I'll wait to feel sorry for her until she actually backtracks on all of these despicable practices.
[0] Actually, I don't think it's even fair to say that - she's been a downright advocate of a whole number of nasty practices.
Feinstein generally disgusts me, but I don't see how she's being hypocritical here.
While I disagree with her point of view on intelligence services, there's nothing hypocritical if she holds the view that their wide remits are important and necessary while still believing that explicitly violating the legal remit of their spying (CIA is explicitly forbidden from engaging in most domestic spying) and spying on the group tasked with the oversight of their spying is one step too far.
If she genuinely believes the intelligence committee is exercising real and important oversight, but that the agencies generally do the right thing, then her reaction makes total sense: Her trust has been utterly betrayed. That's what her speech sounds like - someone like Feinstein openly accusing the CIA of committing crimes is pretty spectacular.
Most of us probably just didn't expect to find out where she'd draw the line. And presumably the CIA didn't either. In that respect this might prove to be a massive misstep for them unless they do masterful damage control, since you're right - she's been one of their staunchest advocates.
She's also powerful, and a hard nail; if she's not satisfied with the way they respond to this, they might very well find they've found a foe they really don't need, as she's one of very few legislators who has a realistic shot of clipping their wings if she decides she needs to.
I don't expect her to fully see the light, but she could make a huge difference even if she gets disillusioned enough with the agencies to simply stop putting spanners in the wheels when other lawmakers tries to make the intelligence agencies more accountable.
My father mentioned that Sigfried & Roy were attacked by the very tigers they trained. Sometimes the dangerous animal you need in order to do the show, turns on you.
That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election cycle.
The only way for politicians to act is for them to be personally harmed. They don't represent us, they represent themselves.
Same thing with Angela Merkel, she didn't even address the Snowden documents until they showed that her phone had been tapped, every German except her? No problem!
None of this is surprising, because Feinstein falls under a psychopath narcissism profile altogether with scumbags like Bloomberg ("we need to ban guns" [while I will have 15 armed body guards walking with me everywhere]), Turner ("we need a China policy of one child" [while I have five]), Gore ("our carbon footprint will kill us [while I fly my personal jet that generates as much green gases as all the air trips of one human being combined over the span of his life]), and many many others. Its been hidden in plain sight that those people wants all those rules BUT for other people, not for them.
So while Feinstein fails to realize blanked over 300,000,000 cellphones is as clear violation of constitution as it gets, she will assume every citizen is a terrorist.... except Majesty herself!
I only wish CIA would join the game. They should have used Feinstein own words and first admit they been spying on her, however this is #1) for citizens safety (you know everyone can be a terrorist, INCLUDING Feinstein), #2 tell her like she did tell us that if you dig enough you would find that CIA property IS CIA property and they deem to do with it whatever they desire (like she told us she is surprise anyone is angry, since mass survilence was all nicely written in public bills), and #3 (my favorite): that she shouldn't be worry about it at all, because you know, they have their own Internal Quality Board Committee to oversight survilence and there IS not a smidgen of abuse. I would love to hear that!! After all, what on Earth you think that old hag, her political party, or President himself can do to the most evil but yet most legal Government organisation in the USA.
I honestly don't get what the hubbub is about. This is a case where the CIA detected the exfiltration of classified material from a CIA network on to a CIA owned computer that the user was likely warned was being monitored. I would speculate that the only reason that the users are not in jail is that they were there as representatives of congress.
There maybe legitimate questions about why certain information is being withheld, but not monitoring what was going on on their network and the computers attached to it would be a dereliction of duty on their part.
Anyone who thinks that this is the equivalent of the NSA sweeping up all of the "metadata" don't know enough about technology to be making policy decisions IMO.
Her response is normal for someone living in her bubble. Think about it -- were you upset back in the olden days when you heard about US Navy divers tapping Soviet telephone lines?
People like the President and senior Senators get daily briefings from the intelligence community. Part of that is to keep these folks apprised about what is up. Another part is to keep the paranoia level up so that these people see threats everywhere.
The "intelligence community" is a modern analog to the Guardians in Plato's republic. The natural question to ask is "Who watches the watchmen?" Feinstein's reaction answers that question.
That other spying (phone metadata collection) that she agrees with also includes her data, so this isn't really an example of hypocrisy. She's fighting more invasive spying that applies only to a smaller group of people that includes herself.
After observing Feinstein for over a decade, I've become a cynic and believe that she engages in doublespeak.
Here's what I think is going on: by being the first to take a position on the CIA's violation of the law, she has become the point person; so now she can do damage control and limit the blowback. She got caught unawares with the Snowden episode, so this time she wants to make sure she's at the front. She is, and always will be, an ardent supporter of NSA/CIA and all the violations they do of our rights.
Now that she knows she was spied on, maybe someone has a bunch of dirt or possible blackmail from those communications. She has benefactors based on her decisions.
In a decade all these spy programs will primarily be used for government tracking and business/corporate espionage, strange they thought Congress would be excluded. Either that or she is taking a lead on this to squash it as a false enemy of it.
This is the same women who said "It’s called protecting America" when defending the NSA's gathering of phone call records. [0] So surveillance is good, but not when you're the person being surveilled?
Yes - Feinstein has been awful on the NSA spying issue. So far there have been only two narrow issues that have bothered her all all: spying on her and spying on friendly foreign leaders. She has been one of the ruling elite for so long that she has lost the ability to see this issue from any other perspective. She needs to retire and enjoy the roughly $100 million she has acquired in a life of "public service".
This is an overly simplistic argument. It is not inconsistent to believe that it is a far greater danger for the executive to spy on a co-equal branch of government, in a way that acquires content, than when the executive spys on the public generally in a way that acquires only metadata. It's glib to say "oh, so Congressmen are more important than regular people?" but in at least certain ways, it's true. The dangers created in the two situations are quite different. You might have a different evaluation of the relative gravity of the dangers, you have to concede that they're different.
The backstory on this seems to be: in the process of compiling the Panetta report, staffers for the Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed a huge number of top-secret cables; the only place they were allowed to do that was in a CIA office building, on equipment provided by CIA. Somehow (another NYT story alludes), CIA came to believe that Senate Intelligence had gained access to more documents than intended, so they rifled through the computers they'd provided.
(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)
According to this[1] it was more that the senate committee staffers found an internal CIA report (the 'Panetta review') that contradicted information CIA had made available to the committee (about their torture-enhanced interrogation practices, presumably, and their destruction of the video evidence on the same, under the rationale that transcripts in the cables provided sufficient detail so that the retention of the 'torture tapes' was unnecessary.)
A tit for tat escalation then followed.
As the article ([1]) puts it:
> All of which is to say the SSCI busted the CIA for lying in their official response to the Committee. And as a result, CIA decided to start accusing the Committee of breaking the law. And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings.
There's some other interesting reading at the same site[2] about acting General Counsel of the CIA, Robert Eatinger, who referred the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators for investigation by the DoJ and helped provide legal advice on the destruction of the 'torture tapes'.
Even given this pretty lamentable story, it's still hard to understand Feinstein's new stance on privacy. Perhaps, as some have commented, it's all about getting the committee's report released in time for the elections?
The Times reported that the CIA created a special network share with the cables that the staffers were supposed to review, and that the staffers "had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A. computer system that had been set up to separate the committee’s work area from other agency digital files".
That sounds overblown to me. The SSCI committee hires from the same general pool as the rest of the Hill -- ambitious PoliSci grads, lawyers, and the like. They pay the same crappy wages too. They aren't getting Kevin Mitnick.
My guess is that some incompetent windows admin didn't set the permissions right and they were able to click on network neighborhood and access the files in question.
I thought it was an internal CIA report ordered by Panetta while he ran the CIA. The oversight committee became interested in it because it supposedly confirmed transgressions that the CIA was simultaneously denying to the committee.
Somehow the committee came in possession of the report. The CIA is arguing that while viewing computer documents at the CIA,committee investigators hacked the CIA network and obtained the Panetta report.
My reading is the multiple breaches of the agreement (between oversight committee & CIA) is the sore point.
That said, I'm impressed the CIA hired outside contractors to sift the millions of documents being reviewed. The oversight committee's access had to be finely constrained, but some it's okay for some Joes and Janes to do the clerical work? Weird.
So the searching of Congressional computers supposedly happened in 2010. She's speaking about it now because she feels the CIA is threatening her committee by turning over the investigation to the Justice department (another Executive branch department).
I know I should be outraged but really all I have is WTF. The head of the Senate oversight committee knew that the CIA had violated multiple laws and did absolutely nothing about it for 4 years. This is oversight? This is what we're all depending on to protect us from an out of control set of military / intelligence / industrial dicks?
Spy on Others (Regular People) - it makes us safer.
Spy on me (Rich Senator who is becoming richer) - it is an OUTRAGE!
These congress critters really need to be a bit more nuanced in their double standards. This is the same person that publicly accused Ed Snowden of Treason [1].
So when we got to know about Large scale spying on the entire American Public for NO Reason - the person who told us about it is a traitor.
When they learned about a SPECIFIC case of spying on their staffers there is sudden (manufactured) outrage?
I think she senses the public mood & is trying to use this issue to slink back into "of the people by the people" mode.
Real Slimy.
I agree with the sentiment but I also recognize that there is a difference between the CIA/NSA spying on citizens and doing the same to congress in a possible effort to directly influence the laws and regulations that govern their behaviour. I do not think that the outrage is "manufactured" because I think it is genuine, the smarter among the Senate that support the surveillance state at least understand the principles involved here.
Spying on oversight committees is worse than spying on typical Americans for the same reason that spying on typical Americans is worse than spying on foreigners - it is a more direct threat to mechanisms that could keep powers in check.
This being "more wrong" doesn't make the other stuff "not wrong", though.
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"
The room designated for the staff, called the “electronic
reading room,” was a spartan office with tables and
computers set against the walls and a large conference
table in the middle.
...
According to a recent court filing in a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit, the C.I.A. created a “network
share drive” segregated from the main agency network, a
provision intended to allow the committee to work in
private.
...
It is unclear how or when committee investigators
obtained parts of the Panetta review. One official said
that they had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A.
computer system that had been set up to separate the
committee’s work area from other agency digital files,
but exactly what happened will not be known until the
Justice Department completes its inquiry.
...
By then, C.I.A. officials had come to suspect that
committee investigators working at the Virginia facility
had seen at least a version of the internal review.
Senior officials at the agency ordered a search of
several years’ worth of digital audit logs that the
C.I.A. uses to monitor its computer systems.
So, based on that very vague description, I'm imagining someone set up an ad-hoc SharePoint server, dumped a bunch of PDFs and MS Office docs on a file system, and absent-mindedly left the C$ share open, and then maybe someone accessed the server as an SMB share, and it showed up in the event logs, and now it's snowballed into "ZOMG u 1337 h4ck3rz, u pwnt mai FIREWALLZ!!!1one"
>The technical details for this brouhaha, if I'm interpreting them correctly, sound like they might approach Dilbert levels of managerial incompetence.
One wonders what "Dilbert" would have been like if Scott Adams had worked for the government instead of a private company.
The Intelligence committee is just doing a review of the CIA's torture practices, no big deal, largely for purposes of whitewashing the whole thing and sweeping it under the rug.
But then the CIA did something unconscionable and lashed out at the committee, threatening them with being reported to the Justice Department. That's when a red line was crossed and they had no choice but to bring the CIA's horriffic moral crime (not torture, but fucking with the Senate) public.
That's not what Kafkaesque means. Kafkaesque is something like Chicago's treatment of sex offenders: state law requires them to register yearly within a short window at the threat of violating probation, but the police close the registration office early because they're lazy. Its about lack of coordination and internal inconsistency, not malintent.
>> Ms. Feinstein said she had sought an apology and an acknowledgment that the C.I.A.'s conduct was improper.
This is on par with what a child would get disciplined with for cutting in the lunch line. If a civilian would have done this they would have been prosecuted with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to 30 years in jail.
The CIA starts pulling Nixon level shenanigans and the general response is ZOMG Feinstein is such a hypocrite?
The way this works is:
1) The CIA violated the law under Bush II by torturing, but was allowed to get away with it because, politics.
2) The people in Congress who want to nail them on this spend the next 5-10 years searching through 5 million records while the CIA spends as much time as they can stalling them.
3) They finally hit the mother load in a document that shows the people running the CIA know about these legal issues 5 years ahead of the committee.
4) People in the CIA freak, try to hide the documents, and then try and get to the DOJ ahead of the committee. Because, as soon as the DOJ is involved, the game is over since they either have to plead the 5th or get caught up in Obstruction of Justice charges.
This is all separate from the NSA spying stuff, which Feinstein is wrong on. But it's not even hypocritical for her to say "spying is okay, but torture is bad news for Democracy." Given a choice between the two, I'd still rather be spied on for no reason, than tortured for no reason.
Gambling? At Rick's? I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on!
For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an English idiom used when an official becomes conveniently outraged or overly surprised at something they had known was going on all along. The outrage expressed is a pro forma statement meant for public consumption -- it doesn't necessarily make sense if you examine it closely, and in fact can be quite funny given the context.
There is a generic problem here: the legislature in the United States has decided that instead of overseeing the government, it was going to grant huge swaths of power to various agencies, then swoop in for various high-profile investigations when anything went wrong. That way they get to play the hero without actually having to do a lot of work.
Well, the problem with this theory of separation of powers is that pretty soon you have dozens or hundreds of agencies, all without much adult supervision, all wanting to do more and more to "help". Without oversight, they turn to the next best thing: in-house legal advice, which tells them what is legal or not.
So now we have multiple intelligence agencies doing things their lawyers say are legal, but the majority of the American people are pretty pissed about (or getting that way).
The way to fix this is NOT to single out CIA or NSA or become outraged or not at any one incident. Geesh, there are dozens of agencies just like them that could be doing the same thing, and it's playing whack-a-mole. We need a reform of Congressional oversight, along with clear criminal laws about what can be gathered or not gathered. These agencies need guidance and oversight, not political posturing and outrage. (Although I'm never one to turn down politicians bloviating on issues I care about).
> The C.I.A. has referred the matter to the Justice Department to investigate possible wrongdoing, a move that Ms. Feinstein called “a potential effort to intimidate this staff.”
What could the Justice Department do in the event that they found wrongdoing on the part of the Senate staff? Don't members of the Senate had immunity from this type of prosecution exactly to prevent this type of interference and intimidation?
Shouldn't a Congressional oversight committee have access to everything at the CIA? Therefore it should be impossible to accuse the committee of improper access since it's their right.
Yeah, they should, except for that pesky 4th amendment, where the committee fucked up what not getting the FISA court to rubber stamp it.
Though the committee could counter that because the information could cross outside of the USA that it's really foreign information anyway and thus doesn't require a warrant.
What happened, did she finally realize the political winds were against her so speaking out against CIA was a good move? She's been one of NSA's staunchest supporters to date.
Is there a big split between CIA and NSA in her mind? There really isn't in reality -- one of the biggest post-9/11 changes is that the "intelligence community" actually acts like a community; even the FBI CT guys aren't viewed too badly by NSA/CIA/JSOC IME.
Is she really this daft? I mean, really, why does she think they can provide oversight of agencies whose purpose is to secretly collect intelligence, intercept communications, etc.? And, she relies on them to provide the information for their own oversight, yet sees nothing wrong with that?
So, she's shocked that some files were moved. Did it occur to her that she wouldn't have known something was being withheld if the CIA had never provided them in the first place? For that matter, does she ever wonder if perhaps massive amounts of information are routinely withheld?
Strong whistleblower laws are quite possibly the only true means of effective oversight. Yet, she seems to be too busy calling Snowden a traitor to consider that salient point.
> Feinstein "accused the Central Intelligence Agency of improperly removing documents from computers that committee staff members had been using to complete a report on the agency’s detention program, saying the move was part of an effort to intimidate the committee."
This sounds like an elderly person that does not understand computers. A staffer probably misplaced a file and cried "CIA". Although I revel in the fact that ubiquitous spying bothers her when she is the target I'm not convinced she knows what she is talking about.
Also note this happened in 2010 so it just sounds like an excuse for her to make a political about face in the face of pressure about the NSA.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|12 years ago|reply
Feinstein has been one of the biggest apologists[0] for violations of civil liberties, government surveillance, and (both) executive and judicial overreach. Suddenly, the tables are turned on her (however briefly) and she's not so happy with the way it feels.
Call me a cynic, but I'll wait to feel sorry for her until she actually backtracks on all of these despicable practices.
[0] Actually, I don't think it's even fair to say that - she's been a downright advocate of a whole number of nasty practices.
[+] [-] vidarh|12 years ago|reply
While I disagree with her point of view on intelligence services, there's nothing hypocritical if she holds the view that their wide remits are important and necessary while still believing that explicitly violating the legal remit of their spying (CIA is explicitly forbidden from engaging in most domestic spying) and spying on the group tasked with the oversight of their spying is one step too far.
If she genuinely believes the intelligence committee is exercising real and important oversight, but that the agencies generally do the right thing, then her reaction makes total sense: Her trust has been utterly betrayed. That's what her speech sounds like - someone like Feinstein openly accusing the CIA of committing crimes is pretty spectacular.
Most of us probably just didn't expect to find out where she'd draw the line. And presumably the CIA didn't either. In that respect this might prove to be a massive misstep for them unless they do masterful damage control, since you're right - she's been one of their staunchest advocates.
She's also powerful, and a hard nail; if she's not satisfied with the way they respond to this, they might very well find they've found a foe they really don't need, as she's one of very few legislators who has a realistic shot of clipping their wings if she decides she needs to.
I don't expect her to fully see the light, but she could make a huge difference even if she gets disillusioned enough with the agencies to simply stop putting spanners in the wheels when other lawmakers tries to make the intelligence agencies more accountable.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|12 years ago|reply
That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election cycle.
[+] [-] sitkack|12 years ago|reply
Same thing with Angela Merkel, she didn't even address the Snowden documents until they showed that her phone had been tapped, every German except her? No problem!
[+] [-] joering2|12 years ago|reply
You haven't been around the block enough yet.
None of this is surprising, because Feinstein falls under a psychopath narcissism profile altogether with scumbags like Bloomberg ("we need to ban guns" [while I will have 15 armed body guards walking with me everywhere]), Turner ("we need a China policy of one child" [while I have five]), Gore ("our carbon footprint will kill us [while I fly my personal jet that generates as much green gases as all the air trips of one human being combined over the span of his life]), and many many others. Its been hidden in plain sight that those people wants all those rules BUT for other people, not for them.
So while Feinstein fails to realize blanked over 300,000,000 cellphones is as clear violation of constitution as it gets, she will assume every citizen is a terrorist.... except Majesty herself!
I only wish CIA would join the game. They should have used Feinstein own words and first admit they been spying on her, however this is #1) for citizens safety (you know everyone can be a terrorist, INCLUDING Feinstein), #2 tell her like she did tell us that if you dig enough you would find that CIA property IS CIA property and they deem to do with it whatever they desire (like she told us she is surprise anyone is angry, since mass survilence was all nicely written in public bills), and #3 (my favorite): that she shouldn't be worry about it at all, because you know, they have their own Internal Quality Board Committee to oversight survilence and there IS not a smidgen of abuse. I would love to hear that!! After all, what on Earth you think that old hag, her political party, or President himself can do to the most evil but yet most legal Government organisation in the USA.
[+] [-] yaur|12 years ago|reply
Anyone who thinks that this is the equivalent of the NSA sweeping up all of the "metadata" don't know enough about technology to be making policy decisions IMO.
[+] [-] Spooky23|12 years ago|reply
People like the President and senior Senators get daily briefings from the intelligence community. Part of that is to keep these folks apprised about what is up. Another part is to keep the paranoia level up so that these people see threats everywhere.
The "intelligence community" is a modern analog to the Guardians in Plato's republic. The natural question to ask is "Who watches the watchmen?" Feinstein's reaction answers that question.
[+] [-] dkl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joyeuse6701|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lern_too_spel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] discardorama|12 years ago|reply
Here's what I think is going on: by being the first to take a position on the CIA's violation of the law, she has become the point person; so now she can do damage control and limit the blowback. She got caught unawares with the Snowden episode, so this time she wants to make sure she's at the front. She is, and always will be, an ardent supporter of NSA/CIA and all the violations they do of our rights.
[+] [-] drawkbox|12 years ago|reply
In a decade all these spy programs will primarily be used for government tracking and business/corporate espionage, strange they thought Congress would be excluded. Either that or she is taking a lead on this to squash it as a false enemy of it.
[+] [-] spoiledtechie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nathancahill|12 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-ns...
[+] [-] spikels|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SDGT|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 00rion|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|12 years ago|reply
(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)
[+] [-] ttctciyf|12 years ago|reply
A tit for tat escalation then followed.
As the article ([1]) puts it:
> All of which is to say the SSCI busted the CIA for lying in their official response to the Committee. And as a result, CIA decided to start accusing the Committee of breaking the law. And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings.
There's some other interesting reading at the same site[2] about acting General Counsel of the CIA, Robert Eatinger, who referred the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators for investigation by the DoJ and helped provide legal advice on the destruction of the 'torture tapes'.
Even given this pretty lamentable story, it's still hard to understand Feinstein's new stance on privacy. Perhaps, as some have commented, it's all about getting the committee's report released in time for the elections?
[1] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/05/operation-stall/
[2] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/11/robert-eatinger-lawyer-...
[+] [-] bradleyjg|12 years ago|reply
That sounds overblown to me. The SSCI committee hires from the same general pool as the rest of the Hill -- ambitious PoliSci grads, lawyers, and the like. They pay the same crappy wages too. They aren't getting Kevin Mitnick.
My guess is that some incompetent windows admin didn't set the permissions right and they were able to click on network neighborhood and access the files in question.
[+] [-] forgotAgain|12 years ago|reply
I thought it was an internal CIA report ordered by Panetta while he ran the CIA. The oversight committee became interested in it because it supposedly confirmed transgressions that the CIA was simultaneously denying to the committee.
Somehow the committee came in possession of the report. The CIA is arguing that while viewing computer documents at the CIA,committee investigators hacked the CIA network and obtained the Panetta report.
[+] [-] specialist|12 years ago|reply
That said, I'm impressed the CIA hired outside contractors to sift the millions of documents being reviewed. The oversight committee's access had to be finely constrained, but some it's okay for some Joes and Janes to do the clerical work? Weird.
[+] [-] forgotAgain|12 years ago|reply
I know I should be outraged but really all I have is WTF. The head of the Senate oversight committee knew that the CIA had violated multiple laws and did absolutely nothing about it for 4 years. This is oversight? This is what we're all depending on to protect us from an out of control set of military / intelligence / industrial dicks?
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] suprgeek|12 years ago|reply
Spy on me (Rich Senator who is becoming richer) - it is an OUTRAGE!
These congress critters really need to be a bit more nuanced in their double standards. This is the same person that publicly accused Ed Snowden of Treason [1].
So when we got to know about Large scale spying on the entire American Public for NO Reason - the person who told us about it is a traitor. When they learned about a SPECIFIC case of spying on their staffers there is sudden (manufactured) outrage?
I think she senses the public mood & is trying to use this issue to slink back into "of the people by the people" mode. Real Slimy.
[1] http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/304...
[+] [-] JamisonM|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dllthomas|12 years ago|reply
This being "more wrong" doesn't make the other stuff "not wrong", though.
[+] [-] trevoragilbert|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryoshu|12 years ago|reply
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"
Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
[+] [-] qwerty_asdf|12 years ago|reply
From Saturday's NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/behind-clash-b...
So, based on that very vague description, I'm imagining someone set up an ad-hoc SharePoint server, dumped a bunch of PDFs and MS Office docs on a file system, and absent-mindedly left the C$ share open, and then maybe someone accessed the server as an SMB share, and it showed up in the event logs, and now it's snowballed into "ZOMG u 1337 h4ck3rz, u pwnt mai FIREWALLZ!!!1one"But never let a good disaster go to waste, right?
[+] [-] ConceptJunkie|12 years ago|reply
One wonders what "Dilbert" would have been like if Scott Adams had worked for the government instead of a private company.
[+] [-] runamok|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mullingitover|12 years ago|reply
The Intelligence committee is just doing a review of the CIA's torture practices, no big deal, largely for purposes of whitewashing the whole thing and sweeping it under the rug.
But then the CIA did something unconscionable and lashed out at the committee, threatening them with being reported to the Justice Department. That's when a red line was crossed and they had no choice but to bring the CIA's horriffic moral crime (not torture, but fucking with the Senate) public.
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nullandnull_|12 years ago|reply
This is on par with what a child would get disciplined with for cutting in the lunch line. If a civilian would have done this they would have been prosecuted with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to 30 years in jail.
[+] [-] nikdaheratik|12 years ago|reply
The way this works is:
1) The CIA violated the law under Bush II by torturing, but was allowed to get away with it because, politics.
2) The people in Congress who want to nail them on this spend the next 5-10 years searching through 5 million records while the CIA spends as much time as they can stalling them.
3) They finally hit the mother load in a document that shows the people running the CIA know about these legal issues 5 years ahead of the committee.
4) People in the CIA freak, try to hide the documents, and then try and get to the DOJ ahead of the committee. Because, as soon as the DOJ is involved, the game is over since they either have to plead the 5th or get caught up in Obstruction of Justice charges.
This is all separate from the NSA spying stuff, which Feinstein is wrong on. But it's not even hypocritical for her to say "spying is okay, but torture is bad news for Democracy." Given a choice between the two, I'd still rather be spied on for no reason, than tortured for no reason.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an English idiom used when an official becomes conveniently outraged or overly surprised at something they had known was going on all along. The outrage expressed is a pro forma statement meant for public consumption -- it doesn't necessarily make sense if you examine it closely, and in fact can be quite funny given the context.
There is a generic problem here: the legislature in the United States has decided that instead of overseeing the government, it was going to grant huge swaths of power to various agencies, then swoop in for various high-profile investigations when anything went wrong. That way they get to play the hero without actually having to do a lot of work.
Well, the problem with this theory of separation of powers is that pretty soon you have dozens or hundreds of agencies, all without much adult supervision, all wanting to do more and more to "help". Without oversight, they turn to the next best thing: in-house legal advice, which tells them what is legal or not.
So now we have multiple intelligence agencies doing things their lawyers say are legal, but the majority of the American people are pretty pissed about (or getting that way).
The way to fix this is NOT to single out CIA or NSA or become outraged or not at any one incident. Geesh, there are dozens of agencies just like them that could be doing the same thing, and it's playing whack-a-mole. We need a reform of Congressional oversight, along with clear criminal laws about what can be gathered or not gathered. These agencies need guidance and oversight, not political posturing and outrage. (Although I'm never one to turn down politicians bloviating on issues I care about).
[+] [-] bradleyy|12 years ago|reply
Right?
[+] [-] amckenna|12 years ago|reply
What could the Justice Department do in the event that they found wrongdoing on the part of the Senate staff? Don't members of the Senate had immunity from this type of prosecution exactly to prevent this type of interference and intimidation?
[+] [-] shutupalready|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|12 years ago|reply
Though the committee could counter that because the information could cross outside of the USA that it's really foreign information anyway and thus doesn't require a warrant.
[+] [-] DavidSJ|12 years ago|reply
One day, the dog bit off the tip of the owner's finger, unprovoked. He was put down shortly thereafter.
[+] [-] chiph|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|12 years ago|reply
Is there a big split between CIA and NSA in her mind? There really isn't in reality -- one of the biggest post-9/11 changes is that the "intelligence community" actually acts like a community; even the FBI CT guys aren't viewed too badly by NSA/CIA/JSOC IME.
[+] [-] acqq|12 years ago|reply
http://youtu.be/GNhDDAhCXXE
The transcript:
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...
Very good written, worth reading or watching.
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|12 years ago|reply
So, she's shocked that some files were moved. Did it occur to her that she wouldn't have known something was being withheld if the CIA had never provided them in the first place? For that matter, does she ever wonder if perhaps massive amounts of information are routinely withheld?
Strong whistleblower laws are quite possibly the only true means of effective oversight. Yet, she seems to be too busy calling Snowden a traitor to consider that salient point.
[+] [-] runamok|12 years ago|reply
This sounds like an elderly person that does not understand computers. A staffer probably misplaced a file and cried "CIA". Although I revel in the fact that ubiquitous spying bothers her when she is the target I'm not convinced she knows what she is talking about.
Also note this happened in 2010 so it just sounds like an excuse for her to make a political about face in the face of pressure about the NSA.