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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Alex Wagner
Anchor of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: The latest installment of the Snowden files published in the
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Keith Alexander
General, Director of the National Security Agency, Chief of the Central Security Service and Commander of the United States Cyber Command.
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: NSA officials who have asserted for over a year that this type of internet data collected under section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act was limited to foreign nationals outside the U.S. Rogers: Is the NSA have the ability to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their e-mails under these two programs? Alexander: No, we do not have that authority. Rogers: Does the technology exist at the NSA to flip a switch by some analysts to listen to Americans' phone calls or read e-mails? Alexander: No. Rogers: So the technology does not exist for any individual or group of individuals at the NSA to flip a switch to listen to Americans' phone calls or read their e-mails? Alexander: That is correct. Wagner: Administration officials had repeatedly ridiculed Snowden's claims that he had access to such content. As recently as May, the former NSA chief assured the “New Yorker” that he didn't get that database, he didn’t have access to.
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Alex Wagner
Anchor of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/08/2014
Wagner: In an awkward bit of timing, the post report was published days after the president's privacy and civil liberties oversight board released a report supporting the internet data collection methods it was impressed with the rigor of the government's efforts to ensure it acquires only those communications it is authored to connect and owes those persons it is authorized to target.
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Alex Wagner
Host of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Wagner: The Washington Post report over the weekend that nine out of every ten people caught up in the NSA’s internet dragnet are regular internet users with no ties to terrorism, comes another NSA revelation. This one is courtesy of a Snowden leak to Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. And it shows that from 2002 to 2008, the NSA and FBI spied on the e-mails of five high profile Muslim Americans, the 5 include Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations or CARR the country's top Muslim civil rights organization. Also included is Faisal Gill , a former Bush Administration official who held top secret security clearance while working at the Department of Homeland Security.
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Faisal Gill
Former Intelligence policy Advisor in the Dept. of Homeland Security in the Bush Administration
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Gill: I was a very conservative Reagan loving republican. I just don't know what's in my background. And if somebody like me could be surveilled, then some other people out there, I can only imagine. Wagner: None of five have a criminal record or any known ties to terrorists. According to the report they were likely targeted because of their Muslim background. Today the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department rejected that allegation saying in a joint statement “It is entirely false that U.S. intelligence agencies conduct electronic surveillance of political religious or activist figures solely because they disagree with public policies or criticize the government or based on their ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. But the targets of that surveillance aren't buying it.
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Nihad Awad
Exec Dir. Of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR )
MSNBCW 07/09/2014
Awad: I feel I'm being targeted because of my religious identity and my First Amendment activities that are protected under the Constitution. Ghafoor: I believe I was targeted because of my name is Ashim Ghafoor, yes, absolutely, I believe that had something to do with it because there were former Bush administration officials representing Saudi entities and I doubt their e-mails were tapped. Wagner: Not helping the government’s argument that this had nothing to do with ethnicity, race or religion, an NSA training document from 2005 that uses the fake name Mohammed Raghead as a place holder for a target’s name. Today a spokeswoman from the NSA would not comment on that document’s authenticity but “… said the NSA has not and would not approve official training documents that include insulting or inflammatory language…”
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John Brennan
Director of the CIA
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Wagner: According to McClatchy, an internal agency review finds that CIA employees did, in fact, improperly access computers used by the committee while its staff was researching a report on the CIA's highly controversial detention and interrogation program. So those claims by Senator Feinstein, the ones John Brennan called “ the scope of reason,” it turns out they were dead on. So dead on that Brennan himself actually apologized yesterday to Feinstein and the committee's Vice Chair, Saxby Chambliss. Hours ago, Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee tweeted, “the CIA broke into senate computer files and tried to have senate staff prosecuted. Absolutely unacceptable in a democracy.
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Alex Wagner
Anchor of NOW with Alex Wagner
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Wagner: According to the A.P. which yesterday obtained new information on the still-classified report, courtesy of an accidental email sent out by the White House, the report concludes that the agency kept Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about the harsh techniques and secret prisons, and that some of the ambassadors informed about interrogations of al Qaeda detainees at black sites were instructed not to tell their superiors at the state department. The A.P. also reveals that while the report does not draw the legal conclusion that the CIA's actions constituted torture, it makes clear that in some cases those actions amount to torture by a common definition. The timing of the declassification will be up to senator Dianne Feinstein.
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Jonathan Landay
Senior National Security and intelligence Correspondent, McClatchy Newspapers
MSNBCW 07/31/2014
Wagner: (from the leaked state department talking points on this report) One of the questions is doesn't the report, the senate intelligence report, make clear that at least some who authorized or participated in the rendition, detention and interrogation program committed crimes? They ask again, whether the justice department will revisit the decision not to prosecute anyone. There could be criminal charges here, Jonathan. Landay: We'll have to wait and see and the state department of course, is going to have to answer overseas to other governments demanding to know what's in this report. there are governments that will be implicated in this report for hosting black sites and also it's very curious because you know, when the justice department issued its statement saying that it has no -- insufficient evidence to pursue criminal investigations, it added, quote,” at this time” unquote. Wagner: indeed. Landay: And so, indeed, it appears to have left the door open for possible -- for a possible further investigation of this matter.
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Ron Wyden
U.S. Senator (D-Oregon), Member of Select Committee on Intelligence
MSNBCW 05/07/2015
Wagner: What about Mitch McConnell and some of the republicans that took to the floor of congress today? Mitch McConnell wants a reauthorization of the patriot act as is. Is he going to get it? Wyden: Not if I have anything to say about it and I'm certainly going to pull out all the stops to once and for all end this misguided program. And listeners who heard those arguments on the floor about how important this was I urge them to take a look at the report of the President's own advisory committee and there were some people who signed that report who are not exactly soft on terror and in page 104 of the report, your viewers will see that those experts said that this program was not of significant value in helping us win the fight against terror.
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