Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 257

Turks Cops Seize Musician's Piano and Car

Latest horrid (if non-fatal) event in Turkey--cops have disappeared that custom-made, including lights, piano used by that traveling musician who played for hours in the midst of last week's protests, calming nerves and inspiring many.  He fled tear gas and found it, and his vehicle, gone.  Hopes to recover but good luck with that.

Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven

For Father's Day, conclusion of fine BBC film "Eroica," recording the moment when Beethoven debuted his revolutionary symphony no. 3.   And his "father," Haydn, said from then on, everything changes.  Love that same actor also portrayed young John Lennon.

For Father's Day

The greatest bluesman ever?  Mr. Hopkins on his papa doing somethin' wrong.  Below that, another legend, Ms. Eartha Kitt, with "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (with Nat Cole bonus).  And then Bruce, declaring "Independence Day," live 1980.

For Father's Day

John Hiatt, getting real.  Unfortunately, no version of him doing it from his great Stolen Moments album, so here's a maybe lamer version.  Below that, Hiatt does "Like Your Dad Did" live.

Congressman: NSA Can Listen to Phone Calls Without Warrants

Not confirmed elsewhere, but making a big ripple tonight is report from longtime New York Rep. Jerry Nadler that in a close door meeting this week he learned that the NSA indeed can listen in on phone calls and read emails without a warrant, at the whim of individual analysts.

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Analysis and video here.  Some caution:  a little confusing over what the exchange really was about and Nadler has not explained fully today.  Skepticism here. And new Bart Gellman piece tonight on PRISM etc.

The 'Other Side' of the Surveillance Debate

That's the title of Gail Collins' column for Sunday NYT and it's an important one.  She takes up the argument, which sways most Americans, that surrendering privacy and freedom to "prevent the next 9/11" is worth it, then shows what you might call the little-reported downside: The arrest of the innocent.  She presents a gripping story and then concludes: 

So there we are: Search of huge database produces a (wrong) name. Investigators get permission to search an American family’s house without their knowledge, from a secret court that does not seem to be superhard to convince....

That was nearly a decade ago. “But you never quite get over these things,” Mayfield said. “It was a harrowing ordeal. It was terrifying.” He and his daughter are working on a book about what happened. Sharia is also going to law school. “I want to do civil liberties,” she said.

So there we are. It’s just one story. But I suspect the national willingness to give government a blank check on national security matters comes to a screeching halt at about the point where the agents tiptoe into the daughter’s bedroom.

Hong Kong Paper With Hacking Details

You may recall that when that Hong Kong daily interviewed Edward Snowden on Wednesday he divulged claim about U.S. hacking of computers there and elsewhere in China--even showed them some documents.  But they did not reveal details then,while promising to do so soon.  Now they have today.  This will only spark more debate and controversy and rumors over what Snowden's up and China's reaction.  Here's excerpt:

The detailed records - which cannot be independently verified - show specific dates and the IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland hacked by the National Security Agency over a four-year period.

They also include information indicating whether an attack on a computer was ongoing or had been completed, along with an amount of additional operational information.

The small sample data suggests secret and illegal NSA attacks on Hong Kong computers had a success rate of more than 75 per cent, according to the documents. The information only pertains to attacks on civilian computers with no reference to Chinese military operations, Snowden said.

"I don't know what specific information they were looking for on these machines, only that using technical exploits to gain unauthorised access to civilian machines is a violation of law. It's ethically dubious," Snowden said in the interview on Wednesday.

Protest in Hong Kong for Snowden

Interesting piece at NYT site just now on demo in Hong Kong today for Snowden--police say 300 there.  And Hong Kong's leader makes first statement on how they will handle U.S. requests for him. But it's just jumping off point for background on the democracy movement there, charges that China hacks computers far more than U.S., and much more.

McClatchy Again Breaks Ranks in Questioning Proof of Syria & Chem Agents

I asked yesterday if McClatchy, as reporters there (actually then with Knight Ridder) did during the run-up to the Iraq war, would be among the few to raise deep questions about "slam dunk" proof offered by a White House on Addad's use of chemical agents.  Reporters there, especially Jonathan Landay, had done that last month and the month before. But now?

First indication comes in this new piece by Matthew Schofield which flatly states that experts are skeptical of the new Obama claims. 

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”
Foremost among those missing items, Zanders said, are cellphone photos and videos of the attacks or the immediate aftermath.

“In a world where even the secret execution of Saddam Hussein was taped by someone, it doesn’t make sense that we don’t see videos, that we don’t see photos, showing bodies of the dead, and the reddened faces and the bluish extremities of the affected,” he said.

Other experts said that while they were willing to give the U.S. intelligence community the benefit of the doubt, the Obama administration has yet to offer details of what evidence it has and how it obtained it.

New edition of my book on how this went down re: Iraq, from 2002 to 2008, here.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/14...

How Santa Monica Killer Got His Guns

You may recall gun nuts last week mocking gun control advocates after the Santa Monica shooting spree--see, they said, wacko could even get assault rifle in big gun control state so what's the use!  Naturally, we now learn that he was denied a weapon in California--but ordered component parts from out of state and then put them together himself or had help.  He also seemed to have assembled or converted a pistol.  Of course this is with so much of the other "evidence" cited by gun nuts and that's what's behind calls by police in states like New York to crack down elsewhere since most weapons flow into the state from gun nutty states or via the web.