Google is continuing to open up about the supposed "secret" program by which it hands data over to the NSA that has been subject to so much attention over the last week. And, once again, the story seems to be less than what was originally reported. Google's now said that when it receives a valid FISA order for information, the "secret" computer system it uses to get the required info to the NSA isn't some crazy server setup or dropbox... but secure FTP.

Instead the company transmits FISA information the old fashioned way: by hand, or over secure FTP.

“When required to comply with these requests, we deliver that information to the US government — generally through secure FTP transfers and in person,” Google spokesman Chris Gaither told Wired. “The US government does not have the ability to pull that data directly from our servers or network.”

However, the company does say that the government has asked for more, but that Google has refused.

“We refuse to participate in any program — for national security or other reasons — that requires us to provide governments with access to our systems or to install their equipment on our networks,” he said. “We have been asked to do things in the past and we have declined.”

It's increasingly beginning to appear like the terminology used in the leaked PowerPoint presentation was not as clear as it should be, concerning the level of the NSA's integration with Google (and, perhaps, other companies).

This does not mean that there aren't significant questions about what kinds of data and how much data is requested via FISA orders, but that puts the issue right back to the government. The specifics of how tech companies are handing legally required data over to the NSA seems like much less of an issue than the breadth of the government's requests (and the non-PRISM request for all phone call records).

As we noted last week, one of the key claims following the revelations about the Prism program was that it was aimed at those outside the US, and that US citizens were caught up in it only incidentally. A further leak concerned the Boundless Informant analysis tool, one of whose maps showed which regions of the world were subject to most surveillance. Along with obvious hotspots like Iran and Pakistan, Germany too was among those of particular interest, as was the US (whoops.) A story on reason.com offers a clue as to why that might be.

The blog post focuses on an incident from the time when the whistleblower Edward Snowden worked for the CIA, rather than the NSA. Here's the original text in the Guardian:

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

In that quotation, there's the nugget of information that the CIA was not targeting terrorists on this occasion, at least not directly, but "attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information". That raises an interesting possibility for the heightened interest in Germany, as revealed by Boundless Informant.

Given that the NSA is gathering information on a large scale -- even though we don't know exactly how large -- it's inevitable that some of that data will include sensitive information about business activities in foreign countries. That could be very handy for US companies seeking to gain a competitive advantage, and it's not hard to imagine the NSA passing it on in a suitably discreet way.

Germany is known as the industrial and economic powerhouse of Europe, so it would make sense to keep a particularly close eye on what people are doing there -- especially if those people happen to work in companies that compete with US firms. In other words, just as as the CIA was looking to obtain "secret banking information" in Switzerland, it seems quite likely that the NSA also comes into the possession of similarly sensitive commercial data during its German trawls.

If that were confirmed, it would certainly change the debate somewhat. The standard justification that massive surveillance is indispensable in the fight against terrorism if lives are to be saved, would be replaced by the rather weaker one that it's rather handy being able to spy on Germany since its industrial secrets can be pilfered. It will be interesting to see whether any future revelations about the NSA's activities shed more light on this area.

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Bradley Manning is currently on trial, charged with "aiding an enemy" (including "classified" enemies) for turning over sensitive documents to Wikileaks. As Mike pointed out earlier, this latter charge doesn't add up. Manning never handed over anything directly to any enemies of America, classified or otherwise, and any documents these unnamed enemies had in their possession were already publicly available.

Adrian Lamo, the ex-hacker who turned Manning over to the feds (or rather, the Dept. of Defense with some assistance from the FBI), was on the stand on June 4th. Under cross examination by David Coombs of Manning's defense team, Lamo is unable to say Manning intended to "aid the enemy" by releasing these documents. In fact, Coombs exchange with Lamo depicts Manning as someone with idealistic aims who hoped that bringing governmental and military wrongdoing into the light would help change both entities for the better.

Q. At one point you asked him what his end game was, correct?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And he told you, hopefully worldwide discussions, debates and reforms?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And he said he wanted people to see the truth?
A. Correct.
Q. He said without information you can't make informed decision as a whole?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And he told you to, he was hoping that people would actually change if they saw the information?
A. Correct.

At one point, the discussion turned to the possibility of aiding US enemies, but Manning still refused to view the information he had acquired as anything other than a contribution to public knowledge.

Q. And at one point you asked him why he didn't just sell the information to Russia or China?
A. Correct.
Q. And he told you that the information belonged in the public domain?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. He believed that information was in the public domain and should be for the public good?
A. Yes.

And when the questions became more direct, Lamo's answers became correspondingly vague.

Q. At anytime did he say he had no loyalty to America?
A. Not in those words, no.
Q. At anytime did he say the American flag didn't mean anything to him?
A. No.
Q. At anytime did he say he wanted to help the enemy?
A. Not in those words, no.

In what words, then? The transcripts of the chats between Lamo and Manning are public. There's no indication Manning wished to aid the enemy. There was the potential for harm to exposed operatives and sources, but that was greatly mitigated by the delay between delivery and publication of the documents, not to mention Lamo bringing this to the FBI's attention after the initial chat session. But the military has chosen to view the embarrassment and inconvenience caused by the documents' release as "aiding the enemy" -- whatever hurts us makes them stronger.

As the NSA spying scandal lumbers along, or as some reports suggest, begins, reports of American apathy have already rolled in. Of course, those supposed indifferent shrugs tend to amount more to how the questions are being asked than actual viewpoints. Couple that with how social humans are as a species, is in my opinion quite dangerous. It'd be all too easy for people to hear reports that nobody really seems to care about any of this intrusive data gathering business and decide that they should feel similarly.

Fortunately, there's at least some evidence that such an effect isn't occurring. Otherwise, we're going to have to come up with a whole new logical reason as to why George Orwell's books, particularly 1984, are skyrocketing up the hot sellers lists. As Gawker notes:

According to Amazon's Movers & Shakers countdown, three different editions of George Orwell's alt-history book Nineteen Eighty-Four have shot up hundreds of spots on the chart since news of the NSA's clandestine spying program PRISM broke late last week. One edition in particular — the Centennial Edition — has exploded in popularity, increasing its sales rank by 7,000% in days.

Now, before you cheer this on, it's worth noting that other books on the "Movers and Shakers" list aren't so politically-minded, unless books on being a gentleman (pshhh!), books on calorie counting (pshhh!), or books by Glenn Beck (PSHHH!) actually have some value there that I'm not aware of. Still, it's encouraging to see signs that people are paying attention. That, after all, is how change actually occurs. I might suggest some lovely texts by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine as well, but Orwell is certainly a start.

Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing has been a popular area of experimentation for the last few years, but people still haven't quite figured out how best to work a crowd. Some projects are insanely successful. Other projects seem to fall far short of their goals. Here are just a few examples of projects that could use some help.

• A crowdfunded report on gun research might not get full funding on Microryza. The campaign ends soon, so if you want to see more independent research on gun statistics, pony up! [url]
• Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project to classify the numerous newly-discovered galaxies seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Hubble Space Telescope. The project started in 2007, and over 150,000 volunteers have helped categorize millions of galaxies. [url]
• The Archon Genomics X Prize challenges teams to sequence 100 complete human genomes in 30 days. The genomes belong to centenarians, but it doesn't look like many teams want to compete for the prize. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

We've already explained why were were worried that new USTR nominee Michael Froman would be as bad, if not worse, than his predecessor, Ron Kirk. And, in his Senate approve hearings he provided little to change that opinion:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) raised the extraordinary secrecy shrouding the Obama administration's trade negotiations to date.  Wyden has blasted USTR's incredible decision to keep the negotiating text of the sweeping TPP pact, affecting everything from food safety to Internet freedom, hidden from the U.S. public and even from members of Congress.  Not even the Bush administration attempted that degree of secrecy.  Wyden asked, "If confirmed, will you make sure that the public...gets a clear and updated description of what trade negotiators are seeking to obtain in the negotiations so that we can make this process more transparent in the future?" Wyden further asked that negotiating texts be placed online.  Froman responded by saying he agrees with the principle of transparency.  But instead of committing to a meaningful fulfillment of that principle by releasing the TPP text online (as done under Bush), he reiterated USTR's general desire to seek input from "stakeholders."  It is of course difficult for stakeholders to provide meaningful input if they cannot see the thing in which they have a stake.   

Of course, as we've explained many times, transparency has nothing to do with seeking input from stakeholders, but the opposite: providing information to the public. Listening is important to understand what's going on, but that's not transparency.

It's pretty simple: information flowing into the USTR is not transparency. Information flowing to select interests is not transparency. Releasing information to the public is transparency. How does the USTR continually get away with pretending otherwise?

Separately, as the article linked above notes, Froman refused to comment on whether he supported investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms that are showing up in trade agreements and which, as we've been highlighting, are so dangerous. He'd only say it's a matter worthy of discussion. But then refused to discuss it. Which says a lot. He also claimed he was going to continue to seek fast track authority, which they renamed Trade Promotion Authority -- which basically forces Congress to sign away its right to oversee what's in TPP. These are all very worrisome statements, because it means we're getting more of the same: a USTR that wants to make an end-run around the public and Congress, but which is driven by the interests of some of the largest companies.

John Oliver has temporarily taken over The Daily Show's host chair while Jon Stewart is off making a movie, and the NSA has given him a fair bit of material to kick off with. In last night's episode, he did a fantastic job highlighting just how ridiculous the position is of those who defend the NSA, saying:

"I think you're misunderstanding the perceived problem here, Mr. President. No one is saying you broke any laws. We're just saying it's a little bit weird that you didn't have to."

That's a much funnier and more clever way of highlighting the point we made yesterday that the real scandal may be how much of what was done was technically "legal." Oliver also covers James Clapper lying to Senator Wyden and the fact that the FISA court has become a rubber stamp. It's a good bit all around (and, yes, we know that The Daily Show's web stream is not available in many non-US locations -- blame Viacom if you can't watch this):

For all the hope by some that this story isn't going mainstream, it seems to have gone very, very mainstream.

We've discussed in great detail how the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lied to Congress concerning NSA surveillance and why he should face the consequences of such lies. What hasn't been noted as much is that NSA boss Keith Alexander more or less told the same lies to Congress a few months earlier, in a letter responding to some of Senator Wyden's questions.

Now Wyden is pointing out that this is unacceptable and calling for hearings on the claims of the intelligence community to Congress:

“One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. This job cannot be done responsibly if Senators aren’t getting straight answers to direct questions. When NSA Director Alexander failed to clarify previous public statements about domestic surveillance, it was necessary to put the question to the Director of National Intelligence. So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapper’s office a day in advance. After the hearing was over my staff and I gave his office a chance to amend his answer. Now public hearings are needed to address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives.”

The specifics here are important, because last week, Clapper suggested that his answer was about whether or not the NSA collected emails from millions of Americans, even though Wyden's direct question concerned "any type of data." Now we know that (1) Clapper had this question ahead of time and (2) was later given a chance to clarify his answer. And he still stood by his "no" answer -- which he now calls "the least untruthful" answer. But we can drop the "least" part of that. It was untruthful. Extremely untruthful in light of the evidence that the NSA is collecting all phone records from at least Verizon and AT&T, but likely from others as well.

Update: For clarification purposes, it appears that the hearings Wyden is requesting are about the data collection program, not specifically Clapper and Alexander's statements. Though, I would imagine that those hearings may turn up more evidence that the earlier statements were, in fact, false.

A bipartisan group of eight Senators have now introduced a bill to end the secret interpretation of the law which enabled the NSA, via the rubber-stamping FISA Court, to claim that the FISA Amendments Act enabled them to sweep up basically all phone call data on everyone.

The measure, coming amid daily revelations about the extent to which the National Security Agency is monitoring communications by Americans, would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions. The senators say the move would allow Americans to know how broad of a legal authority the government is claiming to spy on Americans under the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

“Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it’s allowed to take under the law,” explains Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat who has been an outspoken advocate for congressional oversight of surveillance programs. “There is plenty of room to have this debate without compromising our surveillance sources or methods or tipping our hand to our enemies. We can’t have a serious debate about how much surveillance of Americans’s communications should be permitted without ending secret law.”

The bill will be put forth by Merkley, but co-sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy, Dean Heller, Mark Begich, Al Franken, Jon Tester and Ron Wyden. Leahy, being the chair of the Judiciary Committee, is important, suggesting that this bill isn't automatically dead in the water. During the FISA Amendments Act fight at the end of 2012, Leahy was one of only a few Senators (along with Merkley and Wyden) who pushed back on just doing a straight reauthorization. In fact, it sounds like this bill will be similar to the one that Merkley pushed as an amendment to the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act last year, which got shot down -- but did score 37 votes in the Senate. Perhaps with Leahy's support, and all the news going on, it can get a few more votes.

And, in case you're wondering, yes, Congress can order the executive branch to declassify anything it wants, though obviously it needs to pass the law (and get past any potential veto). Declassifying how the FISC has interpreted the law should not be controversial. As we've been pointing out for years, under no circumstances would it make sense to claim that the official interpretation of what's legal and illegal should be classified. Yes, certain techniques or methods might need to remain classified, but the law must be public. Hopefully, others in Congress will finally recognize that basic fact.

In the wake of the revelation of PRISM last week, Google admitted that it does not include FISA requests in its transparency report -- which has led some to question the value of the transparency report. Now, Google has sent a public letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI boss Robert Mueller, requesting permission to add FISA requests to its transparency report, suggesting that such transparency would be helpful in clearing up how frequently the government is asking Google for information.

Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue. However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.

We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.

Google appreciates that you authorized the recent disclosure of general numbers for national security letters. There have been no adverse consequences arising from their publication, and in fact more companies are receiving your approval to do so as a result of Google’s initiative. Transparency here will likewise serve the public interest without harming national security.

It would be somewhat ridiculous for the DOJ to refuse this request, but we're used to the DOJ doing stupid things these days.