US lawmakers angry that information on how much surveillance data on Americans is collected not being released

A group of lawmakers from both parties are unhappy that they are being asked to reauthorize two key surveillance programs without the Obama executive branch answering how much data is being gathered on innocent Americans.

The two programs authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are PRISM and Upstream. Prism is described by Wikipedia as follows:

PRISM is a clandestine[1] surveillance program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from at least nine major US internet companies.[2][3][4] Since 2001 the United States government has increased its scope for such surveillance, and so this program was launched in 2007.

The major companies include Facebook, Yahoo, and Skype. Upstream collection involves four different surveillance programs: In a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) order from October 3, 2011, it's said that the Upstream collection accounts for approximately 9% of the total number of 250 million internet communications which NSA collects under the authority of section 702 FAA every year. During the first half of 2011, NSA acquired some 13.25 million internet communications through Upstream collection. "The program is unable to exclude domestic communications due to technical difficulties. The government refuses to tell politicians how much data is collected from Americans.

Fourteen members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, asking for at least a rough estimate of the number. The letter said: “In order that we may properly evaluate these programs, we write to ask that you provide us with a public estimate of the number of communications or transactions involving United States persons subject to Section 702 surveillance on an annual basis.” Senator Rony Wyden has been aksing for the number since 2011. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board also asked in 2014. More than 30 privacy groups have also asked for the number.

Elizabeth Goiten, co-director of the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program said:“House Judiciary Committee members have lent their voices to the growing chorus demanding hard facts about how foreign intelligence surveillance affects Americans,The NSA will soon be asking Congress to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it will repeat its past claims that any collection of Americans’ communications is merely ‘incidental. We still don’t have this basic information.”

The United States is a member of the so-called Five Eyes. agreement. The agreement includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The five agree to co-operate in signals intelligence. During the 2013 NSA leaks on internet spying "the surveillance agencies of the "Five Eyes" have been accused of intentionally spying on one another's citizens and willingly sharing the collected information with each other, allegedly circumventing laws preventing each agency from spying on its own citizens."

US intelligence analysts complain that negative reports altered by superiors

Washington - Dozens of US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Defense Intelligence Agency analysts have complained that their superiors suppressed negative assessments they had made on the year-long fight against the Islamic State. An early report by the Daily Beast said: More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, As a result of the complaints the Pentagon inspector general opened an investigation into the issue. In July two senior analysts signed a written complaint that their reports had been changed by CENTCOM higher officials to conform with the Obama administration's line that the US was winning the battle against the Islamic State and Al Nusra the Al Qaeda-linked group in Syria. The reports were altered to make both groups appear weaker than they are according to their intelligence.

This type of manipulation of intelligence is not new. In 2002 and 2003 in Iraq, senior US officials deliberately "cherry picked" intelligence on Hussein's alleged weapons program. The US House of Representatives investigative committee now wants in on the investigation and has asked Pentagon officials for a briefing on the analysts' charges. As the Guardian reports: Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Ron DeSantis, who chairs its national-security subcommittee, asked the defense secretary, Ashton Carter, and inspector general, Jon Rymer, on Friday for information about an ongoing investigation into charges from dozens of US Central Command and Defense Intelligence Agency analysts that their superiors suppressed negative assessments of the year-old war against Isis. The lawmakers want briefings no later than the 18th of this month. Both Chaffetz and DeSantis, the latter a retired naval officer and Iraq veteran, expressed deep concern about the allegations and wanted to make certain that any intelligence provided to key decision makers should reflect the analysis of experts in the intelligence community. The two warned Carter and Rymer that they were "troubled" to find out that acrimony within CENTCOM was causing some analysts simply to leave their positions.

Analysts in CENTCOM say that Army Major General Steven Grove and deputy Greg Ryckman, revise, suppress or even reject analysts' negative assessments of the war's progress or evaluations that show IS to still be quite strong. Grove faces almost daily questioning by the top US intelligence official, James Clapper. Sources told the Guardian that the suppression began as long ago as October 2014 just two months after the air war began against the Islamic State. Similar concerns are surfacing within the Defense Intelligence Agency which provides intelligence analyses for both military commanders and civilian leaders.

 The former director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Michael Flynn, perhaps summed the situation up: "The phrase I use is the politicization of the intelligence community." Flynn said he was not surprised by the investigation and noted that Obama administration officials had often been too optimistic in assessing the situation with respect to the battle against the Islamic state.

Report claims Islamic State leader in Libya former rebel hero against Gaddafi

As the Islamic State expands its operations in Libya western media are paying more attention to this issue rather than the conflicts between military forces of the two rival governments, one in Tripoli and the internationally-recognized regime in Tobruk.

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As the appended video shows, one area where the IS holds sway is the city of Derna. It has been a jihadist center for ages even under the Gaddafi regime. However, many jihadist members such as those associated with Ansar al-Sharia, linked with Al Qaeda, are now leaving that organization and pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. The commentator on the video, Catherine Herridge, claims that there are support networks and training camps run by the IS now in Libya. Derna is in an area mostly under the control of the Tobruk government, but IS has also taken control in the city of Sirte, formerly under the control of the Tripoli government. Tripoli has launched military action in the hopes of taking back control.The IS training camps provide fighters for IS in Syria and Iraq as well as for operations in Libya and elsewhere such as Tunisia.

The Director of US National Intelligence James Clapper said :"From an intelligence perspective, we, I think, clearly need to step up our game from an ISR perspective, where we can operate,I think there’s a lot of merit to partnering with the French, who have sort of staked out their claim in the Sahel region of North Africa."

"ISR" stands for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, According to Herridge one of the leaders of IS in Libya is Abdelhakim Behadj. Other reports describe him as the leader of IS in Libya.

Belhadj has an interesting history, becoming at times a hero and good guy and at others a wanted terrorist. He very early grouped with other Islamists to try and unseat Gaddafi but ended up fleeing to Saudi Arabia and then to Afghanistan in 1988 where he fought in the jihad against the Soviet-backed Afghan regime. These groups were supported by CIA funds and when fighting against a regime supported by the Evil Empire were considered freedom fighters. After the Mujahideen took the capital Kabul, Belhadj eventually returned to Libya where he with others formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group(LIFG) in 1992. After three unsuccessful attempts to kill Gaddafi, the group was crushed in 1998.

Some sources say that LIFG was linked to Al Qaeda and key members such as Belhadj were members of Al Qaeda. However, Belhadj has denied being a member of Al Qaeda and the leadership of the group had denounced Al Qaeda's tactics and also an announcement they made that LIFG was associated with them. Nevertheless, LIFG was banned worldwide as an affiliate of Al-Qaeda and as a terrorist organization.

In 2002, Belhadj and other leaders of the LIFG fled again to Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. In 2002, after the 9/11 attacks, an arrest warrant was issued for Belhadj by Libyan authorities. By this time, Gaddafi was now on good terms with the west. After the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, Abdel left Afghanistan but was arrested in 2004 as he was leaving Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia with his pregnant wife. He was transferred to Bangkok and placed in the custody of the CIA and retained at a secret prison there. He was then flown on a rendition aircraft back to Libya where he was imprisoned for seven years and allegedly tortured.Belhaj was held in Tajoura prison, near Tripoli, where he says he was chained to a window, deprived of sleep, beaten, hung from the walls and kept in solitary confinement. He claims he was also interrogated by British intelligence officers who visited his cell.

Belhadj was active in the rebellion that ousted Gaddafi and was commander of the Tripoli Military Council following Operation Mermaid Dawn in late August of 2011. After the capture of Tripoli, Human Rights Watch found documents relating to Belhadj from both the CIA and the UK M16. The documents showed that UK intelligence had provided questions for his interrogators. Belhadj launched a suit against the UK government but in December 2013 a High Court judge ruled it could not go forward as it could damage UK national interests.

Neither Belhadj nor the Islamic State in Libya have confirmed Belhadj's status as yet. These reports may simply be designed to brand Belhadj as one of the "bad guys" again and discredit his attacks on the CIA and M16. If he were a commander or leader of the Islamic State in Libya one would think that they would be advertising the fact since he was an important leader in the fight against Gaddafi. One can understand that as an Islamist Belhadj would take up arms against the forces of CIA-linked General Haftar, commander of the Tobruk armed forces, but the Islamic State also is fighting against the rival Tripoli government that has many moderate Islamists in its ranks. If, as he claims, he never belonged to Al Qaeda and indeed disagreed with their tactics, it hardly seems likely he would join with the Islamic State whose violence is even more indiscriminate than that of Al Qaeda.

Some experts still doubt that North Korea was behind Sony hack

While FBI director James Comey presented new evidence to show that North Korea was responsible for the recent hacking of Sony Corporation many experts still doubt that North Korea is the culprit.

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper even went so far as to say that North Korean General Kim Youn Choi was directly responsible for ordering the attack. Of course the evidence for this will not be made public. What is in the public domain however is clear evidence that Clapper lied to the American congress under oath. Nothing ever happened to him as a result. It is probably part of his job. Dianne Feinstein said that there is no more direct and honest person than Jim Clapper. Press Secretary Jay Carney said that president Obama believes that Clapper has been "aggressive in providing as much information as possible to the American people." The Snowden leaks show that the intelligence community was keeping information about what was going on from American citizens.

 The new evidence, presented by FBI director James Comey relies upon one believing that the Korean hackers are incredibly sloppy. The detailed evidence is as follows:" ".. a new detail from Comey that the attackers failed to use proxy servers through which to route some of their activity and mask their real IP addresses. As a result, Comey said, they unintentionally revealed that they were using addresses known to be “exclusively” used by North Korea. The new claim builds upon previous evidence cited by the FBI that components used in the Sony hack are similar or identical to components used in the so-called DarkSeoul attacks that struck South Korea last year and another claim that an IP address “associated with known North Korean infrastructure” contacted one of the command-and-control servers used in the Sony hack. " "

Of course there may be further intelligence that experts are not allowed to examine since it is classified, but even if that is so, the new explanations ignore features of the hack that are difficult to explain and are left unexplained. The initial communication between hackers and Sony made no mention of the film The Interview but asked only for money or they would release damaging information--which they did.

The new evidence claims that the hackers several times failed to use proxy servers including logging into a Facebook account and sending emails to Sony executives without masking their IP addresses. The time at which these mistakes were made is crucial but not revealed since they might support an alternative explanation of what happened. Within days of the hack, there were stories about North Korea's possible role. This provided a golden opportunity for the hackers to lead the FBI astray:" ".. if the hackers knew investigators were looking for North Korean links, they may have decided to provide them by using North Korean IP addresses. But that’s assuming the IP addresses the FBI cites are indeed North Korea IP addresses.""

 The new evidence actually raises more questions rather than actually giving any proof that the attack was launched from North Korea. There is no indication as to where the exact IP addresses are, or why officials were able to conclude that the addresses are used exclusively by North Korea. One FBI critic, Marc Rogers point out that IP addresses are quite fallible as proof of origin, and the claim that addresses are used exclusively by North Korea is also fallible. He also questions whether an experienced government hacker would make the mistake of not using a proxy server not just once but several times. Rogers said: " “These guys literally burnt Sony down to hide their tracks and they staged everything pretty methodically. It would surprise me that somebody like that would make such a huge mistake to forget to use a proxy.” "

The FBI has noted the similarity between the DarkSeoul attacks and the Sony attacks as a ground for pinning the blame on North Korea as noted by Jeffery Carr, a security consultant and CEO of Taia Global. Some of the same tools were used and there was also a revelation of an IP address. Carr also disputes the DarkSeoul attribution. Many critics of the FBI position note that the North Korean IP addresses they have identified could themselves be proxies, systems hijacked by the hackers to conduct their own activity and to throw investigators off track.

The FBI notes that the hackers "shut it off very quickly once they saw their mistake" and returned to using known proxies. However, Robert Graham, CEO of Errate Security says that this is just one of many possible interpretations of what happened and noted:" “It would surprise me that somebody like that would make such a huge mistake to forget to use a proxy.That can mean so many different things. It sounds like that’s the interpretation [the FBI] put on things, but not necessarily what happened.”. It could very well be a manufactured event with the hacker knowing exactly what interpretation would be taken of what they did. "

Marc Rogers says that if the FBI drew on NSA signals intelligence as evidence that North Korea was responsible for the hacking they should indicate that rather than relying upon the evidence they have presented so far. Robert Lee, a digital forensic specialist, also criticized the FBI for not revealing unclassified information used by Mandiant the cybersecurity firm hired by Sony to investigate the hack.

The NSA has now actually claimed a part in pointing to North Korea as the hacker. Admiral Michael Rogers NSA director said when asked of the agency's role in the investigation of the hack: "We partner with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI in various areas and this is one such area. We specifically did—we were asked to provide our technical expertise. We were asked to take a look at the malware, we were asked to take a look at not just the data that was being generated from Sony but also what data could we bring to the table—here’s other activity and patterns leading up to it, what is this act really about? We were part of a broad interagency effort, not in the lead role–the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the overall lead. Yes, we were part of a broad government attempt to understand exactly what happened.”"

 Just as all this is happening lo and behold an old zombie is arising and will come before US Congress again CISPA. The bill would give spy agencies such as NSA much more power and has long been opposed by privacy advocates. An editorial at antiwar.com draws connections between the renewed pressure to advance the powers of NSA and attributing the Sony attack to North Korea: "It is the eagerness for government agencies to get these new powers and access to information that is likely informing their decision to blame North Korea for the Sony hack, as a foreign attack would be a far better sell for granting them new powers than the likely facts, that Sony was attacked by a disgruntled former employee and a handful of other hackers. "

Khorasan a mixture of reality and intelligence agencies' propaganda

When the U.S. began bombing the Islamic State in Syria it turns out that they were also targeting Khorasan. This is a group that is linked with Al Qaeda. The name for the group is actually a creation of intelligence agencies.

Khorasan refers to Greater Khorasan, which consists of Eastern Iran-Northern Afghanistan-Tajikistan-Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-region. Intelligence agencies used the term to refer to high-ranking members of Al Qaeda within the Khorasan Shura. However, the group in Syria has members from other areas such as Yemen. A good description of the historical associations of the term to Al Qaeda is given in this article.
The rebels on the ground working in the areas where Khorasan operates have never heard of the group. The group themselves are not known to use the name to describe themselves. While the group exists and may even have some vague plans of the sort ascribed to them by western intelligence they are in reality simply a group of foreign fighters in Syria linked to Jabhat al-Nusra, which Al Qaeda recognizes as their official branch in Syria. Many analysts of jihadist movements are annoyed at the whole idea of Khorasan. Pieter van Ostayen, a historian and follower of jihadist movements, wrote in an e-mail that "in all of the official Jihadi accounts I follow(ed) the name was never mentioned." Ostayen claims the name clearly has a U.S. origin and said he believes that the US has blown up the whole story of their being a huge threat to the west in order to justify their attacks on the Nusra Front in Syria.
 One might wonder if it matters whether Khorasan is part of Jabhat al-Nusra or not since even the US regards both as linked to Al Qaeda. One difference is that Jabhat a-Nusra cooperates with other rebel groups in fighting against Assad and the Islamic State as well. Khorasan is defined as a small splinter group that is supposed to be a huge and imminent threat to the west: At an intelligence gathering in Washington, D.C. on 18 September 2014, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that "in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as the Islamic State (IS)."
 Attacks on Jabhat al-Nusra are extremely unpopular with rebels off all stripes, because they are great fighters in the war against Assad. Instead of bombing Assad, the US is simply bombing radical groups it opposes as jihadists even though those jihadists may be key to fighting Assad. It is hardly any wonder that so far the Assad government has applauded the strikes even though at first they were opposed as against Syrian sovereignty and the UN charter. They still are but they obviously are seen by Assad as a great help against radicals fighting his regime.
Using the Arabic term Daesh for the Islamic State, Ali Bakran, commander of a Free Syrian Army brigade, the moderate rebels in western eyes, said to the Washington Post: “If they hit Daesh and the regime, it’s okay. But why are they striking Nusra? Nusra are from the people — they are the people.”
 Now the press has a new threat and group to talk about —the Khorasan — and the U.S. has a new justification for bombing radical jihadists in Syria other than the Islamic State. The rebels in Syria know what is going on but who are they except pawns to be used as western interests see fit? Some of them may be picked for training in Jordan or Saudi Arabia to become paid proxies fighting against Assad unless the west, Russia and Iran decide it is time for a peace deal. As of now, the US does not seem interested in seeing rebel groups militarily defeat the Assad regime. The Arab nations that were part of the coalition that attacked Islamic State positions did not take part in the bombing attacks upon Jabhat al Nusra and Khorasan as the map on the appended video shows