New York Times to Work With The Guardian on NSA Spying Stories

It seems that with each passing day more information on the endless scope of the NSA's domestic spying and the NSA's violations of legal constraints unfold.  And sadly, Barack Obama can't seem to get ahead of the unfolding revelations and continues to come across as lame and belatedly trying to do damage control.  Now, as BuzzFeed reports, the New York Times is teaming up with The Guardian to do a series of stories that will likely drop some additional bomb shells on the full extent of the police state spying that has been utilized against American citizens.  Here are details from BuzzFeed:

The New York Times is in the Snowden game.   The paper — which NSA leaker Edward Snowden deliberately avoided over his fear that it would cooperate with the United States government — is now working with the Guardian on a series of stories based on documents that detail National Security Agency cooperation with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ.

“In a climate of intense pressure from the UK government, The Guardian decided to bring in a US partner to work on the GCHQ documents provided by Edward Snowden,” Guardian spokeswoman Jennifer Lindenauer said in an email. “We are continuing to work in partnership with the NYT and others to report these stories.”

The London-based newspaper has been under intense British government pressure this summer, its editor, Alan Rusbridger, revealed earlier this week.

The decision to publish the revelations concerning the British intelligence service jointly with the Times may give the Guardian leverage in its battle with the British government, which is trying to prevent the stories’ publication. It may also relate to the stronger protections for free speech and press freedom under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; Britain has no such protections, and its Official Secrets Act is aimed at keeping government secrets secret. Sources at both papers declined to discuss the motives beyond the spokeswoman’s reference to the “climate” of pressure.

The Guardian’s Rusbridger has used the Times’s megaphone before, to spectacular effect: When the British paper’s coverage of the phone hacking scandal at News Corp. appeared to hit a dead end, a collaboration with the the Times revived it, and helped lead to criminal charges against top News Corp. executives.

Snowden said he did not go to the Times because the paper bowed to Bush Administration demands to delay a story on warrantless wiretapping in the interest of national security; he was afraid, he said, the paper would do the same with his revelations.

Now, Times reporter Scott Shane is at work on a series of stories expected to be published next month jointly with the Guardian, a source familiar with the plans said.

Now the Times or an agent for the paper, too, appears to have carried digital files from the United Kingdom across international lines into the United States. Discussions of how to partner on the documents were carried out in person between top Guardian editors and Times executive editor Jill Abramson, all of whom declined to comment on the movement of documents. But it appears likely that someone at one of the two papers physically carried a drive with Snowden’s GCHQ leaks from London to New York or Washington — exactly what Miranda was stopped at Heathrow for doing.

I suspect these stories will prove very embarrassing not only to the British government but also to  American politicians and bureaucrats.

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White House Tap Dances Around UK Intimidation of The Guardian

Personally, I find it some what hard to believe that the British government would have sought to threaten the UK newspaper The Guardian and demand all data in the paper's possession relating to the leaks by Edward Snowden without the knowledge of or a request from the U.S. Government/White House.  After all, the materials involved cam from America's spy system, not the UK's.  Yet the White House is trying to feign surprise and claim that nothing like that could happen here in America.  I for one don't believe it and Barack Obama is continuing to sully his reputation and integrity (or what integrity any politician has nowadays).  Raw Story looks at the White House's tap dancing routine.  Here are excerpts:

The White House distanced itself from Britain’s handling of the leaked NSA documents when representatives said it would be difficult to imagine the US authorities following the example of Whitehall in demanding the destruction of media hard drives.

As a former lord chancellor said the Metropolitan police had no legal right to detain the partner of a Guardian journalist at Heathrow airport under anti-terror laws, the White House suggested it would be inappropriate for US authorities to enter a media organisation’s offices to oversee the destruction of hard drives.

The White House – which on Monday distanced Washington from the detention of David Miranda – intervened for the second time in 24 hours after the Guardian revealed that senior Whitehall figures had demanded the destruction or surrender of hard drives containing some of the secret files leaked by the US whistle blower Edward Snowden.

Asked at his daily briefing on Tuesday whether President Obama’s administration would enter a US media company and destroy media hard drives – even to protect national security – the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said: “That’s very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate.”

The intervention by the White House came after the British government embarked on an aggressive offensive to justify the treatment at Heathrow of the partner of the Guardian journalist Greenwald.  Theresa May, the home secretary, confirmed that she was given advance notice of Miranda’s detention as she praised the police action on the grounds that he possessed sensitive documents that could help terrorists and “lead to a loss of lives”.

But May received a setback when Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the former Labour lord chancellor who was involved in introducing the anti-terror legislation used to detain Miranda, said the police had no right to detain him under the Terrorism Act 2000. Miranda was held for nine hours at Heathrow on Sunday under schedule 7 of the act, which allows police to detain people at ports and airports even if they are not acting suspiciously.

Falconer added: “What schedule 7 allows an examining officer to do is to question somebody in order to determine whether he is somebody who is preparing, instigating or commissioning terrorism. Plainly Mr Miranda is not such a person.”

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said No 10′s confirmation that David Cameron was given notice of the detention of Miranda meant that ministers had, in effect, approved of his treatment. 

It is no coincidence that both America and the UK alone of western democracies have police state-like domestic surveillance and spying operations that are on a level equal to Russia and China.  Apparently, the U.S. Constitution's protections for the citizenry mean nothing to Obama and others in Washington.  The ruse of fighting terrorist and national security needs have been used before to usher in dictatorship.  One need only look at 1930's Germany.

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The Guardian: UK Government Tried Intimidation

In a precursor of what we may yet see in America, the editor of the UK newspaper The Guardian - which frequently has better coverage on issues in the USA and crimes by U.S. military personnel than one finds in the America press - has described intimidation efforts by the British government to secure the information leaked to that paper by Edward Snowden.   What makes the story so strange is the leaked information was AMERICAN information, not that of the UK.  One cannot help but wonder whether the Brits were acting in concert with the Obama administration.  It's all very troubling.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The British government intimidated The Guardian newspaper and destroyed material Edward Snowden provided on surveillance programs, editor Alan Rusbridger said Monday.

Writing in a column on The Guardian’s website, Rusbridger said that in June he was contacted by “a very senior” U.K. government official demanding the return or destruction of the material from Snowden. A month ago the tone toughened, Rusbridger wrote, when a government official told Rusbridger “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”

“There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it,” Rusbridger said. “I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. ‘You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more.’

Rusbridger said he was told if he did not destroy the material, the U.K. would move to close down The Guardian’s reporting through the courts. Despite telling government officials most of their reporting on Snowden was being done outside of the U.K., Rusbridger said British officials carried on with attempting to stop the reporting.

Rusbridger said The Guardian will continue reporting on the Snowden documents, just not in London.

Rusbridger wrote the column after David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden story, was detained for nine hours in London’s Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of Britain’s terror laws. Rusbridger said the detention of Miranda and the seizure of his electronic materials was just the next event in a long line of intimidation by the U.K. government.

“The detention of Miranda has rightly caused international dismay because it feeds into a perception that the US and UK governments — while claiming to welcome the debate around state surveillance started by Snowden — are also intent on stemming the tide of leaks and on pursuing the whistleblower with a vengeance,” Rusbridger said.

A free press is what protects us from government tyranny and also keeps the government honest - if there is such a thing - and exposes war crimes such as those exposed by Bradley Manning' release of information.   One of the first things dictatorships do is silence the free press (Hitler and the Nazi regime did so as have the ayatollahs in Tehran).  What is happening in the UK and America is disturbing.

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Quote of the Day: The Abuse of Domestic Spying

I continue to find the level of domestic spying on citizens in America frightening - not to mention a violation of the U.S. Constitution's provisions against unlawful search and seizure.  Yet Barack Obama and others have continued to defend the unconstitutional practice using the excuse that it is necessary to fight terrorism and national security.  The Nazi regime used the national security ruse in the 1930's and we all know what that lead to down the road.  The potential for abuse is simply too great and there are in truth no effective controls in place to prevent abuse should someone in the government decide to do so.  In a post Andrew Sullivan sums things up well after at first defending the practice.  The final straw for him was the holding and interrogation of reporter Glenn Greenwald's husband: 

When the NSA leaks burst onto the scene, I was skeptical of many of the large claims made by civil libertarians and queasily sympathetic to a program that relied on meta-data alone, as long as it was transparent, had Congressional buy-in, did not accidentally expose innocent civilians to grotesque privacy loss, and was watched by a strong FISA court.

Since then, I’ve watched the debate closely and almost all the checks I supported have been proven illusory. The spying is vastly more extensive than anyone fully comprehended before; the FISA court has been revealed as toothless and crippled; and many civilians have had their privacy accidentally violated over 3000 times. The president, in defending the indefensible, has damaged himself and his core reputation for honesty and candor. These cumulative revelations have exposed this program as, at a minimum, dangerous to core liberties and vulnerable to rank abuse. I’ve found myself moving further and further to Glenn’s position.

What has kept me from embracing it entirely has been the absence of any real proof than any deliberate abuse has taken place and arguments that it has helped prevent terror attacks. This may be too forgiving a standard. If a system is ripe for abuse, history tells us the only question is not if such abuse will occur, but when. So it is a strange and awful irony that the Coalition government in Britain has today clinched the case for Glenn.

A disclosure upfront: I have met David Miranda as part of a my friendship with Glenn Greenwald. The thought of his being detained by the British police for nine hours because his partner embarrassed the American government really sickens me at a gut level. 

My obvious question is: what could possibly lead the British security services to suspect David of such ties to terror groups? 

[A]lthough David was released, his entire digital library was confiscated – including his laptop and phone. So any journalist passing through London’s Heathrow has now been warned: do not take any documents with you. Britain is now a police state when it comes to journalists, just like Russia is.

In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed.

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More Government Spying - XKeyscore: NSA Collects "Nearly Everything One Does on the Internet'

In yet another bombshell article, The Guardian has a piece that suggests that U.S. government spying on American citizens is even more pervasive than previously thought.  Indeed, nearly everything one does online can be collected and used for whatever nefarious purpose the government bureaucrats.  For all I know, I may have a dossier on me at NSA given some of my criticisms of Barack Obama and other parts of the U. S. government.  Naturally, "preventing terrorism" and "national security" are the excuses thrown out to justify such pervasive spying - the same excuses used by communist dictators in China and other dictators past and present in countries around the globe.  Is there any proof of this other than statements by government officials?  Of course not.  The information is all classified and secret.  Here are article highlights:

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.

The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.

The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10.

"I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

In a second Guardian interview in June, Snowden elaborated on his statement about being able to read any individual's email if he had their email address. He said the claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA.

Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.  An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.

In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.   Acknowledging what he called "a number of compliance problems", Clapper attributed them to "human error" or "highly sophisticated technology issues" rather than "bad faith".

Reading all of this, it really is no surprise that the lack of personal freedom from surveillance in America landed in the same category as that of Russia and China.     So much for privacy and freedom from big brother watching your every move.

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Is Another National Security Agency Bombshell Coming?

As Edward Snowden continues to search for a country that will grant him amnesty and protection against extradition to face the wrath of the Obama administration which is deeply pissed off that the magnitude of domestic spying has been made public, Glenn Greenwald - who broke the initial NSA spying story - says another bombshell will soon be dropped.   Politico looks at Greenwald's statements about more disturbing information to come.  Here are excerpts:

Another big National Security Agency scoop is coming soon, Glenn Greenwald said on Tuesday.

Although Greenwald wouldn’t reveal exactly what the new revelations are, he said the world “will be shocked.”

“I will say that there are vast programs, both domestic and international spying, that the world will be shocked to learn about, that the NSA is engaged in with no democratic accountability and that’s what driving our reporting,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald also said President Barack Obama’s administration is using leaker Edward Snowden as an example to prevent future whistleblowers from coming forward.

“I think what the Obama administration wants, and has been trying to establish for the last almost five years now with the unprecedented war on whistleblowers that it is waging, and to make it so that everybody is petrified of coming forward with information about what our political officials are doing in the dark that is deceitful, illegal or corrupt,” Greenwald said.

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Is the NSA's Surveillance Unconstitutional?

As noted before, I do not like the growing police state tendencies in America as most recently revealed in the NSA's sweeping surveillance operations that despite claims to the contrary to pull American citizens into the web of communications being monitored and in some cases being turned over to other police and law enforcement agencies.  I am all for stopping terrorists, but when American citizens are subject to the same levels of surveillance as on finds in China, Russia and Iran, something seriously wrong has happened to freedom in this country.  A column in the Washington Post looks at why the NSA surveillance of Americans is likely unconstitutional.  Here are excerpts:

 

The National Security Agency’s recently revealed surveillance programs undermine the purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach. They violate the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. And they underscore the dangers of growing executive power.

 The intelligence community has a history of overreaching in the name of national security. In the mid-1970s, it came to light that, since the 1940s, the NSA had been collecting international telegraphic traffic from companies, in the process obtaining millions of Americans’ telegrams that were unrelated to foreign targets. From 1940 to 1973, the CIA and the FBI engaged in covert mail-opening programs that violated laws prohibiting the interception or opening of mail. The agencies also conducted warrantless “surreptitious entries,” breaking into targets’ offices and homes to photocopy or steal business records and personal documents. The Army Security Agency intercepted domestic radio communications. And the Army’s CONUS program placed more than 100,000 people under surveillance, including lawmakers and civil rights leaders.
 

Congress passed the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to limit sweeping collection of intelligence and create rigorous oversight. But 35 years later, the NSA is using this law and its subsequent amendments as legal grounds to run even more invasive programs than those that gave rise to the statute.

 

We’ve learned that in April, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Verizon to provide information on calls made by each subscriber over a three-month period. Over the past seven years, similar orders have been served continuously on AT&T, Sprint and other telecommunications providers.

Another program, PRISM, disclosed by the Guardian and The Washington Post, allows the NSA and the FBI to obtain online data including e-mails, photographs, documents and connection logs. The information that can be assembledabout any one person — much less organizations, social networks and entire communities — is staggering: What we do, think and believe.

To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.
 

Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.

 

How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation?”

As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained a warrant, supported by probable cause and issued by a judge. The warrant must specify the places to be searched and items to be seized.

[T]he Supreme Court has held that the Fourth Amendment does not protect foreigners from searches conducted abroad. But it has never recognized a foreign intelligence exception to the warrant requirement when foreign-targeted searches result in the collection of vast stores of citizens’ communications.  Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government.

The FISC is supposed to operate as a check. But it is a secret court, notorious for its low rate of denial. From 1979 to 2002, it did not reject a single application. Over the past five years, out of nearly 8,600 applications, only two have been denied.

Liberal or conservative, Americans who value freedom ought to be very concerned about what is happening in the name of national security.  I suspect these concerns are what motivate Edward Snowden to release the information that he did. 
 

 

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Tea Party Revels in Exposure of NSA Domestic Spying

As noted in previous posts, who would have believed a month ago that the cretins of Tea Party and liberal civil libertarians would be agreeing on anything.   Yet as the reactions and blow back from the revelations of the extent of U.S. government spying on American citizens continues to unfold, no one seems more elated than the Tea Party crowd.  To them, what has been learned underscores their hatred of government, although they still can't comprehend that highways, education, and major infrastructure projects do require a governmental role.  They don't just materialize by themselves or for free.  The Tea Party crowd likewise doesn't get it that it was George W. Bush and the GOP controlled Congress who set the current police state style of surveillance of Americans in place.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the Tea Party euphoria at the NSA leak revelations.  Here are excerpts:

As if Tea Partiers needed any more evidence that Big Government is out to get them, along come Edward Snowden and operation PRISM.

It was bad enough that the tax man had been yanking their chain: Everyone knows the IRS is a bunch of jerks. But the NSA combing through people’s phone calls and emails? That’s a whole different level of sinister.

“I read threads all day long by Tea Party people nationwide. I talk to dozens and dozens of people on a daily basis,” says Ken Crow, the Iowa-based editor of the Tea Party Tribune and cofounder of the activist hub teapartycommunity.com. “They’re all afraid.”

The mood among Tea Party Patriots is equally tense, reports the group’s cofounder Jenny Beth Martin. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Wait a minute, we seem to trending much more toward a police state than we ever imagined.’”

For a political movement largely driven by the specter of government run amok, the NSA snooping news is, to borrow a Bidenism, a big fucking deal, a smoking gun akin to Donald Trump unearthing Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate.

Indeed, Tea Partiers’ reaction to the news of late may be best summed up in four words: We told you so! “They say that those of us in the Tea Party wear tin foil hats and we’re out there and all that,” says Crow. “But take a look around!”

But almost as outrageous to many Tea Partiers as the NSA snooping itself has been the lack of outrage by Republican leaders. Even as a sprinkling of folks like Rand Paul and Glenn Beck decry the government’s assault on the Constitution and declare Snowden a “hero,” most party players have been more in tune with Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, who have been quick to remind people of the hard realities of fighting terrorism, and Speaker John Boehner, who called Snowden “a traitor.” 

“We’ve given up on McCain and Graham,” says Crow. “It’s obvious to us that they are not going to carry the banner of freedom and liberty.” As for the speaker? “A marshmallow,” says Crow. “With a lot of these scandals, there is overwhelming evidence of perjury by senior officials in the administration—overwhelming evidence that criminal activity transpired. Nothing is being done, and we want to know why!”
  

Not that Tea Partiers expected much more from a GOP elite that many members have long held in disdain. “The political establishment voted to allow these things to happen and for government to get this large and out of control,” says Martin, adding sadly, “At this point, very little surprises me.”

This does not mean, however, that the Tea Party intends to take this insult lying down. Far from it. Various groups are rallying members to express their displeasure through calls and email petitions to Congress  .  .  .  .  The NSA mess is simply “the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

 Obviously, things will be interesting for the GOP Congressional leadership crowd - they are going to be bludgeoned from both the left and the right, with the Tea Partiers determined to make their lives difficult.  It should make for fun watching.

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NSA Leaker - Hero Or Traitor?

The rage in some quarters over the revelation that the National Security Agency, CIA and other U.S. government organizations have been spying on American citizens continues unabated.  What's interesting is that some both on the far right and far left are in an uproar.  Meanwhile, the "America, love it or leave it" crowd is accusing NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, is a traitor.  It's the same mindset that kept America in the disaster in Vietnam for far too long and the one that has kept the fool's errand in Afghanistan going for over a decade.  The New York Times takes the position in a main page editorial that Snowden is not a traitor.  Here are some column highlights:

For several top lawmakers in Washington, Edward Snowden committed the ultimate political crime when he revealed to the world just how broadly and easily the government is collecting phone and Internet records. “He’s a traitor,” said John Boehner, the House speaker. “It’s an act of treason,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.

Among prosecutors and defense lawyers, there’s a name for that kind of hyperbole: overcharging. Whatever his crimes — and he clearly committed some — Mr. Snowden did not commit treason, though the people who have long kept the secrets he revealed are now fulminating with rage. 

If Mr. Snowden had really wanted to harm his country, he could have sold the classified documents he stole to a foreign power, say Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But even that would not constitute treason, which only applies in cases of aiding an enemy with whom the United States is at war.

In the landmark 1945 case Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that one had to provide aid and comfort and also “adhere” to an enemy to be guilty of treason. 

“A citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy,” the court said, “making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength — but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.” 

Clearly, Mr. Snowden did not join a terror cell, or express any hostility toward the United States, when he turned over documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. (He was also not nearly as reckless as Bradley Manning, . . . .

Mr. Snowden’s goal was to expose and thus stop the intelligence community from what he considered unwarranted intrusions into the lives of ordinary Americans. “My sole motive,” he told The Guardian, “is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” While that principle is the right one, he should brace himself for the charges and possible punishment that may come in its wake. Most likely, he will be charged with disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act, which carries a possible 10-year jail term for each count. 

Of course, prosecuting Snowden requires that he be taken into custody and may also involve some challenges as noted in The American Conservative under a headline of "Obama Shouldn’t Prosecute Snowden, He Should Hire Him":

I think the Obama administration will have a very difficult time prosecuting Edward Snowden. They can go after Bradley Manning because they have him, in uniform and in prison, and thus shut off from normal communication. Americans are unable to perceive how normal, probably likeable, and how similar to most of us he probably is. But Snowden comes across like everyone’s ideal of a really smart, techie, individualist kid. No high school degree, yet speaks as eloquently as an assistant Harvard professor. Smart enough to rise rapidly in the world without credentials, reminding us vividly computers really are a new frontier, the one field outside of sports and music where classic American Horatio Alger tropes have any continued relevance. If Obama wanted to do something smart, he should thank Snowden and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor.

The situation has indeed made some strange bedfellows when both Boehner and Feinstein are condemning him  and the ACLU and others on the far right are praising him.  It will be an interesting spectacle to watch play out.

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