In a different kind of revolving door, a former FBI official who is now a CBS senior correspondent is defending PRISM.
Former FBI official and CBS senior correspondent John Miller said the program that relies on Internet data, known as PRISM, helped break up a 2009 plot to attack the subway system in New York City. In that case, he said, the intelligence community was monitoring the IP address of an infrequently used dropbox linked to Rashid Rauf, an al-Qaeda bombmaker. When there was contact between the dropbox and an IP address in Aurora, Colo., investigators were led to Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan American who subsequently pleaded guilty to planning suicide attacks in New York.
Not so fast, says AP reporter Adam Goldman:
Let’s be clear Operation Pathway in London uncovered email that thwarted Najibullah Zazi plot in 2009. Public docs available….
— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanap) June 7, 2013
This is not investigative journalism – siac.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/outc…
— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanap) June 7, 2013
Brits got this email –[email protected] — and gave it to USG. Zazi sent urgent message to that email. Alarms went off. See PACER
— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanap) June 7, 2013
Wait a minute, says blogger Empty Wheel:
@speechboy71 The claims in NYT are clearly, per the public record, badly overblown. @marcambinder @buzzfeedben
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 8, 2013
Funny thing abt claim Zazi required PRISM is govt already PUBLICIZED its case. No PRISM mentioned. 215 was (in Senate, not in court).
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) June 8, 2013
“I think what’s striking about the Zazi case is not so much that new tools were being used, but that old tools were being used in a comprehensive fashion,” says Sam Rascoff, who used to work terrorism cases for the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit. “And that they were being stitched together in a thoughtful, strategic way, so that one tool naturally gave way to another.”
[…]
Law enforcement officials close to the Zazi case tell NPR that the FBI applied to a special court for the wiretap months ago. Sources say officials acted after Pakistani intelligence allegedly told them that Zazi had met with al-Qaida operatives there.
And Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith weighs in as well:
Very standard to defend a secret program by secret ties to notorious case; rarely is it this clearly false buzzfeed.com/bensmith/publi…
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) June 8, 2013
British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don’t exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi. The public documents confirm doubts raised by the blogger Marcy Wheeler and the AP’s Adam Goldman, and call into question a defense of PRISM first floated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who suggested that PRISM had stopped a key terror plot.
Smith references a November 2009 story in the Telegraph; no sources are identified in the story.
The plan, which reportedly would have been the biggest attack on America since 9/11, was uncovered after Scotland Yard intercepted an email.
The force alerted the FBI, who launched an operation which led to airport shuttle bus driver Najibullah Zazi, 24, being charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has repeatedly questioned the value of secret surveillance programs.
From a May 26, 2011 floor speech:
[T]he American people will also be extremely surprised when they learn how the Patriot Act is secretly being interpreted, and I believe one consequence will be an erosion of public confidence that makes it more difficult for our critically important national intelligence agencies to function effectively.
From a letter Wyden and Sen. Mark Udall (D-UT) sent to Attorney General Eric Holder last year:
We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.
First Bush and now Obama want us to blindly trust them to do the right thing. And to trust them when they tell us that their projects all have value and are keeping us “safe.”
Doesn’t pass the smell test. Hasn’t ever, really, but clearly doesn’t now.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com