In the wake of revelations about the scope of the NSA’s surveillance activities, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald will soon be writing a book that is expected to reveal new information on the matter. Some of the book’s focus will also be on the alleged cooperation of private companies with the government’s program.
From The Guardian:
Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald is to publish a book about Edward Snowden’s exposure of mass public surveillance by the US government.
The book, which is due to be published in March, will contain new revelations about the NSA surveillance programs, according to publisher Metropolitan Books.
[…]
Metropolitan Books described the book as containing “new revelations exposing the extraordinary co-operation of private industry and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s program, both domestically and abroad”.
Greenwald has long written about what he considers to be the surveillance state of the US, and spoken at events – such as the Socialism 2012 conference in Chicago – about the relationship between private industry and the government in surveillance cooperation.
When the Snowden story on NSA surveillance first broke, there were many questions about the level of cooperation between private companies and the government on issues of national security, much of which remains somewhat murky today as news reports have changed.
Most of the private companies alleged to have cooperated with the PRISM program initially denied even any knowledge of it entirely (likely because “PRISM” is a term internal to the government). As more information became available, those companies later clarified that they do cooperate with law enforcement requests and court orders to provide data as required by law.
Several companies have since appealed to the Department of Justice for permission to publish statistics and information regarding national security letter requests for data related to the companies’ users, in an effort to differentiate such compliance from other law enforcement related requests. National security requests under FISA are typically not permitted to be publicly disclosed.
In a July 16th posting on Microsoft’s TechNet blog, Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President for Legal & Corporate Affairs published the letter and details of Microsoft’s own request of the DoJ on the matter.
Today we have asked the Attorney General of the United States to personally take action to permit Microsoft and other companies to share publicly more complete information about how we handle national security requests for customer information. We believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the Government is stopping us. For example, Government lawyers have yet to respond to the petition we filed in court on June 19, seeking permission to publish the volume of national security requests we have received. We hope the Attorney General can step in to change this situation.
Until that happens, we want to share as much information as we currently can. There are significant inaccuracies in the interpretations of leaked government documents reported in the media last week. We have asked the Government again for permission to discuss the issues raised by these new documents, and our request was denied by government lawyers.
That posting also includes a list of responses that seek to provide clarity to the allegations made in the related NSA reporting. Microsoft also published its most recent transparency report, which separately details other law enforcement requests for data disclosures.
Similar previous requests have been made by other private companies such as Google.
A coalition of privacy advocates, organizations and private companies – including AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo – also sent a letter to President Obama and members of Congress,”to urge greater transparency around national security-related requests by the US government to Internet, telephone, and web-based service providers for information about their users and subscribers.”
With Greenwald’s book expected to focus on the cooperation between private companies and the government in its surveillance activities, we can likely expect to see these companies increasing their pressure on the government to permit the publication of national security related data requests.
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Comments
Wonder if the NSA pays some of its staff to deliberately troll conservative blog sites–the speed to which a number of particularly vicious trolls pounce on some posts smells like a regime funded enterprise. NSA is probably the ground zero for trolls.
I’m pretty sure the paid trolling operations are run by the Democrat party or OFAy.
Were these companies blackmailed into cooperating? Was it in exchange for favorable gov policy making? It seems that the one reason for companies wanting to disclose things now has more to do with customers not be happy knowing that they pay for services from these companies which allowed the gov to invade their privacy. Would these companies have cared if the gov had been able to maintain the secrecy?
One wonders how Greenwald could possibly know any of the revelations in his book will be “new” while Snowden remains free – and supposedly has distributed encrypted files to many people containing all the remaining information, to be opened in the event of his capture or death?
UNLESS he made a deal with Snowden early on – which would tend to confirm he was part of a conspiracy to commit espionage.
Anyone who thought Greenwald was in this for any altruistic reasons is a complete idiot. The man is the quintessential self-promoting blowhard. It was always about making Greenwald more famous and more money. Any lives lost or national security destroyed along the way are acceptable collateral damage.
Greenwald’s still upset that his favorite client is in federal prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.
Something about the NSA spying to note in passing.
The Institutional Republicans, led by Boehner, are changing the appropriations process to prevent anyone, Democrat or Republican, from offering threatened amendments that would cut off funding for the NSA spying on Americans inside the country. Said spying, by the way is a violation of the congressional charter establishing the NSA, but that does not bother the Institutionals.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/house-gop-leaders-hope-to-block-amendments-to-limit-nsa-surveillance-20130717
Subotai Bahadur
John Roberts should be forced to resign from the Supreme Court. OR Congress should see that he gets impeached for creating the secret FISA court. And, also in secret, promoting judges who sit on it.
Can’t have one without the other!
Google (aka “gaggle”) … and Facebook (aka FB or fecesbook), plus Microsoft. ALL face consumer backlash. They, too, will want to “write books” about how the government intimidated them.
How does the blame fall? On BOTH parties! Because Dubya used 9/11 to hurt all our Constitutional rights, in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
You know, I’m really hoping someone comes out who is not aligned to the current political parties … And, one by one, they begin winning elections based on their independence. I want the day to come when there is a PLAGUE ON BOTH HOUSES!
When the Snowden story on NSA surveillance first broke, there were many questions about the level of cooperation between private companies and the government on issues of national security, much of which remains somewhat murky today as news reports have changed.
This is what surprises me the most. SO MANY companies cooperated, and you would think somebody in these companies would have gone public to spill the beans. Reportedly all the companies [except Sprint] agreed to cooperate. The CEO of Sprint was charged with something [I assume] for not cooperating. With the jug-earred Kenyan in charge, payback is a beatch.
Was Glenn Greenwald one of those “JournoList” members in 2008?
That is the group that was yelling racist at the Clintons and doing just about every other thing despicable in 2008 to push Obama.
I just can’t get it out of my mind that he was – but I might be remembering incorrectly.
Anyone here recall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
“Ezra Klein created the online forum in February 2007 while blogging at The American Prospect and shut it down on June 25, 2010 amid wider public exposure. Right-wing journalists would go on to point out various off-color statements made by members of the list denigrating conservatives, as well as a seeming conspiracy to prop up then Presidential candidate Barack Obama.”
No . There was another Slate Greeny name & another Greenwald .
Glenn Greenwald is not a joiner sort of guy.
But the problem with a book is that we want to know details but we are not going to read realms of shit & not gonna pay for it.
So there Glenn.
Gleen cashing in? Shocker!