Following the latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 6 November gathered to discuss Has NSA spying “reached too far”?
L-R: Owen Bennett-Jones, Julian Borger, James P. Rubin, Steven Erlanger. Photo: Sally Ashley-Cound
Chair Owen Bennett-Jones, a freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service started off by asking if anyone really knows how much data has been collected?
Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for The New York Times said:
“I’m not sure we know the answer to the question to be honest. Because these things have been kept secret and they remain secret.”
Julian Borger, The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, continued:
“There is an awful lot of material and it’s a very lengthy process figuring out what in it is of public interest…it’s the process of discussing with the government agencies involved about what it means and the balance between public interest and national security.”
James Rubin, a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute and former chief spokesperson for the US State Department, added:
“I don’t think Snowden knows. He’s got 50,000 documents from the NSA. I took one of these documents and I actually know something about this stuff …it’s hard to understand even for those who know the code words.”
Nigel Inkster, director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, had some praise for the NSA and GCHQ:
“We’ve got this huge explosion of communications. . . . They were confronted with this new reality which they had to make sense of and I have to say, in the circumstances I think they’ve done a rather remarkable job.”
An audience member asked if “the threats justify the methods”?
Inkster replied:
“We elect a government and this is one of the responsibilities that they are assigned. It is for the government of the day to judge on the basis of the best information it can, what the security environment it faces.”
The panel were asked if the release of these documents has changed anything – has damage been done?
https://twitter.com/caro_schmitt/statuses/398172032355270656
Rubin:
“We’ll never know what changed people’s behaviours. People’s behaviours are going to change.”
Inkster:
“We will never know how different would the course of WWII been if Bletchley park had not broken and read the material that was being transmitted over Enigma. How can we judge? You can never do a counter factual assessment.”
Erlanger:
“There’s another level of damage which is to trust, to international relationships; the United States has a big problem with its allies.”
US goodwill was exhausted by Bush and Obama needs to deposit more goodwill. Remark @frontlineclub debate Why #nsa hit US reputation so hard.
— Karen Melchior (ex-verif) (@karmel80) November 6, 2013
Christoph Scheuermann, London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel, seemed surprised at the panel for thinking that anything had changed:
“I thought this was really naive, we don’t live in an age where terrorists…have to read The Guardian or Der Spiegel or the New York Times to know what intelligence agencies are capable of.”
Borger added:
“We share all of GCHQ material, names of everyone who works there, addresses, what they like to do at the weekend, with 850,000 Americans. Half of those people are private contractors. So the odds of that getting out are very high.”
After all this effort, disruption and political chaos, what were the benefits of the NSA gathering all the information?
Inkster:
“Knowing who’s in touch with who can be as – if not more important than – knowing what they’re saying to each other. This is a business that the bad guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re in communication.
“[Secondly] you can use analysis of big data to ascertain patterns of correlation, which are simply not discernable with lesser data sets. This has applications in all sorts of areas, in retail, public health…you can identify all sorts of things.”
One point the panel agreed on was that the world has completely changed from the days of phone bugging and code-breaking:
Watch the event:
https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-has-nsa-spying
"The Afghan War Diary [is] an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military.
"We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course."
"A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency."
Watch the Guardian’s live blog for further developments. Includes a link to a video interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
"The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."
"The war logs expose the true scale of the Western military deployment — and the problems beleaguering Germany’s Bundeswehr in the Hindu Kush."
U.S. Response
Statement by National Security Advisor General James Jones:
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security…These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."
Reaction from Pakistan
Telegraph report including comments from Pakistan envoy:
"Ambassador Husain Haqqani called the release of the file by web whistleblower site Wikileaks "irresponsible," saying it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.
""The documents circulated by Wikileaks do not reflect the current onground realities," Mr Haqqani said in a statement."
Taliban Tactics
Journalist David Axe looks at an incident from June 2007.
Nothing New?
"So, do these documents tell us something intrinsically new? No.
"But they do provide a mine of rich empirical detail, which will allow campaigners and even enterprising scholars interested in this area to w[e]ave narratives about war-fighting and the civilian experience of war.
"Where the documents show the coalition to have been ‘naive’ (the word the BBC kept using), it might prove to be an opportunity or a point of departure for learning lessons. One would hope that it doesn’t take the repeated actions of this campaigning website to prompt it; and one also has to hope that they haven’t done more harm than good."
"Scoop!"
Wikileaks and the media
"Wikileaks takes new approach in latest release of documents", Washington Post.
"The interaction between "traditional" and "new" media is the most immediately arresting "process" aspect of this event," James Fallows, The Atlantic.
Jay Rosen, Press Think, The "first stateless news organisation"
David Clinch: "The leak itself is the headline"
"Story behind biggest leak in intelligence history", Nick Davies, The Guardian.
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