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A2: No Link – Secrecy/Black Budget
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A2: No Link – Secrecy/Black BudgetLeaks inevitable – especially likely in Obama administrationPeterson 13 [Andrea Peterson is the Tech Reporter for ThinkProgress. Andrea has a dual degree with honors in political science and East Asian languages and cultures from the University of Kansas and has previously worked as a Constituent Services Aide to Representative Dennis Moore, on various political campaigns, and in new media with the Women’s Campaign Forum. 6-25-2013 http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/25/2199391/tech-leaks-inevitable/] This week’s massive game of “Where In The World Is Edward Snowden?” may soon be a common occurrence, thanks to new technologies that make more leaks and more leak prosecutions virtually inevitable. Snowden is the eighth person the Obama administration has pursued for leaking information under the Espionage Act of 1917 — more than double the number charged by all previous administrations combined — and it is likely that America is on an unstoppable trajectory towards more and more leak prosecutions in future presidencies. Certainly, the sheer increase in the amount of potentially leakable data is a part of this conversation: According to IBM, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data everyday and that pace means that ninety percent of the data that has ever existed was created within the last two years. And governments are adapting to this new reality. Thanks to Snowden’s leaks, we now know that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been siphoning up call records and sniffing through internet data. And according to one 2007 Department of Defense report, the Pentagon is trying to expand its worldwide communications network to handle yottabytes of data with the Utah NSA data center being key to achieving that goal. A yottabyte is equal to about 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 pages of text. Yes, that is the correct number of zeros. As a result of the expansion of the national security apparatus in general and the amount of intelligence that apparatus must sift through, there are now more than 4.9 million people with security clearance. That includes roughly 483,000 contractors with top secret clearance, like Snowden. Indirectly, this means that the expansion of government surveillance operations and the technological innovations driving that expansion have led to more and more people having access to the kind of documents that could result in a major intelligence leak. Similarly, with digital storage it’s no longer a matter of sneaking out folders or filing cabinets worth of documents to expose a full extent of a program with national security and civil liberty implications. Now you just need a flash drive — or in the alleged case of Bradley Manning, a disc that appears to be a burnt Lady Gaga CD. And services like Wikileaks, the group allegedly used by Bradley Manning to release a vast treasure trove of sensitive content would not exist or have the same impact without the communications capabilities of the internet. Plus, being able to upload documents to an anonymous tool like the New Yorker’s strongbox, while onerous, is certainly different beast than meeting in a dark parking garage. But, as the NSA leaks themselves ironically show, surveillance tech also means it’s easier than ever to track down and prosecute those initiating the leaks. Access to digital documents are often tracked via auditing system that can be quickly searched to narrow down suspects — and if that doesn’t pinpoint the person, the government can use wiretapping laws to snoop on the communications of the reporters who broke the story. Indeed, one of the reasons Snowden supposedly outed himself was that he considered exposure inevitable. Sure, technology also enables a number of ways to avoid that detection, but many require a lot of extra effort and a fair amount of technological know-how. Regardless of your opinion on the value of the information released via leaks over the past several years or by Snowden in particular, the current trajectory of the U.S.’s dependency on technology for national security purposes is more likely to make this kind of information sharing — and the persecution of those engaging in it — the rule rather than the exception. The leak alone links to politicsHess 9 (Pamela Hess, The Associated Press, "CIA hired Blackwater for assassin program," August 20, http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/08/ap_blackwater_al_qaida_program_082009/) The CIA began the hit squad program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but it never became fully operational. CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated the program in June upon learning of it, then informed the congressional intelligence committees in an emergency briefing the next day. CIA spokesman George Little said the program yielded no successes. The New York Times, citing unidentified current and former government officials, said Blackwater executives helped with planning, training and surveillance for the program. The officials told the Times that the CIA's use of an outside company for a potentially lethal program was a major reason Panetta called the emergency congressional briefing. The Times first reported Blackwater's involvement late Wednesday on its Web site. Blackwater, a North Carolina company now known as Xe Services, has come under heavy criticism for its alleged role in a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad's Nisoor Square that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. It was unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill al-Qaida operatives or just to help with training and surveillance. Government officials said bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations, the Times reported. The Times reported that the CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including founder Erik D. Prince. The revelation of the program created a small political firestorm on Capitol Hill. The House Intelligence Committee in June launched an investigation to determine whether the CIA broke the law by not informing Congress about the secret program as soon as it was begun. The program had several lives under four successive CIA directors: George Tenet canceled it during his tenure because it never produced results. His successor, Goss, restarted it and inked the Blackwater contracts. Michael Hayden, Goss' successor, downgraded the program from a planned covert action to an intelligence gathering activity. Panetta drove the final stake into the program in June. Hayden, speaking Thursday at a panel discussion at the National Press Club, said he was initially puzzled by the urgency and excitement surrounding Panetta's briefing to Congress, knowing what he did already about the program. He said he believes Panetta called the emergency meeting because of the political sensitivity of the program rather than concerns about its legality. Hayden would not discuss details of the still-classified effort. Jack Devine, a 32-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations office, said Thursday that the government should be extremely cautious about outsourcing lethal and sensitive CIA operations, in part because those are important capabilities the spy agency should be developing in-house, but also because it looks bad if the operation becomes public. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 1.3 Mb. Share with your friends:
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