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Death by Metadata | Unfilter 85

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Two topics we’ve been closing following on the Unfilter show, Drone assassinations, and the NSA surveillance programs have intersected this week. We’ll give you the details on how Obama uses the NSA Metadata collection to kill people with drones.

Now as we record this episode thanks to new leaks we’ve learned the Administration is preparing their case to kill another American citizen based on the cellphone, in his pocket.

Plus the GCHQ gets caught playing with hackers, and we’ll take a look at Glenn Greenwald’s new publication, and much much more.

On this week’s episode of, Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is Crazy

More than 5,300 web-based companies and other organizations, including Reddit, Imgur, Tumblr, Mozilla the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, have joined forces to protest National Security Agency surveillance on Feb. 11.

The Day We Fight Back, though, is an attempt to dismantle a system that’s been in place for years. Inside the US, participants are urged to put a banner on their website and call or email their legislators in support of Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) USA Freedom Act, which would reform the NSA’s metadata database. But they’re also urged to oppose Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) FISA Improvements Act, a bill that sounds just as pleasant but has been sharply criticized for enshrining the database program in law. And even these are just baby steps in the long run.

“This, we believe, will be a historic lawsuit,” the Kentucky Republican said. The suit, joined by conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

So far, damages and injury from NSA data-gathering have been hard to establish even on an individual basis. Several groups have brought lawsuits against the administration by saying a particular individual organization or person has suffered because of surveillance. But even for Verizon customers, who have a leaked court order to back them up, there’s no definitive way to tell whether the NSA actually collected metadata from them, and the claim is too hypothetical for many judges. If Paul wants to go forward with the suit, he’ll need to calculate and prove similar damages for _every single member _of his class.

Drones

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The JSOC operator’s account is supported by another insider who was directly involved in the drone program. Brandon Bryant spent six years as a “stick monkey” – a drone sensor operator who controls the “eyes” of the U.S. military’s unmanned aerial vehicles. By the time he left the Air Force in 2011, Bryant’s squadron, which included a small crew of veteran drone operators, had been credited with killing 1,626 “enemies” in action.

Bryant says he has come forward because he is tormented by the loss of civilian life he believes that he and his squadron may have caused. Today he is committed to informing the public about lethal flaws in the U.S. drone program.

Leaks from two unnamed officials in the Obama administration to the Associated Press describe him as “an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.”

The person, who was not identified, has been the subject of debate among military commanders and intelligence officials for several weeks as they decide what to recommend. President Barack Obama would make a final decision.

CNN has also learned key members of Congress have been aware of the internal debate.

The officials spoke to CNN’s Barbara Starr on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Exhaustive independent studies by the British Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the New America Foundation and the Long War Journal have documented that civilian casualties are endemic – the latest count is at least 440 since the drone campaigns began, according to the BIJ.

Obama himself is hardly unaware of the dreadful downside of errant drone strikes. As Daniel Klaidman reported in his book, “Kill or Capture,” Obama authorized his very first drone strike on the third full day of his presidency, after having been assured by then-CIA director Michael Hayden that the targets were high-level al Qaeda and Taliban commanders. The Hellfire missile he sent into a compound in Pakistan instead killed a prominent pro-government tribal elder and four members of his family, including two children.

“The online news venture backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar debuted Monday, featuring fresh revelations about US intelligence from investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald. The news site dubbed ”The Intercept“ launched with two articles, including one co-authored by Greenwald stating that the US National Security Agency is relying on electronic surveillance, such as cell phone location, rather than human intelligence, to locate targets for lethal drone strikes. The report said the NSA ”geolocates“ the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone for raids and drone strikes to capture or kill suspected terrorists…”.* How does this match up with what President Obama has said? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

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