Democracy Now! Daily Digest - A Daily Independent Global News
Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González for Monday, 30 December 2013
democracynow.org
STORIES:
Glenn Greenwald: The NSA Can "Literally Watch Every
Keystroke You Make"
The German publication Der Spiegel has revealed new details
about a secretive hacking unit inside the National Security Agency called the
Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to
hack into global communications traffic. Hackers inside the TAO have developed
a way to break into computers running Microsoft Windows by gaining passive
access to machines when users report program crashes to Microsoft. In addition,
with help from the CIA and FBI, the NSA has the ability to intercept computers
and other electronic accessories purchased online in order to secretly insert
spyware and components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence
agencies. American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer
and journalist Glenn Greenwald join us to discuss the latest revelations, along
with the future of Edward Snowden.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War
and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation about the
National Security Agency. On Sunday, the German publication Der Spiegel
revealed new details about secretive hacking—a secretive hacking unit inside
the NSA called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was
created in 1997 to hack into global communications traffic. Still with us,
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center
for Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story
about Edward Snowden. Glenn, can you just talk about the revelations in Der
Spiegel?
GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. I think everybody knows by now, or at
least I hope they do after the last seven months reporting, that the goal of
the NSA really is the elimination of privacy worldwide—not hyperbole, not
metaphor, that’s literally their goal, is to make sure that all human
communications that take place electronically are collected and then stored by
the NSA and susceptible to being monitored and analyzed. But the specifics are
still really important to illustrate just the scope and invasiveness and the
dangers presented by this secret surveillance system.
And what the Der Spiegel article details is that one of the
things that the NSA is really adept at doing is implanting in various
machines—computers, laptops, even cellphones and the like—malware. And malware
is essentially a program that allows the NSA, in the terminology that hackers
use, to own the machine. So, no matter how much encryption you use, no matter
how much you safeguard your communication with passwords and other things, this
malware allows the NSA to literally watch every keystroke that you make, to get
screen captures of what it is that you’re doing, to circumvent all forms of
encryption and other barriers to your communications.
And one of the ways that they’re doing it is that they intercept
products in transit, such as if you order a laptop or other forms of Internet
routers or servers and the like, they intercept it in transit, open the box,
implant the malware, factory-seal it and then send it back to the user. They
also exploit weaknesses in Google and YouTube and Yahoo and other services, as
well, in order to implant these devices. It’s unclear to what extent, if at
all, the companies even know about it, let alone cooperate in it. But what is
clear is that they’ve been able to compromise the physical machines themselves,
so that it makes no difference what precautions you take in terms of
safeguarding the sanctity of your online activity.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I mean, just to be really specific, you order a
computer, and it’s coming UPS, or it’s coming FedEx, and they have it
redirected to their own—you know, to the NSA, and they put in the malware, the
spyware, and then send it on to you?
GLENN GREENWALD: Correct. That’s what the Der Spiegel report
indicates, based on the documents that they’ve published. But we’ve actually
been working, ourselves, on certain stories that should be published soon
regarding similar interdiction efforts. And one of the things that I think is
so amazing about this, Amy, is that the U.S. government has spent the last
three or four years shrilly, vehemently warning the world that Chinese
technology companies are unsafe to purchase products from, because they claim
the Chinese government interdicts these products and installs surveillance,
backdoors and other forms of malware onto the machinery so that when you get
them, immediately your privacy is compromised. And they’ve actually driven
Chinese firms out of the U.S. market and elsewhere with these kinds of
accusations. Congress has convened committees to issue reports making these
kind of accusations about Chinese companies. And yet, at the same time, the NSA
is doing exactly that which they accuse these Chinese companies of doing. And
there’s a real question, which is: Are these warnings designed to steer people
away from purchasing Chinese products into the arms of the American industry so
that the NSA’s ability to implant these devices becomes even greater, since now
everybody is buying American products out of fear that they can no longer buy
Chinese products because this will happen to them?
AMY GOODMAN: The story is reported by Jacob Appelbaum, Laura
Poitras and a group of Der Spiegel reporters. Is this based, Glenn, on Edward
Snowden’s revelations, the documents that he got out and shared with you and
Laura Poitras?
GLENN GREENWALD: Der Spiegel doesn’t actually indicate the
origin of the documents, so I’m going to go ahead and let them speak to that
themselves. What I can tell you is that there are documents in the archive that
was provided to us by Edward Snowden that detail similar programs. Whether
these specific documents that Der Spiegel published come from them or from a
different source is something I’m going to go ahead and let them address.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the beginning of this piece. "In
January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front
of their closed garage doors." Take it from there, Glenn. Glenn, are you
still with us? We may have just lost Glenn. I’ll just read a little more, until
we reconnect with Glenn.
“In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas,
stood baffled in front of their closed garage doors. They wanted to drive to
work or head off to do their grocery shopping, but their garage door openers
had gone dead, leaving them stranded. No matter how many times they pressed the
buttons, the doors didn’t budge. The problem primarily affected residents in
the western part of the city, around Military Drive and the interstate highway
known as Loop 410.
“In the United States, a country of cars and commuters, the
mysterious garage door problem quickly became an issue for local politicians.
Ultimately, the municipal government solved the riddle. Fault for the error lay
with the United States’ foreign intelligence service, the National Security
Agency, which has offices in San Antonio. Officials at the agency were forced
to admit that one of the NSA’s radio antennas was broadcasting at the same
frequency as the garage door openers. Embarrassed officials at the intelligence
agency promised to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and soon the doors
began opening again.
"It was thanks to the garage door opener episode that
Texans learned just how far the NSA’s work had encroached upon their daily
lives. For quite some time now, the intelligence agency has maintained a branch
with around 2,000 employees at Lackland Air Force Base, also in San
Antonio."
Jameel Jaffer, the significance of this, and the legality of
what is happening here?
JAMEEL JAFFER: You know, I think that what bothers me most about
these programs is the bulk aspect of it or the dragnet aspect of it. When the
NSA has good reason to believe probable cause that a specific person is engaged
in terrorism or something like that, it doesn’t bother me that much that the
NSA is surveilling that person. I think that’s the NSA’s job. The problem with
a lot of these programs is that they are not directed at people thought to be
doing something wrong. They’re not directed at suspected terrorists or even
suspected criminals. These programs are directed at everybody. Or, to say that
a different way, they’re not directed at all. They’re indiscriminate.
And if you think about what the Fourth Amendment was meant to
do, what the Constitution was meant to do, it was meant to ensure that the
government couldn’t engage in surveillance without some reason. And all of
this, all of this surveillance that the NSA is engaged in, essentially flips
that on its head. It collects information about everybody in the hope that the
surveillance will lead to suspicion about somebody. It’s supposed to be doing
it the other way around, starting with the suspicion and then going to the
search. It’s starting with the search and going to suspicion. And I think that
that’s really, really dangerous, and it’s exactly what the Fourth Amendment was
meant to prohibit.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, when it came to the judge’s decision
recently, you have the judge that says that this is constitutional, but it
followed the judge saying this is Orwellian and likely unconstitutional. Why
the difference of opinion between these two judges?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, I think one judge got it right, and the
other one got it wrong. I mean, I think that, you know, Judge Pauley—Judge
Pauley was not very skeptical towards the government’s claims. The government
made claims about the effectiveness of the program, about the necessity of the
program, claims that were contradicted by information already in the public
record, information put into the public record by government officials. And
Judge Pauley nonetheless deferred to the government’s claims in court, which is
a disappointment to us.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s get back to Glenn Greenwald. Glenn, I just
read the first couple of paragraphs of the piece in Der Spiegel about the
garage doors that wouldn’t open because the garage door openers were actually
operating on the same frequency of the NSA, which was really vastly expanding
in San Antonio at the time. But could you take it from there? The significance
of this and this Tailored Access Operations, this particular unit, and how
significant it is?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, one thing I think that it underscores,
this was in a community that had no idea that there was this gargantuan NSA
hacking unit that had sprawled up in its community, and it shows just the power
of how much they’re doing, that they just simply shut down the electric devices
of an entire community that didn’t know that they were even there.
But the TAO, the Tailored Access Operations unit, is really
remarkable because the government, the U.S. government, has been warning for
many years now about the dangers of hackers, both stateless hackers as well as
state-sponsored hackers from China and from Iran and from elsewhere. And the
reality is that nobody is as advanced or as prolific when it comes into hacking
into computer networks, into computer systems, than the NSA. And TAO is
basically a unit that is designed to cultivate the most advanced hacking
operations and skills of any unit, any entity on the Earth. And so, yet again,
what we find is that exactly the dangers about which the U.S. government is
shrilly warning when it comes to other people, they’re actually doing
themselves to a much greater and more menacing degree than anybody else is. And
that’s the significance of this particular unit inside of the NSA, is they do
all of the most malicious hacking techniques that hackers who have been
prosecuted by this very same government do and much, much more.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about White Tamale, Glenn Greenwald.
GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, I think that—you know, a lot of
the—one of the good things about this particular story is that it was—the lead
writer on it was Jake Appelbaum, who is, you know, one of the world’s leading
experts when it comes to computer program. He’s the developer of the Tor
Project, one of the developers of the Tor Project, which is designed to
safeguard anonymity on online browsing, to make it impossible for hostile
states to be able to trace where people are. And one of the things he did was
take some very technical documents and translated it into a way that the public
should be able to understand it.
And so, several of these programs, including White Tamale, are
about insertions of malware into various forms of electronics. And he actually
gave a speech this morning explaining some of this. And what he essentially
said is that, with these programs, the government is able to literally control
human beings through control of their machines. We hear all of this—these
stories about the NSA being very targeted in the kinds of communications that
they want to collect and store, and the types of people whom they’re targeting
that are very specific and discriminating, and yet what several of these
programs are, that are revealed by Der Spiegel, are highly sophisticated means
for collecting everything that a user does, and it implicates the people with
whom they’re communicating and a whole variety of other types of online
activity in which they’re engaging.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to computer security researcher
Jacob Appelbaum, who you were just talking about, who co-wrote the piece for
Der Spiegel, who was speaking, as you just said, in Hamburg, Germany, at this
conference, the Chaos Communication Congress.
JACOB APPELBAUM: Basically, their goal is to have total
surveillance of everything that they are interested in. So there really is no
boundary to what they want to do. There is only sometimes a boundary of what
they are funded to be able to do and to the amount of things they’re able to do
at scale. They seem to just do those things without thinking too much about it.
And there are specific tactical things where they have to target a group or an
individual, and those things seem limited either by budget or simply by their
time.
And as we have released today on Der Spiegel's website, which it
should be live—I just checked; it should be live for everyone here—we actually
show a whole bunch of details about their budgets, as well as the individuals
involved with the NSA and the Tailored Access Operations group, in terms of
numbers. So it should give you a rough idea, showing that there was a small
period of time in which the Internet was really free and we did not have people
from the U.S. military that were watching over it and exploiting everyone on
it, and now we see, every year, that the number of people who are hired to
break into people's computers as part of grand operations, those people are
growing day by day.
AMY GOODMAN: Also speaking in Hamburg, Germany, at the Chaos
Communication Congress this weekend was WikiLeaks’ Sarah Harrison, who
accompanied Edward Snowden to Russia and spent four months with him. She spoke
after receiving a long standing ovation.
SARAH HARRISON: My name is Sarah Harrison, as you all appear to
know. I’m a journalist working for WikiLeaks. This year I was part, as Jacob
just said, of the WikiLeaks team that saved Snowden from a life in prison. This
act in my job has meant that our legal advice is that I do not return to my
home, the United Kingdom, due to the ongoing terrorism investigation there in
relation to the movement of Edward Snowden documents. The U.K. government has
chosen to define disclosing classified documents with an intent to influence
government behavior as terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Sarah Harrison. Glenn Greenwald, talk more
about her significance. She isn’t talked about as much, but she said at this
conference that after leaving Russia, she’s now in Germany and cannot go back
to England, where she lives, for fear of being arrested.
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, there’s a lot of people who debate
WikiLeaks and the like, but there is no question that WikiLeaks deserves a huge
amount of credit for the work they did in saving Edward Snowden from what
probably would have been, certainly, ultimate detention by the authorities in
Hong Kong, and then extradition or handing over to the United States, which
would have put him in prison and silenced him, as Daniel Ellsberg said, pending
a trial, and then almost certainly convicted him, given the oppressive laws
that prevent whistleblowers who are charged with Espionage Act violations from
raising the defense that what they did was justified and they were actually
blowing the whistle and not engaged in espionage.
And the person at WikiLeaks who sacrificed the most and who was
the most heroic was Sarah Harrison, who flew to Hong Kong, who met Snowden, who
traveled with him to Moscow, who stayed with him for several months while first
he was in the airport and then he was—he was getting acclimated to his life in
Moscow. And not only did she give up those months of her life and put herself
at risk, but she’s now in danger of not being able, as she just said in that
clip, to return to her own home.
And the terrorism investigation that she was referencing is the
one that has arisen and that the U.K. government is conducting in the context
of its detention of my partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport. And we’ve
challenged that detention in court. And in response, the U.K. government has
said, number one, they are conducting an investigation, a criminal
investigation, under terrorism laws against him, against Laura Poitras and
myself, and against anybody at The Guardian involved in the reporting of these
stories. And that means that everybody implicated in the reporting of the
story, which has caused a global debate around the world and worldwide reform,
is now a suspect in a terrorism investigation. That is how radical and extreme
the U.K. government, working in partnership with the U.S. government, has
become. And every lawyer that Laura and I have talked to has said, "You
should not, in any way, put yourself at risk of getting apprehended by the U.K.
government." And obviously, as a British citizen, she is well advised not
to return to the U.K., for the crime of working in a journalistic capacity to
bring these stories to the world. And of all the criminals that we—of all the
criminality that we’ve exposed in this case, I think the most egregious is the
attempt by the U.S. and the U.K. government to convert journalism not only into
crime and not only into espionage, but into actual terrorism. It’s a real
menace to a free press in an ongoing way.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, you addressed this congress, the Chaos
Congress in Hamburg, but you didn’t go. You did it by Skype or by some form of
video communication. Do you feel you can travel to Europe? Do you feel you can
travel to the United States?
GLENN GREENWALD: You know, there’s clearly risk for my doing
either. I think the big risk—I mean, I would feel completely free to travel to
a country like Germany. The problem is, is that Germany is in the EU, along
with the U.K., and there are all kinds of laws and other conventions that
govern the ability of the U.K. to claim that somebody has engaged in terrorism
and then force other EU states to turn them over. And so, I have very good
lawyers who are working to resolve all of these various risks, but every lawyer
that I’ve spoken with over the past four months has said that "You would
be well advised not to travel until these legal issues are resolved."
Laura Poitras has gotten the same advice. Obviously, Sarah Harrison has gotten
the same advice.
There are very genuine legal threats that are deliberately being
hung over the heads of those of us who have worked on these stories and are
continuing to work on these stories, in an attempt to intimidate us and deter
us from continuing to report. It’s not going to work. We’re going to report as
aggressively as if these threats didn’t exist. But their mere existence does
provide all sorts of limitations, not only on us, but other journalists who now
and in the future will work on similar stories. It is designed to create a
climate of fear to squash a free press.
AMY GOODMAN: Former NSA director, General Michael Hayden,
appeared on Face the Nation Sunday and accused Edward Snowden of being a
traitor.
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: I used to say he was a defector, you know,
and there’s a history of defection. Actually, there’s a history of defection to
Moscow, and that he seems to be part of that stream. I’m now kind of drifting
in the direction of perhaps more harsh language.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Such as?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Such as "traitor." I mean—
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Based on what?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Well, in the past two weeks, in open
letters to the German and the Brazilian government, he has offered to reveal
more American secrets to those governments in return for something. And in
return was for asylum. I think there’s an English word that describes selling
American secrets to another government, and I do think it’s treason.
AMY GOODMAN: Hayden also responded to questions about the impact
of Snowden’s revelations on the NSA. He was being interviewed by Major Garrett.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Is the NSA stronger or weaker as a result
of Edward Snowden’s disclosures?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: It’s infinitely weaker.
MAJOR ELLIOTT GARRETT: Infinitely?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Infinitely. This is the most serious
hemorrhaging of American secrets in the history of American espionage. Look,
we’ve had other spies. We can talk about Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, but their
damage, as bad as it was, was fairly limited, even though in those—both of
those cases, human beings actually lost their lives. But they were specific
sources, all right? There’s a reason we call these leaks, all right? And if you
extend the metaphor, Hanssen and Ames, you could argue whether that was a cup of
water that was leaked or a bucket of water that was leaked. What Snowden is
revealing, Major, is the plumbing. He’s revealing how we acquire this
information. It will take years, if not decades, for us to return to the
position that we had prior to his disclosures.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I wanted you to respond to that
and also the latest request by Edward Snowden to get asylum in, well, the
country where you now live, in Brazil, and the significance of the debate, at
least reported by The New York Times that’s going on within the intelligence
community and the White House about whether Edward Snowden should possibly be
granted amnesty.
GLENN GREENWALD: First of all, Michael Hayden, in that clip, as
he so often does, just told outright lies. Just anyone who has any doubts
should go read the letter that Edward Snowden wrote to the people of Brazil, as
well as to the people of Germany, and compare it to what Michael Hayden lied
and said that he actually did. He never offered to give documents in exchange
for asylum or anything like that. He did the opposite. He has been repeatedly
pursued by officials of both countries asking him to participate in the
criminal investigations that they are conducting about spying on their
citizens. And he was essentially writing a letter to say, "Unfortunately,
I’m not able to help, even though I would like to help in any legal and
appropriate way, because I don’t actually have permanent asylum anywhere, and
the U.S. government is still trying to imprison me. And until my situation is
more secure, I’m not able to help." He was writing a letter explaining why
he can’t and won’t participate in those investigations, not offering anything
in return for asylum or anything else like that.
Secondly, just let me make this point about the complete
ignorance of Michael Hayden. He said in that clip that Edward Snowden should
now be deemed to be a traitor because he’s engaged in treason by virtue of
having offered asylum in exchange for documents. Let’s assume he really did do
that. Go and look at what the Constitution defines treason as being. It is very
clear. It says treason is the giving of aid and comfort to the enemies of the
United States—the enemies of the United States. So, even if you want to believe
Michael Hayden’s lie that Edward Snowden offered information and documents in
exchange for asylum to Germany and Brazil, are Germany and Brazil enemies of
the United States? It’s not treason even if you believe the lies of Michael
Hayden.
Thirdly, I think the real question here is: Why do we even have
to have the discussion of Edward Snowden needing amnesty and asylum from other
countries or needing amnesty from the United States? What he did is not like
Aldrich Ames or Hanssen or anybody else like that. He didn’t sell these documents
to foreign adversary governments, as he could have, and lived the rest of his
life extremely rich. He brought them to some of the leading journalistic
organizations in the world and asked that they be published only in a way that
will inform his fellow citizens and the rest of the world about what is being
done to their privacy. It is classic whistleblowing behavior. And the real
question is: Why are whistleblowers in the United States either prosecuted
vindictively and extremely or forced to flee the country in order to avoid
being in a cage for the rest of their life? That’s the real question.
And the final thing I want to say is, you know, all this talk
about amnesty for Edward Snowden, and it’s so important that the rule of law be
applied to him, it’s really quite amazing. Here’s Michael Hayden. He oversaw
the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program implemented under the Bush
administration. He oversaw torture and rendition as the head of the CIA. James
Clapper lied to the face of Congress. These are felonies at least as bad, and I
would say much worse, than anything Edward Snowden is accused of doing, and yet
they’re not prosecuted. They’re free to appear on television programs. The
United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest
officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of
amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme. And that’s why a
hardened felon like Michael Hayden is free to walk around on the street and is treated
on American media outlets as though he’s some learned, wisdom-drenched elder
statesman, rather than what he is, which is a chronic criminal.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU is the legal
adviser for Edward Snowden—Ben Wizner of the ACLU. What is going on behind the
scenes right now? Is there a discussion between Snowden and the U.S. government
around the issue of amnesty?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, I think that Edward Snowden has been very
direct and very open about his intentions and what he wants from the U.S.
government. He would like to come back to the United States. Obviously, he
doesn’t want to come back under the conditions that are being offered right
now.
I think that Michael Hayden’s statements were really
irresponsible and outrageous. I mean, the idea that Edward Snowden has damaged
national security is ludicrous. And it’s not that Edward Snowden has exposed
just secrets of the NSA; he has exposed, as Glenn says, the lies of the NSA.
James—the director of national intelligence, Mr. Clapper, testified to Congress
that the NSA wasn’t collecting information about millions of Americans. It
turns out that they were. The solicitor general told the Supreme Court that the
NSA was providing notice to criminal defendants who had been surveilled. Turns
out they weren’t. So it’s all these misrepresentations about the NSA’s
activities that Edward Snowden has exposed, and I think that’s a great public
service. I think it’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is in Russia. And we’re
hopeful that he’ll be able to return to the United States, not in—not to face
criminal charges, but rather with the kind of amnesty that he deserves.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Jameel
Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center for
Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story about Edward Snowden,
speaking to us from Brazil, now creating a new media venture with Laura Poitras
and Jeremy Scahill and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace
Report. Tune in, by the way, to our New Year’s Day show, when we go through the
major stories of 2013. Of course, the story about the NSA is top of the list.
This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
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Orwellian or a Blunt Tool?: Conflicting Rulings on NSA Spying
Set Up Likely Supreme Court Showdown
A federal judge has upheld the National Security Agency’s bulk
collection of U.S. telephone data just days after a separate court reached an
opposite opinion. On Friday, District Judge William Pauley dismissed a lawsuit
from the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the NSA’s mass collection
of U.S. phone records. Pauley said telephone metadata could have potentially
prevented the 9/11 attacks by alerting the government to hijackers who made
phone calls from the United States. The issue will likely head to the Supreme
Court — Pauley’s ruling comes less than two weeks after another federal judge
questioned the program’s constitutionality and described the bulk collection as
"almost Orwellian." We’re joined by two guests: Jameel Jaffer, ACLU
deputy legal director and director of its Center for Democracy; and Glenn
Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden’s NSA
leaks.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to one of the biggest stories of 2013:
the National Security Agency and its massive domestic and international
surveillance apparatus. The German publication Der Spiegel has revealed new
details about a secretive hacking unit inside the NSA called the Office of
Tailored Access Operations. The unit was created in 1997 to hack into global
communications traffic.
The Der Spiegel report includes a number of new details about
the NSA’s hacking abilities. Hackers inside the secretive unit have developed a
way to break into computers running Microsoft Windows by gaining passive access
to machines when users report program crashes to Microsoft. With help from the
CIA and FBI, the NSA has the ability to intercept computers and other electronic
accessories purchased online in order to secretly insert spyware and components
that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. In one secret
operation called White Tamale, the NSA hacked into the communications of
Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Security.
These revelations were published just two days after a federal
judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union
challenging the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. phone records. U.S. District
Judge William Pauley wrote, quote, "This blunt tool only works because it
collects everything. Technology allowed al Qaeda to operate decentralized and
plot international terrorist attacks remotely. The bulk telephony metadata
collection program represents the government’s counter-punch," he wrote.
The issue will likely head to the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, another
federal judge questioned the program’s constitutionality and described it as
"almost Orwellian."
We’re joined today by two guests. Here in New York, Jameel
Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU and director of the ACLU’s Center for
Democracy. And joining us from Brazil is Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who
first broke the story about Edward Snowden. He was previously a columnist at
The Guardian newspaper and is creating a new media venture with Laura Poitras,
Jeremy Scahill and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
We’re going to begin right here with Jameel Jaffer. Jameel, talk
about the judge’s ruling. What exactly did he rule?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Sure. Well, it’s a ruling that is limited to the
bulk surveillance of metadata, telephony metadata. So, as you know, there’s a
program that the NSA has in place now—has had in place now for seven years, at
least—that collects information about every single phone call made or received
on a U.S. telephone network. So that means every time you pick up the phone,
the NSA is making a note, in some sense, of who you called, how long you spoke
to them, when you called them, every single time you pick up the phone. And the
NSA is doing that with respect to every single phone call made in the United
States.
So we challenged the constitutionality of that program, and the
judge, Judge Pauley here in the Southern District of New York, upheld the
program, saying first that Congress had intended to prevent people like us—that
is, the targets of this kind of surveillance—from challenging this kind of
program in court, and also that the Constitution doesn’t foreclose the
government from collecting this kind of information about everybody. Obviously,
we disagree strongly with the decision. We think that it’s wrong in multiple
respects, and we intend to appeal it.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly who you represented in this
lawsuit.
JAMEEL JAFFER: So, we represent the ACLU. I mean, obviously, I
work for the ACLU myself, but the client in this case is the ACLU and the New
York Civil Liberties Union. And these organizations are the clients because we
are Verizon subscribers. And the order that was disclosed by Glenn and by The
Guardian is an order that requires Verizon to turn over all of its information,
all of this kind of information, to the NSA on a daily—on a daily basis. So, we
have evidence now that our own communications were monitored in this way. We
know that everybody’s communications are monitored in this way. And we were
able to go into court to challenge the program because we have this evidence.
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, your response to the judge’s
ruling, this ruling coming right after another judge, U.S. District Judge
Richard Leon, called the NSA surveillance "almost Orwellian" and
"likely unconstitutional"?
GLENN GREENWALD: I think the history of the post-9/11 era has
been one of failed institutions, particularly those designed to check abuses by
the executive branch and the intelligence community, beginning obviously with
the U.S. media, the U.S. Congress, and I think the worst culprit has been the
federal judiciary, which really is the most inexcusable because it’s supposed
to be immunized from political pressures by life tenure, which Article III of
the Constitution vests to federal judges specifically to say to them,
"Your duty is to protect people’s rights, no matter how politically
unpopular doing so might be." And yet they’ve really led the way, with
very few exceptions, in endorsing even the most extreme and radical forms of
unconstitutional conduct.
And I think Judge Pauley’s decision is just a continuation of
that, very typical. It begins by exploiting 9/11 to justify anything the
government wants to do. And the reason why Judge Leon’s decision got so much
attention was because it was such an amazing aberration. It was one of the very
few ringing endorsements that the Constitution actually still matters in the
war on terror. And we’ll have to see how these conflicts play out in the
appellate courts.
AMY GOODMAN: Former NSA director, General Michael Hayden,
addressed the issue of telephone surveillance in his interview with CBS’s Face
the Nation on Sunday.
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Granted, millions, billions of phone
records a day are acquired by the National Security Agency, but what follows,
Major, is really important. What happens to that data? How often is that data
touched? And the truth is, it’s touched two to three hundred times per year,
and only based upon a reasonable, articulable suspicion that that number is
affiliated with terrorism.
AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, your response?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Well, I don’t think that should be reassuring to
anyone. I mean, the fact is that this information rests in an NSA database. It
is already being used pretty extensively. Three hundred times in a single year,
the NSA has conducted what it calls queries into this data. Every time it
conducts one of those queries, it looks at not just the information relating to
the person who is suspected of being a terrorist, but the information of
everybody who’s been in contact with that person, everybody who’s been in
contact with those people, and everybody who’s been in contact with those
people. So it’s millions of people every single time the NSA conducts a query.
And that assumes that the NSA is using the data only in the way
that it says it’s using the data, and that it will use the data only in the way
that it says it will use the data. And we know from past experience, we know
from history, that that is not going to be the case. We know that this
information will be abused, if not by this administration, by the next
administration. At some point, a president will see it as politically valuable
to have the information that’s in this database and to use it in ways that it
wasn’t meant to be used.
AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to go to a clip from, well, at the time,
Senator Joe Biden in 2006, now of course vice president. He criticized a
similar call record collection program revealed under the Bush administration.
He, too, was speaking on CBS.
SEN. JOE BIDEN: I don’t have to listen to your phone calls to
know what you’re doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I’m able to
determine every single person you talk to, I can get a pattern about your life
that is very, very intrusive. And the real question here is: What do they do
with this information that they collect that does not have anything to do with
al-Qaeda?
AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, your response?
GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, you know, I think this underscores one of
the most amazing things, Amy. As you know, when I began writing about politics
in 2005, 2006, I focused on the NSA scandal at that time, which was that the
Bush administration was spying on the telephone calls of Americans without the
warrants required by law. And by far the biggest support that I got for the
work I was doing was from Democrats and progressives and liberals, all of whom
almost unanimously were highly supportive of that work because, as we just saw
in that clip, Democrats, back then, understood the serious dangers posed by
mass surveillance and by even the collection of metadata. And fast-forward now
seven years later, when there’s a Democrat in office, and by far the biggest
critics of the reporting that we’re doing, the most vehement defenders of the
NSA, are people like Dianne Feinstein, but also just liberal and Democratic
Party pundits and reporters and journalists all over the Internet who have
suddenly decided that they are going to take it upon themselves to be great
supporters of the NSA. Polling data reflects massive changes in how Democrats
and progressives think about these issues, simply because there’s a new
president in office who belongs to their party. And the Joe Biden clip really
underscores just how unprincipled and hackish that faction of the Democratic
Party has become, radically changing what they think based not on their own
beliefs, but who it benefits in terms of power.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Glenn Greenwald, taking it forward to 2013 to
President Obama and Vice President Biden right now, their latest responses in
dealing with all the revelations around the NSA?
GLENN GREENWALD: What’s clearly underway, Amy, is the same thing
that we saw in the 1970s, when the scandal over and concern over abusive
eavesdropping powers was at least as great as what we have now, if not greater.
And the idea was they needed a way to placate the public and to say,
"Don’t worry, we’re putting these great safeguards on these powers, so you
don’t have to worry anymore about abuse." And what they really did instead
was just created these symbolic gestures that really didn’t change much of
anything, that just made the program prettier and then therefore more
palatable. They said, "We’re going to create a court to oversee
this," and yet the court was created to be a very pro-government court and
met in secret. Only the government could show up. And they’ve rubber-stamped
everything. They said, "We’re going to create oversight committees in
Congress," and yet they installed the most slavish loyalists to the NSA,
like Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers, as the committee chair to make sure
those committees do nothing but bolster and defend the intelligence community
rather than ever checking them or exercising oversight.
That’s what the president is now trying to do with this panel of
hand-picked loyalists, to pretend that these reform—that there’s reform going
on, and yet most of those proposals, though they sound nice, are actually going
to achieve very little, if not make it worse, other than to try and convince
the public that they need not worry. That’s the explicit goal of this reform
process, to make the public more comfortable with these programs, not to
meaningfully reform them.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this
discussion and particularly focus on the latest revelations in a piece that
just came out from Der Spiegel about TAO and find out just what this is. People
ordering online a computer or a cellphone, that computer being sent not to you
directly, but detour—making a detour to the NSA, they put spyware in it, and
then you get it? Just one of the revelations in this piece. We’re talking with
Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story about Edward Snowden, previously a
Guardian columnist, now creating his own media venture, and Jameel Jaffer, who
is the deputy legal director with the ACLU. This is Democracy Now! We’re back
in a minute.
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Jobless Benefits Cut for 1.3 Million, Despite Highest Long-Term
Unemployment Since World War II
On Saturday, 1.3 million Americans lost their last lifeline from
the federal government: an emergency unemployment insurance program. Although
long-term unemployment is still at its highest level since World War II,
Congress failed to renew the program in the budget deal it passed just before
adjourning for winter recess. The program provided up to 47 weeks of
supplemental unemployment insurance payments to jobless people looking for
work. Now, just a quarter of unemployed Americans will receive jobless benefits
— the smallest proportion in half a century. Allowing the program to sunset is
expected to have wide-scale ramifications for the economy at large, axing job
growth by around 300,000 positions next year and pushing hundreds of thousands
of households to the brink of poverty. We are joined by Imara Jones, economic
justice contributor for Colorlines.com.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, 1.3 million Americans lost their last
lifeline from the federal government: an emergency unemployment insurance
program. Although long-term unemployment is still at its highest level since
World War II, Congress failed to renew the program in the budget deal it passed
just before adjourning for winter recess. The program provided up to 47 weeks
of supplemental unemployment insurance payments to jobless people looking for
work. Now, just a quarter of unemployed Americans will receive jobless
benefits—the smallest proportion in half a century. Allowing the program to
sunset is expected to have wide-scale ramifications for the economy at large,
axing job growth by around 300,000 positions next year and pushing hundreds of
thousands of households to the brink of poverty.
For more, we’re joined by Imara Jones. He’s the economic justice
contributor for Colorlines.com, served in the Clinton White House, where he
worked on international trade policy, recently wrote an article called
"The Grinches Who Stole Jobless Benefits."
Imara Jones, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this, in
this holiday season, what’s taken place.
IMARA JONES: Well, in any season it’s a dreadful thing to
happen, but it’s even more so now. And the problem is that not only is it the
holiday season, but this is the wrong thing to happen at the wrong time for our
economy, for all of the reasons that you just laid out. And the problem is that
long-term unemployment is still a problem. And in a year in which there’s a lot
of talk about the need to focus on equity and inequities in our economy, the
loss of over a million benefits for the people just days ago and then up to
five million in the year ahead is going to make that infinitely harder.
AMY GOODMAN: How did this happen? And how did—I mean, while the
Democrats criticize this, but they signed on to the deal.
IMARA JONES: I think two things happened. The first is that this
is not a surprise, given where the GOP has been since it swept to power in
2010. They’ve made a lot of statements, and they believe, right and truly, that
it’s not the role of the government to be involved in helping people who are the
most vulnerable. And that’s just a declaration that they’ve made and that has
been a part of their actions. I think what happened with the Democratic Party
is that there probably was a sense that this wasn’t going to happen, that there
had always been some brinksmanship around unemployment benefits, but there had
always a way that was found. But it probably was just a bridge too far for John
Boehner, given the fact that he just cut a deal with the Democrats on the
budget at large, and so something else had to be given up.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking on Fox News, Republican Senator Rand Paul
of Kentucky said long-term jobless benefits can create a group of perpetually
unemployed people.
SEN. RAND PAUL: I do support unemployment benefits for the 26
weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice
to these workers. There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said
if you have a worker that’s been unemployed for four weeks and on unemployment
insurance, and one that’s on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer,
nearly 100 percent, said they will always hire the person who’s been out of
work four weeks. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99
weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in
our economy. And it really—while it seems good, it actually does a disservice
to the people you’re trying to help.
AMY GOODMAN: Imara Jones, respond to Senator Paul.
IMARA JONES: Two things. First of all, that’s just not true. I
mean, the Fed—Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco came out with a study and
said that unemployment benefits actually have very little impact on whether or
not people remain jobless. It only extends joblessness by up to seven days.
What it does do is that it allows people to be able to sustain themselves while
looking for work. So there’s no impact on jobless benefits on joblessness.
And the second thing is that jobless benefits are actually
stimulative to the economy. They are actually—add, for every one dollar we
provide to someone of unemployment benefits, it yields $1.60 in economic
activity. And that’s why the loss of these benefits is going to rob our economy
of $41 billion, at a time when the economy is still very schizophrenic. It
can’t figure out whether it’s going to recover and how it’s going to recover.
And the problem with selective studies like Senator Paul sort of pulled out is
that it’s not about an individual fact, it’s about an assessment. And the
bottom line is that we’re not in a good shape on unemployment.
AMY GOODMAN: In the past, the unemployment benefits have been
extended. Is it going to happen this time?
IMARA JONES: It’s hard to see how that’s going to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Who are the unemployed in this country? And we just
have 30 seconds.
IMARA JONES: They are disproportionately—long-term unemployed
are disproportionately people of color. They are across all educational areas
and backgrounds. Age-wise, a pretty wide standard age distribution, but the
longest of the long-term unemployed are actually older. And so, what’s going to
happen is that a lot of these people are either going to be pushed into
poverty, they’re going to drop out of the job force and extend that problem, or
they’re going to actually file and go on Social Security early, so they’re
going to actually push up the cost that the GOP says that it wants to hold
down. So, it doesn’t make sense in a lot of ways.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Imara Jones,
economic justice contributor to Colorlines.com, served in the Clinton White
House.
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HEADLINES:
Opposition Activists: Over 500 Killed in Syrian Attacks on
Aleppo
Opposition activists are claiming more than 500 people have died
in weeks of Syrian government air strikes on the city of Aleppo. The Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights says the dead includes 151 children. Syrian
government helicopters have been hitting Aleppo with highly destructive barrel
bombs –- oil drums filled with explosives and sometimes with nails or scrap
metal. At least 25 people were reportedly killed on Saturday when government
forces bombed a vegetable market. Meanwhile, the Assad regime has evacuated
thousands of residents from the town of Adra amidst heavy clashes with rebel
fighters.
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31 Dead in Twin Russian Suicide Attacks
At least 31 people have died in two consecutive days of bombings
in the Russian city of Volgograd. Seventeen people were killed and 34 were
wounded on Sunday when a female suicide bomber hit a train station. Another 14
people were killed earlier today when a bomber hit a packed bus. No group has
claimed responsibility, but Russia has faced repeated attacks from Islamist
militants in Chechnya and the North Caucasus. Russia is set to host the Winter
Olympics in just over a month.
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Crisis Feared as 100,000 Seek Refuge in Central African Republic
Capital
Aid workers are warning of a humanitarian crisis amidst
sectarian violence in the Central African Republic. The local coordinator of
Doctors Without Borders says that more than 100,000 people have now sought
shelter at one camp for the displaced in the capital Bangui.
Lindis Hurum: "For three weeks now, these people haven’t
received any other assistance but health assistance from Doctors Without
Borders and water from the Red Cross. There are no toilets. Water is not
sufficient. There’s no food distribution, no distribution of shelter. So
there’s so much to do. And first of all, we have to improve the situation with
the hygiene as soon as possible, before the situation becomes catastrophic,
with 100,000 people in such a small place. It’s an emergency. We must do
something quickly."
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Regional Leaders Set Deadline for Talks in South Sudan
African leaders have set a deadline of Tuesday for talks between
the South Sudanese government and rebel fighters. More than 1,000 people have
died and tens of thousands have been displaced in over two weeks of fighting
between government forces and rebels loyal to the country’s ousted former vice
president. At a summit in Kenya, Ethiopia’s foreign minister read a statement
on behalf of regional countries supporting South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom: "Welcomed the
commitment by the government of the Republic of South Sudan to an immediate
cessation of hostilities and called upon Dr. Riek Machar and other parties to
make similar commitments. Determined that if hostilities do not cease within
four days of this communiqué, the summit will consider taking further measures.
Condemns all unconstitutional actions to challenge the constitutional order,
democracy and the rule of law, and in particularly condemns changing the
democratic government of the Republic of South Sudan through the use of
force."
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Judge Upholds NSA’s Bulk Collection of Phone Data
A federal judge has upheld the National Security Agency’s bulk
collection of U.S. telephone data just days after a separate court reached an
opposite opinion. On Friday, District Judge William Pauley dismissed a lawsuit
from the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the NSA’s mass collection
of U.S. phone records. Pauley said telephone metadata could have potentially
prevented the 9/11 attacks by alerting the government to hijackers who made
phone calls from the United States. The issue will likely head to the Supreme
Court. Pauley’s ruling comes less than two weeks after another federal judge
questioned the program’s constitutionality and described the bulk collection as
"almost Orwellian."
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Report: Secretive NSA Unit Hacks Into Computers, Intercepts
Packages
The German publication Der Spiegel has revealed new details about
a secretive hacking unit inside the National Security Agency called the Office
of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to hack
into global communications traffic. Hackers inside the TAO have developed a way
to break into computers running Microsoft Windows by gaining passive access to
machines when users report program crashes to Microsoft. With help from the CIA
and FBI, the NSA has the ability to intercept computers and other electronic
accessories purchased online in order to secretly insert spyware and components
that can provide backdoor access for spies.
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Jobless Benefits Expire for 1.3 Million Americans
Jobless benefits have expired for over 1.3 million Americans after
Congress failed to renew them under the recent budget deal. The program
provided up to 47 weeks of supplemental unemployment insurance payments to
jobless people looking for work. Just a quarter of unemployed Americans will
now receive jobless benefits — the smallest proportion in half a century.
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Healthcare Enrollment Jumps in December
The White House says nearly two million people have signed up
for health insurance plans through the federal and state exchanges in the first
three months of enrollment. Over 1.1 million signed up through the federal
website HealthCare.gov, including some 975,000 in December.
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Egypt Faces Violence, Protests After Anti-Brotherhood Crackdown
Egypt is facing continued violence and unrest amidst the latest
escalation of the military government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. On
Sunday, four soldiers were wounded when a bomb struck a military building north
of Cairo. A bombing last week prompted the Egyptian government to deem the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, even though a separate militant
group claimed responsibility. One person was killed and more than 100 were
detained over the weekend in student protests against the anti-Brotherhood
crackdown. Buildings on the Al-Azhar University campus were set on fire during
the unrest. Egypt is set to hold a referendum on a new constitution next month.
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4 Al Jazeera Journalists Detained in Cairo
Egyptian forces have arrested four journalists with the news
network Al Jazeera in Cairo. Correspondent Peter Greste, producers Mohamed
Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, and cameraman Mohamed Fawzy were detained at their
hotel on Sunday. Al Jazeera is calling for their immediate release. Egypt’s
military government has repeatedly targeted Al Jazeera, raiding offices,
ordering an affiliate’s closure and deporting several staffers.
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Saudi Arabia Grants $3 Billion in Aid to Lebanese Military
Lebanon is receiving $3 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia. The
Lebanese government says the money will go to its military, the largest-ever
grant for Lebanon’s armed forces. The announcement follows Friday’s bombing in
Beirut that killed five people, including former minister Mohamad Chatah, a
critic of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
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Thousands Protest Relocation of U.S. Military Base on Okinawa
Thousands of people have rallied on the Japanese island of
Okinawa in protest of plans to relocate a U.S. military base. Local officials
signed on to a deal last week that will move the base from a densely populated
urban area to a more remote location. But a movement of Okinawa residents has
opposed the base altogether and pushed for ousting U.S. forces off the island,
citing environmental concerns and sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers on local
residents. On Friday, thousands of people surrounded a government building and
staged a sit-in inside.
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U.S. Intel Warns of Afghan Collapse Without Security Pact
A new U.S. intelligence estimate warns Afghanistan will likely
descend into chaos unless the two sides can sign a long-term agreement to
maintain American troops. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has delayed
ratification of a security pact that would keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan
after 2014. The National Intelligence Estimate says U.S. gains will be eroded
within three years without a large military presence to fight the Taliban.
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Anti-Polio Health Worker Shot Dead in Pakistan
A health worker overseeing a polio vaccination effort in
Pakistan has been shot dead. The victim was the latest medical official to be
killed in the fallout from the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden. The
Taliban began attacking health workers after it was revealed the CIA used a
fake vaccination program to help locate bin Laden.
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Report: No Al-Qaeda Role in Benghazi Attack, Video Played Role
A new investigation challenges right-wing claims around the
deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year. The New York
Times reports there is no evidence al-Qaeda or other international militants
played a role in the assault that killed four Americans, including Ambassador
Christopher Stevens. The attack was coordinated by local militia who in fact
benefited from the U.S.-backed NATO intervention against Col. Muammar Gaddafi.
It also appears that anger over an anti-Islam film produced in the United
States, "The Innocence of Muslims," helped fuel the attack, as the
Obama administration initially claimed.
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Parents of NYPD Victims Protest Bratton’s Appointment
Protests are continuing in New York City over incoming Mayor
Bill de Blasio’s appointment of William Bratton as the next police
commissioner. Bratton returns to the job after leading the New York City Police
Department in the mid-1990s, when he embraced a controversial strategy of
cracking down on low-level offenses. De Blasio campaigned on a promise to curb
the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy, but Bratton actually expanded
the program while heading the Los Angeles police. On Friday, the parents of
victims shot dead by police under Bratton’s watch led a protest march from
Harlem to the Bronx. Nicholas Heyward Sr. lost his 13-year-old son after police
mistook the boy’s toy rifle for a real gun.
Nicholas Heyward Sr.: "I’m angry today. I’ve been angry
since hearing that Bill de Blasio has chosen Bill Bratton to be the next police
commissioner again. You see, back in 1994, my son was murdered, and he was
gunned down by a New York City police officer. Whether it was housing or just a
city officer, you should have addressed that issue. But he failed to do that.
This protest is, you have parents and family out here who had their innocent
loved ones that were killed. That’s what we’re talking about. We do not wish
for William Bratton to be the police commissioner of New York City again."
Organizers say they plan to continue protests at de Blasio’s
inauguration on Wednesday.
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