WAYNE MADSEN REPORT: EDWARD SNOWDEN MERELY CONFIRMED WHAT WAS ALREADY REPORTED -- OVER FOUR YEARS AGO

The Guardian and The Washington Post did not have the scoop on NSA collection of meta-data. This news site published that story in February 2009, over four years before either The Guardian or the Post. There is a reason why they call us "conspiracy kooks," they can't stand the competition. <> http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/  >>WMR excerpt:

February 4, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT >> NSA's meta-data email surveillance program exposed

WMR has learned details of one of the most important components of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program code named "STELLAR WIND." The highly-classified STELLAR WIND program was initiated by the George W. Bush administration with the cooperation of major U.S. telecommunications carriers, including AT&T and Verizon. 

The interception of text communications by STELLAR WIND was a major priority of the NSA program.

The major NSA system for intercepting text communications is called PINWALE. On September 15, 2008, WMR first reported on how PINWALE was used to target Russian e-mails, "Code-named PINWALE, the NSA email surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic, and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA eavesdroppers."

WMR has learned additional details of PINWALE. The system is linked to a number of meta-databases that contain e-mail, faxes, and text messages of hundreds of millions of people around the world and in the United States. Informed sources have revealed to WMR that PINWALE can search these meta-databases using various parameters like date-time group, natural language, IP address, sender and receipients, operating system, and other information embedded in the header. When an NSA analyst is looking for Farsi or Arabic e-mails, the sender and recipients are normally foreign nationals, who are not covered by restrictions on eavesdropping on U.S. "persons" once imposed on NSA by United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18). 

However, STELLAR WIND and PINWALE negated both USSID 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by permitting NSA analysts to read the e-mails, faxes, and text messages of U.S. persons when PINWALE search parameters included searches of e-mails in English. When English language text communications are retrieved, analysts read the text message content to determine whether it contains anything to do with terrorism. However, rather than being deleted, the messages are returned to the meta-databases. 

Text message records in PINWALE, a system developed by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, are contained in three major meta-databases code-named LIONHEART, LIONROAR, and LIONFUSION.



July 7, 2013 -- The Guardian's correction and correction to the correction

For the record

• On Saturday night, the Observer published a story in print and online on the Guardian website, headlined "Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America". It dealt with the operational relationship between EU member states and the National Security Agency (NSA), suggesting that the US had signed a series of agreements stretching back decades, which allowed it to harvest surveillance data in a number of European countries, in addition to the UK. The documentary evidence for the story, which was based on a number of sources, was sound, but it was wrong to connect Wayne Madsen with this story in any way. For this reason, the original story was removed from the website, and the Observer splash was replaced. A rewritten version of the story was later published on the website.

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From The Observer: Comment

Wayne Madsen

• Regarding the Observer's correction of 5 July 2013 [see For the Record], in which you said it was wrong to connect [me with] the article "Revealed: Secret deals with Europeans...", I wish to inform your readers that I provided your reporter, on his request after he contacted me, with the two documents on which the article was based.

Wayne Madsen

• Sent via email

Information that is already in the public domain can still be spiked and censored: Like this article on European Union countries complaining about NSA surveillance while they assist NSA is conducting that very same surveillance. This article in The Guardian was taken down because the surveillance powers are becoming uncomfortable in the sunshine.