Glenn’s latest Snowden scoop from last week is a memo between US and Israeli intelligence agencies outlining a broad agreement to share information, reported to include “intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens”:
The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies “pertaining to the protection of US persons”, repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights. But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive “raw Sigint” – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: “Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.” …
Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.
You can read the memo here. Matthew Brodsky isn’t too alarmed by the story:
Absent is the crucial fact that the MOU lays out the terms of the sharing agreement, recognizing the need for more procedures to minimize any information on American citizens. It obligates the NSA to perform routine checks on the program to measure the quality and fidelity of the information being shared and it places a similar obligation on the Israeli Signit National Unit to identify, exclude, and destroy any information it finds about US citizens.
But, according to the Guardian, the memo allows Israel to retain “‘any files containing the identities of US persons’ for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA’s special liaison adviser when such data is found”. So another government has the ability to spy on American citizens and retain that information for up to a year, and need merely consult with the NSA afterward. Effectively it fuses US intelligence with Israel’s – with respect to spying on Americans. I have to say I am not terribly thrilled by the idea of having my phones tapped by the Israelis in concert with the NSA. Joshua Foust unloads on the Guardian report, pointing out that the memo, from 2009, gives no idea of “how much, if any, American information actually gets passed along”. He also notes the following unanswered questions in Greenwald’s story:
What the final version of this MOU says;
Whether it changed after minimization rules strengthened later in 2009;
What those “additional procedures” to minimize American citizen information are;
How much, if any, American information actually gets passed along;
What the periodic, annual reviews have said;
What the two biannual program reviews have said;
If the program is even ongoing; or
What the actual implementation of this program looks like
Still, giving this level of access to a foreign government that is, in some cases, clearly at odds with US foreign policy, seems like an awful amount of trust to me. And this reassurance does not reassure:
The truth is that the US probably did not sign a binding document with Israel with official “teeth” because it does not need to. Israel is on a very short list of countries which receive massive intelligence information from the NSA. If Israel abuses the relationship, the US can just turn off the faucet. The one extra-legal scenario which still would likely not be covered would be where the NSA is winking at Israel to look under a rock which the NSA itself is not allowed to check.
The Dish 