Israel, the NSA, Plastic Brains and the Pathologically Rich
Links for Friday, May 30
Links
Two themes for today: our government’s best friend Israel, and your best friend, the very pathologically rich. Plus music, of course.
Israel and the NSA
Here’s an old link with new relevance. This story was broken by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskil in The Guardian in 2013 — Obama years, if you’re counting.
• NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel (The Guardian)
The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
According to the memo of understanding (linked immediately above), the deal is ongoing until cancelled.
Something else of interest from the same piece:
In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US.
If the Epstein suspicions prove true, would you consider them unlikely or obvious?
File under “Sauce for the goose.”
The Pathological Rich
You probably knew the rich got richer this year. Did you know by how much?
• Meet the World’s 24 Superbillionaires (Wall Street Journal)
As of early February, those superbillionaires’ … combined net worth totaled $3.3 trillion, equivalent to the nominal GDP of France.
Twenty-four people worth $3.3 trillion combined.
File under “What a world, what a world.”