Privacy Alert! Big Brother is watching and listening, UPDATED

Ron Paul: Fear Snowden Could Be Target of Drone Assassination

Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013 10:45 PM
By Paul Scicchitano

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Former GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul insisted on Tuesday that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is not a traitor, but he fears the U.S. government may send drones or a cruise missile to kill the 29-year-old, who has fled the United States.

“I don’t think for a minute that he’s a traitor,” Paul told Fox Business’ Melissa Francis.

“Everybody’s worried about him and what they’re going to do, and how they’re going to convict him of treason, and how they’re going to kill him, but what about the people who destroy our Constitution?” the former Texas Republican congressman asserted. “What kind of penalty for those individuals who just take the Fourth Amendment and destroy it? What do we think about people who assassinate American citizens without trials and assume that that’s the law of the land? That’s where our problem is.”

Paul said that “our problem isn’t with people who are trying to tell us the truth about what’s happening” as in the case of Snowden, and he fears that the U.S. government may try to kill the former contractor.

“I’m worried about somebody in our government might kill him with a Cruise missile or a drone missile,” Paul said. “I mean we live in a bad time where American citizens don’t even have rights and that they can be killed, but the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what’s going on.”

Paul added that there are no signs Snowden is trying to sell U.S. government secrets to Russia or another foreign government, otherwise he wouldn’t have made himself so vulnerable.

“He’s not defecting, there are no signs of that happening,” Paul said. “It’s a shame that we are in an age where people who tell the truth about what the government is doing get into trouble.”

He pointed to the case of a CIA agent who was imprisoned for acknowledging that torture takes place at Guantanamo.

“This is not good that the American people are spied on and the secrets are kept in government,” he said. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/snowden-ron-paul-drones/2013/06/11...

ACLU Sues Obama Administration Over Dragnet Phone Record Collections

Posted by Andrea Ryan on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 4:38 PM
Today, the ACLU did what the ACLU does best…file lawsuits. This time it’s against the Obama Administration for illegally collecting phone records of millions of Americans.
The New York Times reports,

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged.
The lawsuit, filed in New York, could set up an eventual Supreme Court test. It could also focus attention on this disclosure amid the larger heap of top secret surveillance matters that were disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor who came forward on Sunday to say he was the source of a series of disclosures by The Guardian and The Washington Post.
The program “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” the complaint says, adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the A.C.L.U. for legal assistance.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Glenn Greenwald: There Are “Dozens of Stories” to Be Released on NS...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 1:53 PM
On Sunday, The Guardian reported that Edward Snowden was the 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history. Snowden spoke out from his hiding place in Hong Kong on his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadow.
Today Guardian contributor Glenn Greenwald told reporters there’s more to come,

“We’re going to have a lot more significant revelations that have not yet been heard over the next several weeks and months. How fast we get the next one out is something we’re deciding now. But there are dozens of more stories generated by the documents he provided.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...;v=217c80nGFLI

Justice Department Prepares Charges Against NSA Leaker Snowden
Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013 09:34 AM
The Justice Department is preparing charges against Edward Snowden, the former federal government contract worker who revealed the National Security Agency's vast secret surveillance program, ABC News reported.


Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contract company Snowden worked for, confirmed Tuesday that Snowden, whose salary was $122,000, was fired Monday for violating the firm's code of ethics.The FBI's Washington field office will oversee the investigation of Snowden, who said he leaked the classified information to Britain's Guardian newspaper because he wanted the American public to know the extent of the government's clandestine surveillance activities.

Meanwhile, an internal review has been launched to solely assess damage to national security, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Reuters. This review is separate from an initial criminal-leak investigation opened by the Justice Department.


The administration's review will examine the extent of damage to national security programs from the unauthorized disclosures of details of NSA's collection of phone call and email data, the official told Reuters.It will be coordinated by the National Counterintelligence Executive, a branch of the Director of National Intelligence's office, the official said.

It is unclear whether Snowden is still in Chinese territory or has left for another country such as Iceland, where he has said he may seek asylum, reports The New York Times. The Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, where he had been staying, said he checked out on Monday.


Kerri Jo Heim, a real estate agent in Hawaii, told the Times that police on June 5 visited the Oahu house Snowden shared with his girlfriend. By then, Snowden already was in Hong Kong.The paper said that pressing charges against the 29-year-old information-technology contractor would help the government in any extradition moves, as governments are generally reluctant to hand over suspects unless they have been formally charged.

Legal experts in Hong Kong said the government there likely would extradite Snowden to the United States if it found him and Washington requested that it do so.


"He won't find Hong Kong a safe harbor," said Regina Ip, a former secretary of security who is a member of the legislature.Meanwhile, Russia said it would weigh an asylum request from Snowden."We will take action based on what actually happens. If we receive such a request, it will be considered," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry told the Russian newspaper Kommersant on Tuesday, according to the Wall Street Journal.


The head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia's State Duma, its lower house of parliament, acknowledged that there would be "hysteria" in the U.S. if his country were to grant Snowden asylum.Writing on Twitter, Alexei Pushkov said, "Having promised Snowden refuge, Moscow is taking up the defense of those persecuted for political reasons. There would be hysteria in the U.S. In listening to phone calls and tracking Internet activity, U.S. intelligence agencies have violated the laws of their own country."


Referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Pushkov said, "In this sense, Snowden -- like Assange -- is a human-rights activist."Despite Snowden's youth and lack of university education, he was able to get a job with Booz Allen which allowed him almost unfettered access to private information on just about anyone in the country.

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email," he told Britain's Guardian newspaper.


He said he handed highly sensitive documents to journalists because the extent of the official snooping appeared to him to be part of an "architecture of oppression."

Snowden's leaks showed that the government had obtained a record of every phone call made from Verizon cellphones. They also showed that Internet giants such as Facebook, Yahoo, Google, and Apple had cooperated with the government in giving up billions of pieces of information about the web use of individuals.


Lawmakers in Washington are preparing for full briefings on the Snowden affair. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said her panel would hold a closed briefing for all senators on Thursday to hear from the NSA, FBI, and Department of Justice officials. A similar hearing is to be held in the House on Tuesday.


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/snowden-justice-leaks-charges/2013...

Rand Paul: Big Brother is Watching

Tuesday, 11 Jun 2013 11:21 AM
By Dan Weil

The National Security Agency's surveillance program is a manifestation of a virtual police state, libertarian Republican Sen. Rand Paul says.

"If this is the new normal in America, then Big Brother certainly is watching and it's not hyperbolic or extreme to say so," the Kentucky senator writes in The Wall Street Journal.

"Nor is it unreasonable to fear which parts of the Constitution this government will next consider negotiable or negligible."

Paul is upset with President Barack Obama's response to the public outcry over the program. Obama said, "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother . . . but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."

Paul heartily disagrees. The NSA program violates the Fourth Amendment, he says.

"How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon? Hundreds of millions. We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies," he says.

"These are the 'details,' and few Americans consider this approach 'balanced,' though many rightly consider it Orwellian."

Paul says he doesn't trust the government to safeguard the privacy of the records it collects. "The president assures us that the government is simply monitoring the origin and length of phone calls, not eavesdropping on their contents," the senator writes.

"Is this administration seriously asking us to trust the same government that admittedly targets political dissidents through the Internal Revenue Service and journalists through the Justice Department?"

Paul says the White House understates the magnitude of the NSA program. "Monitoring the records of as many as a billion phone calls, as some news reports have suggested, is no modest invasion of privacy," he states.

"It is an extraordinary invasion of privacy. We fought a revolution over issues like generalized warrants, where soldiers would go from house to house, searching anything they liked." This is the modern equivalent, Paul says.

"I also believe that trolling through millions of phone records hampers the legitimate protection of our security," he writes. Despite all the government's data mining, it didn't act on the information that one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects traveled to Chechnya, Paul notes.

"Perhaps instead of treating every American as a potential terror suspect the government should concentrate on more targeted analysis."

The administration simply claims blanket access to all Americans' private information, Paul says. "This response is a clear indication that the president views our Constitutional 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects' as null and void."


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/rand-paul-big-brother/2013/06/11/i...

Senators Confront Alexander Over NSA Prism Scandal UPDATE: PUNT

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by Breitbart News 12 Jun 2013, 10:55 AM PDT post a comment
UPDATE: At the start of Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Chair Sen. Barbara Mikulski announced she has agreed to Vice-Chair Sen. Richard Shelby's request to have a full hearing on revelations about NSA surveillance and its PRISM data-mining program. The previously scheduled hearing, as a result, will focus on cyber-security issues generally and will not address the recent scandal. Gen. Alexander will face Senators' questions about the programs another day. More updates below.

What was once scheduled as an ordinary hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee has become a closely-watched spectacle Wednesday, as National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander testifies on the NSA and Prism scandals. New revelations are still emerging about the vast extent to which the agency has been monitoring telephone calls and Internet traffic--not just among foreign nationals but U.S. citizens.
Senators were expected to ask Alexander to explain, in public, the extent and detail of the NSA's surveillance programs. In particular, the Senate has shown interest in whether Alexander, like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, had appeared to mislead Congress in 2012 when asked directly about such spying.
Other legislators, both in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have shown concern about how a low-level contractor, Edward Snowden, was able to obtain top secret information--and how he was able to leak it to the media. Snowden is thought to be in Hong Kong, where he intends to fight likely extradition.
UPDATE: National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander, in his opening remarks before the Committee, said technological advances present an "incredible opportunity" for the nation in fields like education and medical care. He said these opportunities are complicated, though, by cyber espionage.
He said "disruptive attacks against infrastructure" can potentially become "destructive attacks" if they are not prevented.
Alexander said government cannot prevent these attacks without the support from industry because they "own and operate the nation's infrastructure" and said the government had to be transparent in its dealings with industry. He also said those at the National Security Agency take civil liberty concerns to heart.
UPDATE: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said he was not going to get into a discussion today about whether Director of National Intelligence James Clapper misled Congress during his testimony on March 12.
"I'm not going into questions on whether he contradicted himself in a couple of answers," Leahy said.
UPDATE: Alexander said he is pushing to declassify some records about attacks the National Security Agency thwarted by using the various data surveillance programs "within a week."
"I want the American people to know we are being transparent," he told Leahy.
Alexander said he would give selected Members of Congress more classified information as well.
UPDATE: Alexander told Leahy Section 702 of FISA was critical in helping the agency stop Najibullah Zazi from bombing the NYC subway system in 2009. He said Section 702 "was the one that allowed us to know what was happening."
When asked if Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the agency may be using as the legal basis for the PRISM program, was critical to Zazi, he said, "Not to Zazi, because the first part in Zazi went to 702." He did say Section 215 helped stop "dozens" of attacks.
He then said these authorities ultimately "compliment each other" and "work together" in helping the National Security Agency identify threats.
UPDATE: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked Alexander if he was concerned that someone like NSA leaker Edward Snowden could get such access to the nation's secrets.
Alexander responded that he had "great concerns" and it was something he had to fix and will look at.

"In the IT arena, some of these people have tremendous skills to operate networks, and that was his job," Alexander said. "He had great skills in the area." Alexander said Durbin's concerns were not unfounded, and the NSA needed to "go back and look" at "where we went wrong."
UPDATE: Alexander said the agency had some records of one of the 9/11 hijackers and suggested they could have gone "backwards in time" if they were able to get various phone numbers.
When Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) asked Alexander if the agency can see what Americans are "googling or emailing," Alexander said he needed a court order to search the contents of the records of any American.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) then clarified and said, "It's my understanding that you have the meta data, you have the records, if you want to go to the content, you need a court order ... to collect the content of the calls [just like you would in a criminal case]. Alexander then emphasized the agency needed to get a court order to look at the contents of phone and email records of any American.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) asked Alexander to describe the process the agency goes through to collect data on Americans. Alexander said the NSA does not get to "swim through" the data.
"What authorization gave you the grounds for acquiring my cell phone data?" Merkley asked while holding up his Verizon cell phone.
Alexander said it is a "complex area" and he needed to get the Department of Justice involved in the response so he gets it exactly right. Alexander suggested they discuss the matter at the classified hearing tomorrow. Feinstein suggested Alexander give Merkley the answer in writing so that he gets it exactly right.
UPDATE:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) asked Alexander a "true or false" question about whether someone like Snowden could have the authority to tap into the phone and email records of nearly any American, as Snowden claimed in an interview with Glenn Greenwald.
"False, I know of no way to do that," Alexander said.
UPDATE: Alexander tells Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) that the agency is protecting America's civil liberties and privacy but could not explain it to Americans because the details were classified. Alexander said the NSA surveillance programs were not something the agency was doing "under the covers." He insisted the agency is doing nothing wrong.
Udall points out, though, that it is difficult to have "a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law."
UPDATE: Mikulski reads a tweet from a BuzzFeed reporter alleging she was "muzzling" senators so they do not ask questions about the NSA's phone and Internet surveillance programs. She insisted she was not "muzzling" or "stifling" any senator from asking such questions. She then said "hi" to the reporter and said it was an "open hearing."
UPDATE: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) says we are not in a scrimmage but a war and said at a briefing yesterday, one of the briefers told her about the cyber threat challenges the agency faces and explained to her that the Department of Defense is a "Coke bottle cap" and the federal civilian government (.gov) is the coke bottle itself. She said the "companies and citizens" (.com) are the "entire room the bottle is in." She said all the questions are being peppered to the top of the coke bottle but the "room that we are in" is the battleground that we are "fighting in." She said it takes "huge resources" and an unbelievable compromise between the government and private sector. The Coke bottle analogy Landrieu relayed seems to have left many perplexed.
UPDATE: Alexander that Feinstein's understanding that the NSA deletes phone records after five years was accurate.
UPDATE: Feinstein said it is important to show the cases at the classified briefing where the surveillance programs thwarted potential terrorist attacks. Alexander said he would attempt to do so.
UPDATE: Sen. Feinstein said many companies feel like they should only share information if they get liability protection. Alexander said liability insurance should be provided if the companies are sharing information with the government but not when they are sharing with other companies.
UPDATE: Mikulski said it is time for a "fresh, new national debate" about the balance beween privacy and security. She they will now move to a "closed hearing."
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/12/Senators-Confron...

FLASHBACK: Joe Biden Says Don’t Trust a Spying President (Video)

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 5:33 PM
Then Senator Joe Biden in 2006 said you can’t trust a spying president.

“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. The real question here is what do they do with this information they collect that does not have anything to do with Al-Qaeda? And we’re going to trust the president and the vice president of the United States that they’re doing the right thing. Don’t count me in on that.“
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LMfhC4CwUnM

Via TPNN and Special Report:
Under the Obama Administration… FBI requests for records under Patriot Act have increased 1,000% in....

NSA Leaker: US Has Engaged in 61,000 Worldwide Hacking Operations

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 3:06 PM

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Via Drudge:
‘I’M NEITHER TRAITOR NOR HERO. I’M AN AMERICAN’…
SNOWDEN TALKS WITH SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST NEWSPAPER…
More explosive details on US surveillance targets…
Steps he claims US took since he broke cover…
His plans for the immediate future…
His fears for his family…
Will fight extradition…
LET HONG KONG DECIDE…
Not hiding…
NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the US government has engaged in 61,000 worldwide hacking operations.
The Washington Post reported:

Edward Snowden, the self-confessed leaker of secret surveillance documents, claimed Wednesday that the United States has mounted massive hacking operations against hundreds of Chinese targets since 2009.
The former contractor, whose work at the National Security Agency gave him access to highly classified U.S. intelligence, made the assertions in an interview with the South China Morning Post. The newspaper said he showed it “unverified documents” describing an extensive U.S. campaign to obtain information from computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.
“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he told the newspaper.
According to Snowden, the NSA has engaged in more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including hundreds aimed at Chinese targets. Among the targets were universities, businesses and public officials.

George Orwell back in fashion as Prism stokes paranoia about Big Brother

Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a society in which liberty was impossible – so how should we respond to this new threat?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...Orwell-008.jpgMore relevant than ever … George Orwell, who saw the writer as a free individual striving for objective truth. Photograph: Rex Features

The NSA Prism surveillance scandal has been good news for George Orwell, and in particular for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was originally published in 1949. Sales of the centennial edition have risen by more than 7,000% on A... . Having been languishing at 13,074 in the list, it is now up to 193 and rising.

It may not rival Caroline Barnett's Willing to Walk on Water: Step Out in Faith and Let God Work Miracl..., which has miraculously surged from 144th to first in the past 24 hours with a 267,000% rise, but clearly many people are finding parallels between the US government's willingness to snoop on Joe Public's emails and phone calls and Orwell's vision of a future in which Big Brother is everywhere.
"Orwellian" is the word on everyone's lips. "The question is, what do freedom and liberty mean in the United States of America?" Senator Bernie Sanders asked in a TV interview this week. "What does our constitution mean? What kind of country do we want to be? Kids will grow up knowing that every damn thing that they do is going to be recorded somewhere in a file, and I think that will have a very Orwellian and inhibiting impact on our lives."
Not, it must be said, that Orwell really needs the publicity. Like Big Brother, he is always with us. DJ Taylor, who in 2003 wrote a biography of Orwell and for the past five years has been chairman of the Orwell Trust, makes a startling claim for the writer: "If you had to write down the names of the three writers in English who had had the greatest effect in communicating to the general public what books and literature were about," he says, "they would be Shakespeare, Dickens and Orwell."
The US has always been keen on Orwell: liberals warmed to him because of his warnings against the power of the state, conservatives because his books gave them a stick with which to beat communism. His influence has also been felt outside the English-speaking world. Editions of Ninety Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, published in 1945, circulated in the Soviet Union; he was – and indeed still is – revered in Poland, where his satires were widely read under communist rule; and Taylor believes he is being read in China today. Orwell has something to say to everyone who is suffering under autocracy.
However, readers who pick up Nineteen Eighty-Four because of the current worries over the Prism programme would be wrong just to see it as a novel about the dangers of overweening technology. The all-seeing telescreen in the corner of the room is an important device for allowing the state to exercise control, but Orwell's real concern is about far more insidious threats to liberty. The Big Brother state aims at nothing less than the control of language and thought. According to the slogans repeated by the Ministry of Truth, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." Deprive people of the words with which to resist, and you will crush resistance.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith's defining act of rebellion is to keep a diary, to attempt to record his thoughts and feelings accurately – not easy when the expressions you need have been obliterated or perverted. The greatest inhibition, to use Senator Sanders's word, is mental rather than physical.
The idea that governments could control people's minds terrified Orwell. Taylor argues that Nineteen Eighty-Four was born of paranoia – a paranoia that was apparent from the beginning of Orwell's writing career in the early 1930s. He lionised the writer as a free individual striving for objective truth, beholden to no special interests, yet everywhere he saw that freedom being circumscribed.
Orwell encapsulated those fears in his 1946 essay "The Prevention of Literature". "In our age," he wrote, "the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy … Everything conspires to turn the writer, and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed to him from above and never telling what seems to him the whole truth."
It is Orwell's paranoia that gives his writing its power and urgency, and which has kept it alive. . What we might learn from a broader understanding of that much-used (and sometimes abused) term "Orwellian" is that he would fear not only the technology of surveillance but our response to it. Are we willing to question its use? Will we demand greater oversight of the work of the security agencies? Will we hold our government to account? As long as there is a Winston Smith struggling to keep his diary, Big Brother has not won.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/jun/11/george-orwell...

Rand Paul: “I’m Leaving My Phone at Home” When I Go to GOP Meetings...

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 9:37 AM
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul joked with “CBS This Morning” that he’s not taking his phone with him anymore, after it came to light that the National Security Agency’s was secretly collecting phone records.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a4HDIYINtU4

“I’ve been jokingly saying I’m leaving my phone at home when I go to Republican leadership meetings because the President does not need to know where I am all day long.”

Paul also blasted Barack Obama over his surveillance hypocrisy.
For the record… FBI requests for records under Patriot Act have increased 1,000% in....

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Sign up to join the lawsuit below!

I'm looking for ten million Americans to stand with me and sue the federal government and TAKE BACK our rights.

Can I count on your help?

Without it, I truly fear where our fragile Republic could be headed . . .

Recent news reports revealed that Barack Obama's NSA is looking through billions of our emails and phone records every day!

Today I'm counting on your support.

Will you join my class-action lawsuit IMMEDIATELY?

Go here:

http://www.randpacusa.com/nsa_lawsui...2.aspx?pid=04b

Will You Stand With Senator Rand Paul in Class Action Lawsuit Against NSA?

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U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is planning to sue the NSA in a class action lawsuit over the out of control surveillance implemented by the U.S. government upon unsuspecting innocent citizens. While many people were fooled into supporting the “Patriot Act” in the name of “National Security”. It is a well known fact that the Patriot Act started during President Bush’s Administration has widely expanded during the Obama Administrationgiving the government “carte blanche” to watch everything we do. Claiming ultimate control over our lives. Sign to join in on the Lawsuit.

The government and different representatives within our government use the excuse that it is a “Good Thing” that it will help us to catch terrorists. In most people’s minds catching a terrorist is a great thing! No one wants a terrorist running around America threatening our “security” or killing our people. However, as I have reported in detail over the past year the DHS meaning of terrorist has changed. While the average American thinks of a terrorist in it’s actual definition, the government’s meaning is now “Evangelical Christians, Pro-Life, Tea-Party, Pro-Constitution, anyone against big government, etc…” The government through the Department of Homeland Security has completely changed the definition of terrorist and have used it to target everyday Americans as the enemy. The government is supporting arming the real terrorist’s “Syrian Rebels” “Al Qaeda” while targeting unsuspecting American citizens.

AMENDMENT IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

While the fourth Amendment is supposed to protect citizens from this sort of “tyrannical” behavior. We have seen over and over again within this administration complete disregard for the fourth amendment. Whether it be from the “Boston Lock Down“, Christopher Dorner, Fbi Raid, Marine Jose Guerena Killed in Botched Raid, Hacker facing more time than Steubenville rapists, FBI raids and violations.
According to reports over one billion records a day are collected in the name of “National Security” in the hopes that they will find a “terrorist.” Yet with all their “surveillance” it was a citizen that found the “Boston Bomber” not DHS, FBI, nor the Police. We all must realize what is at stake here. We must say enough is enough! We are not the enemy, and will not be treated as such.
Rand Paul: I’ll File A Class Action Lawsuit to Stop Government Snoo...

“I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I’m going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“If we get 10 million Americans saying, ‘We don’t want our phone records looked at’ then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington.”
Paul called the National Security Agency’s monitoring of telephone call logs and the Internet an “extraordinary invasion of privacy,” noting the agency is monitoring more than “a billion phone calls a day,” an alarming number that is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
“I think the American people are with me and I think if you talk to young people who use computers on a daily basis, they are absolutely with me,” Paul said, adding that the vast amount of information being collected is actually counterproductive in the war on terror.
“We are looking through so much data that I think it makes our fight against terrorism worse,” Paul said

Senator Rand Paul I do appreciate all of your efforts to defend our rights and our constitution. I support your actions in suing the government in a class action lawsuit. However, why hasn’t anyone come up with legislation to nullify the “Patriot Act” and the “NDAA”? Stop the funding, stop the programs that are destroying our rights and the rights of our children! Join in on Lawsuit here.
In all my years I have never seen such a disgusting excuse for representatives within our government that blatantly abuse our rights and defile the constitution. I am very thankful that at least some of our representatives are sounding the alarm and standing up for what is right. All representatives that are not standing for their oath to the constitution should immediately be removed from office, and charges filed against them for supporting tyranny instead of the Constitution. Wake up call to the representatives, you work for us not the other way around. The only reason they have this power is because WE THE PEOPLE gave it to them. It’s high time we take it back.
American freedom used to stand for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” but has now become a wide spread police state of “Do as I say and not as I do” “show me your papers” “thought crimes” “guilty until proven innocent” “kill lists” “all officers are above the law” “corrupt judges” “corruption all the way up to the White House” “American citizens are terrorist’s while the real terrorist’s are given arms” “placing weapons of war on the streets of America” etc…
Can we stop this? Only if everyone quits fighting among themselves and realizes All Americans as well as anyone that is in the country are in danger. It does not matter if your a liberal, democrat, republican, libertarian or don’t associate yourself with any party. EVERY PERSON IN AMERICA IS IN DANGER! We can not allow the government to continue on this path. If we do, America is gone and we all will be slaves to a system that makes Hitler and Stalin look like a pipe dream.
Will you join Senator Rand Paul in this class action lawsuit? Will we stand united against those whom choose to abuse their powers against us? Will we stand united or will we fall apart? The choice is up to you, as for me I stand with Senator Rand Paul on this one.
UNITED WE STAND. GOD BLESS AMERICA


Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/rand-paul-asks-americans-to-join-...

Do not extradite Edward Snowden, protesters urge Hong Kong

Demonstrators call on government to protect NSA whistleblower and attack US over internet spying programmes

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 15 June 2013 08.12 EDT



Hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Hong Kong despite heavy rain to support the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and press the US to change its surveillance policies.

The gathering on Saturday came hours before Hong Kong's chief executive, CY Leung, broke days of silence on the case. He promised to "follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated".
His spokesman declined to elaborate on what that follow-up may entail, the South China Morning Post said.
Snowden has alleged that the US hacked hundreds of targets in Hong Kong and on mainland China.

Leung's statement said the government would handle Snowden's case "in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong".Human rights groups and other organisations arranged the rally after Snowden, a US citizen, told the South China Morning Post that he planned to stay in the territory and "ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate". Three days earlier he revealed his identity and his presence in Hong Kong in a video interview with the Guardian.

Protesters waved placards and chanted "protect free speech – protect Snowden" as they rallied in the centre of the city before marching past the US consulate and gathering outside government offices.Hong Kong has a well-used surrender treaty with the US. Supporters say they are concerned that Beijing may intervene in the decision and are worried about his treatment if he is sent back to the US.
Legislator Charles Mok told the crowd of more than 500 that they were there to protect not just Snowden but "all of us", given the allegations about US surveillance.

Albert Ho Chun-yan, a high-profile Democratic politician, said: "It's unlawful, unjustified and unscrupulous … We demand the whole truth be disclosed by the US administration, an unconditional apology from [President Barack] Obama and an assurance this interference will stop."
Allen Kuo, 43, who works in finance, said that as an American the behaviour of the US was "an embarrassment". Holding a sign reading "We stand with Snowden", he said: "People say he is a traitor and what he has done is illegal. I think spying on American people is unconstitutional and we need to address that first."

Protestors came from a range of ages and nationalities. Teacher Mary Stickley, who has lived in Hong Kong for 17 years, said: "This is my first ever march; I just felt pretty strongly about it."Ruth Jopling, whose two young daughters were clutching Snowden masks, said: "We think it does not just affect us, but the next generation. That's why we have come as a family. It's time to stand up: he came to Hong Kong, so he must trust us to do something, and it's not good if we let him down."

One placard in the crowd read "Read my lips, not my emails". Others had images of Obama above the slogan "Big brother is watching you".
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...stles--010.jpg

Several pictured both the US president and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, reinforcing the message from many protesters that they should not have to choose between criticising the US or Beijing.Oiwan Lam, one of the rally's organisers, said: "In the past we have campaigned against Beijing, usually against their violations of rights and free speech … It's not fair to use one evil to cover another."
Tsui Hon Kong, of the Professional Teachers Union, which backed the protest, compared Snowden's case to that of a Chinese journalist who leaked a propaganda directive banning discussion of the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown on the student protests in Tiananmen Square. Shi Tao was jailed after Yahoo handed email records to the Chinese government.

Tsui said the case was similar because it was about governments ordering internet providers to give them information about customers. "The important thing is that many Americans came forward to speak up for Shi Tao. Now it's our turn," he said.
Several hundred people participated, but the numbers were small compared with other recent demonstrations. A vigil on the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown this month drew tens of thousands.

A small poll conducted for the South China Morning Post found that one in two Hong Kong residents did not believe Snowden should be returned if the US made a surrender request.Half of the 509 respondents in the poll, conducted by the Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey at Chinese University, said they were against or strongly against his surrender, the Post reported.
Nearly one in five said Hong Kong should hand him over, and the remainder refused to answer or said they had not formed an opinion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...ong-protesters

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...stles--005.jpg
Demonstrators call on government to protect NSA whistleblower and attack US over internet spying programmes

• Snowden supporters march – in pictures
• Surveillance request figures revealed
• NSA program 'not the American way'
• FBI chief says spy tactics could have stopped 9/11
• Surveillance 'did not collect European data in bulk'
• Senators challenge NSA claim of foiling attacks

Edward Snowden's worst fear has not been realised – thankfully

The NSA whistleblower's only concern was that his disclosures would be met with apathy. Instead, they're leading to real reform


Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' This column was written by Glenn Greenwald for the Guardian's newspaper edition
In my first substantive discussion with Edward Snowden, which took place via encrypted online chat, he told me he had only one fear. It was that the disclosures he was making, momentous though they were, would fail to trigger a worldwide debate because the public had already been taught to accept that they have no right to privacy in the digital age.


Snowden, at least in that regard, can rest easy. The fallout from the Guardian's first week of revelations is intense and growing.
If "whistleblowing" is defined as exposing secret government actions so as to inform the public about what they should know, to prompt debate, and to enable reform, then Snowden's actions are the classic case.US polling data, by itself, demonstrates how powerfully these revelations have resonated. Despite a sustained demonization campaign against him from official Washington, a Time magazine poll found that 54% of Americans believe Snowden did "a good thing", while only 30% disagreed. That approval rating is higher than the one enjoyed by both Congress and President Obama.


While a majority nonetheless still believes he should be prosecuted, a plurality of Americans aged 18 to 34, who Time says are "showing far more support for Snowden's actions", do not. Other polls on Snowden have similar results, including a Reuters finding that more Americans see him as a "patriot" than a "traitor".On the more important issue – the public's views of the NSA surveillance programs – the findings are even more encouraging from the perspective of reform. A Gallup poll last week found that more Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the two NSA spying programs revealed last week by the Guardian.


As always with polling data, the results are far from conclusive or uniform. But they all unmistakably reveal that there is broad public discomfort with excessive government snooping and that the Snowden-enabled revelations were met with anything but the apathy he feared.But, most importantly of all, the stories thus far published by the Guardian are already leading to concrete improvements in accountability and transparency. The ACLU quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the legality, including the constitutionality, of the NSA's collection of the phone records of all Americans. The US government must therefore now defend the legality of its previously secret surveillance program in open court.


These revelations have also had serious repercussions in Congress. The NSA and other national security state officials have been forced to appear several times already for harsh and hostile questioning before various committees.To placate growing anger over having been kept in the dark and misled, the spying agency gave a private briefing to rank-and-file members of Congress about programs of which they had previously been unaware. Afterward, Democratic Rep Loretta Sanchez warned that the NSA programs revealed by the Guardian are just "the tip of the iceberg". She added: "I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."


It is hardly surprising, then, that at least some lawmakers are appreciative rather than scornful of these disclosures. Democratic Sen Jon Tester was quite dismissive of the fear-mongering from national security state officials, telling MSNBC that "I don't see how [what Snowden did] compromises the security of this country whatsoever". He added that, despite being a member of the Homeland Security Committee, "quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn't aware of before".


These stories have also already led to proposed legislative reforms. A group of bipartisan senators introduced a bill which, in their words, "would put an end to the 'secret law' governing controversial government surveillance programs" and "would require the Attorney General to declassify significant Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinions, allowing Americans to know how broad of a legal authority the government is claiming to spy on Americans under the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act".


The disclosures also portend serious difficulties for the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, and NSA chief, Keith Alexander. As the Guardian documented last week, those officials have made claims to Congress – including that they do not collect data on millions of Americans and that they are unable to document the number of Americans who are spied upon – that are flatly contradicted by their own secret documents.


This led to one senator, Ron Wyden, issuing a harshly critical statement explaining that the Senate's oversight function "cannot be done responsibly if senators aren't getting straight answers to direct questions", and calling for "public hearings" to "address the recent disclosures and the American people have the right to expect straight answers from the intelligence leadership to the questions asked by their representatives".One well-respected-in-Washington national security writer, Slate's centrist Fred Kaplan, has called for Clapper's firing. "It's hard," he wrote, "to have meaningful oversight when an official in charge of the program lies so blatantly in one of the rare open hearings on the subject."


The fallout is not confined to the US. It is global. Reuters this week reported that "German outrage over a US Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi."


Indeed, Viviane Reding, the EU's justice commissioner, has, in the words of the New York Times, "demanded in unusually sharp terms that the United States reveal what its intelligence is doing with personal information of Europeans gathered under the Prism surveillance program revealed last week". She is particularly insistent that EU citizens be given some way to find out whether their communications were intercepted by the NSA.


In the wake of the Guardian's articles, I heard from journalists and even government officials from around the world interested in learning the extent of the NSA's secret spying on the communications of their citizens. These stories have resonated globally, and will continue to do so, because the NSA's spying apparatus is designed to target the shared instruments used by human beings around the world to communicate with one another.


The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform. A key purpose of journalism is to provide an adversarial check on those who wield the greatest power by shining a light on what they do in the dark, and informing the public about those acts. Both purposes have been significantly advanced by the revelations thus far.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...r-not-realised

• 
  

Secure Reagan.com email service sees bump in privacy-conscious subscribers after NSA news

7:35 AM 06/15/2013

Weekly activity among Reagan.com emailhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png address owners has “more than doubled since the NSA news was released,” a spokesman for the service told The Daily Caller on Friday.The $40 per year email servicehttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png promises to “not copy, scan, or sell one word of your email account” and to give President Ronald Reagan’s admirers a conspicuous way to express their fondness — through a @reagan.com email address.


And if the government comes knocking?


“The answer would be no,” Michael Reagan, the son of the late president and a part-owner of the email servicehttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png, told TheDC Friday.
“We are firm believers in the Fourth Amendment,” agreed Gregory Noack, a Reagan.com spokesman. “We would not participate in any blanket request for any information about our members.”That could be a compelling selling point for the “official email provider of the conservative movement” — as the site calls itself — following the news that major email providershttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png like Google and Yahoo! have secretly provided the federal government with access to their users’ communications over the years.

“People need to know there is a spot where you can go where these things don’t happen,” Reagan told TheDC.
People are noticing.

“Since a week and a half ago we have seen a significant uptick in businesshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png,” Noak explained. “Weekly activity” on the site has “more than doubled since the NSA news was released.”While the site didn’t provide TheDC with its subscriber numbers, a doubling of activity could represent a significant jump for the fledgling email service, which launched in 2012 with an ad campaign on the widely listened to Rush Limbaugh Program.


The idea for the service stemmed out of conversations between Michael Reagan and a group of conservative business men in Chicago.
The group got together and decided that the same privacy protections used online to help large financial institutionshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png trade investments securely could be extended to everyday users of email. Michael Reagan turned over the keys to Reagan.com and the crew set to work building their answer to the popular “free” email services.“In any way that we can measure it, it’s been a complete success,” Noak told TheDC. “People not only want their privacy — they value that — they’re learning what it costs to have a free email address.”

He pointed to the advertisements that services like Gmail display to their users based on the content of their inboxes.
Such users ”pay for it with their privacy,” Noak said. “That’s why we charge for the service. There are no ads on the site [and] we don’t sell our members information.”


Michael Reagan says the revelation that the bigger emailshttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png services give the government access to private communications “absolutely” gives his site an advantage.“Because it’s a place they can go that doesn’t sell their information, doesn’t give out the information to anyone,” Reagan said. “We just don’t do it.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/15/se...#ixzz2WOAZl3hE

From search engine Startpage.com:

No PRISM. No Surveillance. No Government Back Doors. You Have our Word on it.

Giant US government Internet spying scandal revealed

The Washington Post and The Guardian have revealed a US government mass Internet surveillance program code-named "PRISM". They report that the NSA and the FBI have been tapping directly into the servers of nine US service providers, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype, and began this surveillance program at least seven years ago. (clarifying slides)
These revelations are shaking up an international debate.
StartPage has always been very outspoken when it comes to protecting people's privacy and civil liberties. So it won't surprise you that we are a strong opponent of overreaching, unaccountable spy programs like PRISM. In the past, even government surveillance programs that were begun with good intentions have become tools for abuse, for example tracking civil rights and anti-war protesters.
Programs like PRISM undermine our Privacy, disrupt faith in governments, and are a danger to the free Internet.
StartPage and its sister search engine Ixquick have in their 14-year history never provided a single byte of user data to the US government, or any other government or agency. Not under PRISM, nor under any other program in the US, nor under any program anywhere in the world. We are not like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Apple, Skype, or the other US companies who got caught up in the web of PRISM surveillance.
Here's how we are different:

• StartPage does not store any user data. We make this perfectly clear to everyone, including any governmental agencies. We do not record the IP addresses of our users and we don't use tracking cookies, so there is literally no data about you on our servers to access. Since we don't even know who our customers are, we can't share anything with Big Brother. In fact, we've never gotten even a single request from a governmental authority to supply user data in the fourteen years we've been in business.
• StartPage uses encryption (HTTPS) by default. Encryption prevents snooping. Your searches are encrypted, so others can't "tap" the Internet connection to snoop what you're searching for. This combination of not storing data together with using strong encryption for the connections is key in protecting your Privacy.
• Our company is based in The Netherlands, Europe. US jurisdiction does not apply to us, at least not directly. Any request or demand from ANY government (including the US) to deliver user data, will be thoroughly checked by our lawyers, and we will not comply unless the law which actually applies to us would undeniably require it from us. And even in that hypothetical situation, we refer to our first point; we don't even have any user data to give. We will never cooperate with voluntary spying programs like PRISM.
• StartPage cannot be forced to start spying. Given the strong protection of the Right to Privacy in Europe, European governments cannot just start forcing service providers like us to implement a blanket spying program on their users. And if that ever changed, we would fight this to the end.

Privacy. It's not just our policy, it's our business.

Report: Verizon Built Separate Fiber-Optic Line Linked Directly to US Government (Video)

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, June 15, 2013, 11:43 AM
Verizon reportedly set up a fiber-optic line linked directly to the US government.
The Cashing In panel weighed in on this controversial discovery today.

Business Insider reported on the fiber-optic line:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CrwiVfbwjs&feature=player_embedded

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times — who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for this story on the NSA gaining the cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to customer data — mentioned a detail from 2007 (emphasis ours):

In Virginia, a telecommunications consultant reported, Verizon had set up a dedicated fiber-optic line running from New Jersey to Quantico, Va., home to a large military base, allowing government officials to gain access to all communications flowing through the carrier’s operations center.

Facebook Received Over 9,000 Requests For User Data From US Government in Last Half of 2012

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, June 15, 2013, 9:06 AM
http://4-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/...3DY4Z6WmF3.jpg
(Cognoscenti)
Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from the US government for user data in the last six months of 2012.

Press TV reported:

The social networking website Facebook says it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data from US government entities in the last six months of 2012.
The Internet giant said on Friday that the requests, which involved 18,000 to 19,000 of its users’ accounts, covered issues from minor crime to national security.
The disclosure comes after the British daily The Guardian on June 6 revealed a top secret US court order that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect data on millions of Americans who are customers of the major US phone company, Verizon.
Also on June 9, former CIA employee Edward Snowden, leaked documents exposing the widespread surveillance of US communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), as well as a separate NSA program code-named PRISM that allows the government to access private conversations conducted over Facebook, Google, Skype and other services.
Facebook’s General Counsel Ted Ullyot wrote on the company’s blog that the requests included topics “from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat.”
Meanwhile, he declined to say to what extent the company had met the requests

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JDwlHcBqtfg

Firefox Plug-in Warns Users Of NSA Surveillance


Saturday, June 15, 2013 0:16

(Before It's News)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day? The government is likely logging even the most mundane day-to-day computer habits of millions of Americans, but there’s a way to stand up against surveillance while also rocking out.
According to leaked NSA documents published by The Guardian last week, the United States National Security Agency is conducting dragnet surveillance of the communications of Americans, regularly receiving phone records for millions of Verizon customers while also being capable of accessing the conversations that occur over Facebook, Google and several other major Internet names through a program called PRISM. Now a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, New York has found a fun way of warning computer users about potential government surveillance, and he’s incorporated one of the best-selling rock albums ever in the process.
Justin Blinder released a plugin for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.
Blinder told the Guardian that he built the program over the course of four hours with the hopes he could “create some sort of ambient notification that you are on a site that is being surveiled by the NSA.”
“I was really interested in the fact that, although the PRISM leaks were a shock to many of us, we pretty much already kind of know we’re being surveiled a lot of the time and giving away so much data,” he said.
More: http://rt.com/usa/prism-floyd-nsa-surveillance-723/


Source: http://yeoldefalseflag.com/thread-firefox-plug-in-warns-users-of-nsa-surveillance http://image.b4in.net/report_abuse.png


http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative...&utm_campaign=



Firefox plug-in warns users of NSA surveillance

Get short URL
Published time: June 14, 2013 19:43
Edited time: June 15, 2013 02:23

http://rt.com/files/news/1f/6d/30/00/5.si.jpgAFP Photo / Leon Neal








Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day? The government is likely logging even the most mundane day-to-day computer habits of millions of Americans, but there’s a way to stand up against surveillance while also rocking out.
According to leaked NSA documents published by The Guardian last week, the United States National Security Agency is conducting dragnet surveillance of the communications of Americans, regularly receiving phone records for millions of Verizon customers while also being capable of accessing the conversations that occur over Facebook, Google and several other major Internet names through a program called PRISM. Now a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, New York has found a fun way of warning computer users about potential government surveillance, and he’s incorporated one of the best-selling rock albums ever in the process.
Justin Blinder released a plugin for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.

http://rt.com/files/news/1f/6d/30/00/14.jpgPRISM

Blinder told the Guardian that he built the program over the course of four hours with the hopes he could "create some sort of ambient notification that you are on a site that is being surveiled by the NSA."
"I was really interested in the fact that, although the PRISM leaks were a shock to many of us, we pretty much already kind of know we're being surveiled a lot of the time and giving away so much data," he said.
Upon news of the phone tracking program, even members of Congress said they couldn’t get over how much information was being shared between the telecoms and the government. Walking out of a briefing this Wednesday, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-California) said, "What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today,” and described her reaction as “astounded.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said the program “represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,” and the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government with a similar complaint filed in federal court.
Separate from leaking a document about the NSA’s access to phone records, former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden also gave The Guardian evidence of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and others sharing private communications of customers with the government. When “The Dark Side of the Prism” is installed, users of those sites will be reminded with one of the most iconic albums of the twentieth century.
"I just Googled 'Prism' and the cover came up," Blinder said. It just so happened that the long-time best-seller also fits the mood for exactly what the programmer was looking for.
"I didn’t want it to be too jarring because a lot of us seem to be giving in to being surveiled on a daily basis. I feel like people already know that. I didn't want it to be alarming,” he said.


http://rt.com/files/news/1f/6d/30/00/12.jpgImage from pinkfloyd.com

“The Dark Side of the Moon” was Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album and most commercially successfully, selling roughly 50 million copies and landing on the Billboard charts for 741 consecutive weeks. Surveillance, on the other hand, isn’t quite as popular: according to a Post/Washington Post poll released this week, 52 percent of Americans oppose the PRISM program.
With regards to Snowden, the American public is largely polarized on the issue. He’s been labeled as both a traitor and whistleblower and is currently the target of a Department of Justice investigation.
“He’s not a whistleblower, by the way, because a whistleblower actually wants the rule of law to be enforced,” Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff for then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, told Politics Confidential this week. “He copied documents and he made a run for it. He may be actually aiding our enemies.”
On his part, Snowden said he leaked the documents because, “I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.”
Earlier this year, Pink Floyd lyricist Roger Waters lent his support to Army Private first class Bradley Manning, who is currently on trial for the largest intelligence leak in US history.
“We need more whistl blowers,” Waters wrote in a statement. “Blowing the whistle on our behalf is not just brave, it is heroic and it is our duty.”


http://rt.com/usa/prism-floyd-nsa-surveillance-723/

WOW Gore is upset.....will wonders ever cease.....

Al Gore: NSA's secret surveillance program 'not really the American way'

Former vice-president – not persuaded by argument that program was legal – urges Congress and Obama to amend the laws

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...re-nsa-010.jpg Al Gore: 'I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don't do dial groups on the bill of rights.' Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The National Security Agency's blanket collection of US citizens' phone records was "not really the American way", Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful.In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, telling the Guardian security considerations should never overwhelm the basic rights of American citizens.


He also urged Barack Obama and Congress to review and amend the laws under which the NSA operated.
"I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way," Gore said in a telephone interview. "Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."


Since the 2000 elections, when Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidency to George W Bush, the former vice-president has tacked to the left of the Democratic party, especially on his signature issue of climate change. Gore spoke on Friday from Istanbul where he was about to lead one of his climate change training workshops for 600 global activists. Such three-day training sessions on behalf of the Climate Reality Project are now one of his main concerns.


Unlike other leading Democrats and his former allies, Gore said he was not persuaded by the argument that the NSA surveillance had operated within the boundaries of the law."This in my view violates the constitution. The fourth amendment and the first amendment – and the fourth amendment language is crystal clear," he said. "It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is."

Gore added: "This is not right."


The former vice-president was also unmoved by some recent opinion polls suggesting public opinion was in favour of surveillance
"I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don't do dial groups on the bill of rights," he said.
He went on to call on Barack Obama and Congress to review the laws under which the NSA expanded its surveillance. "I think that the Congress and the administration need to make some changes in the law and in their behaviour so as to honour and obey the constitution of the United States," he said. "It is that simple."
He rejected outright calls by the Republican chair of the house homeland security committee, Peter King, for prosecution of journalists who cover security leaks, such as the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald.


Gore did say, however, that he had serious concerns about some aspects of the testimony offered by national intelligence director James Clapper during testimony to the Senate intelligence committee last March.
Clapper, in response to pointed questions from Democratic senator Ron Wyden, had said during that appearance that the NSA did not collect data on Americans."I was troubled by his direct response to Senator Wyden's very pointed question," Gore said. "I was troubled by that."Gore has long had qualms about the expansion of the surveillance state in the digital age. He made those concerns public this year in his latest book, The Future: Six Drivers of Social Change, in which he warned: "Surveillance technologies now available – including the monitoring of virtually all digital information – have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place."


Within hours of the Guardian's first story about the NSA, the former vice-president tweeted: "In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?
He said on Friday: "Some of us thought that it was probably going on, but what we have learned since then makes it a cause for deep concern."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...tion1:sublinks

Glenn Beck Discusses DHS Insider "It's About To Get Ugly!"


06/14/2013


+Glenn Beck on Douglas Hagmann DHS Insider - Glenn Beck

http://www.hagmannandhagmann.com/upl...576/401062.jpg

Glenn Beck

Written by The Producer of The Hagmann and Hagmann Report.

On Monday of this week, June 10, 2013, Glenn Beck broke this story on his own syndicated radio show, "Its about to get ugly!" We have edited the clip down to only 4 minutes and 6 seconds so all of you can hear what he said on his show.


Here is what is on the Glenn Beck Web Site:


Over the weekend, Glenn read a shocking story out of Canada where a DHS insider warned that things were about to get very ugly very anyone exposing this administration either as a whistleblower or as a dissenting voice in the media.

Doug Hagmann with the Canadian Free Press explained his encounter with a DHS insider:

“If anyone thinks that what’s going on right now with all of this surveillance of American citizens is to fight some sort of foreign enemy, they’re delusional. If people think that this ‘scandal’ can’t get any worse, it will, hour by hour, day by day. This has the ability to bring down our national leadership, the administration and other senior elected officials working in collusion with this administration, both Republican and Democrats. People within the NSA, the Department of Justice, and others, they know who they are, need to come forth with the documentation of ‘policy and practice’ in their possession, disclose what they know, fight what’s going on, and just do their job. I have never seen anything like this, ever. The present administration is going after leakers, media sources, anyone and everyone who is even suspected of ‘betrayal.’ That’s what they call it, ‘betrayal.’ Can you believe the size of their cahones? This administration considers anyone telling the truth about Benghazi, the IRS, hell, you name the issue, ‘betrayal,’” he said.

“We know all this already,” I stated. He looked at me, giving me a look like I’ve never seen, and actually pushed his finger into my chest. “You don’t know jack,” he said, “this is bigger than you can imagine, bigger than anyone can imagine. This administration is collecting names of sources, whistle blowers and their families, names of media sources and everybody they talk to and have talked to, and they already have a huge list. If you’re not working for MSNBC or CNN, you’re probably on that list. If you are a website owner with a brisk readership and a conservative bent, you’re on that list. It’s a political dissident list, not an enemy threat list,” he stated.

After reading this story, Glenn forwarded it on to TheBlaze news team to verify it and see how it matched up with the information they were getting from their sources. What he received in response from the team at TheBlaze was one of the most chilling things he has ever read.

“I found that and I sent that immediately to my global information desk in New York,” Glenn said. “And this is the responsive: Glenn, I can’t tell you about this source or this story, but I can tell you this: One, our sources have been increasingly afraid and have insisted in some cases on similar clandestine arrangements to deliver information.”

“Two, they have avoided all e‑mails, cellphones from the get‑go and that is becoming even more the case of late,” he continued, “They have reported increased security and scrutiny on their jobs, along with warnings of what happens ‘to those that commit treason’.”

“Three, they are uniformly panicked and they feel what info they have has got to get out to be broadcast to the broadest possible group as quickly as possible. They are growing very frustrated by the lack of response from the American people and are becoming increasingly bold. See the Guardian and WaPo leaks.They have a fear that they are about to be shut down.”

“Four, many know far more than they have shared and they are trying to figure out ways, as are we, to insulate them so the information can be revealed.”

Glenn asked for the prayers and support of the audience, warning that things were only going to get harder from here.


The rest is here.

http://www.hagmannandhagmann.com/1/p...-get-ugly.html

http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/06/10/...t-to-get-ugly/

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Justin Blinder released a plugin for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.

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LOL excellent, I had no idea, thanks for posting Kathyet! :)

On Prism, partisanship and propaganda

Addressing many of the issues arising from last week's NSA stories

lhttp://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...enwald-140.jpg


http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...0-460x276.jpegJames Clapper, on Saturday decried the release of the information and said media reports about it have been inaccurate Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

(updated below - Update II - Update III)
I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities:

"What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . . . I can't speak to what we learned in there, and I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg . . . . I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."

The Congresswoman is absolutely right: what we have reported thus far is merely "the tip of the iceberg" of what the NSA is doing in spying on Americans and the world. She's also right that when it comes to NSA spying, "there is significantly more than what is out in the media today", and that's exactly what we're working to rectify.
But just consider what she's saying: as a member of Congress, she had no idea how invasive and vast the NSA's surveillance activities are. Sen. Jon Tester, who is a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the same thing, telling MSNBC about the disclosures that "I don't see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever" and adding: "quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn't aware of before because I don't sit on that Intelligence Committee."
How can anyone think that it's remotely healthy in a democracy to have the NSA building a massive spying apparatus about which even members of Congress, including Senators on the Homeland Security Committee, are totally ignorant and find "astounding" when they learn of them? How can anyone claim with a straight face that there is robust oversight when even members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are so constrained in their ability to act that they are reduced to issuing vague, impotent warnings to the public about what they call radical "secret law" enabling domestic spying that would "stun" Americans to learn about it, but are barred to disclose what it is they're so alarmed by? Put another way, how can anyone contest the value and justifiability of the stories that we were able to publish as a result of Edward Snowden's whistleblowing: stories that informed the American public - including even the US Congress - about these incredibly consequential programs? What kind of person would think that it would be preferable to remain in the dark - totally ignorant - about them?
I have a column in the Guardian's newspaper edition tomorrow examining the fallout from these stories. That will be posted here and I won't repeat that now. I will, though, note the following brief items:
(1) Much of US politics, and most of the pundit reaction to the NSA stories, are summarized by this one single visual from Pew:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...729309/pew.png
The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election.
Some Democrats have tried to distinguish 2006 from 2013 by claiming that the former involved illegal spying while the latter does not. But the claim that current NSA spying is legal is dubious in the extreme: the Obama DOJ has repeatedly thwarted efforts by the ACLU, EFF and others to obtain judicial rulings on their legality and constitutionality by invoking procedural claims of secrecy, immunity and standing. If Democrats are so sure these spying programs are legal, why has the Obama DOJ been so eager to block courts from adjudicating that question?
More to the point, Democratic critiques of Bush's spying were about more than just legality. I know that because I actively participated in the campaign to amplify those critiques. Indeed, by 2006, most of Bush's spying programs - definitely his bulk collection of phone records - were already being conducted under the supervision and with the blessing of the FISA court. Moreover, leading members of Congress - including Nancy Pelosi - were repeatedly briefed on all aspects of Bush's NSA spying program. So the distinctions Democrats are seeking to draw are mostly illusory.
To see how that this is so, just listen to then-Senator Joe Biden in 2006 attack the NSA for collecting phone records: he does criticize the program for lacking FISA court supervision (which wasn't actually true), but also claims to be alarmed by just how invasive and privacy-destroying that sort of bulk record collection is. He says he "doesn't think" that the program passes the Fourth Amendment test: how can Bush's bulk record collection program be unconstitutional while Obama's program is constitutional? But Biden also rejected Bush's defense (exactly the argument Obama is making now) - that "we're not listening to the phone calls, we're just looking for patterns" - by saying this:

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 talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. . . . If it's true that 200 million Americans' phone calls were monitored - in terms of not listening to what they said, but to whom they spoke and who spoke to them - I don't know, the Congress should investigative this."

Is collecting everyone's phone records not "very intrusive" when Democrats are doing it? Just listen to that short segment to see how every defense Obama defenders are making now were the ones Bush defenders made back then. Again, leading members of Congress and the FISA court were both briefed on and participants in the Bush telephone record collection program as well, yet Joe Biden and most Democrats found those programs very alarming and "very intrusive" back then.
(2) Notwithstanding the partisan-driven Democratic support for these programs, and notwithstanding the sustained demonization campaign aimed at Edward Snowden from official Washington, polling data, though mixed, has thus far been surprisingly encouraging.
A Time Magazine poll found that 54% of Americans believe Snowden did "a good thing", while only 30% disagreed. That approval rating is higher than the one enjoyed by both Congress and President Obama. While a majority think he should be nonetheless prosecuted, a plurality of young Americans, who overwhelmingly view Snowden favorably, do not even want to see him charged. Reuters found that more Americans see Snowden as a "patriot" than a "traitor". A Gallup poll this week found that more Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the two NSA spying programs revealed last week by the Guardian.
(3) Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower who was unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Obama DOJ, writes in the Guardian that as a long-time NSA official, he saw all of the same things at the NSA that Edward Snowden is now warning Americans about. Drake calls Snowden's acts "an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience." William Binney, the mathematician who resigned after a 30-year career as a senior NSA official in protest of post-9/11 domestic surveillance, said on Democracy Now this week that Snowden's claims about the NSA are absolutely true.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg, writing in the Guardian, wrote that "there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago." He added: "Snowden did what he did because he recognized the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity."
Listen to actual experts and patriots - people who have spent their careers inside the NSA and/or who risked their liberty for the good of the country - and the truth of Snowden's claims and the justifiability of his acts become manifest.
(4) As we were about to begin publishing these NSA stories, a veteran journalist friend warned me that the tactic used by Democratic partisans would be to cling to and then endlessly harp on any alleged inaccuracy in any one of the stories we publish as a means of distracting attention away from the revelations and discrediting the entire project. That proved quite prescient, as that is exactly what they are attempting to do.
Thus far we have revealed four independent programs: the bulk collection of telephone records, the Prism program, Obama's implementation of an aggressive foreign and domestic cyber-operations policy, and false claims by NSA officials to Congress. Every one of those articles was vetted by multiple Guardian editors and journalists - not just me. Democratic partisans have raised questions about only one of the stories - the only one that happened to be also published by the Washington Post (and presumably vetted by multiple Post editors and journalists) - in order to claim that an alleged inaccuracy in it means our journalism in general is discredited.
They are wrong. Our story was not inaccurate. The Washington Post revised parts of its article, but its reporter, Bart Gellman, stands by its core claims ("From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for Prism access may 'task' the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company's staff").
The Guardian has not revised any of our articles and, to my knowledge, has no intention to do so. That's because we did not claim that the NSA document alleging direct collection from the servers was true; we reported - accurately - that the NSA document claims that the program allows direct collection from the companies' servers. Before publishing, we went to the internet companies named in the documents and asked about these claims. When they denied it, we purposely presented the story as one of a major discrepancy between what the NSA document claims and what the internet companies claim, as the headline itself makes indisputably clear:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...8669/prism.png
The NSA document says exactly what we reported. Just read it and judge for yourself (Prism is "collection directly from the servers of these US service providers"). It's endearingly naive how some people seem to think that because government officials or corporate executives issue carefully crafted denials, this resolves the matter. Read the ACLU's tech expert, Chris Soghoian, explain why the tech companies' denials are far less significant and far more semantic than many are claiming.
Nor do these denials make any sense. If all the tech companies are doing under Prism is providing what they've always provided to the NSA, but simply doing it by a different technological means, then why would a new program be necessary at all? How can NSA officials claim that a program that does nothing more than change the means for how this data is delivered is vital in stopping terrorist threats? Why does the NSA document hail the program as one that enables new forms of collection? Why would it be "top secret" if all this was were just some new way of transmitting court-ordered data? How is Prism any different in any meaningful way from how the relationship between the companies and the NSA has always functioned?
As a follow-up to our article, the New York Times reported on extensive secret negotiations between Silicon Valley executives and NSA officials over government access to the companies' data. It's precisely because these arrangements are secret and murky yet incredibly significant that we published our story about these conflicting claims. They ought to be resolved in public, not in secret. The public should know exactly what access the NSA is trying to obtain to the data of these companies, and should know exactly what access these companies are providing. Self-serving, unchecked, lawyer-vetted denials by these companies don't remotely resolve these questions.
In a Nation post yesterday, Rick Perlstein falsely accuses me of not having addressed the questions about the Prism story. I've done at least half-a-dozen television shows in the last week where I was asked about exactly those questions and answered fully with exactly what I've written here (see this appearance with Chris Hayes as just the latest example); the fact that Perlstein couldn't be bothered to use Google doesn't entitle him to falsely claim I haven't addressed these questions. I have done so repeatedly, and do so here again.
I know that many Democrats want to cling to the belief that, in Perlstein's words, "the powers that be will find it very easy to seize on this one error to discredit [my] NSA revelation, even the ones he nailed dead to rights". Perlstein cleverly writes that "such distraction campaigns are how power does its dirtiest work" as he promotes exactly that campaign.
But that won't happen. The documents and revelations are too powerful. The story isn't me, or Edward Snowden, or the eagerness of Democratic partisans to defend the NSA as a means of defending President Obama, and try as they might, Democrats won't succeed in making the story be any of those things. The story is the worldwide surveillance apparatus the NSA is constructing in the dark and the way that has grown under Obama, and that's where my focus is going to remain.
(5) NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen examines complaints that my having strong, candidly acknowledged opinions on surveillance policies somehow means that the journalism I do on those issues is suspect. It is very worth reading what he has to say on this topic as it gets to the heart about several core myths about what journalism is.
(6) Last week, prior to the revelation of our source's identity, I wrote that "ever since the Nixon administration broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office, the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message" and "that attempt will undoubtedly be made here."
The predictable personality assaults on Snowden have begun in full force from official Washington and their media spokespeople. They are only going to intensify. There is nobody who political officials and their supine media class hate more than those who meaningfully dissent from their institutional orthodoxies and shine light on what they do. The hatred for such individuals is boundless.
There are two great columns on this dynamic. This one by Reuters' Jack Shafer explores how elite Washington reveres powerful leakers that glorify political officials, but only hate marginalized and powerless leakers who discredit Washington and its institutions. And perhaps the best column yet on Snowden comes this morning from the Daily Beast's Kirsten Powers: just please take the time to read it all, as it really conveys the political and psychological rot that is driving the attacks on him and on his very carefully vetted disclosures.
UPDATE

The New York Times reports today that Yahoo went to court in order to vehemently resist the NSA's directive that they join the Prism program, and joined only when the court compelled it to do so. The company specifically "argued that the order violated its users' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures."
If, as NSA (and Silicon Valley) defenders claim, Prism is nothing more than a harmless little drop-box mechanism for delivering to the government what these companies were already providing, why would Yahoo possibly be in court so vigorously resisting it and arguing that it violates their users' Fourth Amendment rights? Similarly, how could it possibly be said - as US government officials have - that Prism has been instrumental in stopping terrorist plots if it did not enhance the NSA's collection capabilities? The denials from the internet companies make little sense when compared to what we know about the program. At the very least, there is ample reason to demand more disclosure and transparency about exactly what this is and what data-access arrangements they have agreed to.
UPDATE II

My column that is appearing in the Guardian newspaper, on the fallout from the NSA stories, is now posted here.
UPDATE III

Underscoring all of these points, please take two minutes to watch this amazing video, courtesy of EFF, in which the 2006 version of Joe Biden aggressively debates the 2013 version of Barack Obama on whether the US government should be engaged in the bulk collection of American's phone records:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanshi...

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Glenn asked for the prayers and support of the audience, warning that things were only going to get harder from here.

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I agree we all need to be praying. I think there is going to be lots of upheaval over this.

http://www.randpacusa.com/images/CA-S2.jpg

Sign up to join the lawsuit below!

I'm looking for ten million Americans to stand with me and sue the federal government and TAKE BACK our rights.

Can I count on your help?

Without it, I truly fear where our fragile Republic could be headed . . .

Recent news reports revealed that Barack Obama's NSA is looking through billions of our emails and phone records every day!

Today I'm counting on your support.

Will you join my class-action lawsuit IMMEDIATELY?

Go here:

http://www.randpacusa.com/nsa_lawsui...2.aspx?pid=04b

Obama Squelches Air Force Freedom


Posted on June 16 2013 by Conservative Daily
http://www.conservative-daily.com/wp...13/06/usaf.png The United States active duty military (at least the Air Force, right now) has been told NOT to view even the news about the Verizon phone snooping by the government on the Internet!
This is the last straw. Finally, “enough is enough!”
A “Notice to Airmen” was sent by the 624^th Operations Center of the United States Air Force and had a priority of “CRITICAL.”
The Executive summary reads: “Similar to events associated with WIKILEAKS disclosures in the past 2 years, classified documents associated with a news story on NSA and wiretapping are potentially classified and readily available on the internet. Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message incident.”
In short, the Air Force has warned airmen NOT to read news stories related to the data-mining scandal!
The totalitarian society described in George Orwell’s novel, 1984, has universal surveillance, much like we now know that the United States is under.
NOW MILITARY PERSONNEL CANNOT EVEN READ ABOUT THE SCANDAL!

PLEASE FAX NOW!

Isn’t that the ultimate, secretive cover-up? News about phone records is off-limits to our airmen.
We must demand a Congressional investigation into this matter that goes even further than the actual scandal itself—NOT letting our military even read about it!
An airman doing a simple search on his computer could endanger their future in the Air Force. Anything to do with the recent news about the NSA and Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories is not only “off-limits,” but can bring possible charges against our military!
Cindy McGee, the mother of an airman stationed overseas, gave this account of the scandal cover-up: “The fact that our government is attempting to censor our service members from the truth of what is happening here at home is truly frightening and disheartening. I am outraged that our government is attempting to censor the information from our military that every citizen in this country is potentially being targeted by our government in a massive overreach of their constitutional powers by unconstitutional surveillance of all Americans and storage of that date.”
How dare the President of the United States call these intrusive surveillance programs merely “hype.” But, by now, that wording can almost be expected from President Obama!\

Join the conversation on Facebook!

You may ask, “What happens if an airman disobeys this unclassified notice?” They could be punished!

FAX CONGRESS NOW!

How about asking Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers?
FOX News reports: Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran based at Fort Myer in Washington. Sommers said his core beliefs are enough to mark a soldier for persecution in today’s military.”
Army documents obtained by Fox News indicate Sommers was told that his actions bordered on being disrespectful to President Obama and the “slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.” “You should strive to express your opinion while being aware of the overall ramifications of your statements,” the Army noted.
Sommers’ troubles began last April when he was told to remove pro-Republican, anti-Obama bumper stickers that were on his privately owned car. The stickers read: “Political Dissent is NOT Racism,” “NOBAMA,” NOPE2012” and “The Road to Bankruptcy is Paved with Ass-Fault.” That sticker included the image of a donkey. His superior officer told the solider that the bumper stickers were creating “unnecessary workplace tension.”
“The types of stickers on your car were creating an atmosphere detrimental to morale and were creating unnecessary workplace tension,” the officer wrote in an Army document obtained by Fox News. “A Soldier must balance their personal feelings with the mission of the U.S. Army. Even the slightest inference of disrespect towards superiors can have a demoralizing effect on the unit.”
Attorney Wells said once he got involved, the military backed off of filing a formal reprimand.
Our military men and women put their life on the line for our freedoms. Yet the military is threatened with punishment when they express their private beliefs in private. NOW, airmen are not even allowed to use the Internet to look at just the news! What day doesn't go by that the story isn't somewhere on the front page of every news site?
Something is very wrong here and we must demand a Congressional investigation!

FAX NOW!

Sincerely,
Joe Otto
Conservative-Daily

http://www.conservative-daily.com/2013/06/16/obama-squelches-air-force-freedom/

Who Will Watch the Watchers?

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by Sydney Williams 14 Jun 2013 15 post a comment
http://cdn.breitbart.com/mediaserver...-swilliams.png The title is borrowed from Edwin Fadiman’s 1970 book. But the concern it expresses goes back almost two thousand years to the Roman poet, Juvenal. He became known as the first to use the term, Quis custodiet ipros custodes?, which literally translated means who will watch the watchmen? But the meaning is the same. In a democracy, the watchers are supposed to be the people, aided by a press not beholden to any political party.

We live in an age of ubiquitous personal data, easily available and mined by government and business. We love the connectivity technology affords, but we are torn between a desire for privacy and a need to be protected. Edward Snowden claims that the pendulum had swung too far toward violations of privacy, so he broke the secrecy rules, ran off to Hong Kong and exposed the NSA’s Prism program on which he had been working while employed by Booz Allen in Hawaii. Civil disobedience has a long history in the United States, from the Bostonians who threw British tea into Boston Harbor, to Henry David Thoreau, to Martin Luther King. Thoreau once said: “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
But then there are those who claim civil disobedience, but in fact are motivated by hubris or politics, men like Daniel Ellsberg who published the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971 and ABC’s Sam Donaldson who in 2006 declared it a “sacred duty” to expose secret CIA prisons. Both men probably thought of themselves as modern-day Thoreaus. But, in my opinion, their motivations had baser elements. Mr. Ellsberg disagreed with the Vietnam War, while Mr. Donaldson simply did not like George Bush. Not everyone who disobeys our laws is a hero, no matter their claim. In which camp does Mr. Snowden fall? It is too early to tell, but I suspect he falls into the latter.


We live in an information age. Ninety-nine plus percent of Americans love their smart phones. Wikipedia estimates that there are 327 million cell phones in the U.S. and over six billion in the world. Estimates are that on average six calls are made per day and three to four times as many text messages. It is estimated that about 150 billion e-mails are sent each day. Instant messaging and twittering provide more fodder. Every YouTube video ever made resides somewhere in the blogosphere, as does every photo sent over the internet. Smart phones are used to call, text, locate the nearest Starbucks or determine the weather. Messages and calls travel wirelessly using some form of spectrum or broadband that some carrier has purchased from the government. We purchase goods and make payments this way. Two years ago, PEW Research estimated that the average young person received or sent 87.7 messages every day. Even those over the age of 65 were sending more than five messages a day. The numbers must be far higher today.


Consequently, our movements, calls and messages can be tracked, listened to and read. That knowledge is instinctive to anyone with a smart phone. “You have zero privacy. Get over it,” said Scott McNealy fourteen years ago. Despite the popularity of Lee Child’s hero, there are very few Jack Reacher’s out there.


The point being, because of technology and the human need to stay in touch, we live in a world that is far easier to monitor than ever before. Yet millions of Americans seemed oblivious to the traceability of their movements, calls, videos and messages. The disclosure by Edward Snowden about the workings of the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) Prism Program sent sales of George Orwell’s 1984 soaring – up 5000% one day earlier this week. Millions of people, having forgotten or ignored Mr. McNealy’s admonition, are unreservedly sending text messages, photos and e-mails, data that would embarrass them in more sober moments. To them, Mr. Snowden’s divulgence served as a wake-up call; so, for many in the aftermath, the Fourth Amendment trumped safety.


The massive amount of data available means it is impossible for any organization to listen in on every call or read every message. The NSA must create sophisticated algorithms to mine this “metadata” in order to monitor possible terrorist activity. And the formulas must be constantly adjusted to account for new pieces of information. They must also always be on the alert to hacking activities, as the bad guys persistently attempt to block intrusive government monitoring programs. One can think of the Prism Program as a funnel with a very large conical mouth and a microscopic stem – ingesting the general, digesting and disgorging the granular. Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate, NSA chief, General Keith Alexander noted that billions of pieces of data resulted in only a few dozen pieces of information that would be studied carefully.


General Alexander claimed that a dozen or more terrorist plots had been prevented because of the surveillance. On the other hand, the Tsarnaev brothers escaped scrutiny. Was their slipping through the cracks a result of political correctness, errors in the algorithms of the surveillance program, or was their non-detection proof that the NSA errs in favor of not being a Big Brother? A survey conducted by PEW Research, released on Monday, found that 56% of Americans approve the programs. Still, 41% of Americans found that tracking phone calls was an “unacceptable way” for government to investigate terrorists. How, then, should it be done?
We all know that the data exists. We all know that our messages, calls, movements and purchases are captured by some entity. Every time I go on Amazon, a message pops up welcoming me back and making suggestions based on past purchases. This happens to us all and is repeated millions of times every day. What concerns people is what is done with the data. How is it used? Is it sold? Can it be compromised? Virtually every business is dependent on data transmission, from buying gasoline, to the entire banking system to the deployment of nuclear missiles. Cybersecurity is a real and present danger.


When James Clapper, the National Director of Intelligence, appeared before the Senate last March, he was asked if the NSA collects any data at all on millions of Americans. He answered unequivocally that they did not. He lied. Should he be prosecuted for perjury, or was he simply safeguarding a program designed to protect Americans from terrorists? In my opinion the question was designed to elicit a lie. One would have had to have lived in a cave for the last two decades to believe that such data was not being collected. The real question is how is it used?


We live in a politically correct, multicultural environment, one that is supported by mainstream media. In his acceptance of the Bradley Prize last week, Roger Ailes – a notable, non-mainstream media executive – said America is losing its historic literacy. Sixty percent of seniors among the nation’s top colleges could not place the Civil War in the correct half of the 19^th Century! Ideas, in this milieu, don’t count for diversity. Diversity, according to the politically correct, can only be determined by one’s gender or the color of one’s skin, not by the ideas one expresses. It is impossible for “historical illiterates” to put into perspective the disclosures of Mr. Snowden, or to consider what he said in a broader context.


At the heart of the controversy, however, is trust. How can we trust a government that used IRS audits for political gains and the Department of Justice to penetrate press activities for the same purposes? How do we trust a government that lied about the events in Benghazi? Who will watch the watchers? How can we find a consensus when the two Parties are so far apart that landmark legislation like ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank were passed without a single opposition vote? Two PEW Research Center polls regarding the NSA’s tracking methods are telling – one conducted in 2006, the other last week. In both cases, people marginally approved the methods. But in 2006, Republicans overwhelmingly supported the program. Democrats did not. In 2013, we saw the reverse. If half the country does not trust the other half and if nobody trusts government, we have a problem, as President Obama noted a week ago. Yes, Mr. President we do have a problem, and a search for the reason should put you before a mirror. There are others who are responsible, but you are the President. Campaigning when you are not up for re-election, demonizing your opponents, and acting unilaterally has not helped.
Restoration of trust will have to wait for the next President, if then.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...h-the-Watchers

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Our military men and women put their life on the line for our freedoms. Yet the military is threatened with punishment when they express their private beliefs in private. NOW, airmen are not even allowed to use the Internet to look at just the news! What day doesn't go by that the story isn't somewhere on the front page of every news site?

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Something is very wrong here and we must demand a Congressional investigation!

FAX NOW!

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How the government is treating military is outrageous....they expect them to risk their lives but not read the news.

Snowden Used Banned Flash Drive to Smuggle NSA Data

http://www.newsmax.com/CMSPages/GetF...axsidesize=600.

Friday, 14 Jun 2013 04:42 PM
By Todd Beamon

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Edward Snowden, who has admitted leaking top-secret documents detailing the NSA's phone and Internet surveillance programs, exceeded his authorized access to the agency's computer systems while managing to smuggle out classified documents on a portable USB drive.

The small data-storage device has been banned from use on secret military networks, including those of the National Security Agency, for at least five years, The Washington Times reports.


"He should not have been able to do either of those things" without raising red flags, a private-sector IT security specialist told the Times.

NSA officials "were lying down on their job if they didn't disable the USB port," the specialist said, referring to the small socket on the side of a computer where the thumb-sized drives are inserted.

The agency is still trying to determine the extent of Snowden's breach of top-secret information. It did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, smuggled electronic copies of an unknown number of classified documents out of the agency's operations center in Hawaii, where he worked, The Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

A U.S. official told The Washington Times "that's one avenue" investigators are following.

Thumb drives have been banned from use on classified military systems since malicious software, thought to be of Russian origin, infected the secret computer networks of the U.S. Central Command five years ago, The Washington Times reports.

Lawmakers briefed on the matter by NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander have not commented on the USB drive, but said Snowden also exceeded his authorized access to the agency's computer systems.


Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/snowden-nsa-flash-drive/2013/06/14...

Another secure email , info sent to me by a friend.



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Canada Free Press columnist being investigated by NSA
It was reported last night that, Douglas J. Hagmann, columnist for the Canada Free Press (CFP) was informed that he was put on an active investigation list by NSA by an unnamed security source.
Judi McLeod, an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media stated that Hagmann’s recent reporting and for the past several years of his Insider Reports, has earned him the spot on the NSA’s watch list and that a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request has been filed on his behalf.
McLeod stated that the NSA investigation was found on the heels when Hagmann wrote a column warning Americans, “It’s about to get very ugly”.
In his column, “It’s about to get very ugly” and reported on by the Paulding County Republican Examiner, Hagmann said that a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) insider told him, “The present administration is going after leakers, media sources, anyone and everyone who is even suspected of ‘betrayal.’ That’s what they call it, ‘betrayal.’ Can you believe the size of their cahones? This administration considers anyone telling the truth about Benghazi, the IRS, hell, you name the issue, ‘betrayal’.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/canada-free-press-columnist-being-i...

Confirmed: CBS Reporter’s Computer Was Hacked on Multiple Occasions

Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, June 14, 2013, 1:25 PM

In 2011, CBS reporter Sharyl Attisson broke the story that Eric Holder knew about the gun sting long before he said he did.

In 2012, Attisson investigated the Benghazi massacre.

In May, Sharyl Attkisson announced that her computers were compromised by the Obama administration.
Today CBS News confirmed that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions.”

CBS News announced Friday that correspondent Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions,” confirming Attkisson’s previous revelation of the hacking.

CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said that a cybersecurity firm hired by CBS News “has determined through forensic analysis” that “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”“Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data. This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion. CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yZV_fMiaMlc

Cheney calls Snowden a ‘traitor,’ defends NSA phone tracking


Sunday, June 16, 2013

http://patriotupdate.wpengine.netdna...de-150x150.jpg Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the National Security Agency’s data surveillance programs and labeled admitted leaker Edward Snowden as a “traitor.”
“I think he’s a traitor…I think he has committed crimes,” Cheney said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
The former number two to President George W. Bush said he suspects Snowden was a Chinese spy all along, questioning his decision to flee to Hong Kong ahead of releasing classified information on the NSA’s phone and Internet monitoring programs.
Cheney defended those data surveillance methods as essential to national security, arguing that the threat from terrorism is worse than ever.

Post Continues on thehill.com

Read more: http://patriotupdate.com/2013/06/che...#ixzz2WOTr8ZDO


Well it is clearly not these people they all belong to the same admiration society of freedom for themselves but not for US..It is also getting so easy to see who is "with us or against US", now isn't it!!!!



http://cdn.breitbart.com/mediaserver...sh_reuters.jpg


Brothers from another "Mother" but still drank from the same milk!!!!

Secret to Prism Program: Even Bigger Data Seizure

http://cdn.breitbart.com/mediaserver...sh_reuters.jpg


(AP) - In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.
The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.
Often there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate.
Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" -- not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.

This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format.


The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.


Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.Whether by clever choice or coincidence, Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.


The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president's daily briefing. Prism makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet's raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.


Many of the people interviewed for this report insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a classified, continuing effort. But those interviews, along with public statements and the few public documents available, show there are two vital components to Prism's success.


The first is how the government works closely with the companies that keep people perpetually connected to each other and the world. That story line has attracted the most attention so far.The second and far murkier one is how Prism fits into a larger U.S. wiretapping program in place for years.

___
Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world's phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn't need permission. That's its job.But Internet data doesn't care about borders. Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a warrant.


Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans' private conversations.


Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light.


"You have to assume everything is being collected," said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades.The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a key hub for fiber optic cables.


What followed was the most significant debate over domestic surveillance since the 1975 Church Committee, a special Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, reined in the CIA and FBI for spying on Americans.
Unlike the recent debate over Prism, however, there were no visual aids, no easy-to-follow charts explaining that the government was sweeping up millions of emails and listening to phone calls of people accused of no wrongdoing.
The Bush administration called it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and said it was keeping the United States safe.
"This program has produced intelligence for us that has been very valuable in the global war on terror, both in terms of saving lives and breaking up plots directed at the United States," Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.
The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.
That means Americans' personal emails can live in government computers, but analysts can't access, read or listen to them unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation.


The government doesn't automatically delete the data, officials said, because an email or phone conversation that seems innocuous today might be significant a year from now.What's unclear to the public is how long the government keeps the data. That is significant because the U.S. someday will have a new enemy. Two decades from now, the government could have a trove of American emails and phone records it can tap to investigative whatever Congress declares a threat to national security.


The Bush administration shut down its warrantless wiretapping program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with changes: The NSA generally would have to explain its techniques and targets to a secret court in Washington, but individual warrants would not be required.


Congress approved it, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the midst of a campaign for president, voting against it.
"This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide," Obama said in a speech two days before that vote. "I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom."
___
When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen.


One expert in national security law, who is directly familiar with how Internet companies dealt with the government during that period, recalls conversations in which technology officials worried aloud that the government would trample on Americans' constitutional right against unlawful searches, and that the companies would be called on to help.
The logistics were about to get daunting, too.


For years, the companies had been handling requests from the FBI. Now Congress had given the NSA the authority to take information without warrants. Though the companies didn't know it, the passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially called US-98XN.It was known as Prism. Though many details are still unknown, it worked like this:


Every year, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence spell out in a classified document how the government plans to gather intelligence on foreigners overseas.By law, the certification can be broad. The government isn't required to identify specific targets or places.


A federal judge, in a secret order, approves the plan.
With that, the government can issue "directives" to Internet companies to turn over information.
While the court provides the government with broad authority to seize records, the directives themselves typically are specific, said one former associate general counsel at a major Internet company. They identify a specific target or groups of targets. Other company officials recall similar experiences.
All adamantly denied turning over the kind of broad swaths of data that many people believed when the Prism documents were first released.


"We only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers," Microsoft said in a statement.
Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.


How many of those were related to national security is unclear, and likely classified. The numbers suggest each request typically related to one or two people, not a vast range of users.Tech company officials were unaware there was a program named Prism. Even former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials who were on the job when the program went live and were aware of its capabilities said this past week that they didn't know what it was called.

What the NSA called Prism, the companies knew as a streamlined system that automated and simplified the "Hoovering" from years earlier, the former assistant general counsel said. The companies, he said, wanted to reduce their workload. The government wanted the data in a structured, consistent format that was easy to search.


Any company in the communications business can expect a visit, said Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle, a company that advertises software for secure, encrypted conversations. The government is eager to find easy ways around security.
"They do this every two to three years," said Janke, who said government agents have approached his company but left empty-handed because his computer servers store little information. "They ask for the moon."


That often creates tension between the government and a technology industry with a reputation for having a civil libertarian bent. Companies occasionally argue to limit what the government takes. Yahoo even went to court and lost in a classified ruling in 2008, The New York Times reported Friday."The notion that Yahoo gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users' records is categorically false," Ron Bell, the company's general counsel, said recently.


Under Prism, the delivery process varied by company.
Google, for instance, says it makes secure file transfers. Others use contractors or have set up stand-alone systems. Some have set up user interfaces making it easier for the government, according to a security expert familiar with the process.


Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the Prism documents: that the NSA pulled data "directly from the servers" of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more.Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate Prism's neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet's major pipelines.


In slide made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from both Prism and from the fiber-optic cables.Prism, as its name suggests, helps narrow and focus the stream. If eavesdroppers spot a suspicious email among the torrent of data pouring into the United States, analysts can use information from Internet companies to pinpoint the user.


With Prism, the government gets a user's entire email inbox. Every email, including contacts with American citizens, becomes government property.Once the NSA has an inbox, it can search its huge archives for information about everyone with whom the target communicated. All those people can be investigated, too.


That's one example of how emails belonging to Americans can become swept up in the hunt.
In that way, Prism helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. But it's the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree."I'm much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone," said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. "I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to."


One unanswered question, according to a former technology executive at one of the companies involved, is whether the government can use the data from Prism to work backward.For example, not every company archives instant message conversations, chat room exchanges or videoconferences. But if Prism provided general details, known as metadata, about when a user began chatting, could the government "rewind" its copy of the global Internet stream, find the conversation and replay it in full?


That would take enormous computing, storage and code-breaking power. It's possible the NSA could use supercomputers to decrypt some transmissions, but it's unlikely it would have the ability to do that in volume. In other words, it would help to know what messages to zero in on.Whether the government has that power and whether it uses Prism this way remains a closely guarded secret.

___
A few months after Obama took office in 2009, the surveillance debate reignited in Congress because the NSA had crossed the line. Eavesdroppers, it turned out, had been using their warrantless wiretap authority to intercept far more emails and phone calls of Americans than they were supposed to.Obama, no longer opposed to the wiretapping, made unspecified changes to the process. The government said the problems were fixed.


"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs," Obama explained recently. "My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards."
Years after decrying Bush for it, Obama said Americans did have to make tough choices in the name of safety.
"You can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," the president said.


Obama's administration, echoing his predecessor's, credited the surveillance with disrupting several terrorist attacks. Leading figures from the Bush administration who endured criticism during Obama's candidacy have applauded the president for keeping the surveillance intact.


Jason Weinstein, who recently left the Justice Department as head of its cybercrime and intellectual property section, said it's no surprise Obama continued the eavesdropping."You can't expect a president to not use a legal tool that Congress has given him to protect the country," he said. "So, Congress has given him the tool. The president's using it. And the courts are saying `The way you're using it is OK.' That's checks and balances at work."

Schneier, the author and security expert, said it doesn't really matter how Prism works, technically. Just assume the government collects everything, he said.

He said it doesn't matter what the government and the companies say, either. It's spycraft, after all.
"Everyone is playing word games," he said. "No one is telling the truth."


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/15/Secret-to-Prism-...

NSA Chief Lies to Congress



Saturday, June 15, 2013 10:42





(Before It's News)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4397-9qbY_...76c5_large.jpgStephen Lendman
Activist Post

General Keith Alexander is NSA director. He’s US Cyber Command head. He’s in charge of lawlessly spying. He directs illegal hacking.
He does both globally. He’s a serial lawbreaker. He violates fundamental constitutional law. He testified before Congress. More on that below.
Edward Joseph Snowden revealed what vital to know. He exposed unconstitutional spying. He said more. He accused NSA of lawless hacking. He knows. He was there. He revealed what he saw firsthand.
On June 14, Russia Today headlined “Snowden’s asset: NSA hacking exposer knows secrets China wants,” saying:
He’s currently in Hong Kong. He’s a wanted man. Washington wants him extradited, arrested, prosecuted, disappeared or murdered. He fears for his safety.
According to the Chinese daily Global Times:

The US is accumulating all the advanced powers of the Internet to forge a state-level ‘fist’ in order to launch cyber attacks on other countries.

The unparalleled power of this ‘fist’ is beyond our imagination, which should be an alarm bell for us to catch up with the development of the internet.

On June 14, the South China Morning Post headlined “Edward Snowden: Classified US data shows Hong Kong hacking targets.”
Records show specific NSA-hacked Hong Kong and mainland dates and IP addresses over a four year period. According to Snowden:

The primary issue of public importance to Hong Kong and mainland China should be that the NSA is illegally seizing the communications of tens of millions of individuals without any individualised suspicion of wrongdoing.

They simply steal everything so they can search for any topics of interest.

Exposure “demonstrated (America’s) hypocrisy and arrogance” on matters regarding cyber warfare.
On June 12, the Wall Street Journal headlined “NSA Director Says Data Programs Foiled Plots,” saying:

Classified US government data shown to the South China Morning Post by whistle-blower Edward Snowden has provided a rare insight into the effectiveness of Washington’s top-secret global cyberspying programme.

New details about the data can be revealed by the Post after further analysis of information Snowden divulged during an exclusive interview on Wednesday in which the former CIA computer analyst exposed extensive hacking by the US in Hong Kong and the mainland.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-d.../imgad2200.gifIn testimony before Senate Appropriations Committee members, NSA Director General Keith Alexander defended the indefensible. He lied doing so. He falsely claimed NSA spying foiled “dozens” of terror plots.
He “didn’t elaborate on the attacks that were stopped, other than to tie them to two well-known foiled 2009 plots.” More on them below. No such plots existed. They were invented. Innocent victims were falsely accused.
No verifiable evidence shows any plots were foiled on Alexander’s watch. He’s been NSA chief since August 1, 2005. His claims don’t wash.
He committed perjury. He’s guilty on multiple counts. Don’t expect recrimination against him. Key Senate members are fully briefed. They’re complicit in state crimes. So are many other congressional members.
Post 9/11, Washington declared war on Islam. Muslims became America’s enemy of choice. They’ve been wrongfully vilified and dehumanized as terrorists.
So-called terror plots are fake. None existed earlier. None exist now. Dozens of innocent men and women were falsely charged, prosecuted, convicted and given long prison terms. Expect more innocent victims persecuted ahead.
Alexander referred to Najibullah Zazi and David Coleman Headley.
Justice Department officials claimed Zazi “received bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10 (2009) in furtherance of his criminal plans.”
No evidence whatever supported government accusations. Zazi got no bomb-making instructions. He planned no crimes. His so-called ingredients included hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid.
He bought them at a beauty shop. He did so legally. Anyone can buy the same things. Hydrogen peroxide’s a common bleaching agent. It’s a mild disinfectant.
Acetone’s an inflammable organic solvent. It’s used in nail polish remover, plastics and for cleaning purposes.
Hydrochloric acid’s used in oil production, ore reduction, food processing, pickling, metal cleaning, and over-the-counter eye lubricants, among other applications. It’s found diluted in stomachs.
Zazi’s alleged plot was fabricated. Authorities claimed he planned to attack New York commuter trains and/or other high-profile New York targets. No motive was explained. None existed.
No legitimate evidence surfaced. None was presented. Innocence is no defense. Zazi was declared guilty by accusation.
According to Justice Department officials, Healy was guilty of “a dozen federal terrorism crimes relating to his role in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, and a subsequent proposed attack on a newspaper in Denmark.”
No verifiable evidence links him to any crimes. CIA, Mossad, India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW, and perhaps Pakistan’s ISI were behind twelve coordinated shooting and bombing Mumbai attacks. They were false flags.
DOJ officials fabricated charges against Healy and others. He’s innocent but guilty as charged. Thousands of political prisoners rot in America’s gulag.
Media scoundrels pronounce guilt before trial. They do so in the court of public opinion. They support the worst state crimes. They violate core journalistic ethics. They it unapologetically. They betray their readers, viewers and listeners in the process.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x...50/empbook.pngPost-9/11, dozens of Muslims were falsely convicted of terrorism and/or conspiracy to commit it.
Alexander’s claims about NSA spying foiling plots and keeping America safe don’t wash.
On June 12, London’s Guardian headlined “Senators press NSA director for answers on secret surveillance program.”
It was more show-and-tell than holding Alexander accountable. Congress is fully briefed on what’s ongoing. Key members know the worst of it. Permitting it makes them complicit.
FBI Director Robert Mueller lied like Alexander. In testimony before House Judiciary Committee members, he claimed spying could have foiled 9/11. It will prevent “another Boston,” he said.
Both incidents were state-sponsored false flags. Mueller didn’t explain. House members didn’t ask. Perhaps they know and don’t need to. Maybe key House and Senate members are briefed in advance of US-staged terror plots.
Mueller claims watering down spying leaves America vulnerable. “If you narrow (the scope of surveillance), you narrow the dots and that might be the dot that prevents the next Boston,” he said.
America has no enemies except ones it invents. Mueller lied to Congress. He committed perjury like Alexander. He remains unaccountable.
He’s stepping down in September. Perhaps he’ll accept a high-paying private sector job. Most exiting US officials do so.
America’s war on terror continues. Doing so reflects war on humanity. Obama represents the worst of rogue governance. Accountability is sorely lacking. Fundamental laws are spurned.
Diktat power rules. No one’s safe anywhere. Tyranny and permanent wars define Obama’s agenda. Ravaging humanity continues. Unchallenged dominance alone matters.
Thermonuclear war is possible. All bets are off if it happens. Imagine a worst case scenario. Imagine not going all out to prevent it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative...rticalresponse



Now what part of treasonous action to the Our Country and to the American People do we not understand here....They lie it is fine, we lie we go to jail, they make up false innuendo's, just fine there, we tell the truth, we go to jail...Makes sense to me....Hmmmm See Something Say Something, well can you hear us now!!!!...Oh so sorry it isn't your kind of "see something say something" truth you want to hear, should we say Heil!

Praying isn't all we need, we need more than a few good men or women to constantly "see some say something" so we can keep their feet to the fire and their embarrassments out in the open, so a few good men and women will do something about it, because from where I sit they are all in it together and none of them are very good!!!!!

Quote:

---

Praying isn't all we need, we need more than a few good men or women to constantly "see some say something" so we can keep their feet to the fire and their embarrassments out in the open, so a few good men and women will do something about it, because from where I sit they are all in it together and none of them are very good!!!!!

---

I agree, the traitors need to be booted out and replaced with patriots who love this country and RESPECT the people of this country.

AT&T to Load iPhones With Emergency Alerts From Obama – That You Can’t Switch Off

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, June 16, 2013, 1:17 AM
Just in case you want more Obama in your life…
AT&T is loading iPhones with emergency alerts from Barack Obama…
That you can’t switch off.
http://2-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/...uAIdx-8eB2.jpg
Engadget reported:

AT&T has begun rolling out Wireless Emergency Alerts updates for iPhone 4S and 5, so you won’t be the last folks to know if the entire northern hemisphere is about to be covered in ice à la Day After Tomorrow.
You’ll receive a notification from the carrier when your update is ready, but only if you’re using iOS 6.1 or higher.
Once installed, AMBER and Emergency alerts are automatically sent to your phone unless you switch them off via Settings. However, should you be tired of Obama, just know that there’s no way to switch off Presidential alerts.

So now Barack can track your calls and send you messages, too.
Hat Tip Michael
UPDATE: Henry sent this screenshot from his Blackberry z 10 phone.
http://3-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/...6NUh9FlBtt.jpg
955 522 102 1635


538 Comments

Which Websites Are Under NSA surveillance – This May Shock You!!!


Saturday, June 15, 2013 18:00


(Before It's News)
(Be The Media) – One of BIN contributor, Ye Olde False Flag, recently posted an excellent article about a Firefox plug-in that warns computer users about potential government surveillance. Ye Old False Flag explains that a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, NY has found a fun way to alert users of potential NSA snooping by creating the “The Dark Side of The Prism’ browser extention, which plays songs from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of The Moon” each time a questionable website is crossed.
Since I already have many plug-ins, proxies, gadgets and other goodies that keep me invisible to prying eyes online, I definitely had to give this one a try. I installed the plug-in and accessed several webpages that Ive always been a tad suspicious about. Well, the songs went off on pretty much most of the ones I suspected!
Below are some of the websites where the “alarm” went off. I’ve compiled news, social media, alternative news, governement and pro-constitution websites. Now the question is if these sites are unknowingly being tracked to keep tabs on visitors or if the ones behind them are nothing but government shills feeding the masses controlled oppositon. You decide. Comments are more than welcomed so we can extend the discussion.
http://www.irs.gov/
http://www.ronpaul.com/
http://sheriffmack.com/
http://constitutionclub.ning.com/ (Constitutional Sheriffs)
https://www.youtube.com/
http://petersantilli.com/
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.davidicke.com/
https://pandaunite.org/ (People Against the NDAA)
http://divinecosmos.com/
http://www.stewwebb.com/
http://21stcenturywire.com/
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/
http://exovaticana.com/
http://americannationalmilitia.com/
http://disinfo.com/
http://brianhaw.tv/index.php
http://in5d.com/
http://misstilaomg.com/
http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/
http://www.activistpost.com/
http://www.watchmanscry.com
https://endtimesnews.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/
https://www.microsoft.com
http://google.com/
http://apple.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://rt.com/

http://beforeitsnews.com/blogging-ci...in.info%2Fa7rK