Thread: Privacy Alert! Big Brother is watching and listening, UPDATED

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?



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".


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

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 email 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 service 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 service, 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 providers 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 business,” 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 institutions 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 emails 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:

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

(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