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  1. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-18/tell-next-idiot-who-thinks-youre-unpatriotic Tell This To The Next Idiot Who Thinks You're "Unpatriotic" on 06/18/2015 22:00 -0400 default Iraq Kuwait inShare Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog, I’ll never forget the Oath of Office I took when I was commissioned as an Army Intelligence Officer all those years ago. The most important part is where you swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.” That was the part that kept ringing in my head as George W. Bush went on TV in the run-up to the Iraq war talking about weapons of mass destruction. We had been on the ground in Kuwait since late 2002, months before the invasion of Iraq kicked off. And every time Bush told that lie, I thought about my oath. I’m disappointed to admit that, back then, I didn’t have the courage to go up against the big Army machine… to march into my Battalion Commander’s office and say, “Sir, we must defend the Constitution against the President of the United States.” I knew I would get crushed. When I left the military, I started noticing all the other ways in which the government turned the Constitution into a punchline. And that practice has only accelerated. I came up with a different solution. Instead of fighting some faceless machine, I voted with my feet and left the country. That, coupled with my drastically reduced tax bill thanks to being an overseas expat, has prompted a lot of use of the word ‘unpatriotic’ since I started writing this letter six years ago. I find this appallingly ignorant. The American Revolution itself was predicated on the inequity of taxation without representation. Are your interests represented when they buy bombs and body scanners? Mine certainly aren’t. Yet people who define patriotism by the frequency and rapidity of their flag-waving think that we all have some collective duty to ignorantly believe whatever we’re told by the government. I disagree. So does the New Oxford American Dictionary, which defines ‘patriot’ as “a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.” There’s that phrase again– ‘defending against enemies.’ Who exactly are these ‘enemies’, by the way? Are they men in caves who hate us for our freedom? Arab teenagers with intense sexual angst and a collection of firearms? No. The real enemies are not foreign… but domestic. It is the apparatus of government itself that has collapsed upon the founding document of the nation. It’s not unpatriotic to lament how far a government’s practices have diverged from its Constitution. It’s not unpatriotic to want to be free. And it’s not unpatriotic to take steps to make that happen. In fact, people who think it’s everyone’s patriotic duty to pay taxes are only feeding the beast that makes them less free. And it’s entirely delusional to think that all of this can change by going to a voting booth. There’s no politician that’s going to change this. Nobody is going to stand on stage and say, “My plan is to eliminate entire departments of government, fire half of all government workers, terminate social security, and default on the debt.” Elections are pointless charades. But rather than vote for new people, we can simply vote to restrict the resources they have available. Yes, there are legal obligations to pay tax. And everyone should abide those obligations or risk pointless imprisonment. But with proper planning, tax obligations can be minimized. In my case, I left the country. This provides up to $100,800 in tax-free income based on the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, and that’s before taking into account additional deductions, allowances, and exclusions. Recently I used my tax savings to finance a new prosthetic leg for an amputee war veteran that had been abandoned by the US government, and to buy food for earthquake victims here in Nepal. Had I not taken steps to reduce my tax bill, a big chunk of my income would have paid for more soldiers to get their legs blown off, and more bombs to be dropped by remote control on brown people. Instead, now I get to decide how my income and savings can best have an impact on the interests that I believe in. Let’s call it “representation without taxation”. And it’s completely legal as long as you follow the rules. Sure, not everyone has the ability to leave the country. But there are options to fit any lifestyle and circumstance. In addition to taxes, for example, it’s important to consider moving a portion of your savings abroad where it can’t be confiscated or frozen by capital controls. Safeguarding your wealth is a huge part of this strategy, in fact. The larger point is that taking steps to preserve your wealth and freedom is not unpatriotic. And for anyone who truly cares to defend your country from its domestic enemies, starving the beast is one of the most powerful tools you have available.
  2. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-15/montana-passes-sweeping-anti-government-spying-bill Montana Passes Sweeping Anti-Government Spying Bill Tyler Durden's pictureSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 07/15/2013 20:03 -0400 Recession SPY Submitted by Michael Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, What is so interesting about Montana’s House Bill 603, which passed overwhelmingly the state Senate by a 96-4 margin, is that it was passed in April, or several months before Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. Talk about some foresight. Hopefully, we will see many more such bills sweep across the nation, as “change” will have to be done at the local level. The central government in D.C. is hopelessly corrupt and I don’t see that changing. We must just decentralize away from the District of Criminals on our own. From the Atlantic Wire: Privacy advocates, behold the Montana legislature and House Bill 603, a measure that requires the government to obtain a probable cause warrant before spying on you through your cell phone or laptop. HB 603 was signed into law this past spring, effectively making Montana the first state to have an anti-spy law long before anyone heard of Edward Snowden. To be clear, HB 603 passed the state Senate overwhelmingly by a vote of 96-4 in April and was signed into law on May 6. At the time, the law might have seemed extraneous, or even paranoid. But knowing what we know now, the law seems prophetic. The law is pretty straightforward—the government can’t spy on Montanans through their electronic devices unless they obtain a warrant: That effectively makes Montana the first state in the country’s history to pass an electronic privacy law that protects you from the government. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Daniel Zolnikov, and Montana’s lawmakers outpaced all the states in the country when it comes to privacy. “The younger Democrats and Republicans were the ones really for the bill. The older legislators in Helena didn’t say much for or against it,” Zolnikov told the Daily Interlake. The above line explains precisely why the government is concerned about “an increasingly disgruntled, post-Great Recession workforce and the entry of younger, ‘Gen Y’ employees who were ‘raised on the Internet,’” as noted in the recent “Insider Threat” article from McClatchy. MORE: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/07/if-you-dont-want-government-spy-you-move-montana/66962/ If You Don't Want the Government to Spy on You, Move to Montana flickr user: archerwl Share Share Print article Email article Comments Comments ALEXANDER ABAD-SANTOS 7,704 ViewsJUL 9, 2013 Privacy advocates, behold the Montana legislature and House Bill 603, a measure that requires the government to obtain a probable cause warrant before spying on you through your cell phone or laptop. HB 603 was signed into law this past spring, effectively making Montana the first state to have an anti-spy law long before anyone heard of Edward Snowden. To be clear, HB 603 passed the state Senate overwhelmingly by a vote of 96-4 in April and was signed into law on May 6. That's almost one month to the day when we first found out about the NSA's secret order to collect phone records from Verizon, which has since ballooned into a world-wide scandal and chase. "The NSA reports hadn’t even come out at that time," said one of the law's supporters to the news website The Daily Interlake. That we didn't find out about the extensive NSA spying and Edward Snowden until June, is probably the reason HB 603 passed without much fanfare in the spring. At the time, the law might have seemed extraneous, or even paranoid. But knowing what we know now, the law seems prophetic (not unlike the way Shia LaBeouf warned us about spying back in 2008) and is getting some new-found attention. The law is pretty straightforward—the government can't spy on Montanans through their electronic devices unless they obtain a warrant: And "electronic device" is meant to encompass laptops, cell phones and tablets: That effectively makes Montana the first state in the country's history to pass an electronic privacy law that protects you from the government. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Daniel Zolnikov, and Montana's lawmakers outpaced all the states in the country when it comes to privacy—Texas signed an email privacy bill into law last month, and Massachusetts and a handful of other states are considering their own privacy laws when it comes to electronic surveillance and wiretapping. "The younger Democrats and Republicans were the ones really for the bill. The older legislators in Helena didn’t say much for or against it," Zolnikov told the Daily Interlake. Zolnikov actually wanted a harsher bill that would have limited federal authority. "This is very small compared to what we want to accomplish," he added.
  3. Looks like we need to some MAJOR house cleaning on both sides of he aisle--- Those who voted AGAINST ending NSA Domestic Surveillance: Republicans: 134 Democrats: 83 Total: 217 ------------------------------------------------- Those who voted FOR ending NSA Domestic Surveillance: Republicans: 94 Democrats: 111 Total: 205 ------------------------------------------------ Click on the link folks, it's a few charts to view, and gives specific representative names: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-24/these-are-217-people-who-voted-preserve-nsa-surveillance
  4. http://rt.com/usa/obama-insider-threat-leaks-905/ Obama administration urges federal employees to spy on each other to avoid leaks Get short URL Published time: July 10, 2013 18:22 Edited time: July 10, 2013 19:09 President Barack Obama has asked that federal agencies launch an unprecedented campaign requiring government workers to monitor the behavior of their colleagues and report potential leakers under the threat of prosecution. McClatchy reporters Jonathan Landay and Marisa Taylor wrote Tuesday that the “Insider Threat” program mandated by Pres. Obama utilizes methods that, while meant to identify security threats from within, actually provoke co-workers to spy on one another. The program is unprecedented in scope and hopes to prevent future instances where government secrets are spilled. According to a new report, however, the Insider Threat initiative and the techniques utilized by the agencies involved are not proven to work. Insider Threat was authorized in October 2011 after Army Private first class Bradley Manning sent classified intelligence to the website WikiLeaks, an action that government prosecutors argued in court this week aided al-Qaeda by indirectly providing them with secret documents. Through the program, employees are asked to monitor the behavior of their peers, and could face hefty penalties if they fail to alert higher-ups of a potential breach. Specifically, the Insider Threat program asks that officials within the ranks of federal agencies spanning all sectors of the government adopt behavioral profiling techniques that ideally would alert higher-ups of a subordinate interested in leaking intelligence. The White House, the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Education have all been asked to watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers under the program, and If “indicators of insider threat behavior” are brought to attention, officials within those agencies are expected to investigate in order to curb the likelihood of another Pfc. Manning. Research conducted by McClatchy reporters combined with expert interviews suggest those efforts are futile, though, and aren’t proven to work. Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, told McClatchy that “the awareness effort of the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it and why it is so important to report it.” So far, though, that method hasn’t been proven to actually put potential leakers out of work. According to McClatchy, the “indicators” that federal employees are told to monitor include stress, relationship issues, financial problems, odd work hours and random traveling. “It simply educates employees about basic activities or behavior that might suggest a person is up to improper activity,” Barlow told reporters. On the website for his agency’s Insider Threat program, the Office claims that employees may be lured to “betray their nation for ideological reasons, a lust for money or sex, or through blackmail,” and cites threats from within as “the top counterintelligence challenge to our community." Barlow also stressed that the policy “does not mandate” employees to report behavior indicators, but McClatchy reporters noted that failing to act could land an eyewitness with harsh penalties, including criminal charges. According to a 2008 National Research Council study, however, analyzing these indicators do not necessarily signal that one agent may be up to no good. “There is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring techniques are ready for use at all,” the study concluded. “We have not found any silver bullets,” added Deana Caputo, a behavioral scientist at MITRE Corp., which assists several US agencies with their insider threat efforts. “We don’t have actually any really good profiles or pictures of a bad guy, a good guy gone bad or even the bad guy walking in to do bad things from the very beginning.”
  5. http://rt.com/news/snowden-edward-nsa-guardian-817/ Edward Snowden: Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped Get short URL Published time: June 17, 2013 15:30 Edited time: June 17, 2013 21:29 Graffiti that is sympathetic to NSA leaker Edward Snowden is seen stenciled on the sidewalk on June 11, 2013 in San Francisco, California (AFP Photo / Justin Sullivan) Share on tumblr Trends NSA leaksTags CIA, Hacking, Intelligence, Internet,Politics, USA The threat of imprisonment or murder will not stop the truth from coming out, Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who blew the lid on the massive National Security Agency surveillance program, told the Guardian in a live Q&A. The 29-year-old former NSA contractor in conjunction with Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian journalist who broke the story on the NSA’s two controversial data-collection programs which targeted Americans and foreign allies alike, took questions onlineregarding the fallout from the massive intelligence leak. Edward Snowden kicked off the session by describing the targeted campaign by the US government to paint him as a traitor, “just as they did with other whistleblowers." The smear campaign, he argues, has destroyed the possibility of a fair trial at home. In this regard, his decision to leave the United States was not based on any desire to evade justice, especially since he believes he can “do more good outside of prison.” A poster supporting Edward Snowden is displayed opposite the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong June 17, 2013. (Reuters / Bobby Yip) Snowden realized his choice of Hong Kong as a refuge would stir up anti-Chinese hysteria in the US media and be used as a tool to “distract away from the issue of US government misconduct.” He remained emphatic, however, that he had in no way shape or form acted on behalf of Beijing, saying that he “only works with journalists.” “Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.” He was further dismissive of the perennial, dual-pronged approach from US officials to play the terror card in an effort to shut down discussion regarding their every increasing authority and the traitor angle to dismiss those who advocate government transparency. Regarding the former tactic, Snowden argues the fourth estate can verify the veracity of government claims by analyzing how and if the government’s massively expanded powers have resulted in the actual prevention of terror plots. “Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.” 'Being called a traitor by **** Cheney is highest honor for an American' Snowden further deployed his considerable wit to cast aspersion on members of the US political elite who had led leveled the traitor charge against him. “It's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President **** Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by **** Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, [Democratic Senator Dianne] Feinstein, and [Republican Senator Peter]King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen **** Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.” Former Vice President **** Cheney. (AFP Photo / Bruce Bennett) Living a life on the run had previously led Snowden to say that none of the options ahead of him were good, but his ultimate goal would be realized no matter what fate awaited him. "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped." Despite the risks, his message to other potential whistleblowers was unequivocal: "This country is worth dying for." Snowden, who had previously stated that he painstakingly evaluated every document he had disclosed to ensure that it was legitimately in the public interest, reiterated that had not in fact posed a national security threat. “I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target," he argued. 'Draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers'When pressed over whether it was his intention to insinuate that Bradley Manning, the United States soldier currently on trial for passing classified material to WikiLeaks, indiscriminately dumped classified information with the intention of harming people, the former CIA employee defended both the Army Private and the online non-profit. “WikiLeaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that 'documents were dumped' to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.” Snowden said the “draconian” campaigns against Manning, NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and William Binney, , and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou would result in even more anti-corruption and government transparency advocates aspiring to greater acts of boldness. “Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.” Incidentally, Binney told RT last December how the FBI was engaged in widespread surveillance against the bulk of American citizenry, including members of congress. In April 2012, Binney said the NSA had intercepted 20 trillion communications “transactions” of American citizens, including phone calls and emails, via the Bush-era Stellar Wind surveillance programs. That such programs were continued and expanded under the current administration led to Snowden's disillusion with Obama, who he claims has “closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs.” However, Snowden believes Obama has not yet reached the point of no return. “He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it.” 'IPS, content, attachments: Analysts get everything'With the promise of further revelations, Snowden dispelled any disinformation intended to downplay the scope of US Intelligence surveillance capabilities, describing a murky legal framework with virtually no oversight which gives signals intelligence analysts carte blanche when it comes to the collection of American’s private communications. “…if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT (signals intelligence) databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.” Snowden continues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court essentially acts as a rubberstamp judicial body which, for all intents and purposes, operates on an ad hoc basis, as “Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant.” This so-called “incidental” collection has very real world implications, as the “content of your communications” which has been obtained without a warrant is still accessible to NSA workers for future use. When asked to clarify if by content, he means a record that the correspondence took place or the actual content itself, Snowden said the answer is “both.” “If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA (FISA Amendments Avy) 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.” AFP Photo / Mehdi Fedouach Snowden argued that for those hoping to bolster their security against invasive government snooping, encryption remains a viable option, though with one major caveat. “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.” Snowden concedes that US citizens do enjoy both limited “policy protections” as well as a “very weak technical protection,” albeit one which does not preclude US communications from getting swept up by Sigint ingestion points, especially once they cross the border. “More fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system,” he stresses. “Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal." he stresses. Snowden further argued that dividing people down nationalist lines was no substitute for probable cause. “The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.” Ending with a show of appreciation to all of his supporters, Snowden implored them to remember one fundamental point: “just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay.”
  6. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-11/guest-post-why-surveillance-state-must-be-erased Why The Surveillance State Must Be Erased Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/11/2013 21:18 -0400 Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog, In America today there is a great rushing storm, a swirling hurricane of clashing opinions and ideologies that defy coherent organization and classification. This social tempest has been triggered by certain revelations among the general public on issues which we in the Liberty Movement have long been aware. The fact that our government is bought and paid for by international corporate interests, the fact that our government has positioned itself to spy on ALL Americans without warrant and without probable cause, the fact that our government is instituting policy initiatives that target common citizens as enemy combatants, the fact that every one of our Constitutional rights is being deliberately torn away; these things are not news to us, but to many once ignorant people, they are a shock to the system. Open corruption on the part of a criminal establishment has a funny way of politicizing everyone, even those people who go out of their way to avoid the bigger picture. In the end, no man or woman gets a pass. Whether you like it or not, one day soon, you will have to choose a side; freedom or tyranny. There is no middle ground. There is no Switzerland. With all the rationalizations and counter-rationalizations flying around concerning the current avalanche of admissions and data leaks, it is easy to lose track of the root of the overall conflict. It’s as if we have been dropped into the heart of an Amazonian swamp, our feet encased in a thick sludge of social inaction as a dark cloud of mindless mosquito-people buzz about us, pecking hungrily at our veins with their warped and uneducated world views. The deafening chorus distracts us from what is truly important. Here is the reality of our situation: 1) Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration supported FISA domestic surveillance legislation. FISA is the legal tool which the federal government now uses to justify the monitoring of journalists and recently exposed mass surveillance programs such as PRISM. Politicians from both the Republican and the Democratic parties have defended the use of FISA and PRISM. Both parties support the destruction of your 4th Amendment rights. 2) The Obama Administration openly admits to the monitoring of journalists phone and email records in an attempt to thwart whistleblowers that might actually bring the truth of what the government is doing into the light of day. Obama of course defends this position by claiming that “national security” is at stake. 3) Part of the motivation for surveillance measures against journalists has clearly been the Benghazi conspiracy, which is a thorn in the side of the establishment that refuses to go away. Like Watergate, or Iran-Contra, the White House has been caught with its pants down and instead of admitting its guilt, has decided to attack the messengers instead. 4) Another motivation was certainly the exposure of the ATF’s “Fast And Furious” program, which funneled U.S. firearms into the hands of Mexican drug cartels so that American firearms dealers and owners could be blamed for the escalation of deadly violence south of the border. Again, Obama and his handlers seek to use a suffocating surveillance grid in order to thwart whistleblowers and prevent federal crimes from being aired in public. 5) The use of the IRS as a weapon against the political enemies of the establishment (namely Tea Party groups) verifies that government surveillance without oversight can indeed lead to political profiling and unjustified punishment. 6) The PRISM scandal, leaked by former CIA operative and NSA contractor Edward Snowden, has given the general public a raw naked look at the reality of the FISA spy initiative. In the past, Liberty Movement champions have been derided as “paranoid” for pointing out that there were no limitations to FISA, and that the entire nation might one day be monitored and catalogued like animals in a great technological cage. Today, the public now knows that this concern is concrete and undeniable. EVERYONE is being watched. Reports now estimate that NSA hackers harvest over 2.1 million gigabytes of data on American citizens per hour. 7) Privacy rights have been so debased that the invasion of our electronic communications is the least of our worries. The Supreme Court has ruled in Maryland v. King that police now have the authority to extract DNA samples from any person placed under arrest, without a warrant, and without due process. This means that the second a law enforcement officer places you in cuffs, your genetic materials are no longer your property, even if the charges against you are erroneous, if charges are ever filed at all. The government admits to having at least 10 million people catalogued in their genetic database already. 8) Since 9/11, U.S. cities have added approximately 30 million new CCTV cameras on top of those already in operation. After the Boston Bombing, even more are expected to be installed. There are few places in most major cities where you are not being watched, and even smaller municipalities with miniscule crime rates are beginning to follow suit. It would seem that our government has somehow overlooked the 4th Amendment of our Constitution, and statist rationalists would do well to study it before defending their actions. Let’s read it, shall we? 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. Now let’s examine the arguments of the establishment in favor of the Surveillance State: Argument #1: Mass Surveillance Has Been Going On For A Long Time And Is Nothing New Dianne Feinstein and Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most evil political duo since McCain and Lieberman, have both used the above talking point in order to rationalize the mass surveillance of FISA and PRISM. But let’s put this in perspective… Feinstein and Graham are essentially saying that because the government has criminally trespassed on our privacy for years, we should not complain when we discover that the invasion was a bit more elaborate than we had originally suspected. They are saying that because we allowed them to get away with taking an inch, we might as well allow them to get away with taking a mile. This is the logical fallacy of incrementalism, and tyrants use it in their arguments all the time. Despotism rarely establishes itself overnight. Rather, it slithers slowly into the midst of a society like a parasite, and carefully entrenches itself under our skin bit-by-bit so that we do not notice until it is buried so deep we fear removing it at all. A line must be drawn in the sand eventually. Past mistakes are not a license for future failures and future regrets, and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to take something away from you. Argument #2: If You’re Not Talking To Terrorists, Then You Have Nothing To Worry About Another debate point from the bottom feeding Lindsey Graham. First off, our Constitutional rights are not predicated on whether or not we are guilty of “terrorism”. Even a so-called terrorist is supposed to be protected under the Bill of Rights. The law is very clear, and this is not a negotiable position. Every American, regardless of government suspicion, has a right to privacy, and is protected from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. Period. Graham’s argument perpetuates the fallacy that the word “terrorism” is somehow a magical password that allows the federal government to bypass Constitutional barriers. I’m sorry to tell Lindsey that he is greatly mistaken. Secondly, the very foundation of a free society requires that every person be treated as INNOCENT until proven guilty. Mass surveillance twists this principle, so that all people are treated by the state as guilty until proven innocent. Such a system will inevitably generate a vast rift between the populace and the government because it designates the political elite as the “watchers” and the public as the “watched”. As history has shown us, the "watchers" always become the enslavers, and the "watched" always become the enslaved. I’m not sure why so many people, including U.S. senators, do not seem to grasp this concept. Argument #3: We Must Trust That The Government Is Using The Surveillance Apparatus For Good Barack Obama in defense of the leaked PRISM initiative and all encompassing NSA surveillance stated that Americans must simply “trust” that the federal system is using the data they have criminally harvested for the good of the country. That is to say, we should have “faith” in the White House. I’m sorry, but the Constitution was written exactly because governments are run by men, NOT benevolent gods, and men are notorious for abusing power. The Constitution exists because NO government can be trusted to act in a principled manner. We do not have to “trust” them because tight constitutional restrictions are in place to ensure that they aren’t given enough slack to become dangerous. When those restrictions are diminished, we get programs like PRISM… The checks and balances of due process and warrants are supposed to be absolutely public and transparent so that we can see, with our own eyes, that all is being handled justly and honorably. Mass surveillance in particular is an affront to the 4th Amendment because there is no conceivable way that warrants could ever be issued for the incredible volume of materials gathered, and therefore, there is no conceivable way that any legitimate judicial oversight is being enforced. Secret courts, secret charges, secret programs targeting entire subsections of the population, were expressly forbidden by the Founding Fathers as totalitarian in nature. In February of this year, Obama boasted during a Google Plus “Fireside Chat” that his was “the most transparent administration in history”. The ability of politicians to lie with sociopathic expertise is well documented, hence, my lack of faith. The government and the Obama White House in particular do not deserve our trust. Trust has to be earned… Argument #4: Surveillance Programs Are Essential To The Safety Of The Public At this point I find that anyone who still uses the “safety” position to justify the trampling of our freedoms is a lost cause. Years ago, when the surveillance grid was being put into place through legal chicanery, the common skeptic would insist that such subversive laws had not yet hurt anyone, and that the concerns of the Liberty Movement were “overblown”. Today, it’s no longer about theory. Our cultural pain is real, people are being targeted, people are suffering, and it’s only going to get worse from here on. And, as we warned a long time ago, the concept of “collective safety” would be the primary persuasion technique used to lead America further into oblivion. In a race to spin the leak of PRISM, lawmakers and establishment shills have come out in droves to suggest that the secret surveillance state has “stopped terrorist attacks” and “saved lives”. Of course, because all the details of the program are classified, we’ll never see any proof that such claims are true. What a conundrum. Frankly, I know enough about government sponsored terrorism to understand that even if PRISM thwarted an attack, our clandestine alphabet bureaucracy has created far more death and destruction than they have ever prevented. In the end, I couldn’t care less if PRISM stopped a terrorist act. The point is irrelevant. Our civil liberties are not subject to the supposed success of an unconstitutional government action. The promise of safety does not nullify our rights, nor does it give government capital to do whatever it pleases. Comfort Means Death I believe the establishment has moved away from the denial of so many abuses because it hopes to convince us that this is the “new normal” of our society. They want us to embrace the surveillance state and become comfortable in its cradling arms. I do not plan to get “comfortable”. When political villains no longer fear the exposure of their villainy, it is time to start worrying. There has been a lot of unrestrained conjecture on the motivations of the suddenly world-famous Edward Snowden. The fact is we still know very little about him, and for now I will reserve judgment; partially because I know that one day people like myself could be accused of “fomenting controlled opposition” or “working for the enemy”. Our culture has become so cynical that we refuse to believe that anyone does anything anymore out of a sense of principle. Whatever Snowden’s original intentions, I find his admitted reasons inspiring. When asked why he forced the truth of PRISM into the mainstream, Snowden replied: "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under…" "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that [career and former life] because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building." "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which was done in their name and that which is done against them…I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant." The surveillance machine is the key to control. When each person feels the eyes of the state constantly upon them, dissent and rebellion becomes unthinkable. At the very least, those of us who are aware of the great Orwellian shift before us must take an immovable stand. The right to privacy is an inherent right of natural law. No individual or government system should be allowed legal precedence to invade my privacy, and all people have the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent. As an individual, I do not owe the collective, or the government, a constant update on whether or not I am a "threat". In fact, I don't owe anyone anything. If someone continues to treat me as an enemy and constantly tramples my natural right to privacy, I am going to fight them, and I am going to hurt them, perhaps mortally. This is what people who support surveillance society need to understand; there will be consequences for their trespasses against the natural rights of others. There can be no negotiation. There can be no compromise. The surveillance state must be erased.
  7. http://rt.com/news/intelligence-officials-nsa-leaker-452/ Alleged US security officials said NSA leaker, journalist should be 'disappeared' – report : June 10, 2013 10:46 Edited time: June 10, 2013 19:09 US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is pictured during an interview with the Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong Sunday. The 29-year-old NSA contractor revealed top secret U.S. surveillance programs. (Reuters/Ewen MacAskill) A US editor has alleged he overheard security officials saying that the NSA leaker and the Guardian columnist who broke his story should be “disappeared.” Leaker Edward Snowden said that American spies often prefer silencing targets over due process. Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on NSA leak fallout “In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be disappeared recorded a bit,” the Atlantic's Washington-based editor-at-large Steve Clemons tweeted on Sunday. According to Clemons, four men sitting next to him at the airport “were loud. Almost bragging” while discussing an intelligence conference they had just attended hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. Clemens said he was unsure of the men's identities or which agency they worked for, and told the Huffington Post that one of them was wearing “a white knit national counter-terrorism center shirt.” Clemons also recorded part of their conversation and snapped some photos, hoping that “people in that bz will know them.” “But bad quality,” he noted about the quality of the photos. “Was a shock to me and wasn't prepared,” he wrote on Twitter. Clemons’ post immediately went viral, and his Twitter account was flooded with responses. While some users were anxious to learn more details and hear the conversation, others lashed out at the blogger, saying he should have verified the information before posting it. Clemons said his view on the “disappear” part was that the statement was one of “bravado” and a “joke” – but a very “disturbing” one. He said he felt obligated to make it public because he thought the speakers were senior intelligence officers. It was a “disconcerting set of comments offered in public,” Clemons explained. The blogger judged the speakers’ profession from the “context” of their conversation, as well as from the shirt one of them was wearing. Clemons is now working on an article detailing the conversation, but he said he will not publish it or the recording until he identifies the speakers and offers them a “fair chance to clarify” their remarks. Clemons has claimed that another person present at the time of the alleged conversation emailed him with the “same interpretation and concern” of the conversation. Snowden on tweet: ‘I am a spy and that is how they talk’ The source behind the revelation of the top-secret NSA surveillance program, dubbed one of the most significant intelligence leaks in US history, was uncovered late last week. Snowden, a former CIA technical contractor and NSA consultant, had asked the Guardian to reveal his identity. He has fled to Hong Kong in a bid to escape retaliation by the US. "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards,” Snowden told the Guardian. When asked for his reaction to the alleged comments that reporter Glenn Greenwald and the 29-year-old leaker himself should be "disappeared," Snowden told the newspaper: "Someone responding to the story said 'real spies do not speak like that.' Well, I am a spy and that is how they talk. Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process – they defend decisive action. They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane than let these people have a day in court. It is an authoritarian mindset in general." Snowden earlier explained that he had sacrificed his life and $200,000-a-year career out of his desire to protect "basic liberties" in order to “send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.” The whistleblower leaked top-secret documents that revealed the existence of the US National Security Agency’s extensive Internet spying program PRISM, which records digital communications and allows for real-time online surveillance of US citizens. PRISM apparently gives US intelligence agencies direct access to files stored on the servers of major Internet companies – including Google and Facebook – in order to identify and target potential terror suspects.
  8. http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-06-10/real-reason-government-spying-americans Is This the REAL Reason for the Government Spying On Americans? Submitted by George Washington on 06/10/2013 14:51 -0400 To understand the scope, extent and reason that the government spies on all Americans, you have to understand what has happened to our Constitutional form of government since 9/11. State of Emergency The United States has been in a declared state of emergency from September 2001, to the present. Specifically, on September 11, 2001, the government declared a state of emergency. That declared state of emergency was formally put in writing on 9/14/2001: A national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001 . . . That declared state of emergency has continued in full force and effect from 9/11 to the present. President Bush kept it in place, and President Obama has also. For example, on September 9, 2011, President Obama declared: CONTINUATION OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED BY PROC. NO. 7463 Notice of President of the United States, dated Sept. 9, 2011, 76 F.R. 56633, provided: Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency previously declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States. Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2011. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency that was declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat. This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress. The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001: Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law. The White House has kept substantial information concerning its presidential proclamations and directives hidden from Congress. For example, according to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy: Of the 54 National Security Presidential Directives issued by the [George W.] Bush Administration to date, the titles of only about half have been publicly identified. There is descriptive material or actual text in the public domain for only about a third. In other words, there are dozens of undisclosed Presidential directives that define U.S. national security policy and task government agencies, but whose substance is unknown either to the public or, as a rule, to Congress. Continuity of Government Continuity of Government (“COG”) measures were implemented on 9/11. For example, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, at page 38: At 9:59, an Air Force lieutenant colonel working in the White House Military Office joined the conference and stated he had just talked to Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The White House requested (1) the implementation of continuity of government measures, (2) fighter escorts for Air Force One, and (3) a fighter combat air patrol over Washington, D.C. Likewise, page 326 of the Report states: The secretary of defense directed the nation’s armed forces to Defense Condition 3, an increased state of military readiness. For the first time in history, all nonemergency civilian aircraft in the United States were grounded, stranding tens of thousands of passengers across the country. Contingency plans for the continuity of government and the evacuation of leaders had been implemented. The Washington Post notes that Vice President **** Cheney initiated the COG plan on 9/11: From the bunker, Cheney officially implemented the emergency continuity of government orders . . . (See also footnotes cited therein and this webpage.) CNN reported that – 6 months later – the plans were still in place: Because Bush has decided to leave the operation in place, agencies including the White House and top civilian Cabinet departments have rotated personnel involved, and are discussing ways to staff such a contingency operation under the assumption it will be in place indefinitely, this official said. Similarly, the Washington Post reported in March 2002 that “the shadow government has evolved into an indefinite precaution.” The same article goes on to state: Assessment of terrorist risks persuaded the White House to remake the program as a permanent feature of ‘the new reality, based on what the threat looks like,’ a senior decisionmaker said. As CBS pointed out, virtually none of the Congressional leadership knew that the COG had been implemented or was still in existence as of March 2002: Key congressional leaders say they didn’t know President Bush had established a “shadow government,” moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington to ensure that the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on the nation’s capital, The Washington Post says in its Saturday editions. Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told the Post he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings. An aide to House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he was also unaware of the administration’s move. Among Congress’s GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew. Aides to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) said he had not been told. As Senate president pro tempore, he is in line to become president after the House speaker. Similarly, the above-cited CNN article states: Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, said Friday he can’t say much about the plan. “We have not been informed at all about the role of the shadow government or its whereabouts or what particular responsibilities they have and when they would kick in, but we look forward to work with the administration to get additional information on that.” Indeed, the White House has specifically refused to share information about Continuity of Government plans with the Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress, even though that Committee has proper security clearance to hear the full details of all COG plans. Specifically, in the summer 2007, Congressman Peter DeFazio, on the Homeland Security Committee (and so with proper security access to be briefed on COG issues), inquired about continuity of government plans, and was refused access. Indeed, DeFazio told Congress that the entire Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress has been denied access to the plans by the White House. CLICK ON LINK FOR VIDEO: (Or here is the transcript). The Homeland Security Committee has full clearance to view all information about COG plans. DeFazio concluded: “Maybe the people who think there’s a conspiracy out there are right”. University of California Berkeley Professor Emeritus Peter Dale Scott points out that – whether or not COG plans are still in effect – the refusal of the executive branch to disclose their details to Congress means that the Constitutional system of checks and balances has already been gravely injured: If members of the Homeland Security Committee cannot enforce their right to read secret plans of the Executive Branch, then the systems of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution would seem to be failing. To put it another way, if the White House is successful in frustrating DeFazio, then Continuity of Government planning has arguably already superseded the Constitution as a higher authority. Indeed, continuity of government plans are specifically defined to do the following: Top leaders of the “new government” called for in the COG would entirely or largely go into hiding, and would govern in hidden locations Those within the new government would know what was going on. But those in the “old government” – that is, the one created by the framers of the Constitution – would not necessarily know the details of what was happening Normal laws and legal processes might largely be suspended, or superseded by secretive judicial forums The media might be ordered by strict laws – punishable by treason – to only promote stories authorized by the new government See this, this and this. Could the White House have maintained COG operations to the present day? I don’t know, but the following section from the above-cited CNN article is not very reassuring: Bush triggered the precautions in the hours after the September 11 strikes, and has left them in place because of continuing U.S. intelligence suggesting a possible threat. Concerns that al Qaeda could have gained access to a crude nuclear device “were a major factor” in the president’s decision, the official said. “The threat of some form of catastrophic event is the trigger,” this official said. This same official went on to say that the U.S. had no confirmation — “and no solid evidence” — that al Qaeda had such a nuclear device and also acknowledged that the “consensus” among top U.S. officials was that the prospect was “quite low.” Still, the officials said Bush and other top White House officials including Cheney were adamant that the government take precautions designed to make sure government functions ranging from civil defense to transportation and agricultural production could be managed in the event Washington was the target of a major strike. As is apparent from a brief review of the news, the government has, since 9/11, continuously stated that there is a terrorist threat of a nuclear device or dirty bomb. That alone infers that COG plans could, hypothetically, still be in effect, just like the state of emergency is still in effect and has never been listed. Indeed, President Bush said on December 17, 2005, 4 years after 9/11: The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad. The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks [45 days times 30 equals approximately 4 years] and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups. The N.S.A.’s activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and N.S.A.’s top legal officials, including N.S.A.’s general counsel and inspector general. In other words, it appears that as of December 2005, COG plans had never been rescincded, but had been continously renewed every 45 days, and . In 2008, Tim Shorrock wrote at Salon: A contemporary version of the Continuity of Government program was put into play in the hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Vice President Cheney and senior members of Congress were dispersed to “undisclosed locations” to maintain government functions. It was during this emergency period, Hamilton and other former government officials believe, that President Bush may have authorized the NSA to begin actively using the Main Core database for domestic surveillance [more on Main Core below]. One indicator they cite is a statement by Bush in December 2005, after the New York Times had revealed the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping, in which he made a rare reference to the emergency program: The Justice Department’s legal reviews of the NSA activity, Bush said, were based on “fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government.” In 2007, President Bush issued Presidential Directive NSPD-51, which purported to change Continuity of Government plans. NSPD51 is odd because: NSPD51 was passed without Congressional input Even the New York Times wrote in an editorial: Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the President may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack, or to any ‘other condition.’ Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new Presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. Everyone from “conservative activist Jerome Corsi [to] Marjorie Cohn of the [liberal] National Lawyer’s Guild have interpreted [the COG plans contained in Presidential Directive NSPD-51] as a break from Constitutional law ….“ As a reporter for Slate concluded after analyzing NSPD-51: I see nothing in the [COG document entitled presidential directive NSPD51] to prevent even a “localized” forest fire or hurricane from giving the president the right to throw long-established constitutional government out the window White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that “because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the American public needs no explanation of [Continuity of Government] plans” This is all the more bizarre when you realize that COG plans were originally created solely to respond to a decapitating nuclear strike which killed our civilian leaders. (It was subsequently expanded decades before 9/11 into a multi-purpose plan by our good friends **** Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. See this, this and this.) Does COG Explain the Pervasive Spying on Americans? 5 years ago, investigative reporter Christopher Ketcham disclosed the spying which was confirmed last week by whistleblower Edward Snowden: The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database. Given that Ketcham was proven right, let’s see what else he reported: Given that Ketcham was right about the basics, let’s hear what else the outstanding investigative journalist said in 2008: There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.” *** According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger [for martial law ]. *** When COG plans are shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively unregulated by Congress or the courts, and married to an overreaching surveillance state—as seems to be the case with Main Core—even sober observers must weigh whether the protections put in place by the federal government are becoming more dangerous to America than any outside threat. Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets’ behavior and tracks their circle of associations with “social network analysis” and artificial intelligence modeling tools. *** A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace. *** If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people. A veteran CIA intelligence analyst who maintains active high-level clearances and serves as an advisor to the Department of Defense in the field of emerging technology tells Radar that during the 2004 hospital room drama, [current nominee to head the FBI, and former Deputy Attorney General] James Comey expressed concern over how this secret database was being used “to accumulate otherwise private data on non-targeted U.S. citizens for use at a future time.” [snowden and high-level NSA whistleblower William Binney have since confirmed this] …. A source regularly briefed by people inside the intelligence community adds: “Comey had discovered that President Bush had authorized NSA to use a highly classified and compartmentalized Continuity of Government database on Americans in computerized searches of its domestic intercepts. [Comey] had concluded that the use of that ‘Main Core’ database compromised the legality of the overall NSA domestic surveillance project.” *** The veteran CIA intelligence analyst notes that Comey’s suggestion that the offending elements of the program were dropped could be misleading: “Bush [may have gone ahead and] signed it as a National Intelligence Finding anyway.” But even if we never face a national emergency, the mere existence of the database is a matter of concern. “The capacity for future use of this information against the American people is so great as to be virtually unfathomable,” the senior government official says. In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world-renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won’t prevent terrorist conspiracies. “Because there is so little historical terrorist event data,” Jonas tells Radar, “there is not enough volume to create precise predictions.” *** [J. Edgar Hoover's] FBI “security index” was allegedly maintained and updated into the 1980s, when it was reportedly transferred to the control of none other than FEMA (though the FBI denied this at the time). FEMA, however—then known as the Federal Preparedness Agency—already had its own domestic surveillance system in place, according to a 1975 investigation by Senator John V. Tunney of California. Tunney, the son of heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney and the inspiration for Robert Redford’s character in the film The Candidate, found that the agency maintained electronic dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans that contained information gleaned from wide-ranging computerized surveillance. The database was located in the agency’s secret underground city at Mount Weather, near the town of Bluemont, Virginia. [One of the main headquarter of COG operations.] The senator’s findings were confirmed in a 1976 investigation by the Progressive magazine, which found that the Mount Weather computers “can obtain millions of pieces [of] information on the personal lives of American citizens by tapping the data stored at any of the 96 Federal Relocation Centers”—a reference to other classified facilities. According to the Progressive, Mount Weather’s databases were run “without any set of stated rules or regulations. Its surveillance program remains secret even from the leaders of the House and the Senate.” *** Wired magazine turned up additional damaging information, revealing in 1993 that [Oliver] North, operating from a secure White House site, allegedly employed a software database program called PROMIS (ostensibly as part of the REX 84 plan). PROMIS, which has a strange and controversial history, was designed to track individuals—prisoners, for example—by pulling together information from disparate databases into a single record. According to Wired, “Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon’s enemies list or Senator Joe McCarthy’s blacklist look downright crude.” Sources have suggested to Radar that government databases tracking Americans today, including Main Core, could still have PROMIS-based legacy code from the days when North was running his programs. *** Marty Lederman, a high-level official at the Department of Justice under Clinton, writing on a law blog last year, wondered, “How extreme were the programs they implemented [after 9/11]? How egregious was the lawbreaking?” Congress has tried, and mostly failed, to find out. *** “We are at the edge of a cliff and we’re about to fall off,” says constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein. “To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability. There’s no doubt that Congress would have the authority to denounce all this—for example, to refuse to appropriate money for the preparation of a list of U.S. citizens to be detained in the event of martial law. But Congress is the invertebrate branch. *** UPDATE [from Ketcham]: Since this article went to press, several documents have emerged to suggest the story has longer legs than we thought. Most troubling among these is an October 2001 Justice Department memo that detailed the extra-constitutional powers the U.S. military might invoke during domestic operations following a terrorist attack. In the memo, John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general, “concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.” (Yoo, as most readers know, is author of the infamous Torture Memo that, in bizarro fashion, rejiggers the definition of “legal” torture to allow pretty much anything short of murder.) In the October 2001 memo, Yoo refers to a classified DOJ document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.” According to the Associated Press, “Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Attorney General John Mukasey last month refused to clarify before Congress whether the Yoo memo was still in force. Americans have the right to know whether a COG program is still in effect, and whether the spying on our phone calls and Internet usage stems from such COG plans. Indeed, 9/11 was a horrible blow, but it was not a decapitating nuclear strike on our leaders … so COG and the state of emergency should be lifted. If COG plans are not still in effect, we have the right to demand that “enemies lists” and spying capabilities developed for the purpose of responding to a nuclear war be discarded , as we have not been hit by nuclear weapons … and our civilian leaders – on Capital Hill, the White House, and the judiciary – are still alive and able to govern.
  9. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-06/reminder-att-verizon-and-others-have-been-providing-nsa-phone-records-2001 As A Reminder, AT&T, Verizon And Others Have Been Providing NSA With Phone Records Since 2001 Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2013 10:31 -0400 Department of Justice Verizon When it comes to events from the recent "for the collective good" history, America appears to have a very short memory. Because if it could remember further back than just 15 (milli)seconds, it would recall this USA Today front page from May 11, 2006: To summarize: On May 11, 2006, USA Today published an article reporting that AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth had been providing the NSA with the telephone records of “tens of millions of Americans” since shortly after September 11, 2001. Called “the largest database ever assembled in the world” by the newspaper’s source, its purported goal was to “‘create a database of every call ever made’ within the nation’s borders.” Back then everyone denied everything. Although it was not implicated in the story, Qwest, a teleco that operates primarily in the West and Northwest, quickly stated that it had not participated in the NSA program. Shortly thereafter, both BellSouth and Verizon also denied involvement. BellSouth demanded that USA Today state for the record that it had not been involved with the NSA. Eventually, on June 30, 2006, USA Today withdrew the story as it applied to Verizon and BellSouth... Unlike BellSouth and Verizon, AT&T neither confirmed nor denied assisting the NSA, asserting that the U.S. Department of Justice said discussing the program would harm national security Good - so we now know Verizon was lying and AT&T was and likely still continues to cooperate with the NSA. Any questions? So - once again - what exactly is the news? That Americans are being spied upon? This has been the case for the past 12 years! Oh, we know - it must is the "stunning" realization that the person who created the following morphed photo actually knew what they were doing. (CLICK ON LINK TO SEE)
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