U.S. Government spying on entire U.S., to nobody's surprise

[macdiesel]

The people calling Snowden a traitor etc have the argument that it is only the phone records being pulled and ran through supercomputers using algorithms and what not.
Most then go into saying that calls aren't actually being tapped...........then I watched the Guardian/Snowden interview.

quote from that interview-
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere," Snowden said in a video on the Guardian's website. "I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."

I'd like to hear more about this, even though I'm sure they are stifling this as best they can.

One more interesting thing is that if this is no surprise to anyone.....(because it's outlined in The Patriot Act) then why the concern that Snowden confirms it? He really hasn't compromised anything. I think this could get very interesting before it's all said and done.

Like I said several days ago...............CONFIRMED

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-5...-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/
total f'ing bullshit

 

[DonPanchoVilla]

I'm ashamed to say this but I kinda new this was happening since the movie Enemy of the state came out.

 

[DrFever]

Of all our international creditors who have been given US Treasury notes in exchange for buying our federal debt, China is the largest shareholder in America. By 2011 they had already purchased 850 billion dollars in US debt with our Treasury Notes. Japan and Mexico are next in the size of the US deficit that they have bought in exchange for our Treasury Notes. We are already paying interest on that debt with the yield currently earned on US Treasury Notes which isn’t much because they have just about Junk Bond status. Now China could begin a trend for collecting on their debt that will allow America’s lands to be sold to the Chinese government to satisfy their demands for buying our debt. Thanks to Federal Reserve quantitative easing, our Treasury Notes are constantly being repurchased before those Treasury Notes reach maturity, but still those actions continue to devalue the US dollar.

Washington DC is not your friend

America is teetering under the weight of a federal government under the Obama presidency that is being subverted daily through a refusal to balance the budget, and rather than doing that the President and his staffers would rather allow foreign control over our lands and our sovereignty. Already there are 35 terrorist training facilities known to exist within the borders of the US. President Obama has recently given several Aleutian chain islands in the Bering Sea near Alaska to the Russians that have rich offshore oil reserves that could go far in making America energy independent, yet our President cedes these resource rich lands to the Russians by redrawing international boundaries. What the hell is happening here people?

Definition of a traitor

Anyone who would describe the acts of a government and its highest levels of leadership acceptable for handing over our waters, our lands, and our precious mineral rights to foreign nations, our enemies, or even the UN, qualify for another label. That is traitors! The Obama White House is guilty of many Constitutional violations, crimes against Americans, and the intentional mismanagement of our fiscal interests, and still no one raises a hand to do anything about it. I submit to you, that our country is in the eve of a transfer of power, citizen’s rights, and state’s rights to a one world government. We have been betrayed by our President in so many ways that its almost incomprehensible as we draw nearer to that ultimate collectivist agenda. In the process, the voices who cry out against this injustice will be vilified and incriminated as we who do care resist anyway we possibly can!

 

[gobbler3447]

Minds I, proves my statement concerning "ridicule", suppose he's an IRS agent, or NSA agent, who in the end will give up his guns and load into the cattle cars to be relocated out of harms way, and into a gas chamber!

 

[idiit]

there has been a global shadow government silent coup.

coup (k)
n. pl. coups (kz)
1. A brilliantly executed stratagem; a triumph.
2.
a. A coup d'état.
b. A sudden appropriation of leadership or power; a takeover:

your government (no matter what nationality you are) is probably not your government.

the 99% need wake up throughout the world and take back their sovereign rights from the 1% psychopathic criminals.

the original 5 brics nations ( brazil, russia, india, china,south america) are now 180+ strong but even in india the leadership has tried to keep a populace that overwhelmingly in majority values their net worth in gold instead of paper lies (fiat currency) from owning bullion.

the asleeples around the world are waking up. the people are forming groundswell coalitions against the nwo terrorists. change is on the horizon.

 

[BudToaster]

Already there are 35 terrorist training facilities known to exist within the borders of the US.

okay, this is cool! as demonstrated by Waco and Ruby Ridge, the feds are trained at "containing" such like. Feds know where they are and can monitor all communication (maybe "How Do They Do It" can do a show on carrier pidgeon intercept).

It's like a Gitmo where the prisoners self incarcerate. and much cheaper to operate.

this is a win for the tax payer.

 

[Tudo]

Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? (Good Will Hunting)
[YOUTUBEIF]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw&feature=youtu.be[/YOUTUBEIF]


If that doesn't work try here ( how do you imbed the screenshot? )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw&feature=youtu.be

 

[bentom187]

this is from glen greenwald,i don't have social media but for anyone who is interested edward snowden wil be having a q&a session.


account‏@ggreenwald
BREAKING: Edward Snowden will appear today at the Guardian website, 11 am EST, for reader Q-and-A - ask him anything http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower …

 

[bentom187]

i'll drop the intresting questions here occasionally here is just 1 and 2

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: 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. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

2) 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

 

[bentom187]

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT 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.

2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 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

 

[headband 707]

Snowden and Brad Manning are hero's and why they spend more time on them then the actual thing they did the whistle blowing on only shows how they are good at deflection. headband 707

 

[bentom187]

Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:


I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. 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."

 

[bentom187]

Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. 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.

 

[bentom187]

US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks, & calling you traitor. Respond?

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.

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 acheive 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.

 

[bentom187]

Final question from Glenn Greenwald:

Anything else you’d like to add?

Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. 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.

 

[idiit]

FROM A BLOOMBERG MSM ARTICLE PUBLISHED 2 DAYS AGO.

Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.

^^ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html


this kind of access to extremely sensitive private information can be used to blackmail government and judicial officials, not just monetary or technological gain. according to some sources close to snowden this is part of the "iceberg" soon to be revealed.

wait and see.

if this doesn't wake up the snoring asleeples.......

 

[bentom187]

looking at the comment sections from snowden reports around the web,it doesn't look good.

 

[gaiusmarius]

this guy is clever, he didnt just expose all the information at once, that way it might die down again and other stories could be used to distract folks from the subject, but this way, with new info being added daily, makes the whole thing stay on peoples minds, with more and more "important" people getting pissed off as the extent of the abuse becomes known grafdually, it's a great strategy.

i mean now it turns out they were not just spying on tom dick and harries communications etc, but on sir tom, lord dick and lady harries private communications too.......LMFAO! all those fuckers sat back and said nothing to ever increasing police state policies being implemented on the people they are supposed to serve. now they are shocked as hell to find out it's being used on them too, as well as on so called enemies, hehe. they been using the info to blackmail their way to what ever they wanted and never will they give this power up voluntarily. they will have to experience such a massive amount of public resistance that they are forced to back down.

the devils defending this shit need to go on a national list of oath breaking traitors to the constitution to be voted out of power who ever they are!

 

[HempKat]

Hempkat your right that people need to get out and vote. However folks need more options. Unfortunately in the USA it requires a shit load of cash to get elected. Independents are the answer if they can get the publicity. USA needs high profile independent people sitting in the house who will ask the hard questions and not vote according to party dogma. Wishful thinking i know but possible. You dont need to control the house, you just need the balance of power.

Yeah it's going to be a tough battle for sure. Especially since the things we need to do to bring about meaningful change we currently have to depend on the people such changes will hurt the most to actually change. Like imposing term limits for example. It's not in the best interests of the people the limits would be imposed upon to create and pass legislation doing so. Nor would it be in their best interest to eliminate the electoral college, both steps which would go a long way towards fixing a broken, out dated system.

 

[macdiesel]

the devils defending this shit need to go on a national list of oath breaking traitors to the constitution to be voted out of power who ever they are!

I like this.