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

[bentom187]

I believe the local PD and sheriffs use smaller uav's like quad rotor helicopters. they might be susceptible to attack's .i don't think they mean predator drones.

Drones can become targets if the bounty hunter feels the aircraft is stalking them, if they maneuver as if they’re following someone, or if they display any weaponry.

DOMESTIC SPY DRONES To be DEPLOYED by SEATTLE POLICE
[YOUTUBEIF]81Jj18T9X6U[/YOUTUBEIF]


and with any luck and a lot of promotion this should be our next president.

Sen. Rand Paul at Foreign Relations Hearing - 7/17/13
[YOUTUBEIF]BpP_DP0l-fM[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[RetroGrow]

Driving somewhere? There's a gov't record of that AP

You beat me to it. I was about to post this disturbing story. It seems there's no end to their meddling in our business. The government is trying to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. This goes way beyond anything George Orwell could have imagined. Next thing you know, they will be putting chips in every baby born, so they can track our every move 24/7. I just can't believe it has come to this. I have never had any trust or faith in government or religion or any other source of authority, but things have gotten so far out of hand that it blows my mind. None of us could have conceived of this before computers and technology took over our lives. Now we sit here communicating with the same technology they are using against us. I read an article by Steve Wozniak that was fascinating. I am trying to dig it up. Basically, he said he is sorry things turned out as they have, and he never would have taken part in the invention of PCs if he knew this is how they would be used.
O.K., found it. Here's the link:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-a-hero-because-this-came-from-his-heart.html
Here's part of the article. There's also a video at the link. Apologies if this has already been posted.

"Computer whiz Steve Wozniak is more than a little distressed that the technology he helped develop nearly four decades ago is being used on a massive scale to invade people’s privacy.
He’s especially troubled by the secret intrusions into the private emails of American citizens by the National Security Agency—secret, that is, until the recent detailed revelations of the NSA’s Prism program of electronic surveillance by a 29-year-old NSA contractor turned fugitive named Edward Snowden.

“I think he’s a hero,” said the 62-year-old Wozniak, who co-founded Apple Computer with Steve Jobs and invented the Apple I and Apple II personal computers that launched a technological revolution. “He’s a hero to my beliefs about how the Constitution should work. I don’t think the NSA has done one thing valuable for us, in this whole ‘Prism’ regard, that couldn’t have been done by following the Constitution and doing it the old way.”
Sitting down with me on Tuesday at the Ford Motor Co. campus in Dearborn, Michigan, during the “Go Further With Ford” 2013 Trend Conference, Wozniak added: “I don’t think terrorism is war. I think terrorism is a crime. And by using the word ‘war’ we’ve managed to use all these weird ways to say the Constitution doesn’t apply in the case of a war. And I think Edward Snowden is a hero because this came from his heart. And I really believe he was giving up his whole life because he just felt so deeply about honesty, about spying on Americans, and he wanted to tell us.”
Snowden, a former CIA employee who faces felony charges of espionage and theft of government property after admitting he leaked classified material to Glenn Greenwald of Britain’s The Guardian, was reportedly trying to evade extradition and waiting in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for political asylum from Ecuador or some other sympathetic country. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB official, acknowledged Snowden’s presence in Moscow on Tuesday but vowed not to extradite him to the United States.

While Wozniak conceded that the NSA has a legitimate mission “to be looking out for our security, there were restrictions [on clandestine surveillance] that were very good,” he told me. “The way I was brought up, the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution means you have to have two people testify that this person is likely doing something very wrong just to get a warrant and a court order from a normal court.”

Referring to the secret proceedings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reportedly granted comprehensive warrants for the NSA’s Prism activities, “Why do you set up a little private court? That’s like saying, ‘I need a warrant and I’m going to give one to myself.’ What it leads to is judge, jury, and executioner. It’s the same thing as lynch mobs.”

When Wozniak and Jobs started Apple Computer in 1976, the Internet was in its infancy, unknown to the general public and not a factor in everyday life. But today the World Wide Web presents a serious threat to personal privacy, Wozniak said.

“Every time you set up an account, just because you want to purchase something, you have to click ‘OK’ and ‘I agree to this,’ ” Wozniak said. “Who has the time to read all the legalese terms and who has the ability to understand them? All I know, from a life of having been involved in a lot of contracts, is when the other side breaks the contract and you have no say, it’s all written totally in their favor and you’ve given away everything.”
Wozniak had just participated in a panel discussion titled “Disrupting the Drive,” which focused on the development of automobiles, at Ford and other carmakers, that will be able to monitor a driver’s heart rate and blood-sugar level, choose his favorite music and even set his alarm clock for work—sucking personal information from “the cloud,” the popular term for the network of a huge number of connected computers that form the Web. The loss of privacy is unavoidable.

“We don’t have a lot of choice right now,” Wozniak said, “because the whole world has gone to pretty much operating on the cloud, where huge amounts of information are stored and huge amounts of processing ability to interrelate all different types of things.”

When Wozniak built the first Apple computers, “they were totally local, and they were totally different from all these shared-network machines,” he said. “Now we’re all on the Internet. The funny thing is, you had to mail a letter in an envelope and you had legal guarantees, except in the case of court orders and warrants, that it couldn’t be opened on the way there. It was sealed. And now we don’t have any guarantee about email anymore.

“When the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom. People could communicate with anyone, anywhere, and nobody could stop it ... Now it turns out that every single thing we send as email counts as publicly viewable and it’s totally open and exposed, and can be taken for whatever reason. That wasn’t supposed to be. That wasn’t where we thought the Internet was going to go. We thought it was going to elevate the really average people over huge, big, controlling governments and protect us from tyrants.”
nstead, “it allows the tyrants to get tighter control over more and more of our lives,” Wozniak lamented.

He suggested the two top technology companies, Microsoft and Apple, missed an opportunity by not incorporating PGP (for “pretty good privacy”) Encryption software into their products. “If two companies, Microsoft and Apple, had built in PGP Encryption,” Wozniak said, “every email would have been encrypted and uncrackable.”

There's a bit more in the article, but the above is the part relevant to this discussion

 

[RetroGrow]

They did?

I must have a different definition of roasting than you do Retro. It seems to me that politicians never get as roasted for the shit they do as any of us would for doing the same shit.

Nixon was allowed to resign and live the rest of his life in comfort. Taking his power away from him probably hurt the cocksucker but i would not consider that "roasting" him ........ not even close

IMHO people in power should be held to a higher standard because what they do and how they act effects us all. But since the people in power make the rules they get off with a slap on the hand when they fuck us and i don't think that just happens in the US.

I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean by "roasted", as we don't actually roast people. The point is he was impeached for wiretapping on a scale that pales compared to what Obama has done, and Obama has paid no price for numrous impeachable offenses.
Thanks for playing though.

 

[opiumo]

EDIT: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/snowdens_dead_m.html

Snowden's Dead Man's Switch

It's not just a matter of, if he dies, things get released, it's more nuanced than that," he said. "It's really just a way to protect himself against extremely rogue behavior on the part of the United States, by which I mean violent actions toward him, designed to end his life, and it's just a way to ensure that nobody feels incentivized to do that."

^^dont know if this has been posted here before^^


What info do you guys think that "dead mans switch" contain?

 

[bentom187]

there is nothing sacred to these people. I mean after all this they just want to expand .

The NSA Wants America's Most Powerful Corporations to Be Dependent on It

The Washington Post profile of NSA director General Keith B. Alexander concludes with an account of a private meeting that he conducted a few years ago with financial industry officials. Talk turned to computer malware aimed at stealing customer data.

"His proposed solution: Private companies should give the government access to their networks so it could screen out the harmful software," the newspaper reports. "The NSA chief was offering to serve as an all-knowing virus-protection service, but at the cost, industry officials felt, of an unprecedented intrusion into the financial institutions' databases." They were "stunned" the story goes on, "immediately grasping the privacy implications of what Alexander was politely but urgently suggesting." Said one participant, "Folks in the room looked at each other like, 'Wow. That's kind of wild.' "

Alexander's proposal is just the latest example we have of the NSA aggressively reaching out to America's biggest, most powerful corporate actors in ways that ostensibly offer an upside of added protection against attack, but at a terrible cost: the extreme concentration of power in the United States. The federal government, Wall Street, Silicon Valley -- all are centers of power. In fact, entities within each sphere are powerful enough, on their own, to warrant constant vigilance. The NSA has constant access to troves of private communications. So does Google. I wouldn't bet that, 10 years from now, Google is going to launch a sophisticated blackmail campaign against America's ruling class. But if they wanted to, they'd have the data!

What ultimately restrains powerful entities is their separateness.


If Google tried to blackmail people, the federal government could arrest, prosecute, and jail the responsible parties. If national-security officials tried to mistreat Google, its management could marshal a substantial fortune, high-powered lawyers, and a far-reaching public platform to fight back. The same goes for Wall Street, Walmart, and the city of Walla Walla, Washington: America has countless repositories of power, some big, some small. And while that doesn't always prevent abuses, even serious ones, it has prevented us from becoming a society where anyone, whether a military dictator or the owner of a company store, has free rein to rule over regular people.


The diffuseness of power in America has long been a strength. But we're rapidly undermining it. I don't just mean that we're increasingly federalizing everything, and concentrating power in the executive branch, though we've done both of those things. What I mean is that, during the last two presidencies, a series of events, including the 9/11 attacks and the global financial crisis, have led to increasingly, uncomfortably close ties between Big Finance, Big Telecom, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. And apparently, Alexander is pushing for even closer ties, in the form of government eyes constantly inside of America's financial infrastructure.


Americans shouldn't trust any of these repositories of power. Government and corporations are both capable of terrible things. To have them colluding with one another in secret, inexorably arranging things so that there's disincentive for disagreement among them, is terrifying. The people can fight Big Government. The people can fight Big Finance. The people can fight Big Tech. Could the people fight them if they're all working together with secret law on their side? Booz Allen Hamilton is paid handsomely to spy on us for the government, then pours campaign contributions back into that same government, protecting their powerful financial incentive to have the surveillance state expand, something that is already a bipartisan cause. Five years hence, are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase going to be similarly invested in the expansion of the national security state? How about Microsoft and Google? AT&T? Under the umbrella of cybersecurity, is there any corporate player the NSA won't court or compel?


Alexander is no fool. He knows it is in his interest to make the NSA useful, even indispensable, to as many powerful corporations as possible -- that just as the military-industrial complex consists of public and private entities with a common interest in growing the state every year, so too could his surveillance and cyber-security complex, if he is smart in how he proceeds.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex," President Eisenhower warned. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

What do you think, my fellow Americans? Has the Obama Administration permitted the input of "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" on these matters? Or has the swollen weight of the surveillance state been thrust on our chests before we quite understood what had been created?

 

[bentom187]

human rights just shat the bed.so because you cant prove the government is going imprison/kill you,you have no protection or relief/remedy from the courts.and it's not like they are going to tell you when they would imprison/kill you, so your chance for appeal, is zero.i guess those kids who signed the petition to abolish the bill of rights just received their wish.

a legal catch 22 that can be exploited on a whim.does anyone want someone to have that power over them?

and they impeached bill for messing around in the office.FFS


NDAA Indefinite Detention Challenge Shot Down by Appeals Court

http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/...appeals-court/

By Christopher Twarowski on July 17, 2013

The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government Wednesday in vacating a permanent injunction sought by several prominent journalists and activists barring the enforcement of a provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which they claim, legalizes the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil.

In a 60-page decision, the court ruled against such an injunction—which had previously been granted, and the provision, Section 1021, ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge—additionally arguing that the case’s plaintiffs, which include Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, among four others (collectively nicknamed “The Magnificent Seven”), do not have standing.

“We conclude that plaintiffs lack standing to seek preenforcement review of Section 1021 and vacate the permanent injunction,” reads Wednesday’s decision. “The American citizen plaintiffs lack standing because Section 1021 says nothing at all about the President’s authority to detain American citizens. And while Section 1021 does have a real bearing on those who are neither citizens nor lawful resident aliens and who are apprehended abroad, the non-citizen plaintiffs also have failed to establish standing because they have not shown a sufficient threat that the government will detain them under Section 1021. Accordingly, we do not address the merits of plaintiffs’ constitutional claims.”

The Court of Appeals’ ruling was the latest in what has been a long and hard-fought battle waged by the plaintiffs against the NDAA provision. U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled 1021’s language unconstitutional and had issued a permanent injunction on its implementation in September 2012.

“Here, the stakes get no higher: indefinite military detention—potential detention during a war on terrorism that is not expected to end in the foreseeable future, if ever. The Constitution requires specificity—and that specificity is absent from § 1021(b)(2),” wrote Forrest, additionally finding that Section 1021 “appears to be a legislative attempt at an ex post facto ‘fix’: to provide the President (in 2012) with broader detention authority than was provided in the AUMF [Authorization for Use of Military Force] in 2001 and to try to ratify past detentions which may have occurred under an overly-broad interpretation of the AUMF.”

The Obama Administration appealed that decision the following day, resulting in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issuing a stay on the injunction pending the outcome of the government’s challenge. In February, hundreds packed the oral arguments hearing and rallied outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in opposition of the provision.

Lead plaintiff Hedges posted his response to Wednesday’s ruling on TruthDig.com, where he’s a columnist:

“This is quite distressing. It means there is no recourse now either within the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches of government to halt the steady assault on our civil liberties and most basic Constitutional rights. It means that the state can use the military, overturning over two centuries of domestic law, to use troops on the streets to seize U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers. States that accrue to themselves this kind of power, history has shown, will use it. We will appeal, but the Supreme Court is not required to hear our appeal. It is a black day for those who care about liberty.”

Unreachable by telephone Wednesday, plaintiffs’ attorney Bruce Afran insisted to the Press the viability of his clients’ standing in February.

“The journalists are in fact directly within the scope of the law,” he contended. “The journalists are harmed or brought within the statute.”

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Working link for the above article:

http://www.longislandpress.com/2013...tention-challenge-shot-down-by-appeals-court/

 

[vta]

Link


Air Force Bans Personnel from Reading News Stories Reporting NSA Scandal

by Kerry Picket

The Air Force's 624th Operations Center sent an e-mail with a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that prohibits them from accessing and reading news stories related to the current National Security Agency snooping controversy on the Air Force’s NIPRNET (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) systems.

The 624th Operations Center, located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, is the operational arm for the 24th Air Force’s cyberspace operations capability.

The e-mail, first attained by Shane Vander Hart, President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, posted the memo on his site after receiving an e-mail from a mother whose son is stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East. The NOTAM warns airmen about the risks of simple web searches regarding the NSA and Verizon phone records scandals:

I wanted to make sure that all of you read this because just doing a simple search could jeopardize your future. In summary, anything to do with the recent news about the NSA and Verizon phone records are considered classified and searching news or records about these on our NIPRNET computers is unauthorized. Thanks!

The executive summary states that documents associated with the NSA story may potentially be classified, even though the information is publicly available on the internet:

Classified documents regarding Verizon phone record collection and court order have been identified as being hosted on publicly accessible Internet Web Sites, most notably "The Guardian" news site. Viewing and/or downloading these documents on Air Force NIPRNET computers could constitute a Classified Message Incident. Therefore, users are not to access these file (sic) for any reason (i.e. viewing, downloading, forwarding, etc.)

Edward Snowden, a 29-year old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of NSA defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, revealed himself as the NSA leaker over the weekend. Interviewed by the The Guardian in a Hong Kong hotel room, Snowden told the U.K. publication, "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," he continued. "That is not something I am willing to support or live under... 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."

Booz Allen released a statement Sunday evening confirming Snowden's employment with them for less than three months, assigned to a team in Hawaii.

"News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement reads. "We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter."

 

[vta]

 

[Eighths-n-Aces]

I'm pretty sure you know exactly what I mean by "roasted", as we don't actually roast people. The point is he was impeached for wiretapping on a scale that pales compared to what Obama has done, and Obama has paid no price for numrous impeachable offenses.
Thanks for playing though.

but he was NOT impeached. and even though i agree that Obama is a tool it is not up to him to impeach himself is it? it is the senate/congress that does that isn't it? maybe that is why every president who should get impeached does not ....... and the last few should have

LOL playing

 

[RetroGrow]

but he was NOT impeached. and even though i agree that Obama is a tool it is not up to him to impeach himself is it? it is the senate/congress that does that isn't it? maybe that is why every president who should get impeached does not ....... and the last few should have

LOL playing

He resigned from office the day after the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee sent an article or recommendation for impeachment to the full house for approval after 27 separate articles of impeachment had been filed by various house members. He knew he would lose the trial in the senate (Clinton was acquitted in his trial) so he decided it would be best to just resign. The articles alleged abuse of power and obstruction of justice and he definitely would have been found guilty because he was on tape telling his staff to pressure the FBI to stop their investigation into the Watergate burglary and approving payoffs to the burglars to keep their silence. Nixon tried everything in his power to stop people from finding out men in his employment broke into both the offices of the DNC and Daniel Ellsberg but he failed.
He resigned to avoid CERTAIN impeachment.
What he did was mild compared to what Obummer has done. Nixon wasn't executing people without due process, not to mention the innocents who were nearby when the drones struck.

 

[srf]

Of course they are but its illegal so unless you say your a terro**** then they can't try you for anything let them hear all the perverted and stupid shit you say.

 

[Eighths-n-Aces]

He resigned from office the day after the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee sent an article or recommendation for impeachment to the full house for approval after 27 separate articles of impeachment had been filed by various house members. He knew he would lose the trial in the senate (Clinton was acquitted in his trial) so he decided it would be best to just resign. The articles alleged abuse of power and obstruction of justice and he definitely would have been found guilty because he was on tape telling his staff to pressure the FBI to stop their investigation into the Watergate burglary and approving payoffs to the burglars to keep their silence. Nixon tried everything in his power to stop people from finding out men in his employment broke into both the offices of the DNC and Daniel Ellsberg but he failed.
He resigned to avoid CERTAIN impeachment.
What he did was mild compared to what Obummer has done. Nixon wasn't executing people without due process, not to mention the innocents who were nearby when the drones struck.

so the short version is that nixon was not impeached and he was allowed to retire on his own terms.

but it is up to congress to impeach someone

and for some reason obama is being given a break by people in congress even though they say they think he is a criminal

but for some reason that is his doing?

i call bullshit ......... and willing blindness to the fact that blue and red are both full or shit

 

[PoopyTeaBags]

so the short version is that nixon was not impeached and he was allowed to retire on his own terms.

but it is up to congress to impeach someone

and for some reason obama is being given a break by people in congress even though they say they think he is a criminal

but for some reason that is his doing?

i call bullshit ......... and willing blindness to the fact that blue and red are both full or shit

if you do some research you find that nixon was impeached from within the government. Was he formerly impeached with process of law? no.
However its known that during vietnam 2-3 days before he announced he was stepping down that alot of poeple high up in the army got orders NOT TO TAKE ORDERS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE. Couple days later he was telling us hes stepping down.

Then nixon was taken to a ship off the coast to make sure he was on board with everything. There is a invisible government that controls all the puppets we watch. And if they step out of line they get dealt with. Nixon is a perfect example.


Obama is not getting hassled because hes right on with the agenda of the PTB to destroy are country and cause a civil war. Obama is the perfect puppet. Hed never be challenged unless he went outside the plan.

 

[resinryder]

but it is up to congress to impeach someoneand for some reason obama is being given a break by people in congress even though they say they think he is a criminal

Maybe it's part of a larger agenda and the Repubs and Dems are in it together??
Follow me here
1-In 2008 the repubs put up John McCain against him. No way would he win against Obama
2-In 2012 the put up Romney. No way would he beat Obama. To arrogant and out of touch with a lot of the independent voters to get their support.
3-On every major issue Obama and the Dems have wanted to push through, and all the chances the repubs have had to prove a "gotcha moment" all they have done is blowhard showboating politics and then buckled just enough on the votes to pass what Obama has wanted.
3-Just before each major election some Repub has said something so utterly stupid in a tight race that gets them left at home and losing to their opponent. Example-the Repub in the race up north that said that a woman that get raped shouldn't have an abortion. Then the Repub in Alaska that referred to Mexicans as "Wetbacks"<not while running but he'll be up in 2014. Another repub gets caught trying to suck dick in a restroom few years back.
I mean, just how literally fucking stoopid do you have to be to show the people just how out of touch they really are when running for higher office?
Something is going on in congress that is benefiting them and not the American people.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, with everything the government is doing over the past year, all the spy programs that have come to light, there hasn't been any movement to start a 3rd party that actually represents the people, the constitution, and the way America should be run. The tree of liberty has fruit that's ripe harvest that could usher in real "CHANGE" and no one gives a shit. We're fucked!
Mao, Stalin,Kim Jong-il, and Hitler would be proud of where we are as a country at the moment.

 

[Eighths-n-Aces]

Maybe it's part of a larger agenda and the Repubs and Dems are in it together??

i can agree with that !!!!!!

and it has been going on for a while, and by while i mean 50 years or so.

how anybody can miss the fact that both parties suck is beyond me.

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Rep. Wolf says Benghazi survivors were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., is calling on the Obama administration to explain why the survivors of last year's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, were reportedly asked to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about the attack.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and CIA Director John Brennan, Wolf said his office has received reports that some survivors of the attack were asked to sign the confidentiality agreement as recently as this summer.

"If these reports are accurate, it would raise serious questions about additional restrictions the State Department has placed on those with knowledge of the Benghazi attacks," Wolf said in the letter. "I also worry about the impact of any [non-disclosure agreements] on congressional efforts to understand fully what happened that night and why the agency responded as it did."

Wolf requested names and contact information for any State Department employees or contractors who may have been asked to sign the documents.

A congressional source told Fox News in May that Hill staffers investigating the attack believed about 37 personnel were in Benghazi on behalf of the State Department and CIA on Sept. 11.

With the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, about 33 people were evacuated. Of them, a State Department official confirmed there were three diplomatic security agents and one contractor who were injured in the assault -- one seriously.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said earlier this year that some of the survivors injured in the attack have been "told to be quiet" and feel they can't come forward to tell their stories.

The South Carolina senator told Fox News in March that he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their stories "chilling." He said at time the Obama administration may have been “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied allegations that administration officials were trying to silence Benghazi survivors when asked about the claims at a March press briefing.

"I'm sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking," Carney said at the time.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...gn-non-disclosure-agreements/?test=latestnews

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Ex-CIA chief: What Edward Snowden did

Edward Snowden will likely prove to be the most costly leaker of American secrets in the history of the Republic.

I know that we have had our share of spies.

Benedict Arnold was bent on betraying the garrison at West Point to the British during the Revolution. Klaus Fuchs and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg ferreted out nuclear secrets for the Russians. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen identified American penetrations for ultimate execution by the Soviets.

We have also had our share of leakers.

Daniel Ellsberg copied thousands of pages of documents related to the Vietnam War. Bradley Manning is accused of indiscriminately scoured the Defense Department's SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) for all manner of military reports and diplomatic cables.

But Snowden is in a class by himself.

The secrets that Arnold wanted to betray fit into the heel of the boot of his British case officer. The "atom bomb" spies reported out using secret ink. Ellsberg was limited to the number of documents he could physically Xerox. Manning, although fully empowered by digital media, had access only to a secret level network housing largely tactical information.

Snowden fled to China with several computers' worth of data from NSANET, one of the most highly classified and sensitive networks in American intelligence. The damage is potentially so great that NSA has taken one of its most respected senior operations officers off mission tasks to lead the damage assessment effort.

In general terms, it's already clear Snowden's betrayal hurts in at least three important ways.

First, there is the undeniable operational effect of informing adversaries of American intelligence's tactics, techniques and procedures. Snowden's disclosures go beyond the "what" of a particular secret or source. He is busily revealing the "how" of American collection.

The Guardian newspaper's Glenn Greenwald, far more deserving of the Justice Department's characterization of a co-conspirator than Fox's James Rosen ever was, claims that Snowden has documents that comprise "basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built. ... [To prove] what he was saying was true, he had to take ... very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do."

Greenwald has disputed the notion that he aided Snowden, telling David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press": "The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea I've aided and abetted him in any way."

And Michael Clemente, Fox News' executive vice president of news, has said, "we are outraged to learn ... that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter."

Greenwald: Snowden is 'the classically responsible whistle-blower'

Will Snowden release more intelligence?
Absent "rogue" U.S. action to silence him, Snowden has promised not to reveal this data, but there are already reports of counterterrorism targets changing their communications patterns. And I would lose all respect for China's Ministry of State Security and Russia's FSB if they have not already fully harvested Snowden's digital data trove.

As former director of CIA, I would claim that the top 20% of American intelligence -- that exquisite insight into an enemy's intentions -- is generally provided by human sources. But as a former director of NSA, I would also suggest that the base 50% to 60% of American intelligence day in and day out is provided by signals intelligence, the kinds of intercepted communications that Snowden has so blithely put at risk.

But there is other damage, such as the undeniable economic punishment that will be inflicted on American businesses for simply complying with American law.

Others, most notably in Europe, will rend their garments in faux shock and outrage that these firms have done this, all the while ignoring that these very same companies, along with their European counterparts, behave the same way when confronted with the lawful demands of European states.

The real purpose of those complaints is competitive economic advantage, putting added burdens on or even disqualifying American firms competing in Europe for the big data and cloud services that are at the cutting edge of the global IT industry. Or, in the case of France, to slow negotiations on a trans- Atlantic trade agreement that threatens the privileged position of French agriculture, outrage more based on protecting the production of cheese than preventing any alleged violation of privacy.

The third great harm of Snowden's efforts to date is the erosion of confidence in the ability of the United States to do anything discreetly or keep anything secret.

Manning's torrent of disclosures certainly caused great harm, but there was at least the plausible defense that this was a one-off phenomenon, a regrettable error we're aggressively correcting.

Snowden shows that we have fallen short and that the issue may be more systemic rather than isolated. At least that's what I would fear if I were a foreign intelligence chief approached by the Americans to do anything of import.

Snowden seems undeterred by any of these consequences. After all, he believes he is acting for a higher good -- an almost romantic attachment to the merits of absolute transparency -- and he seems indifferent to the legitimacy of any claims of national security.

The appropriate balance between liberty and security has bedeviled free peoples, including Americans, for centuries. But it takes a special kind of arrogance for this young man to believe that his moral judgment on the dilemma suddenly trumps that of two (incredibly different) presidents, both houses of the U.S. Congress, both political parties, the U.S. court system and more than 30,000 of his co-workers.

Arrogant or not, Snowden has thrust into public view sensitive and controversial espionage activities. So what of his facts, fictions and fears and of the national debate that he claims he intended to stimulate?

More on this in following columns.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/opinion/hayden-snowden-impact/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

 

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[HempKat]

all i was really asking for was a sane explanation of how our last president both signed an order saying he could not read your mail and was in charge when the patriot act was passed . does that make things easier ?

i really ,really ,really don't trust political pundits ..... or parrots

Because the law about reading the mail was really just a rough equivalent of saying "We only look at the metadata not the content" It was just something to appease the masses into believing only terrorists would lose their rights.