UPDATE:
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
The Summer of Discontent is Upon Us
"The Preemptive Revolution to Stave Off the Real One
June 7, 2013
by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
UPDATE: And what exactly did all of this domestic full spectrum dominance do to thwart the Boston Bombing or the Aurora Massacre or the shooting at Sandy Hook or the Ricin letters attacks? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Don’t even have so much as a manifesto or a related text message to show for it from any of the suspects. Why is that you think? Why are none of the MSM asking that all important question?
———–
What is happening right now looks an awful lot like a regime change “color revolution” in the making. The American press along with various “alternative” journalists, breathlessly en mass making mountains out of already well established mole-hills as if they are “breaking news” suddenly stirring up unrest and hostility. Typically this pattern has been a clear indicator when they plan to force a color revolution in some other country once our puppet dictator starts acting like he doesn’t want to be our puppet dictator any longer.
As bad as that is, it may actually be something much, much worse.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. The economy is going to crash, Wall Street is going to get all the rest of the loot and control they missed in the first go-round and we are going to be forced to make do with far less than we have now.Economists have been saying since the middle of last year that the beginning of the summer of 2013 will be start of the next collapse. Seems like they were right.
The neoliberal “brick” of Chicago School of Economics austerity is going to hit and hit hard very, very soon, and suddenly, without warning, the Obamatide is turning in a big way and as far as I can see, with no real “breaking news” to support the near universal nationwide MSM shift.
We have a proven agent provocateur in the form of Adam Kokesh setting up his “armed revolution” for July 4th (less than a month away now) and suddenly there are all kinds of scandals being brought to light, mostly from Washington insider leaks, which promise to turn up the heat going into the Summer of Discontent. Here’s a clue: these scandals were already well known to most people and like the Wikileaks psyop, though they didn’t expose anything new, they are being treated as if each and every one are the Pentagon Papers. That should tell you something.
So what does all of this mean? What is the significance of the timing of these carefully scripted leaks and revelations from the very administration that is demonized by them? Gun control, NDAA 2012, drones in our skies, NSA in our phones… and austerity poised to rain down on us like the Chicago School Brick that slammed Chile in ’73. What does it all mean? What of the announcement of the “Final American Revolution”? How would marketers and PR gurus deal with an unstable society and the threat of a real revolution?
They would fabricate one of their own.
You can’t just suddenly have bunches of armed folks running around shooting other folks for no good reason. There has to be a believable pretext created like the “Innocence of the Muslims” video they attempted to use to explain the Benghazi psyop. That’s the exposition to the story, the portion of a story that introduces important background information to the audience answering critical questions like “why a revolution?” and “why now?”
In a world where the manufacturing of preemptive wars and preemptive arrests are commonplace, is a Preemptive Revolution with all the scandals and the angst to justify it, such an outrageous theory? Is that what we are seeing? The exposition stage of the Preemptive Revolution?
Scandals are one thing. There have been plenty of those since 9/11. But for the most part they have been swept under the rug or completely ignored by the complicit MSM. These aren’t the kind of scandals that could have our president arrested and removed from office like killing 23 kids in Dec. of 2009 with cruise missiles in support of a Yemen dictator or killing U.S. citizens illegally without due process or the FBI simply murdering a suspect while being questioned because he refuses to confess to something he didn’t do. Though the drone program factors in, the focus is on lesser crimes, including the lesser crimes of the drone program.
Here’s a list of the scandals that have recently broke with the help of “insiders” who leaked info to the press:
You will also notice that in every case, the critical information was either leaked by someone on the inside or as in the case of the renewed focus on drone policy and the IRS audit scandal, it was brought before the public’s attention by the government themselves for reasons no one is quite sure of.
Each and every one of those scandals looks like it was custom tailored to piss off a libertarian or a patriot in the Tea Party. God knows they won’t give a rat’s ass about 122 dead Muslim children or the illegal invasion of other countries or not prosecuting the previous administration for obvious war-crimes and crimes against humanity. But mess with their rights, an invasive IRS? Now them’s fightin words.
Now consider this in light of that rough timeline of “scandals”
So it was cancelled and in it’s place, protesters are instructed to march on the 50 different capital buildings across the country. That would make staging an event easier in that there will be less witnesses and cameras to account for. It also gives the impression of a larger movement when in fact Astroturf Adam couldn’t get 20 people to show up to protest for his release outside the Federal building where he was supposedly being held after his planned arrest a few weeks ago.
Has all of this been scripted to generate a narrative that the public can easily buy into? A narrative that claims political unrest leading up to the July 4th event boiled over into a bloody confrontation and the creation of a new “al Qaeda” type insurgency inside the United States that has to be crushed in the name of “national security”?
The managed nature of these scandals and the timing of them would certainly lead one to that conclusion.
But perhaps the best evidence is the breathless and exaggerated reactions from the MSM which are completely out of character for the status defending instruments of conventional repression.
You have the Huffington Post headlining their website with “George W Obama” which is something that we have been saying for years, even before his coronation (Obama is just the continuation of Bush – Clinton – Bush – Reagan) and in fact for years the Huffington Post would erase comments and ban commenters who dared to make that claim on their site.
The New York Times has gone so far as to claim the Obama administration “has lost all credibility” and again, the sycophantic Huffington Post echoes that sentiment.
Glenn Greenwald and other respected journalists (“real” journalists, not us “conspiracy theorists” who have been making claims like these for years regarding our vanishing freedoms of the press) recently Tweeted:
With the new austerity looking to crash down upon us very soon and the stock market only being propped up by mass infusions and transfers of wealth to the big banks on a monthly basis, it’s very interesting timing isn’t it?
You can also factor in the American Gladio operation that started nearly a year ago in a theater in Aurora. The push for gun grabbing has been building but without a growing popular consensus. At this point, the people still want their second amendment rights and who can blame them.
Finally, factor in the worse intangible, the gradual buildup of the domestic police state and the militarization of our “protect and serve” public servants.
And don’t forget that martial law little rehearsal drill they ran after the staged Boston Bombing event.
When you step back far enough to see the big picture, when you admit to yourself that we all knew for quite sometime that the NSA was scooping up everything we said or wrote in order to use it against us in the future, you come to understand that focusing on this one thing alone isn’t helping one bit.
So-called “alternative” news analysts like Mike Rivero of What Really Happened are out there, once again, promoting the status quo line (just like he’s doing on the Turkey psyop by the way) breathlessly screeching that you HAVE TO BE ANGRY at all of this.
Yeah? To what end Mike?
I’ve been doing this kind of analysis for some time now. I do it under my real name and I do it with the full understanding of the consequences it has brought and will bring. And I tell you this – these are not coincidences. The Summer of Discontent is upon us, early in the Obama second term. The control grid they have been putting in place is about to tighten across the country just like it has in so many other nations where the crippling austerity of neoliberal Chicago School Economics has been imposed. And what we have seen thus far pales in comparison. Left vs Right, White vs Black, Rich vs Poor, Christian vs Muslim… all kinds of divide and conquer tricks are being used while anger and desperation is channeled in all directions but the right ones.
When a country is dragged into 3rd world status and the people grasp the astronomical divide between the oligarchs and the proletariat, revolutions tend to flourish. So what is the best way to counter the instability of such a threat?
The best way is to manufacture it yourself before the real one takes shape. That way you can justify rounding up the potential leaders and participants and disarm the public before the public disarms you.
I don’t do fear mongering, I do observation. You stand far enough back from anything observing without emotional distraction or the blinders of identity politics and you can see it’s form and it’s design from the beginning. Something wicked this way comes… of that I am sure.
--MORE w/VIDEOS--"
June 7, 2013
by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
UPDATE: And what exactly did all of this domestic full spectrum dominance do to thwart the Boston Bombing or the Aurora Massacre or the shooting at Sandy Hook or the Ricin letters attacks? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Don’t even have so much as a manifesto or a related text message to show for it from any of the suspects. Why is that you think? Why are none of the MSM asking that all important question?
———–
Something Wicked This Way Comes
- Provocateur Kokesh announces “The Final American Revolution” (May 6, 2013) Armed March Announced
- Benghazi memo rewrites (May 10, 2013) Benghazi memos reportedly revised 12 times
- FBI surveillance of AP (May 13th, 2013) Justice Department secretly obtained AP phone records
- IRS Informs on themselves in Audit Scandal (May 14, 2013) Treasury Inspector General Review
- James Rosen leak probe (May 17, 2013) A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
- drone program (May 23th, 2013) Obama Looks to Shift Focus to Drone Strikes As Scandals Swirl
Justice Department Admits to Spying on Over 100 Individual Associated Press Journalists – See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/breaking-justice-department-admits-to-spying-on-over-100-individual-associated-press-journalists-over-two-month-period_052013#sthash.uy0YeVuV.dpuf
- NSA leaked contract with Verizon (June 6, 2013) NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
What is happening right now looks an awful lot like a regime change “color revolution” in the making. The American press along with various “alternative” journalists, breathlessly en mass making mountains out of already well established mole-hills as if they are “breaking news” suddenly stirring up unrest and hostility. Typically this pattern has been a clear indicator when they plan to force a color revolution in some other country once our puppet dictator starts acting like he doesn’t want to be our puppet dictator any longer.
As bad as that is, it may actually be something much, much worse.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. The economy is going to crash, Wall Street is going to get all the rest of the loot and control they missed in the first go-round and we are going to be forced to make do with far less than we have now.Economists have been saying since the middle of last year that the beginning of the summer of 2013 will be start of the next collapse. Seems like they were right.
The neoliberal “brick” of Chicago School of Economics austerity is going to hit and hit hard very, very soon, and suddenly, without warning, the Obamatide is turning in a big way and as far as I can see, with no real “breaking news” to support the near universal nationwide MSM shift.
We have a proven agent provocateur in the form of Adam Kokesh setting up his “armed revolution” for July 4th (less than a month away now) and suddenly there are all kinds of scandals being brought to light, mostly from Washington insider leaks, which promise to turn up the heat going into the Summer of Discontent. Here’s a clue: these scandals were already well known to most people and like the Wikileaks psyop, though they didn’t expose anything new, they are being treated as if each and every one are the Pentagon Papers. That should tell you something.
So what does all of this mean? What is the significance of the timing of these carefully scripted leaks and revelations from the very administration that is demonized by them? Gun control, NDAA 2012, drones in our skies, NSA in our phones… and austerity poised to rain down on us like the Chicago School Brick that slammed Chile in ’73. What does it all mean? What of the announcement of the “Final American Revolution”? How would marketers and PR gurus deal with an unstable society and the threat of a real revolution?
They would fabricate one of their own.
You can’t just suddenly have bunches of armed folks running around shooting other folks for no good reason. There has to be a believable pretext created like the “Innocence of the Muslims” video they attempted to use to explain the Benghazi psyop. That’s the exposition to the story, the portion of a story that introduces important background information to the audience answering critical questions like “why a revolution?” and “why now?”
In a world where the manufacturing of preemptive wars and preemptive arrests are commonplace, is a Preemptive Revolution with all the scandals and the angst to justify it, such an outrageous theory? Is that what we are seeing? The exposition stage of the Preemptive Revolution?
Scandals are one thing. There have been plenty of those since 9/11. But for the most part they have been swept under the rug or completely ignored by the complicit MSM. These aren’t the kind of scandals that could have our president arrested and removed from office like killing 23 kids in Dec. of 2009 with cruise missiles in support of a Yemen dictator or killing U.S. citizens illegally without due process or the FBI simply murdering a suspect while being questioned because he refuses to confess to something he didn’t do. Though the drone program factors in, the focus is on lesser crimes, including the lesser crimes of the drone program.
Here’s a list of the scandals that have recently broke with the help of “insiders” who leaked info to the press:
- Benghazi memo rewrites (May 10, 2013) Benghazi memos reportedly revised 12 times
- FBI surveillance of AP (May 13th, 2013) Justice Department secretly obtained AP phone records
- IRS Informs on themselves in Audit Scandal (May 14, 2013) Treasury Inspector General Review
- James Rosen leak probe (May 17, 2013) A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
- drone program (May 23th, 2013) Obama Looks to Shift Focus to Drone Strikes As Scandals Swirl
Justice Department Admits to Spying on Over 100 Individual Associated Press Journalists – See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/breaking-justice-department-admits-to-spying-on-over-100-individual-associated-press-journalists-over-two-month-period_052013#sthash.uy0YeVuV.dpuf
- NSA leaked contract with Verizon (June 6, 2013) NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
You will also notice that in every case, the critical information was either leaked by someone on the inside or as in the case of the renewed focus on drone policy and the IRS audit scandal, it was brought before the public’s attention by the government themselves for reasons no one is quite sure of.
Each and every one of those scandals looks like it was custom tailored to piss off a libertarian or a patriot in the Tea Party. God knows they won’t give a rat’s ass about 122 dead Muslim children or the illegal invasion of other countries or not prosecuting the previous administration for obvious war-crimes and crimes against humanity. But mess with their rights, an invasive IRS? Now them’s fightin words.
Now consider this in light of that rough timeline of “scandals”
- Provocateur Kokesh announces “The Final American Revolution” (May 6, 2013) Armed March Announced
So it was cancelled and in it’s place, protesters are instructed to march on the 50 different capital buildings across the country. That would make staging an event easier in that there will be less witnesses and cameras to account for. It also gives the impression of a larger movement when in fact Astroturf Adam couldn’t get 20 people to show up to protest for his release outside the Federal building where he was supposedly being held after his planned arrest a few weeks ago.
Has all of this been scripted to generate a narrative that the public can easily buy into? A narrative that claims political unrest leading up to the July 4th event boiled over into a bloody confrontation and the creation of a new “al Qaeda” type insurgency inside the United States that has to be crushed in the name of “national security”?
The managed nature of these scandals and the timing of them would certainly lead one to that conclusion.
But perhaps the best evidence is the breathless and exaggerated reactions from the MSM which are completely out of character for the status defending instruments of conventional repression.
You have the Huffington Post headlining their website with “George W Obama” which is something that we have been saying for years, even before his coronation (Obama is just the continuation of Bush – Clinton – Bush – Reagan) and in fact for years the Huffington Post would erase comments and ban commenters who dared to make that claim on their site.
The New York Times has gone so far as to claim the Obama administration “has lost all credibility” and again, the sycophantic Huffington Post echoes that sentiment.
Glenn Greenwald and other respected journalists (“real” journalists, not us “conspiracy theorists” who have been making claims like these for years regarding our vanishing freedoms of the press) recently Tweeted:
Glenn Greenwald
Websites like Drudge and Fox News are pretty much still doing what they’ve been doing, just with more higher caliber ammo than they are typically allowed to use.Accusing James Rosen of committing crimes – for basic reporting – may be the most dangerous thing the Obama DOJ has done yetAnthony De RosaWhat was done to James Rosen “goes above and beyond what the Justice Department did when it monitored the AP” http://t.co/O6wYF0BMMlThe Daily CallerDOJ went through so many of this Fox reporters private records, you have to wonder, what didn’t they look at? http://t.co/Gn2xTU8Qik
With the new austerity looking to crash down upon us very soon and the stock market only being propped up by mass infusions and transfers of wealth to the big banks on a monthly basis, it’s very interesting timing isn’t it?
You can also factor in the American Gladio operation that started nearly a year ago in a theater in Aurora. The push for gun grabbing has been building but without a growing popular consensus. At this point, the people still want their second amendment rights and who can blame them.
Finally, factor in the worse intangible, the gradual buildup of the domestic police state and the militarization of our “protect and serve” public servants.
And don’t forget that martial law little rehearsal drill they ran after the staged Boston Bombing event.
When you step back far enough to see the big picture, when you admit to yourself that we all knew for quite sometime that the NSA was scooping up everything we said or wrote in order to use it against us in the future, you come to understand that focusing on this one thing alone isn’t helping one bit.
So-called “alternative” news analysts like Mike Rivero of What Really Happened are out there, once again, promoting the status quo line (just like he’s doing on the Turkey psyop by the way) breathlessly screeching that you HAVE TO BE ANGRY at all of this.
Yeah? To what end Mike?
I’ve been doing this kind of analysis for some time now. I do it under my real name and I do it with the full understanding of the consequences it has brought and will bring. And I tell you this – these are not coincidences. The Summer of Discontent is upon us, early in the Obama second term. The control grid they have been putting in place is about to tighten across the country just like it has in so many other nations where the crippling austerity of neoliberal Chicago School Economics has been imposed. And what we have seen thus far pales in comparison. Left vs Right, White vs Black, Rich vs Poor, Christian vs Muslim… all kinds of divide and conquer tricks are being used while anger and desperation is channeled in all directions but the right ones.
When a country is dragged into 3rd world status and the people grasp the astronomical divide between the oligarchs and the proletariat, revolutions tend to flourish. So what is the best way to counter the instability of such a threat?
The best way is to manufacture it yourself before the real one takes shape. That way you can justify rounding up the potential leaders and participants and disarm the public before the public disarms you.
I don’t do fear mongering, I do observation. You stand far enough back from anything observing without emotional distraction or the blinders of identity politics and you can see it’s form and it’s design from the beginning. Something wicked this way comes… of that I am sure.
--MORE w/VIDEOS--"
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Breaking News: Obama Secretly Spying on U.S. Businesses
UPDATE: Seeing Through the PRISM of Obama's Spying Program
I don't like posting that side on this side, but this is that serious.
Time to impeach.
(And while I remain that is the correct thing to do since Obama is the chief executive officer of this government, the fact is the whole government needs to be impeached. )
UPDATE: Collection of phone records is ongoing practice
So, what, that makes it all right?
"US secretly collects data on business calls" by Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt | New York Times, June 06, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program by collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed Wednesday night.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The order does not apply to the content of the communications.
So we are told.
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, such as its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of Verizon declined to comment Wednesday evening.
And they called it freedom.
The four-page order was disclosed by the newspaper The Guardian.
Oh, it took a BRITISH PAPER to BLOW the WHISTLE, huh?
That's why the AP scandal just faded away.
Obama administration officials at the FBI and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
And then the AmeriKan media let go.
“We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.
The FBI sought the order under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, including “tangible things” that the law defines as business records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
This isn't going to make business happy in this nation, and I suspect Obama may have finally stepped over the line on this one. When you do such things to average citizens the corporate pre$$ is in favor of such things (for the obvious rea$ons), but when you are spying on them, well...
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.
The mass collection of communications logs, or calling “metadata,” was believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s surveillance program that took place without court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The order would suggest that the government later continued a form of that aspect of the program by bringing it under the Patriot Act.
I'm so glad we got change in 2008, aren't you?
The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to set off a new furor over the scope of government surveillance.
I hope so. I hope it leads to the impeachment of this president. I know that won't change anything, but I don't care. I want this dismal failure and liar out of office.
Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the NSA wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration.
IMPEACH!!!
“On what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?” she said.
For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.
Oh, we are MORE than ALARMED, we are FUCKING OUTRAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
No, not really, not after all we have seen in the last decade.
They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”
And you thought this government gave a shit about your safety and protection?
A Wyden spokesman did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order.
The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect’s hotel or credit card records. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.
Oh, the Obama administration lied?
I don't like posting that side on this side, but this is that serious.
Time to impeach.
(And while I remain that is the correct thing to do since Obama is the chief executive officer of this government, the fact is the whole government needs to be impeached. )
UPDATE: Collection of phone records is ongoing practice
So, what, that makes it all right?
"US secretly collects data on business calls" by Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt | New York Times, June 06, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program by collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed Wednesday night.
The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”
The order does not apply to the content of the communications.
So we are told.
Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, such as its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of Verizon declined to comment Wednesday evening.
And they called it freedom.
The four-page order was disclosed by the newspaper The Guardian.
Oh, it took a BRITISH PAPER to BLOW the WHISTLE, huh?
That's why the AP scandal just faded away.
Obama administration officials at the FBI and the White House also declined to comment on it Wednesday evening, but did not deny the report, and a person familiar with the order confirmed its authenticity.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Nothing but a big s*** show fooley?
And then the AmeriKan media let go.
“We will respond as soon as we can,” said Marci Green Miller, a National Security Agency spokeswoman, in an e-mail.
The FBI sought the order under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that regulates domestic surveillance for national security purposes, including “tangible things” that the law defines as business records. The provision was expanded by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which Congress enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
This isn't going to make business happy in this nation, and I suspect Obama may have finally stepped over the line on this one. When you do such things to average citizens the corporate pre$$ is in favor of such things (for the obvious rea$ons), but when you are spying on them, well...
The order was marked “TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN,” referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. That would make it among the most closely held secrets in the federal government, and its disclosure comes amid a furor over the Obama administration’s aggressive tactics in its investigations of leaks.
The collection of call logs is set to expire in July unless the court extends it.
The mass collection of communications logs, or calling “metadata,” was believed to be a major component of the Bush administration’s surveillance program that took place without court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The order would suggest that the government later continued a form of that aspect of the program by bringing it under the Patriot Act.
I'm so glad we got change in 2008, aren't you?
The disclosure late Wednesday seemed likely to set off a new furor over the scope of government surveillance.
I hope so. I hope it leads to the impeachment of this president. I know that won't change anything, but I don't care. I want this dismal failure and liar out of office.
Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the NSA wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration.
IMPEACH!!!
“On what possible basis has the government refused to tell us that it believes that the law authorizes this kind of request?” she said.
For several years, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, have been cryptically warning that the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under that section of the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming to the public if it knew about it.
Oh, we are MORE than ALARMED, we are FUCKING OUTRAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act,” they wrote last year in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
No, not really, not after all we have seen in the last decade.
They added: “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”
And you thought this government gave a shit about your safety and protection?
A Wyden spokesman did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment on the Verizon order.
The senators were angry because the Obama administration described Section 215 orders as being similar to a grand jury subpoena for obtaining business records, like a suspect’s hotel or credit card records. The senators said the secret interpretation of the law was nothing like that.
Oh, the Obama administration lied?
--more--"
That's why we call it AmeriKa.
UPDATE:
"Domestic Spying Revelation Could Be Devastating For The Obama White House
by Peter Foster, The Telegraph | Jun. 6, 2013
The Obama administration will be bracing itself for a torrent of hostile questions this morning following the apparent revelation that the National Security Agency has been data-mining the phone records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans.
Not to be confused with eaves-dropping, or bugging the phones of those suspected of conspiring to commit a terrorist or criminal offence, the top secret court order published by The Guardian appears to show that the NSA has been trawling the anonymous 'metadata' of potentially billions of phone-calls.
On the one hand, American might take comfort that the 'internals' of their phone conversations – ie the voices themselves - are not being routinely recorded, but on the other, it seems from this leak that potentially everyone with a phone is under some form of surveillance in the USA.
For Mr Obama– a president who prided himself on his liberal credentials – this leak is a potentially devastating revelation since it exposes him to attack on two fronts - from both the libertarian Right and the liberal Left.
Already the administration has been hammered over its aggressive prosecution of leakers, including what appeared to be an attempt to criminalise a Fox News journalist, James Rosen, for working a source to obtain a leak from the State Department about North Korea.
That story caused the New York Times – usually a reliable friend of the Obama administration - to write a seething editorial accusing the Department of Justice of over-reaching, and using its powers to send a "chilling" message to the media.
It is not clear how wide the NSA data-mining project goes, it's effectiveness as a counter-terrorism tool in identifying potential terrorist or criminal cells or – indeed – whether it has been used for any other purposes.
It appears from previous reports that the NSA's data-mining operation is not new, and has long been suspected – but this is the first clear-cut proof, in the shape of a highly unusual leak from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Service Court (Fisa), that the practice is occurring.
A report in USA Today newspaper from 2006, quoting anonymous intelligence officials, alleged that the NSA been "secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans" and that the agency was using the data to "analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity".
Since September 11 and the passing of the 2001 Patriot Act, the American public has accepted a great deal of inconvenience and intrusion in the name of national security. The publication of this court order will re-open the debate on how far the security services' writ should run.
Politically, the difficulty for Mr Obama is that even if the NSA is actually doing nothing different than it did for George W Bush, the American public – particularly on the liberal left – had believed that Mr Obama's administration represented a fundamental departure from the excesses of the Bush years.
Now, with the continued debate over the use of drones, the failure to close Guantanamo, the ultra-aggressive prosecution of leaks even to the point, perhaps, of muzzling a free press – the questions from the public and the media are starting to weigh down on the Obama White House.
Already last night, within hours of publication, civil liberties groups who have long warned about the extent of secret surveillance, were jumping on the revelations.
"This confirms what we had long suspected," says Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization that has accused the government of operating a secret dragnet surveillance program told the Washington Post.
"I don't think Congress thought it was authorizing dragnet surveillance" when it passed the Patriot Act, Ms Cohn said, "I don't think Americans think that's OK. I would be shocked if the majority of Congressmen thought it's okay." Over the next few days and weeks, expect a fierce and polarizing debate over just what Americans do feel is acceptable, in the name of their national security.
--MORE--"
Related: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
UPDATED:
"Collection of phone records is ongoing practice" by Donna Cassata and Matt Apuzzo | Associated Press, June 06, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency’s need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday that the court order for telephone records, first disclosed by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice.
And this has been going on HOW LONG?
The records have been collected for some seven years, according to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
‘‘I think people want the homeland kept safe to the extent we can,’’ Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference. ‘‘We want to protect these privacy rights. That’s why this is carefully done in federal court with federal judges who sit 24/7 who review these requests.’’
This has NOTHING to do with the RAFT of LIES surrounding homeland security, and just wondering why a FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT was used for DOMESTIC SPYING!
The disclosure raised a number of questions: What is the government looking for? Are other big telephone companies under similar orders to turn over information? How is the information used and how long are the records kept?
The sweeping roundup of U.S. phone records has been going on for years and was a key part of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program, according to a U.S. official.
And your point is what? That this is all OKAY?
The White House had no immediate on-the-record comment. Attorney General Eric Holder sidestepped questions about the issue during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, offering instead to discuss it at a classified session that several senators said they would arrange.
The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the Guardian reported. It requires Verizon, one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies, on an ‘‘ongoing, daily basis,’’ to give the NSA information on all landline and mobile telephone calls of Verizon Business in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.
And that is protecting us from the "terrorists," huh?
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration, the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether the people are suspected of any wrongdoing.
Yeah, I thought THAT WAS IMPORTANT!
A former U.S. intelligence official who is familiar with the NSA program said that records from all U.S. phone companies would be seized by the government under the warrants, and that they would include business and residential numbers.
Yeah, I thought THAT WAS IMPORTANT, too!
Reaction to the revelation — both pro and con — reflected the vigorous debate in Washington over how best to balance the sometimes-competing goals of protecting the nation from terror attacks while safeguarding the privacy and civil rights of Americans. President Barack Obama, in a recent national security address, said the nation is at a crossroads as it determines how to remain vigilant yet move beyond a post-9/11 mindset focused on global antiterrorism.
Former Vice President Al Gore tweeted that privacy was essential in the digital era.
‘‘Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?’’ wrote Gore, the Democrat who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush.
It's not just you, Al, and for anyone who reads this blog they know am no fan of the man.
Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent whose comments were echoed by members of both parties, said: ‘‘To simply say in a blanket way that millions and millions of Americans are going to have their phone records checked by the U.S. government is to my mind indefensible and unacceptable.’’
But NO CALL for IMPEACHMENT!
But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he had no problem with the court order and the practice, declaring, ‘‘If we don’t do it, we’re crazy.’’
‘‘If you’re not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about,’’ he said.
That supremely fascist mind-set is sickening!
Btw, ever hear of a WRONG NUMBER, you f***?!!
Related: Feds Using AP and IRS Scandals To Limit First Amendment Rights
I suppose the attitude is not surprising seeing as it is coming from someone who DOES NOT BELIEVE in the FIRST AMENDMENT!
Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran against Obama for president in 2008, said that if the records sweep was designed to track ‘‘people in the United States who are communicating with members of jihadist terrorist organizations,’’ that might not be a problem. ‘‘But if it was something where we just blanket started finding out who everybody called and under what circumstances, then I think it deserves congressional hearings.’’
Senate Democratic leader Reid played down the significance of the revelation.
Democraps are SO DISAPPOINTING!
‘‘Right now I think that everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t anything that’s brand new,’’ he said. ‘‘This is a program that’s been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It’s a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not.’’
That is JUST MAKING ME ANGRIER!!!!
The disclosure of the records sweep was just the latest controversy to hit the Obama administration.
The president also is facing questions over the Internal Revenue Service’s improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalist phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead.
And there are like three others that the corporate media isn't even mentioning, including one at EPA.
At the very least, the controversies threaten to distract the White House at a pivotal time, when the president wants to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes.
Well, TOO BAD! I don't give a SHIT about the president and his political program in the face of this MASSIVE TOTALITARIAN TYRANNY!
At most, the controversies collectively could erode the American people’s trust in him, threatening both to derail his second term agenda and sully his presidential legacy.
Aww, poor Obama!
Is that SHIT JOURNALISM or what?
As for the TRUST ISSUE, he has LOST THAT LONG AGO and he will NEVER GET IT BACK!
Sorry, but I'm sick and tired of being patient while waiting for the "good change" as the BAD CHANGES CONTINUE and CONTINUE and CONTINUE! It is the GOD-DAMN AGENDA being PUSHED FORWARD and NOTHING ELSE!
The court order did not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls.
So we are told by the lying government and its mouthpiece media.
But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA’s computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify what are known in intelligence circles as ‘‘communities of interest’’ — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.
Once the government has zeroed in on numbers it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.
I give up on AmeriKa's apologetic pieces of shit.
The court document related to Verizon offers a glimpse into the larger NSA effort. Under the law, the government would need to demand records from each phone company individually. While subpoenas for other phone companies have not been made public, for the data-mining program described by government officials to work, the government would need records for all providers.
‘‘There is no indication that this order to Verizon was unique or novel. It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records. And this has been going on for at least 7 years, and probably longer,’’ wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.
Yes, dear readers, BLOGS are where it is at these days, not pos AmeriKan newspapers.
Jim Harper, a communications and privacy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, questioned the effectiveness of using so-called pattern analyses to intercept terrorism. He said that kind of analysis — finding trends in transactional data collected by Verizon — would produce many false positives and give the government access to intricate data about people’s calling habits.
That last part has been the WHOLE POINT of the MASSIVE AMOUNT of LIES since 9/11.
‘‘This is not just entertainment or a sideshow. This is a record of who you called every day this month,’’ he said, urging Congress to require the government to provide ‘‘a full explanation’’ of how this data turns up terrorism plots.
Under Bush, the National Security Agency built a highly classified wiretapping program to monitor emails and phone calls worldwide. The full details of that program remain unknown, but one aspect was to monitor massive numbers of incoming and outgoing U.S. calls to look for suspicious patterns, said an official familiar with the program. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Yes, we knew it was being done by the Bush Administration, and I'm sure I blogged my outrage back then. It GOES ALL the WAY back to BILL CLINTON?!!!!!
After The New York Times revealed the existence of that wiretapping program, the roundup continued under authority granted in the USA Patriot Act, the official said.
So the NYT scoop and exclusive did nothing?
The official did not know if the program was continuous or whether it stopped and restarted at times.
Give me a break.
The official had not seen the court order released by the Guardian newspaper but said it was consistent with similar authorizations the Justice Department has received.
Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment.
The NSA had no immediate comment.
It's all no comment, no comment, no comment. So much for transparency!
The agency is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans.
PFFFFFFFFFTTT!
Like this pos tyranny gives a crap about what we think.
In a brochure it distributes, which includes a DVD for reporters to view video that it provides for public relations purposes, it pledges that the agency ‘‘is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans’ civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability,’’ and says, ‘‘Earning the American public’s trust is paramount.’’
Like I said, nothing but a mouthpiece.
Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn’t specify which customers’ records were being tracked.
Folks, EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN has been SPIED ON! Once again, the AmeriKan media have shown themselves to be collaborators.
Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are call time and duration, and unique identifiers. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.
So we are told! If you believe that I have some of Saddam's non-existent nuclear weapons to sell you.
A senior administration official, defending the collection of phone records by the government, said, ‘‘On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls.’’ The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
This government is HOPELESS, and it is time to WATER the TREE OF LIBERTY, if you know what I mean!
Interviewed separately, the former intelligence official described a system in which the database needed to be kept current so that if intelligence agencies obtained a phone number from a terror suspect overseas, it could immediately be matched against the records on file. Because it is not easy or quick to obtain the records from phone companies, the Obama administration needed to renew the Bush-era program on an ongoing basis to keep it updated, the former official said.
Have you HAD IT with the EXCUSES!!??
It’s not clear how long the records are kept, or if they are destroyed.
Yeah, right. This government never destroys shit; it simply changes the name of the program.
The former official said that since terror suspects frequently change phone numbers to cover their tracks, there is little need for older records.
Congressional intelligence agencies were briefed extensively on the program, and received support from both Republicans and Democrats to continue it, the former official said. ‘‘Some were nervous about it, but there was never any attempt to stop the program,’’ he said. He described it as a White House-led process.
One reason among many as to why I NO LONGER WANT TO BLOG about the Boston Globe or AmeriKa anymore. We need this government to SELF-IMPLODE so we can START OVER FROM SCRATCH! It is BEYOND SAVING NOW!
The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual.
Is it? How would we know? Certainly not through the AmeriKan media.
Remember, it took a BRITISH PAPER to BUST THIS STORY OPEN!
FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial.
The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of ‘‘all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad’’ or ‘‘wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,’’ The Guardian said.
The law on which the order explicitly relies is the ‘‘business records’’ provision of the USA Patriot Act.
--more--"
UPDATE:
"Domestic Spying Revelation Could Be Devastating For The Obama White House
by Peter Foster, The Telegraph | Jun. 6, 2013
The Obama administration will be bracing itself for a torrent of hostile questions this morning following the apparent revelation that the National Security Agency has been data-mining the phone records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans.
Not to be confused with eaves-dropping, or bugging the phones of those suspected of conspiring to commit a terrorist or criminal offence, the top secret court order published by The Guardian appears to show that the NSA has been trawling the anonymous 'metadata' of potentially billions of phone-calls.
On the one hand, American might take comfort that the 'internals' of their phone conversations – ie the voices themselves - are not being routinely recorded, but on the other, it seems from this leak that potentially everyone with a phone is under some form of surveillance in the USA.
For Mr Obama– a president who prided himself on his liberal credentials – this leak is a potentially devastating revelation since it exposes him to attack on two fronts - from both the libertarian Right and the liberal Left.
Already the administration has been hammered over its aggressive prosecution of leakers, including what appeared to be an attempt to criminalise a Fox News journalist, James Rosen, for working a source to obtain a leak from the State Department about North Korea.
That story caused the New York Times – usually a reliable friend of the Obama administration - to write a seething editorial accusing the Department of Justice of over-reaching, and using its powers to send a "chilling" message to the media.
It is not clear how wide the NSA data-mining project goes, it's effectiveness as a counter-terrorism tool in identifying potential terrorist or criminal cells or – indeed – whether it has been used for any other purposes.
It appears from previous reports that the NSA's data-mining operation is not new, and has long been suspected – but this is the first clear-cut proof, in the shape of a highly unusual leak from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Service Court (Fisa), that the practice is occurring.
A report in USA Today newspaper from 2006, quoting anonymous intelligence officials, alleged that the NSA been "secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans" and that the agency was using the data to "analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity".
Since September 11 and the passing of the 2001 Patriot Act, the American public has accepted a great deal of inconvenience and intrusion in the name of national security. The publication of this court order will re-open the debate on how far the security services' writ should run.
Politically, the difficulty for Mr Obama is that even if the NSA is actually doing nothing different than it did for George W Bush, the American public – particularly on the liberal left – had believed that Mr Obama's administration represented a fundamental departure from the excesses of the Bush years.
Now, with the continued debate over the use of drones, the failure to close Guantanamo, the ultra-aggressive prosecution of leaks even to the point, perhaps, of muzzling a free press – the questions from the public and the media are starting to weigh down on the Obama White House.
Already last night, within hours of publication, civil liberties groups who have long warned about the extent of secret surveillance, were jumping on the revelations.
"This confirms what we had long suspected," says Cindy Cohn, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties organization that has accused the government of operating a secret dragnet surveillance program told the Washington Post.
"I don't think Congress thought it was authorizing dragnet surveillance" when it passed the Patriot Act, Ms Cohn said, "I don't think Americans think that's OK. I would be shocked if the majority of Congressmen thought it's okay." Over the next few days and weeks, expect a fierce and polarizing debate over just what Americans do feel is acceptable, in the name of their national security.
--MORE--"
Related: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
UPDATED:
"Collection of phone records is ongoing practice" by Donna Cassata and Matt Apuzzo | Associated Press, June 06, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is secretly collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top-secret court order, according to the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Obama administration is defending the National Security Agency’s need to collect such records, but critics are calling it a huge over-reach.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday that the court order for telephone records, first disclosed by The Guardian newspaper in Britain, was a three-month renewal of an ongoing practice.
And this has been going on HOW LONG?
The records have been collected for some seven years, according to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
‘‘I think people want the homeland kept safe to the extent we can,’’ Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference. ‘‘We want to protect these privacy rights. That’s why this is carefully done in federal court with federal judges who sit 24/7 who review these requests.’’
This has NOTHING to do with the RAFT of LIES surrounding homeland security, and just wondering why a FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT was used for DOMESTIC SPYING!
The disclosure raised a number of questions: What is the government looking for? Are other big telephone companies under similar orders to turn over information? How is the information used and how long are the records kept?
The sweeping roundup of U.S. phone records has been going on for years and was a key part of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program, according to a U.S. official.
And your point is what? That this is all OKAY?
The White House had no immediate on-the-record comment. Attorney General Eric Holder sidestepped questions about the issue during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee, offering instead to discuss it at a classified session that several senators said they would arrange.
The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the Guardian reported. It requires Verizon, one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies, on an ‘‘ongoing, daily basis,’’ to give the NSA information on all landline and mobile telephone calls of Verizon Business in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.
And that is protecting us from the "terrorists," huh?
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration, the communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk, regardless of whether the people are suspected of any wrongdoing.
Yeah, I thought THAT WAS IMPORTANT!
A former U.S. intelligence official who is familiar with the NSA program said that records from all U.S. phone companies would be seized by the government under the warrants, and that they would include business and residential numbers.
Yeah, I thought THAT WAS IMPORTANT, too!
Reaction to the revelation — both pro and con — reflected the vigorous debate in Washington over how best to balance the sometimes-competing goals of protecting the nation from terror attacks while safeguarding the privacy and civil rights of Americans. President Barack Obama, in a recent national security address, said the nation is at a crossroads as it determines how to remain vigilant yet move beyond a post-9/11 mindset focused on global antiterrorism.
Former Vice President Al Gore tweeted that privacy was essential in the digital era.
‘‘Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?’’ wrote Gore, the Democrat who lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush.
It's not just you, Al, and for anyone who reads this blog they know am no fan of the man.
Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent whose comments were echoed by members of both parties, said: ‘‘To simply say in a blanket way that millions and millions of Americans are going to have their phone records checked by the U.S. government is to my mind indefensible and unacceptable.’’
But NO CALL for IMPEACHMENT!
But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he had no problem with the court order and the practice, declaring, ‘‘If we don’t do it, we’re crazy.’’
‘‘If you’re not getting a call from a terrorist organization, you've got nothing to worry about,’’ he said.
That supremely fascist mind-set is sickening!
Btw, ever hear of a WRONG NUMBER, you f***?!!
Related: Feds Using AP and IRS Scandals To Limit First Amendment Rights
I suppose the attitude is not surprising seeing as it is coming from someone who DOES NOT BELIEVE in the FIRST AMENDMENT!
Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran against Obama for president in 2008, said that if the records sweep was designed to track ‘‘people in the United States who are communicating with members of jihadist terrorist organizations,’’ that might not be a problem. ‘‘But if it was something where we just blanket started finding out who everybody called and under what circumstances, then I think it deserves congressional hearings.’’
Senate Democratic leader Reid played down the significance of the revelation.
Democraps are SO DISAPPOINTING!
‘‘Right now I think that everyone should just calm down and understand that this isn’t anything that’s brand new,’’ he said. ‘‘This is a program that’s been in effect for seven years, as I recall. It’s a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not.’’
That is JUST MAKING ME ANGRIER!!!!
The disclosure of the records sweep was just the latest controversy to hit the Obama administration.
The president also is facing questions over the Internal Revenue Service’s improper targeting of conservative groups, the seizure of journalist phone records in an investigation into who leaked information to the media, and the administration’s handling of the terrorist attack in Libya that left four Americans dead.
And there are like three others that the corporate media isn't even mentioning, including one at EPA.
At the very least, the controversies threaten to distract the White House at a pivotal time, when the president wants to tackle big issues like immigration reform and taxes.
Well, TOO BAD! I don't give a SHIT about the president and his political program in the face of this MASSIVE TOTALITARIAN TYRANNY!
At most, the controversies collectively could erode the American people’s trust in him, threatening both to derail his second term agenda and sully his presidential legacy.
Aww, poor Obama!
Is that SHIT JOURNALISM or what?
As for the TRUST ISSUE, he has LOST THAT LONG AGO and he will NEVER GET IT BACK!
Sorry, but I'm sick and tired of being patient while waiting for the "good change" as the BAD CHANGES CONTINUE and CONTINUE and CONTINUE! It is the GOD-DAMN AGENDA being PUSHED FORWARD and NOTHING ELSE!
The court order did not authorize snooping into the content of phone calls.
So we are told by the lying government and its mouthpiece media.
But with millions of phone records in hand, the NSA’s computers can analyze them for patterns, spot unusual behavior and identify what are known in intelligence circles as ‘‘communities of interest’’ — networks of people in contact with targets or suspicious phone numbers overseas.
Once the government has zeroed in on numbers it believes are tied to terrorism or foreign governments, it can go back to the court with a wiretap request. That allows the government to monitor the calls in real time, record them and store them indefinitely.
I give up on AmeriKa's apologetic pieces of shit.
The court document related to Verizon offers a glimpse into the larger NSA effort. Under the law, the government would need to demand records from each phone company individually. While subpoenas for other phone companies have not been made public, for the data-mining program described by government officials to work, the government would need records for all providers.
‘‘There is no indication that this order to Verizon was unique or novel. It is very likely that business records orders like this exist for every major American telecommunication company, meaning that if you make calls in the United States the NSA has those records. And this has been going on for at least 7 years, and probably longer,’’ wrote Cindy Cohn, general counsel of the nonprofit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, and staff attorney Mark Rumold, in a blog post.
Yes, dear readers, BLOGS are where it is at these days, not pos AmeriKan newspapers.
Jim Harper, a communications and privacy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, questioned the effectiveness of using so-called pattern analyses to intercept terrorism. He said that kind of analysis — finding trends in transactional data collected by Verizon — would produce many false positives and give the government access to intricate data about people’s calling habits.
That last part has been the WHOLE POINT of the MASSIVE AMOUNT of LIES since 9/11.
‘‘This is not just entertainment or a sideshow. This is a record of who you called every day this month,’’ he said, urging Congress to require the government to provide ‘‘a full explanation’’ of how this data turns up terrorism plots.
Under Bush, the National Security Agency built a highly classified wiretapping program to monitor emails and phone calls worldwide. The full details of that program remain unknown, but one aspect was to monitor massive numbers of incoming and outgoing U.S. calls to look for suspicious patterns, said an official familiar with the program. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Yes, we knew it was being done by the Bush Administration, and I'm sure I blogged my outrage back then. It GOES ALL the WAY back to BILL CLINTON?!!!!!
After The New York Times revealed the existence of that wiretapping program, the roundup continued under authority granted in the USA Patriot Act, the official said.
So the NYT scoop and exclusive did nothing?
The official did not know if the program was continuous or whether it stopped and restarted at times.
Give me a break.
The official had not seen the court order released by the Guardian newspaper but said it was consistent with similar authorizations the Justice Department has received.
Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said Wednesday the company had no comment.
The NSA had no immediate comment.
It's all no comment, no comment, no comment. So much for transparency!
The agency is sensitive to perceptions that it might be spying on Americans.
PFFFFFFFFFTTT!
Like this pos tyranny gives a crap about what we think.
In a brochure it distributes, which includes a DVD for reporters to view video that it provides for public relations purposes, it pledges that the agency ‘‘is unwavering in its respect for U.S. laws and Americans’ civil liberties — and its commitment to accountability,’’ and says, ‘‘Earning the American public’s trust is paramount.’’
Like I said, nothing but a mouthpiece.
Verizon Communications Inc. listed 121 million customers in its first-quarter earnings report this April — 98.9 million wireless customers, 11.7 million residential phone lines and about 10 million commercial lines. The court order didn’t specify which customers’ records were being tracked.
Folks, EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN has been SPIED ON! Once again, the AmeriKan media have shown themselves to be collaborators.
Under the terms of the order, the phone numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as are call time and duration, and unique identifiers. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered, The Guardian said.
So we are told! If you believe that I have some of Saddam's non-existent nuclear weapons to sell you.
A senior administration official, defending the collection of phone records by the government, said, ‘‘On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls.’’ The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
This government is HOPELESS, and it is time to WATER the TREE OF LIBERTY, if you know what I mean!
Interviewed separately, the former intelligence official described a system in which the database needed to be kept current so that if intelligence agencies obtained a phone number from a terror suspect overseas, it could immediately be matched against the records on file. Because it is not easy or quick to obtain the records from phone companies, the Obama administration needed to renew the Bush-era program on an ongoing basis to keep it updated, the former official said.
Have you HAD IT with the EXCUSES!!??
It’s not clear how long the records are kept, or if they are destroyed.
Yeah, right. This government never destroys shit; it simply changes the name of the program.
The former official said that since terror suspects frequently change phone numbers to cover their tracks, there is little need for older records.
Congressional intelligence agencies were briefed extensively on the program, and received support from both Republicans and Democrats to continue it, the former official said. ‘‘Some were nervous about it, but there was never any attempt to stop the program,’’ he said. He described it as a White House-led process.
One reason among many as to why I NO LONGER WANT TO BLOG about the Boston Globe or AmeriKa anymore. We need this government to SELF-IMPLODE so we can START OVER FROM SCRATCH! It is BEYOND SAVING NOW!
The broad, unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is unusual.
Is it? How would we know? Certainly not through the AmeriKan media.
Remember, it took a BRITISH PAPER to BUST THIS STORY OPEN!
FISA court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets. NSA warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks was very controversial.
The FISA court order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compelled Verizon to provide the NSA with electronic copies of ‘‘all call detail records or telephony metadata created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad’’ or ‘‘wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls,’’ The Guardian said.
The law on which the order explicitly relies is the ‘‘business records’’ provision of the USA Patriot Act.
--more--"
Can You Hear Me Now, Obama?
I sure hope you can.
MP+D'+D^3\4:@%7DLH=GH(14````"Q>AX7.]?M`X9IJ):E/D![R4```!"?9)P
M2.6:ZF(S&;$)[-1E3Z!C*$.4'E*W3S^J%`VBD>85````14[FHT:1LPC\6BX.
MEAIT?CL5````0_':ZP9*!S!+8?^T.[7+>A(Y$-,DJ-UI8&
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M*J+CY_]R>O)3J$HS.1SCO(/[#:N!H^^*)3[-!;HBYUD^,CIXF$2;G+D5J+L8
M];F+0;P3J`V+F_YH,TS<])Q?JU=[$9>E)(Y//0M,/S`(9<'1N%(P!_YGMFLH
M5IGO)_;9>\QG@X9/9I5*198"=?XQ_=0N-3-_R]_/U7)#'Y4/F*=-S!OIM&Z#
M%MY4?7LH7$4+6][H=@1J):T,;^%&TYL4L/&=Y1*A%DTC,A#Z"*0+@[A](GX6
L]!TZR@VLX,HW3CK==L1BB"7<]4&5?.L@*.*:-ZWN.TV,<<_ a="" amp="" href="">H`
Should I turn up the volume up?
MP+D'+D^3\4:@%7DLH=GH(14````"Q>AX7.]?M`X9IJ):E/D![R4```!"?9)P
M2.6:ZF(S&;$)[-1E3Z!C*$.4'E*W3S^J%`VBD>85````14[FHT:1LPC\6BX.
MEAIT?CL5````0_':ZP9*!S!+8?^T.[7+>A(Y$-,DJ-UI8&
M'9^I9L55/F+.T,H6,24SF#H```T````#`P(!!Z"0(A0-````/^``````````
M*J+CY_]R>O)3J$HS.1SCO(/[#:N!H^^*)3[-!;HBYUD^,CIXF$2;G+D5J+L8
M];F+0;P3J`V+F_YH,TS<])Q?JU=[$9>E)(Y//0M,/S`(9<'1N%(P!_YGMFLH
M5IGO)_;9>\QG@X9/9I5*198"=?XQ_=0N-3-_R]_/U7)#'Y4/F*=-S!OIM&Z#
M%MY4?7LH7$4+6][H=@1J):T,;^%&TYL4L/&=Y1*A%DTC,A#Z"*0+@[A](GX6
L]!TZR@VLX,HW3CK==L1BB"7<]4&5?.L@*.*:-ZWN.TV,<<_ a="" amp="" href="">H`
Should I turn up the volume up?