Obama Administration NSA Spying on Americans

[Ryan Ruck]

It's official, Russia has given asylum to Snowden. Saw that coming...

[American Patriot]

I think we all saw that. He's probably been under sodium pentothal for some time now, all his shit gone through, the Russians have everything they want and now they are gonna throw Snowden to the dogs in about 12 months.

[American Patriot]

Snowden’s Father Calls Out Obama On Nuremberg Crimes

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Land & Livestock Interntional, Inc.
I cling to the hope that, some day, guys like Snowden, Manning, et al will be celebrated as all American Heroes of the Washington-Jefferson class. Meantime, just like during the first Revolution, 99% of the spittle chins, quivering lips et al will continue to feed on the rotting carcass of American Liberty. Indeed, “truth is only treason in the Empire of lies.” Yours for freedom in our lifetimes. — jtl, 419



Kurt Nimmo ********.com August 1, 2013


[IMG]http://static.********.com/bindnfocom/2013/07/wantyou2.jpg[/IMG]

Predictably, the corporate media, the official propaganda outlet for the establishment, has refused to post or publish an open letter sent to Obama by Lon Snowden, the father of Edward Snowden. This callous refusal should finally convince any who may have had any doubt that the United States is anything but a tyrannical national security state with a state-run media no different than the one in Cuba, China or Iran.


Edward Snowden’s unwarranted persecution and vilification by the globalist propaganda media is part of a larger campaign to snuff out investigative media.


Glenn Greenwald eluded to this during a conversation about the persecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning with CIA operative Anderson Cooper and CNN legal analyst and establishment insider Jeffrey Toobin. In response to Toobin’s defense of Manning’s unjust persecution and probable life sentence, Greenwald said the former Harvard Review editor was arguing “for the end of investigative journalism.”


As the indisputable assassination of investigative journalist Michael Hastings makes painfully obvious, the government is not merely attempting to persecute journalists who refuse to act as stenographers for the national security state, but is actively killing them. The United States is now on par with Mexico, Iran, Colombia, and Russia, countries that stand accused of murdering journalists.


The letter penned by constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein and sent by Lon Snowden to Obama follows. Below it is a video of the exchange between Greenwald and the apologist for a vindictive and murderous state, Jeffrey Toobin, who counts as his close friend Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan.


July 26, 2013 President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500



Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution
Dear Mr. President:



You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”



Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”



Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.



A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.



Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.



We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.



From the commencement of your administration, your secrecy of the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance programs had frustrated a national conversation over their legality, necessity, or morality. That secrecy (combined with congressional nonfeasance) provoked Edward’s disclosures, which sparked a national conversation which you have belatedly and cynically embraced. Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate to curtail or terminate the NSA’s programs, and the American people are being educated to the public policy choices at hand. A commanding majority now voice concerns over the dragnet surveillance of Americans that Edward exposed and you concealed. It seems mystifying to us that you are prosecuting Edward for accomplishing what you have said urgently needed to be done!
The right to be left alone from government snooping–the most cherished right among civilized people—is the cornerstone of liberty. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg. He came to learn of the dynamics of the Third Reich that crushed a free society, and which have lessons for the United States today.



Writing in Brinegar v. United States, Justice Jackson elaborated:



The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”



These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police.



We thus find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible.



We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward.



On June 27, 2013, Mr. Fein wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that Edward’s father was substantially convinced that he would return to the United States to confront the charges that have been lodged against him if three cornerstones of due process were guaranteed. The letter was not an ultimatum, but an invitation to discuss fair trial imperatives. The Attorney General has sneered at the overture with studied silence.



We thus suspect your administration wishes to avoid a trial because of constitutional doubts about application of the Espionage Act in these circumstances, and obligations to disclose to the public potentially embarrassing classified information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.



Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial. Neither does your refusal to remind the American people and prominent Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate like House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,and Senator Dianne Feinstein that Edward enjoys a presumption of innocence. He should not be convicted before trial. Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a “traitor.”



Ms. Pelosi has pontificated that Edward “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.” Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, “This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor.” And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of “treason,” which is defined in Article III of the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, “or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”



You have let those quadruple affronts to due process pass unrebuked, while you have disparaged Edward as a “hacker” to cast aspersion on his motivations and talents. Have you forgotten the Supreme Court’s gospel in Berger v. United States that the interests of the government “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done?”



We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage. Classified details of your predator drone protocols, for instance, were shared with the New York Times with impunity to bolster your national security credentials. Justice Jackson observed in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.”



In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed. Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.
Sincerely, Bruce Fein Counsel for Lon Snowden Lon Snowden

[American Patriot]

RT: Encrypted email service used by Snowden mysteriously shuts down

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Jean
Published time: August 08, 2013 21:00
Edited time: August 08, 2013 23:08
AFP Photo / John Macdougall


The highly encrypted email service reportedly used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden has gone offline – and its administrator claims the company is legally barred from explaining why.


On Thursday, the homepage of Lavabit.com was changed to a letter from the company’s owner announcing that the site’s operations have ceased following a six-week long ordeal that has prompted the company to take legal action in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.


Now in the midst of an escalating fight from the federal government aimed at cracking down on encrypted communications, one of the last free and secure services has thrown in the towel under mysterious circumstances.


“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” owner and operator Ladar Levison of Dallas, Texas wrote in the statement. “I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot.”


“I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the First Amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise,” wrote Levison. “As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”


Levison’s statement comes two months after Snowden – a former analyst at intelligence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton – revealed himself to be the source of leaked NSA documents disclosing vast surveillance programs operated by the United States government. A month later, the Global Post published an article in which a Lavabit.com email address thought to be registered to Snowden was revealed.


The Global Post wrote on July 12 that the Sheremetyevo Airport press conference hosted by Snowden later that day was announced to human rights groups under the email address “edsnowden@lavabit.com” and signed by “Edward Joseph Snowden.” Washington Post foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald have both since reported that Lavabit is indeed Snowden’s email provider.


During a Q&A session hosted by The Guardian last month, Snowden wrote, “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.”


Although Lavabit’s website is now almost entirely inaccessible, a cached version hosted by Google provides background on why and how the service provided highly secure encryption to its users.


“In an era where Microsoft and Yahoo’s e-mail services sell access past their spam filters, Google profiles user’s inboxes for targeted advertising, and AT&T allows the government to tap phone calls without a court warrant; we decided to take a stand,” one page reads. “Lavabit has developed a system so secure that it prevents everyone, including us, from reading the e-mail of the people that use it.”


By combining three different encryption schemes with Elliptical Curve Cryptography, Lavabit provided a service purposely designed to provide protection against government surveillance.


“The result is that once a message is stored on our servers in this fashion, it can’t be recovered without knowing a user’s password. This provides a priceless level of security, particularly for customers that use e-mail to exchange sensitive information,” the company wrote.


“The key element of the PATRIOT Act is that it allows the FBI to issue National Security Letters (NSLs). NSLs are used to force an Internet Service Provider, like Lavabit, to surrender all private information related to a particular user. The problem is that NSLs come without the oversight of a court and can be issued in secret. Issuing an NSL in secret effectively denies the accused an opportunity to defend himself in court. Fortunately, the courts ruled NSLs unconstitutional in 2005; but not before illustrating the need for a technological guarantee of privacy,” the cached page reads.



Screenshot from lavabit.com



“Lavabit believes that a civil society depends on the open, free and private flow of ideas. The type of monitoring promoted by the PATRIOT Act restricts that flow of ideas because it intimidates those afraid of retaliation. To counteract this chilling effect, Lavabit developed its secure e-mail platform. We feel e-mail has evolved into a critical channel for the communication of ideas in a healthy democracy. It’s precisely because of e-mail’s importance that we strive so hard to protect private e-mails from eavesdropping.”


Lavabit noted that brute force attacks could theoretically allow a third-party to see password-protected emails but said that such attacks shouldn’t be happening anytime soon.


“In practice, the key lengths Lavabit has chosen equal enough possible inputs that a brute-force attack shouldn’t be feasible for a long time to come.”


According to Snowden’s Q&A with The Guardian last month, “endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”


Now as Levison and crew prepare for a fight in appeals court, he suggests that very few are safe from having even secure emails stolen by the US government.


“This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” Snowden said in the statement.


On a since removed page from Lavabit.com, the company wrote, “Like insurance, we hope our secure e-mail platform is something you’ll never need. However, should the issue ever arise, like insurance, you’ll be glad you have it.”


Earlier this year, Federal Bureau of Investigation general counsel Andrew Weismann said the US Justice Department wants to be able to decrypt all messages sent over the internet in real-time by the end of 2014.


“The problem with not having [that ability in America] is that we’re making the ability to intercept communications with a court order increasingly obsolete,” Weissman said.

“Those communications are being used for criminal conversations, by definition…and so this huge legal apparatus that many of you know about to prevent crimes, to prevent terrorist attacks is becoming increasingly hampered and increasingly marginalized the more we have technology that is not covered” under current law.


According to a cached page of the company’s history, Lavabit was launched in 2004 and most recently handled service for upwards of 60,000 individuals at a rate of around 200,000 emails a day.


“How many Lavabit users have just been impacted by the hand of attempted government oppression in secret?” security researcher Jacob Appelbaum tweeted on Thursday. “The path chosen by Lavabit is an honorable choice. It is also horrible that they must now ruin their company to try to keep their integrity.”


In an email to RT, Appelbaum said, “It seems rather obvious that the US government surveillance agenda is out of control.”


“This isn’t a matter of ‘a surveillance program’ – the issue isn’t just passive wiretapping, it include[s] actively breaking into people’s computers, as well as storing the data for retroactive policing,” added Appelbaum. “Welcome to the United States of American Total Surveillance. A State over all other States.”


Appelbaum himself is no stranger to the government’s surveillance policies and has had his own personal data thrown under Uncle Sam’s magnifying glass in the past. A known volunteer with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, Appelbaum was the subject of federal subpoenas served to both Google and a small-time Internet Service Provider that compelled them to hand over private emails. Twitter was also served with a subpoena for Mr. Appelbaum’s user info.
Lavabit representatives did not immediately return requests for comment.

[American Patriot]

Still processing this....

Snowden Revelation Of “Solar-Virus” Armageddon Shocks World

Posted by EU Times on Aug 8th, 2013 // 4 Comments





A grim Ministry of Health (MoH) report on information obtained from former CIA/NSA whistleblower, and “global hero to the masses,” Edward Snowden reveals the Obama regimes fears of a raging pandemic due to upcoming solar storms that, according to the Americans, “may very well alter life on this planet as we know it.”


According to the MoH, one of the computer devices (USB flash drive) provided to Russian intelligence by Snowden contains over 20,000 pages of top-secret US Defense Department (DOD) documents related to that military institutions shocking 2004 report to then President George W. Bush that stated “climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters,” that “disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” and concluding that “Once again, warfare would define human life.”


Important to note about this information obtained from Snowden, this MoH report says, is that it follows a path similar to that of the 2004 Pentagon Report in that the world’s first notice of it came when it was leaked to Britain’s The Guardian Newspaper, and, like Snowden’s spying revelations to this same newspaper earlier this spring, the leakers appear to be “strongly associated” with the “President Carter-General Colin Powell Faction” currently waging a secret war against the Obama regime.


Also important to note is that Glenn Greenwald, the US journalist based in Brazil, who published information about Snowden’s leaked NSA files in The Guardian, testified yesterday to Brazilian lawmakers that he too was still in possession of these 20,000 top-secret documents, but was still in fear of releasing them knowing the Obama regimes “open kill order” on anyone making this dire information public.


As to the information being kept from the world’s public by the Obama regime, this MoH report continues, is that sometime this coming fall and/or winter, a massive reversal of our Sun’s magnetic field may not only “severely affect” our plants weather and disrupt radio transmissions, its ability to genetically mutate a number of deadly viruses is now occurring and with this coming “solar flip” will accelerate to “Armageddon-type proportions”.


This MoH report further states that these DOD documents contain heretofore never released scientific documents related to the Hoyle–Wickramasinghe Model of Panspermia, which British scientists Sir Fred Hoyle and Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe revealed in 1990 were directly tied to solar activity (sunspots) to nearly every incidence of viral influenza epidemics and pandemics in human history.


Of particular concern to DOD officials, this report says, Snowden’s leaked documents reveal are the Influenza A virus subtype H7N9 (Bird Flu) which Chinese scientists are now reporting is able to pass from human-to-human, and the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) virus which has killed millions of pigs in the United States this year and shows no sign of stopping.


The MoH further says in their report on Snowden’s leaked documents that they reveal the massive ammunition purchases being made by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [1.5 billion rounds in 2012 and more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next four or five years] are in direct response to Obama regime fears of “social anarchy” developing as tens-of-millions of Americans begin to die and their economy collapses in the face of what they warn could be the worst pandemic in human history.


Even more startling, MoH experts in this report say, is that the massive domestic spying operation currently being conducted by the Obama regime and revealed by Snowden, and in cooperation with all other Western nations, under the guise of “preventing terrorism” is, in fact, being coordinated by the US National Security Agency-Central Security Service (NSA-CSS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in order to enable them to nearly immediately spot outbreaks, establish containment zones, and blacklist information from becoming public. [Note: The NSA-CSS is under the command of the DOD]


The most similar type example of what the NSA-CSS/CDC is attempting, this report says, can be found by viewing the Health Map which uses global internet data to document disease outbreaks.


However, this report says, what the NSA-CSS/CDC spying project is attempting to do is nothing short of putting a “surveillance blanket” over the entire American population that will continuously monitor these people (and those of other Western nations too) on a 24 hour basis.


Specifically to be tracked by NSA-CSS/CDC computer monitoring algorithms, this MoH report says Snowden’s documents reveal, are internet searches relating to all illnesses, medical/medicine purchases (both over the counter and prescription), phone and email communications relating to illness, all medical records including private doctor-patient communications, GPS tracking of people (by cell phone and onboard vehicle systems) leaving infected/blockaded areas, all US Postal mailings, and too many other surveillance measures to mention in just one article.


Interesting to note about the information contained in this MoH report, and as reported by the ********.Com News Service, is that the Obama regime has begun a disinformation counterattack against Snowden’s revelations by filling the internet with spurious stories claiming that he warned of a “solar flare killshot” set to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in September.


As this MoH report, however, reveals, the dangers to our world revealed by Snowden show the grave danger our world is truly in…but with so few even knowing the truth, and others avidly seeking to keep it from being known, the final outcome will, as always, be predictable….only those who prepare will survive.
Source

[American Patriot]

Snowden Revelation Of “Solar-Virus” Armageddon Shocks World, 5.0 out of 5 based on 6 ratings Related Posts:

• Snowden wants asylum in Russia, ready to meet condition not to damage US
• Snowden Revelations Strike Fear Into Putin
• Obama Requests 15,000 Russian Troops For “Upcoming” Disaster
• Snowden’s plane lands in Havana, NSA leaker not seen aboard
• US asks Moscow to ‘look at all options available’ to expel Snowden

Tags: Armageddon, Barack Obama, Bird Flu, Edward Snowden, H7N9, Hoyle–Wickramasinghe Model of Panspermia, Moscow, Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe, NSA, Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, Russia, Sir Fred Hoyle, Solar-Virus, Sun, Sunspots

So... we're going to have a global pandemic based on solar storms?

Obviously people have their heads up their collective asses. While there is a certainty that sun will reach it's peak soon, there's no evidence at all that viruses and other diseases are caused by "solar storms" and I can't see that connection from any direction.

The worst that can happen is a CME hits the planet and tears up a power grid on the side of the planet that is hit. Could be larger than we expect, and might shut down an entire continent but that's not a high probability. Solar radiation is blocked by our magnetic field from hitting the Earth. The worst IT can do is affect the ionosphere, giving off pretty colored lights (Aurora and Australius Borealis). A CME contains components of solar material, magnetic fields and ions. Solar storms are CAUSED by CMEs.

If ionizing radiation were to hit biological critters they can die from cellular damage. Chances are good some cells might be damaged but not destroyed and cause mutations.

It is difficult to say that a pandemic can be created instantly by such a thing.

I just can't see this as some kind of viable Armageddon Scenario.

[American Patriot]

Just a follow up...

Obama Requests 15,000 Russian Troops For “Upcoming” Disaster

Posted by EU Times on Jun 27th, 2013 // 303 Comments





An unsettling report prepared by the Emergencies Ministry (EMERCOM) circulating in the Kremlin today on the just completed talks between Russia and the United States in Washington D.C. says that the Obama regime has requested at least 15,000 Russian troops trained in disaster relief and “crowd functions” [i.e. riot control] be pre-positioned to respond to FEMA Region III during an unspecified “upcoming” disaster.


According to this report, this unprecedented request was made directly to Minister Vladimir Puchkov by US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Director Janet Napolitano who said these Russian troops would work “directly and jointly” with her Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), part of whose mission is to secure the continuity of the US government in the event of natural disasters or war.


Important to note, this report says, is that FEMA Region III, the area Russian troops are being requested for, includes Washington D.C. and the surrounding States of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, “strongly suggesting” that the Obama regime has lost confidence in its own military being able to secure its survival should it be called upon to do so.


In his public statements, yesterday, regarding these matters Minister Puchkov stated, “We have decided that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency and Russia’s Emergencies Ministry will work together to develop systems to protect people and territory from cosmic impacts,” and further noted that his meeting with DHS Director Napolitano also covered other kinds of natural emergencies, such as recent years’ extreme weather in both Russia and United States.




In this EMERCOM report, however, Minister Puchkov notes that the Russian troops being requested by the Obama regime would “more than likely” be paired with US-DHS troops who last year purchased nearly 2 billion rounds of ammunition and just this past month placed and emergency order for riot gear.


As to what “upcoming disaster” the US is preparing for, this report continues, appears to be “strongly related” to last weeks assassination of American reporter Michael Hastings who was killed while attempting to reach the safety of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, and as we had reported on in our 20 June report Top US Journalist Attempting To Reach Israeli Consulate Assassinated.


Further to be noted about Hastings assassination by the Obama regime is the continued US mainstream propaganda news cover-up of it, though many freelance reporters continue to uncover the truth, such as Jim Stone whose investigation noted that the rear portion of Hastings car was blown open and shredded with the rest of the car nicely intact, which runs counter to the “official” story that this vehicle has hit a tree.




Not mentioned in this EMERCOM report is any suggestion that Russia would comply with this request from the Obama regime, especially in light of the horrifying information being given to Russian intelligence analysts from Edward Snowden who has been labeled as the most wanted man in the world.


According to one Federal Security Services (FSB) bulletin on their continued debriefing of Snowden, and analysis of the information he has provided Russian intelligence officers, his father, Lonnie Snowden, was an officer in the US Coast Guard during the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States who had “direct knowledge” of the true events that occurred and whom the real perpetrators were.




Being directly affected by the events of 9/11, this FSB bulletin says, Snowden “self initiated” a multi-year effort to gain access to America’s top secrets, a mission which when recently completed led him to contact various international reporters, including Hastings, whom he believed could be trusted with disseminating the information he had obtained.


Though known to us directly from our Kremlin sources as to the exact connections Snowden’s information proves regarding 9/11 and both the Bush and Obama regimes, and the even more horrific event soon to come, a June 2013 Defence Advisory Notice (DA-Notice) prevents our being able to…at this time.


Likewise, and as the assassination of Hastings clearly shows, the Obama regime claims a legal right to kill anyone it so chooses without charges or trial they believe may threaten US national security, and what Snowden’s information reveals definitely falls into that category.


What can be said though, there is a critical reason billionaires all over the world have been dumping their stocks, and fast; and those who are not able to read between the lines will soon find themselves in the most dangerous situation they’ve ever encountered.
Forewarned IS forearmed.

[Malsua]

It's pretty clear what is going on with Lavabit.

The NSA said "hand us the keys to the Kingdom or shut down"

So they shut down.

[American Patriot]

That's pretty much what I was thinking too. They refused to hand over the encryption keys - which if things get sticky, they can simply destroy them. All the users will lose their data but looks like they have no access to it now.

Any thoughts on the other part of this? The "Solar-Virus Armageddon" thing? I'm a little bit confused on this one. There's really not enough information I don't think to make a good guess, but I can infer a lot from what I read.

[Malsua]

[QUOTE=American Patriot;111907]The "Solar-Virus Armageddon" thing?

sounds like a SYFY movie of the week to me. It also tracks back to ********, so it's bullshit.

[American Patriot]

I didn't get that far. LOL, ********? Seriously?

I'll have to look that over.

[vector7]

Guess Who Obama Put in Charge of Investigating the NSA?



8/13/2013 4:00:00 PM - Katie Pavlich

The real answer is Congress, but the President's answer to NSA spying on Americans is to put the guy who lied under oath about spying on Americans in charge of investigating the NSA. Is your head spinning yet?

Quote:

Today, Obama ordered Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to name an outside panel to review the United State's global collection of signals intelligence - meaning its efforts to target phone calls, internet messages, and various forms of electronic communication.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...e-nsa-n1663325

[vector7]

Brazil Demands Clarifications on N.S.A. Surveillance


Brazil demanded answers Tuesday from the U.S. about National Security Agency spying in the country and warned that trust between the two nations would be damaged if U.S. explanations about the program were not satisfactory.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was visiting Brasilia, sought to allay Brazil’s concerns about the program, saying the U.S. would work to provide answers to Brazil and other Latin American nations rankled by the NSA surveillance revealed by systems analyst Edward Snowden.

“We’re now facing a new type of challenge in our bilateral relationship,” Brazil Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota said at a news conference. “The challenge is related to news about the interception of Brazilian electronic and telephone communications. And if those challenges are not resolved in a satisfactory way, we run the risk of casting a shadow of distrust over our work.”

He said Brazil was seeking explanations through political, diplomatic and technical channels, but that those clarifications were not an “end to themselves.”

“We need to stop practices that violate sovereignty, ” he said.

The O Globo newspaper reported last month that information released by Snowden showed Brazil is the top target in Latin America for the NSA’s massive intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at monitoring communications around the world.

Public opposition to the spying was on display outside the Foreign Ministry building on Tuesday as a few dozen protesters yelled “go away, spies” to some members of Kerry’s traveling party as they left the building.

Kerry defended the NSA program, saying it had been approved by all three branches of the U.S. government.

“We’re not surprised and we’re not upset that Brazil would ask questions. Absolutely understandable,” Kerry said.

“Brazil is owed answers with respect to those questions and they will get them. And we will work together very positively to make certain that this question — these issues — do not get in the way of all the other things that we talked about,” Kerry said.

He said he could not discuss operational issues, but said the U.S. is talking to the Brazilians about the program.

“We will guarantee that Brazil and other countries will understand exactly what we are doing — why and how — and we will work together to make sure that whatever is done is done in a way that respects our friends and our partners. And that is what we are going to achieve.”

[American Patriot]

Defense Against National Vulnerabilities in Public Data
DoD DARPA SBIR 2013.3 - Topic SB133-002
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
Opens: August 26, 2013 - Closes: September 25, 2013

---

SB133-002 TITLE: Defense Against National Vulnerabilities in Public Data
TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems, Human Systems
This topic is eligible for the DARPA Direct to PHASE II Pilot Program. Please see section 7.0 of the DARPA instructions for additional information. To be eligible, offerors are required to provide information demonstrating the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of a Phase I project. DARPA will not evaluate the offeror's related Phase II proposal where it determines that the offeror has failed to demonstrate the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of the Phase I project. Offerors must choose between submitting a PHASE I proposal OR a Direct to Phase II proposal, and may not submit both for the same topic.
OBJECTIVE: Investigate the national security threat posed by public data available either for purchase or through open sources. Based on principles of data science, develop tools to characterize and assess the nature, persistence, and quality of the data. Develop tools for the rapid anonymization and de-anonymization of data sources. Develop framework and tools to measure the national security impact of public data and to defend against the malicious use of public data against national interests.
DESCRIPTION: The vulnerabilities to individuals from a data compromise are well known and documented now as "identity theft." These include regular stories published in the news and research journals documenting the loss of personally identifiable information by corporations and governments around the world. Current trends in social media and commerce, with voluntary disclosure of personal information, create other potential vulnerabilities for individuals participating heavily in the digital world. The Netflix Challenge in 2009 was launched with the goal of creating better customer pick prediction algorithms for the movie service [1]. An unintended consequence of the Netflix Challenge was the discovery that it was possible to de-anonymize the entire contest data set with very little additional data. This de-anonymization led to a federal lawsuit and the cancellation of the sequel challenge [2]. The purpose of this topic is to understand the national level vulnerabilities that may be exploited through the use of public data available in the open or for purchase.
Could a modestly funded group deliver nation-state type effects using only public data? The threat of active data spills and breaches of corporate and government information systems are being addressed by many private, commercial, and government organizations. The purpose of this research is to investigate data sources that are readily available for any individual to purchase, mine, and exploit. The marketing community uses large-scale data aggregators, big data analytics, and social science techniques to deliver highly targeted advertising campaigns. Does the availability of data for purchase or for free, advanced marketing techniques (e.g., collaborative filtering, computational advertising), and low-cost big data analytic capabilities (e.g., Amazon EC2) provide a determined adversary with the tools necessary to inflict nation-state level damage? To what extent could a non-state actor collect, process, and analyze a portfolio of purchased and open source data to reconstruct an organizational profile, fiscal vulnerabilities, location of physical assets, work force pattern-of-life, and other information [3], in order to construct a deliberate attack on a specific capability?
The goal of this topic is to develop tools to characterize and assess the nature, persistence, and quality of data. The tools should be based on principled scientific methods for sampling and relevant statistical methods for assessment. Also of interest are tools to characterize the quality of data for automated processing and analysis (i.e., a measure of how much manpower would be required to use a specific source).
Additionally, the goal of this topic is to characterize the threat through the creation of tools, techniques, and methodologies to measure the vulnerabilities in a given set of public data. As an example, reconstructing the profile of an organization from many data pieces using low computational-complexity methods might indicate vulnerability. Also of interest to this topic is the development of sensors, tools, and techniques necessary to defend against the malicious use of data for purchase. Throughout the performance of this research (Phases I, II, and III), there will be no indefinite collection or storage of data sources containing personal identifying information (PII). Develop a proof-of-concept system that can automatically sample data from numerous sources, characterize the data, and provide automatic feedback on the measurable risk inherent with various collections of data. Develop methodology for risk assessment and mitigation through reallocation of resources.
PHASE I: Investigate the landscape of public data both open and purchasable across several domains (e.g., GIS, webpages, consumer data, social media, etc.), through statistical data characterization and assessment. Develop a set of risk factors for vulnerability including complexity of the computation for compromise, and design a prototype tool set necessary to automatically measure the risk inherent in the data. Develop a plan for detailed implementation of methods in PHASE II and III, including a data privacy plan.
DIRECT TO PHASE II - Offerors interested in submitting a Direct to PHASE II proposal in response to this topic must provide documentation to substantiate that the scientific and technical merit and feasibility described in the PHASE I section of this topic has been met and describes the potential commercial applications. Documentation should include all relevant information including, but not limited to: technical reports, test data, prototype designs/models, and performance goals/results. Read and follow Section 7.0 of the DARPA Instructions.
PHASE II: Develop a proof-of-concept system that can automatically sample data from numerous sources, characterize the data, and provide automatic feedback on the measurable risk inherent with various collections of data. Develop methodology for risk assessment and mitigation through reallocation of resources.
PHASE III: DOD entities including Army, Navy, and Air Force are interested in operational security and not having their plans and operations compromised through vulnerabilities in public data. In addition, closing the any gaps in such vulnerabilities will minimize the attack front, in which the commercial organizations have interest. The goals for this Phase, aimed at developing capabilities for defensive countermeasures, are as follows. Deploy a tool into a near-real-time environment that continually monitors available open source data, measures vulnerabilities, and provides defensive countermeasures. Develop a series of capabilities relevant to both government and commercial organizations to defend against threats due to the proliferation of purchasable or public data sets. Deploy a tool into a near-real-time environment that continually monitors available open source data, measures vulnerabilities, and provides defensive countermeasures. Develop a series of capabilities relevant to both government and commercial organizations to defend against threats due to the proliferation of purchasable or public data sets.
REFERENCES:
1) Bell, Robert, Yehuda Koren, Chris Volinsky. 2009. "The BellKor 2008 Solution to the Netflix Prize," 2009, AT&T Labs, Yahoo! Research, Florham Park, NJ.
2) Netflix Prize Update, March 12, 2010, http://blog.netflix.com/2010/03/this...chief-product- officer.html
3) Gorman, Sean. 2004. "Project Mayhem: Physical Vulnerability Exploitation Targeting the US Financial Sector, George Mason University School of Public Policy, 2004.
KEYWORDS: public data, national vulnerability, data science, anonymization
TPOC: Dr. Christopher White
Phone: (703) 248-1545
Email: christopher.white@darpa.mil

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

DoD Notice: Between July 26 through August 25, 2013, you may talk directly with the Topic Authors (TPOC) to ask technical questions about the topics. Their contact information is listed above. For reasons of competitive fairness, direct communication between proposers and topic authors is not allowed starting August 26, 2013, when DoD begins accepting proposals for this solicitation.

However, proposers may still submit written questions about solicitation topics through the DoD's SBIR/STTR Interactive Topic Information System (SITIS), in which the questioner and respondent remain anonymous and all questions and answers are posted electronically for general viewing until the solicitation closes. All proposers are advised to monitor SITIS (13.3 Q&A) during the solicitation period for questions and answers, and other significant information, relevant to the SBIR 13.3 topic under which they are proposing. If you have general questions about DoD SBIR program, please contact the DoD SBIR Help Desk at (866) 724-7457 or email weblink.

[American Patriot]

http://stopmakingsense.org/2013/08/1...curity-threat/

Irony Alert: Pentagon Now Sees Big Data as ‘National Security Threat’

By mrdsk on August 14, 2013

From Foreign Policy:
[...] The doomsday thinkers over at DARPA are looking for researchers to “investigate the national security threat posed by public data available either for purchase or through open sources.” The question is, could a determined data miner use only publicly available information — culled from Web pages and social media or from a consumer data broker — to cause “nation-state type effects.” Forget identify theft. DARPA appears to be talking about outing undercover intelligence officers; revealing military war plans; giving hackers a playbook for taking down a bank; or creating maps of sensitive government facilities.


The irony is delicious. At the time government officials are assuring Americans they have nothing to fear from the National Security Agency poring through their personal records, the military is worried that Russia or al Qaeda is going to wreak nationwide havoc after combing through people’s personal records.
READ MORE…

[American Patriot]

Britain Detains the Partner of a Reporter Tied to Leaks

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Published: August 19, 2013 163 Comments

WASHINGTON — The partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist for The Guardian who has been publishing information leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, was detained for nine hours by the British authorities under a counterterrorism law while on a stop in London’s Heathrow Airport during a trip from Germany to Brazil, Mr. Greenwald said Sunday.






Ricardo Moraes/Reuters

David Michael Miranda spoke to reporters at Rio de Janeiro's International Airport on Monday.





Mr. Greenwald’s partner, David Michael Miranda, 28, is a citizen of Brazil. He had spent the previous week in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who has also been helping to disseminate Mr. Snowden’s leaks, to assist Mr. Greenwald. The Guardian had paid for the trip, Mr. Greenwald said, and Mr. Miranda was on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.


Mr. Miranda, Mr. Greenwald said, was told that he was being detained under Section 7 of the British Terrorism Act, which allows the authorities to detain someone for up to nine hours for questioning and to conduct a search of personal items, often without a lawyer, to determine possible ties to terrorism. More than 97 percent of people stopped under the provision are questioned for under an hour, according to the British government.


“What’s amazing is this law, called the Terrorism Act, gives them a right to detain and question you about your activities with a terrorist organization or your possible involvement in or knowledge of a terrorism plot,” Mr. Greenwald said. “The only thing they were interested in was N.S.A. documents and what I was doing with Laura Poitras.
It’s a total abuse of the law.” He added: “This is obviously a serious, radical escalation of what they are doing. He is my partner. He is not even a journalist.”


London’s Metropolitan Police Service, which had jurisdiction over the case, said in a statement that Mr. Miranda had been lawfully detained under the Terrorism Act and later released, without going into detail. “Holding and properly using intelligence gained from such stops is a key part of fighting crime, pursuing offenders and protecting the public,” the statement said.


Sergio Danese, the under secretary for consular affairs at Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, said Brazil’s consul general and embassy officials in London had worked to resolve the situation. In a statement, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry expressed “grave concern” about the incident, which it said was “without justification” since there could be no “legitimate” accusations that Mr. Miranda fell under the Terrorism Act.


On Monday, Keith Vaz, a Labour member of the British Parliament who is chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, said that he would ask for clarification.


“What needs to happen pretty rapidly is we need to establish the full facts,” he told the BBC. “Now you have a complaint from Mr. Greenwald and the Brazilian government — they indeed have said they are concerned at the use of terrorism legislation for something that does not appear to relate to terrorism — so it is something that does need to be clarified, and it needs to be clarified quickly.”


The Guardian published a report on Mr. Miranda’s detainment on Sunday afternoon.


Mr. Greenwald said someone who identified himself as a security official from Heathrow Airport called him early on Sunday and informed him that Mr. Miranda had been detained, at that point for three hours. The British authorities, he said, told Mr. Miranda that they would obtain permission from a judge to arrest him for 48 hours, but he was released at the end of the nine hours, around 1 p.m. Eastern time.


Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald’s investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said. All of the documents came from the trove of materials provided to the two journalists by Mr. Snowden. The British authorities seized all of his electronic media — including video games, DVDs and data storage devices — and did not return them, Mr. Greenwald said.


A spokesman for the British Foreign Ministry said the episode was a “police matter” and would provide no further comment. Civil rights groups in Britain have criticized Section 7 of the Terrorism Act, accusing the authorities of using the provision to arbitrarily stop and detain travelers, particularly Muslims. The British Home Office has said it is reviewing the provision in an effort to address the concerns.


A lawyer for The Guardian in London was working on trying to understand what had happened, as were foreign-affairs officials for Brazil both in that country and in London, Mr. Greenwald said. He said that he received a call from the Brazilian foreign minister about 40 minutes after alerting the Brazilian government, and that the Brazilian authorities were outraged.

[American Patriot]

• Updated August 20, 2013, 11:31 p.m. ET

New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach

Programs Cover 75% of Nation's Traffic, Can Snare Emails

WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.


The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.


The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.
Q&A

What You Need to Know on the New Details of NSA Spying


How the NSA Scours Internet Traffic in the U.S.

View Graphics








WSJ: Privacy Insights

The Wall Street Journal is conducting a long-running investigation into the profound transformation of personal privacy in America.
Selected findings:

• The Wall Street Journal reconstructs the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. (10/13/12)
• Companies today are increasingly tying people's real-life identities to their online browsing habits. (12/7/12)
• Two students are outed as gay—provoking a crisis within their families—by a Facebook privacy loophole . (10/12/12)
• Suspicious spouses are taking investigations into their own hands as snooping technologies become cheaper and easier to use. (10/6/12)
• Americans' license plates are now being tracked not only by the government, but also by repo men who hope to profit from the information. (10/2/12)
• Google bypassed the privacy settings on millions of Web browsers on Apple iPhones and computers— tracking the online activities of people who intended that kind of monitoring to be blocked. (2/17/12)
• The government follows the movements of thousands of Americans a year by secretly monitoring their cellphone records . (9/9/11)
• iPhone and Android apps secretly shared data about their users, a Journal investigation found. (12/10/10)
• Top apps on Facebook transmit personal identifying details to tracking companies, a Journal investigation found. (10/18/10)
• Plus, the global surveillance bazaar , a secretive phone-tracking "stingray" and RapLeaf's clever way of figuring out Web surfers' real names .
• See full privacy coverage

The NSA's surveillance network covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, reaching roughly 75 percent of all U.S. internet traffic. Siobhan Gorman reports on the News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.




The programs, code-named Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew, among others, filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies. Blarney, for instance, was established with AT&T Inc., T -0.62% former officials say. AT&T declined to comment.


This filtering takes place at more than a dozen locations at major Internet junctions in the U.S., officials say. Previously, any NSA filtering of this kind was largely believed to be happening near points where undersea or other foreign cables enter the country.


Details of these surveillance programs were gathered from interviews with current and former intelligence and government officials and people from companies that help build or operate the systems, or provide data. Most have direct knowledge of the work.


The NSA defends its practices as legal and respectful of Americans' privacy. According to NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, if American communications are "incidentally collected during NSA's lawful signals intelligence activities," the agency follows "minimization procedures that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons."


As another U.S. official puts it, the NSA is "not wallowing willy-nilly" through Americans' idle online chatter. "We want high-grade ore."


To achieve that, the programs use complex algorithms that, in effect, operate like filters placed over a stream with holes designed to let certain pieces of information flow through. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, NSA widened the holes to capture more information when the government broadened its definition of what constitutes "reasonable" collection, according to a former top intelligence official.


The NSA's U.S. programs have been described in narrower terms in the documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. One, for instance, acquires Americans' phone records; another, called Prism, makes requests for stored data to Internet companies. By contrast, this set of programs shows the NSA has the capability to track almost anything that happens online, so long as it is covered by a broad court order.


The NSA programs are approved and overseen by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. NSA is required to destroy information on Americans that doesn't fall under exceptions to the rule, including information that is relevant to foreign intelligence, encrypted, or evidence of a crime.





The NSA is focused on collecting foreign intelligence, but the streams of data it monitors include both foreign and domestic communications. Inevitably, officials say, some U.S. Internet communications are scanned and intercepted, including both "metadata" about communications, such as the "to" and "from" lines in an email, and the contents of the communications themselves.


Much, but not all, of the data is discarded, meaning some communications between Americans are stored in the NSA's databases, officials say. Some lawmakers and civil libertarians say that, given the volumes of data NSA is examining, privacy protections are insufficient.


Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, in 2012 sought but failed to prohibit the agency from searching its databases for information on Americans without a warrant. He has also pushed intelligence agencies to detail how many Americans' communications have been collected and to explain whether purely domestic communications are retained in NSA's databanks. They have declined.


"Technology is moving us swiftly into a world where the only barriers to this kind of dragnet surveillance are the protections enshrined into law," Mr. Wyden says.
This month President Barack Obama proposed changes to NSA surveillance to improve oversight. Those proposed changes wouldn't alter the systems in the U.S. that NSA relies upon for some of its most sensitive surveillance.


The systems operate like this: The NSA asks telecom companies to send it various streams of Internet traffic it believes most likely to contain foreign intelligence. This is the first cut of the data.


These requests don't ask for all Internet traffic. Rather, they focus on certain areas of interest, according to a person familiar with the legal process. "It's still a large amount of data, but not everything in the world," this person says.


The second cut is done by NSA. It briefly copies the traffic and decides which communications to keep based on what it calls "strong selectors"—say, an email address, or a large block of computer addresses that correspond to an organization it is interested in. In making these decisions, the NSA can look at content of communications as well as information about who is sending the data.


One U.S. official says the agency doesn't itself "access" all the traffic within the surveillance system. The agency defines access as "things we actually touch," this person says, pointing out that the telecom companies do the first stage of filtering.


The surveillance system is built on relationships with telecommunications carriers that together cover about 75% of U.S. Internet communications. They must hand over what the NSA asks for under orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The firms search Internet traffic based on the NSA's criteria, current and former officials say.


Verizon Communications Inc., VZ -0.70% for example, has placed intercepts in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas, according to one person familiar with the technology. It isn't clear how much information these intercepts send to the NSA. A Verizon spokesman declined to comment.


Not all telecommunications providers handle the government demands the same way, says the person familiar with the legal process. According to a U.S. official, lawyers at telecom companies serve as checks on what the NSA receives. "The providers are independently deciding what would be responsive," the official says.


Lawyers for at least one major provider have taken the view that they will provide access only to "clearly foreign" streams of data—for example, ones involving connections to ISPs in, say, Mexico, according to the person familiar with the legal process. The complexities of Internet routing mean it isn't always easy to isolate foreign traffic, but the goal is "to prevent traffic from Kansas City to San Francisco from ending up" with the NSA, the person says.


At times, the NSA has asked for access to data streams that are more likely to include domestic communications, this person says, and "it has caused friction." This person added that government officials have said some providers do indeed comply with requests like this.


The person says talks between the government and different telecoms about what constitutes foreign communications have "been going on for some years," and that some in the industry believe the law is unclear on Internet traffic. "Somebody should enunciate a rule," this person says.
Intelligence officials and the White House argue NSA's surveillance provides early warnings of terror threats that don't respect geographic boundaries. "It's true we have significant capabilities," Mr. Obama said in his NSA remarks last week. "What's also true is we show a restraint that many governments around the world don't even think to do."


Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials say NSA's programs are overseen by all three branches of government, citing procedures approved by the secret surveillance court that require the NSA to eliminate "incidentally acquired" data on Americans. "If you say, 'We don't want the NSA to be scanning large amounts of traffic,' you're saying you don't want it to do its job," says one former official.


Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew were mentioned, but not fully explained, in documents released by Mr. Snowden. An NSA paper released this month mentioned several but didn't describe them beyond saying, "The government compels one or more providers to assist NSA with the collection of information responsive to the foreign intelligence need."


The system is built with gear made by Boeing Co.'s BA -0.23% Narus subsidiary, which makes filtering technology, and Internet hardware manufacturers Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO +0.10% and Juniper Networks Inc., JNPR -1.23% among other companies, according to former intelligence officials and industry figures familiar with the equipment.
Narus didn't respond to requests for comment. Cisco and Juniper declined to comment.


The NSA started setting up Internet intercepts well before 2001, former intelligence officials say. Run by NSA's secretive Special Services Office, these types of programs were at first designed to intercept communications overseas through arrangements with foreign Internet providers, the former officials say. NSA still has such arrangements in many countries, particularly in the Middle East and Europe, the former officials say.


Within NSA, former officials say, intelligence officers joked that the Blarney intercept program with AT&T was named in homage to the NSA program Shamrock, which intercepted telegraphic messages into and out of the U.S. and was an inspiration for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created the secret national-security court and placed intelligence activities under its supervision.


Blarney was in use before the 2001 terror attacks, operating at or near key fiber-optic landing points in the U.S. to capture foreign communications coming in and out of the country. One example is an AT&T facility in San Francisco that was revealed in 2006 during the debate over warrantless wiretapping. A similar facility was built at an AT&T site in New Jersey, former officials say.


After the 2001 attacks, a former official says, these intercept systems were expanded to include key Internet networks within the U.S. through partnerships with U.S. Internet backbone providers. Amid fears of terrorist "sleeper cells" inside the U.S., the government under President George W. Bush also began redefining how much domestic data it could collect.


For the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, officials say, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NSA arranged with Qwest Communications International Inc. to use intercept equipment for a period of less than six months around the time of the event. It monitored the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City area.


At that point, the systems fed into the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping, which circumvented the surveillance court on the authority of the president's power as commander in chief. The Bush administration came under criticism from lawmakers and civil libertarians for sidestepping court supervision.


The current legal backing for Blarney and its related programs stems from a section of a 2008 surveillance law. It permits the government, for foreign intelligence investigations, to snoop on foreigners "reasonably believed" to be outside the U.S.


Previously, the law had tighter standards. It allowed the government to spy on people if there were "probable cause" to believe they were an "agent of a foreign power."


NSA has discretion on setting its filters, and the system relies significantly on self-policing. This can result in improper collection that continues for years.


For example, a recent Snowden document showed that the surveillance court ruled that the NSA had set up an unconstitutional collection effort. Officials say it was an unintentional mistake made in 2008 when it set filters on programs like these that monitor Internet traffic; NSA uncovered the inappropriate filtering in 2011 and reported it.
"NSA's foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen internally and externally," Ms. Vines says. "When we make a mistake in carrying out our foreign intelligence mission, we report the issue internally and to federal overseers and aggressively get to the bottom of it."


Another Snowden document describes the procedures NSA uses to protect American information that is retained. Any such information is "minimized," meaning that it is destroyed. The document highlights several exceptions, including encrypted communications and information of foreign intelligence significance.


Officials acknowledged some purely domestic communications are incidentally swept into the system. "We don't keep track of numbers of U.S. persons," a U.S. official says. "What we try to do is minimize any exposure."


When searching the data, intelligence officials say they are permitted to look only for information related to a "foreign intelligence interest." In practice, the NSA has latitude under that standard, and an American's communication could be read without a warrant, another U.S. official says.


Paul Kouroupas, a former executive at Global Crossing Ltd. and other telecom companies responsible for security and government affairs, says the checks and balances in the NSA programs depend on telecommunications companies and the government policing the system themselves. "There's technically and physically nothing preventing a much broader surveillance," he says.


An official at Global Crossing's parent, Level 3 Communications Inc., says the company complies with laws requiring it to assist government investigations and declined to disclose the assistance provided.


It is difficult to know how much domestic data NSA is inadvertently retaining. The filtering technology relies on algorithms to seek out valuable communications. A U.S. official says analysts guide the use of these algorithms to make them as precise as possible.

[vector7]

Companion Threads:

• Obama Appointee Sunstein Favors Infiltrating Online Groups
• 'Perfect Citizen' Program Places 'Sensors' Throughout Web
• Obama picks Samantha Power (Wife to Cass Sunstein) to replace Susan Rice as UN Ambassador
• Obama administration introduced an anti-free speech measure
  
• Czars
  
• Obama Administration's Plans for Regulating the Internet
• US Department of Behavior Control

Obama Picks Cass Sunstein (America’s Goebbels?) To Serve On NSA Oversight Panel

Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,



Pete Souza/The White House
Sunstein, right, and his wife, Samantha Power, with their boss.

“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.”

“We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals”

- Joseph Goebbels, Head of Hitler’s Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda

Only under the Obama Presidency, in which every appointment, minor or major, is handed only to the most corrupt, devious crony to be found, can a man like Cass Sunstein be appointed to serve on the NSA oversight panel. Cass is a noted propagandist, who has advocated that government agents should infiltrate groups and discussions that push “conspiracy theories” (read my article on how to know if you are a conspiracy theorist) in order to delegitimize them. But don’t take my word for it. The Washington Post wrote the following a couple of days ago:

The Obama administration is reportedly proposing Cass Sunstein as a member of a panel to review the surveillance practices of the National Security Agency (NSA), among other former White House and intelligence staffers. Sunstein was the head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs until last year, when he returned to teaching at Harvard Law School.

While at Harvard in 2008, Sunstein co-authored a working paper that suggests government agents or their allies “cognitively infiltrate” conspiracy theorist groups by joining ”chat rooms, online social networks or even real-space groups” and influencing the conversation.

The paper also suggests that the government “formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech.” That sounds an awful lot like the 50 Cent Party of online commentators who are paid per comment by the Chinese communist party to sway public opinion.

This is a great time to watch one of my favorite We are Change videos. The one where Luke Rudkowski corners Sunstein and he tried to squirm away. Enjoy!
What a guy. Just make Summers head of the Federal Reserve and get it over with already.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...versight-panel

[American Patriot]

Only under the Obama Presidency, in which every appointment, minor or major, is handed only to the most corrupt, devious crony to be found, can a man like Cass Sunstein be appointed to serve on the NSA oversight panel. Cass is a noted propagandist, who has advocated that government agents should infiltrate groups and discussions that push “conspiracy theories” (read my article on how to know if you are a conspiracy theorist) in order to delegitimize them. But don’t take my word for it. The Washington Post wrote the following a couple of days ago:

These are the fucks that run Alex Jones folks.

[American Patriot]

Putin Says Snowden Was In Touch Before Coming To Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that Edward Snowden contacted Russian diplomats in Hong Kong a few days before boarding a plane to Moscow but that no agreement was reached to shelter him and he decided to come to Russia on his own without warning.


By Lukas I. Alpert


MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that Edward Snowden contacted Russian diplomats in Hong Kong a few days before boarding a plane to Moscow but that no agreement was reached to shelter him and he decided to come to Russia on his own without warning.


Mr. Putin had initially said Mr. Snowden’s arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on June 23 was a “complete surprise,” but now acknowledges that he had some prior knowledge that the fugitive former U.S. National Security Agency contractor might be headed Russia’s way.


“Mr. Snowden first appeared in Hong Kong and met with our diplomatic representatives. It was reported to me that there was such an employee, an employee of the security services. I asked ‘What does he want?’ He fights for human rights, for freedom of information and challenges violations of human rights and violations of the law in the United States. I said, ‘So what?’,” Mr. Putin said in an interview with Russia’s Channel One and The Associated Press.


He said he had been willing to allow Mr. Snowden to come to Russia but only if he stopped leaking highly classified details of U.S. intelligence programs.


“If he wants to stay with us, please, he can stay with us, but only if he stops any activity that could destroy Russian-American relations. We are not an NGO, we have the interests of the state and we do not want to damage our relations with the U.S.,” he said. “He was told about it and he replied ‘I am a fighter for human rights and I urge you to fight with me. I said ‘No, we won’t fight, you are on your own.’ And he left.”


The Russian leader said the next time he heard about Mr. Snowden was two hours before the Aeroflot flight that brought him to Moscow was due to land. He had initially planned to connect with a flight to Cuba and ultimately to Ecuador where he had been promised asylum, but was stopped in his tracks when the U.S. voided his passport.
Mr. Putin, who was in the KGB during the Soviet Union, criticized that decision as poor tradecraft as it stranded Mr. Snowden in Russia where U.S. agents would be unable to get to him.


“Representatives of the American special services–and I hope they won’t be angry–but they could have been more professional, and the diplomats as well. After they found out that he was flying to us, and that he was flying as a transit passenger, there was pressure from all sides — from the Americans, from the Europeans — instead of just letting him go to a country where they could operate easily,” he said.


Mr. Putin said Russia would not consider returning Mr. Snowden to America to face trial as the two countries do not have a formal extradition treaty.


“We do not protect Snowden. We are protecting certain norms of reciprocal relations between two countries,” he said, while raising the possibility that an agreement could be reached.


“It’s clear we will not give him up, he can feel safe here. But what’s next?” Mr. Putin said. “Maybe some compromises will be found in this case.”


Mr. Putin said he didn’t fully understand Mr. Snowden’s thinking, and called him “a strange guy.”


“This is his destiny, but he chose it. He believes this is noble, that this is justified and such sacrifices are necessary. That is his choice,” he said.


Russia granted Mr. Snowden temporary asylum on Aug. 1, straining relations between Russia and the United States. A week later, President Barack Obama cancelled a meeting with Mr. Putin in Moscow ahead of the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg which starts Thursday.


Mr. Snowden’s lawyer in Russia could not immediately be reached.


In a poll published Wednesday by the state-run All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 37% of Russians who responded said they supported the decision to grant Mr. Snowden asylum, with just 15% opposed. Another 38% said they have no opinion.