Obama Administration NSA Spying on Americans

[American Patriot]

A.C.L.U. Sues to Bar ‘Dragnet’ Collection of Phone Records
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: June 11, 2013

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its “dragnet” collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged.
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The lawsuit, filed in New York, could set up an eventual Supreme Court test. It could also focus attention on this disclosure amid the larger heap of top secret surveillance matters that were disclosed by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor who came forward on Sunday to say he was the source of a series of disclosures by The Guardian and The Washington Post.

The program “gives the government a comprehensive record of our associations and public movements, revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, professional, religious and intimate associations,” the complaint says, adding that it “is likely to have a chilling effect on whistle-blowers and others who would otherwise contact” the A.C.L.U. for legal assistance.

The Justice Department did not respond immediately.

The A.C.L.U. has frequently assisted other plaintiffs in challenges against national security policies, but the government has generally persuaded courts to dismiss such lawsuits without any ruling on the legal merits after arguing that litigation over any classified program would reveal state secrets or that the plaintiffs could not prove they were personally affected and so lacked standing to sue.

This case may be different. The government has now declassified the existence of the program on domestic call record “metadata.” And the A.C.L.U. itself is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services — the subsidiary of Verizon Communications that was the recipient of a secret court order for all its domestic calling records — which it says gives it direct standing to bring the lawsuit.

The call logging program is keeping a record of “metadata” from domestic phone calls, including which numbers were dialed and received, from which location, and the time and duration of the communication, officials have said.

The program began as part of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 programs of surveillance without warrants, and, it is now known, it has continued since 2006 with the blessing of a national security court, which has ruled in still-secret legal opinions that such bulk surveillance was authorized by a section of the Patriot Act that allows the F.B.I. to obtain “business records” if they are relevant to a counterterrorism investigation.

Congress never openly voted to authorize the N.S.A. to collect logs of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls, but the administration notes that some lawmakers were briefed on the program. Some members of Congress have backed it as a useful counterterrorism tool, while others have denounced it.

“The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can,” Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Sunday. “I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law.”

Over the weekend, in hope of preventing a backlash, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, also disclosed details about privacy protections built into the program. Among them, officials may access the database only if they can meet a legal justification — “reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” To deter abuse, queries are audited under the oversight of judges on a national security court.

Timothy Edgar, who recently left the government after serving as a privacy and civil liberties official on intelligence matters in both the Bush and Obama administrations and who worked on building safeguards into the phone log program, said the notion underlying the limits was that people’s privacy is not invaded by having their records collected and stored in government computers, but only when a human extracts and examines them.

“When you have important reasons why that collection needs to take place on a scale that is much larger than case-by-case or individual obtaining of records, then one of the ways you try to deal with the privacy issue is you think carefully about having a set of safeguards that basically say ‘O.K., yes, this has major privacy implications, but what can we do on the back end to address those?'” he said.

Still, even with such restrictions, privacy advocates say the mere existence of the database will inevitably erode the sense of living in a free society: from now on, whenever Americans pick up a phone, before dialing they now face the consideration of whether they want the record of that call to go into the government’s permanent files.

Moreover, while use of the database may currently be limited to terrorism, history has shown that new powers granted to the government for one purpose often end up being applied to others. An expanded search warrant authority that Congress granted in the Patriot Act justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, was used far more often in routine investigations like suspected drug, fraud, tax, weapons and extortion offenses.

Executive branch officials and lawmakers who support the program have hinted in public that some terrorist plots have been foiled and intelligence leads have been identified by using the database. In private conversations, they have also explained how it is used: investigators start with a specific phone number that is already believed to be linked to terrorism, and scrutinize the ring of people who have called that number — and other people who in turn called those in the first ring, and so on — in an effort to identify any co-conspirators.

Still, that kind of analysis may generally be performed without keeping a wholesale library of call records, since investigators can instead use retail-scale subpoenas to obtain relevant calling logs from telephone companies. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee who issued cryptic warnings about the program before its existence was revealed and who have examined it in classified hearings, have claimed that the evidence is thin that the program provided uniquely available intelligence.

But supporters of the program privately say the database’s existence is about more than convenience and speed. They say it can also help in searching for networks of terrorists who may be taking steps to shield their communications with one another, for instance by using different phone lines; if calls are going to and from a different number at the same address or cellphone towers as the number that is known to be suspicious, for example, having the comprehensive database may be helpful in a way that subpoenas for specific numbers cannot match.

It remains unclear, however, whether there have been any real-world instances in which a terrorist network that tried to evade detection was identified in that way, and so the existence of the database prevented an attack that otherwise would have occurred, or whether that advantage is to date only theoretical.

A 1979 ruling over a small-scale collection of calling “metadata,” Smith v. Maryland, held that such records were not protected by the Fourth Amendment since people have revealed such information to phone companies and so have no reasonable expectation of privacy. However, in a 2012 case involving GPS trackers placed by the police on cars, the Supreme Court suggested that the automated collection of people’s public movements may raise Fourth Amendment privacy issues in a way that nonbulk surveillance does not.

[American Patriot]

Snowden’s girlfriend, a dancer and nature lover, said to be shocked by his actions


By Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate, Tuesday, June 11, 11:07 AM E-mail the writers

Edward J. Snowden, the government contractor who leaked documents revealing a top-secret government surveillance program, has left few traces of his personal or professional life online. An online diary kept by his longtime girlfriend, however, freely shared details of their lives in Hawaii and elsewhere.

Lindsay Mills, a 28-year-old Laurel native, lived with Snowden in Honolulu, where Snowden was employed by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton as a systems analyst for a National Security Agency Threat Operations Center. Mills described herself as a dancer and nature lover, while neighbors said Snowden kept to himself and never provided any personal information.


Mills kept a blog in which she wrote frequently about her daily routine, describing herself as a “world-traveling, pole-dancing superhero.” She said on Instagram that she and Snowden had been together for eight years, yet she described him in one post as a “man of mystery.”

The blog, “Lsjourney,” was publicly viewable in the days after Snowden announced that he was the source of leaks to The Washington Post and the Guardian about the surveillance programs, but had been taken down as of Tuesday.

Friends confirmed that the blog was written by Mills and that the boyfriend she refers to as “E” was Edward Joseph Snowden. She describes swing dancing and pole dancing at venues in Hawaii, and of being alone for two weeks starting in late March because Snowden was headed to the mainland for a two-week business trip.

Friends said Mills was caught completely unaware by Snowden’s decision to leak classified records detailing the anti-terror surveillance programs through which the U.S. indiscriminately collects reams of e-mails, phone records and electronic data.

“I just talked to her,” one friend of Mills’s in Hawaii said in a phone interview. “I know she didn’t have any idea.”

Mills did not respond to messages left on her home and cell phones. Efforts to reach her father, mother and stepfather by telephone or at their homes were unsuccessful.

In a blog post dated Monday, Mills said she was writing to report that she wouldn’t be sharing updates on her life for a while. Friends said she is in a state of shock over Snowden’s sudden departure for Hong Kong.

“As I type this on my tear-streaked keyboard I’m reflecting on all the faces that have graced my path. The ones I laughed with. The ones I’ve held. The one I’ve grown to love the most. And the ones I never got to bid adieu,” Monday’s blog post read. “But sometimes life doesn’t afford proper goodbyes.”

Unlike Mills, Snowden had virtually no online presence until he revealed himself as the source of the leaks. Neighbors in the couple’s Hono*lulu neighborhood of Waipahu said Snowden rebuffed their overtures.

When members of Carolyn Tijing’s family, who lived across the street, tried to introduce themselves, Snowden said “fine,” kept his head down and kept walking to his house, Tijing said.

“It was a no go, no conversation at all,” she said.

Numerous members of Snowden’s class at Anne Arundel County’s Arundel High School, where he attended ninth and tenth grades, said they do not remember him. The principal at the time had no recollection of him either.

But Mills, in her blog, appeared comfortable sharing intimate thoughts and personal struggles. Friends described her as open and warm.

“She’s a really beautiful and kind person,” said one friend and fellow dancer in Hawaii, who along with others asked not to be identified by name because they didn’t want to be besieged by reporters and were concerned about a possible criminal probe. “She has such an open heart.”

In September 2012, Mills wrote jovially of a successful effort to persuade Snowden to go hiking with her and several friends.

“At two of my favorite places on the island, (Fearless H’s and Goldie’s houses) over Indian food and Magic Mike (yes I finally saw it!), a plot to get E out in nature was formed,” she wrote. “Ice Ponds was the projected target for a couple’s hike and my task was to kidnap E and force a little adventure on my man of mystery.”

The next month, though, she wrote of feeling low after “a weekend of cleaning house and heavy conversations.”

“Trouble of loving someone you are incompatible with means having the same endless talk for eight years in a row,” a post on Instagram said. “One of those times I wish I had wings.”

[vector7]

Snowden’s girlfriend, a dancer and nature lover, said to be shocked by his actions

If they were just friends then maybe he didn't tell her everything.

If they were close makes me think Phil's theory is getting traction.

[American Patriot]

Maybe. No one knows everything abt my past jobs either, including the wife

[vector7]

The NSA Scandal Explains how Mitt Romney Lost the Election


by John Galt
June 11, 2013 17:45 ET

Once upon a time,
All through the White House,
Not a creature was stirring,
Nary even a computer mouse.

The stockings were hung out by the fire,
To be filled with weed and booty,
Or whatever the campaign staff,
Might desire.

As the Windy City blew,
Late into the night,
The NSA assured,
The party would continue until daylight.

Shoot me, because as my readers can see, I’m no poet. But the facts are so obvious that I am shocked, shocked I’m telling you that the Republican whinerhawks and the “conservative” talk jock community has yet to figure out the ultimate reason the “PRISM” and other intelligence agency spy programs were in use by the Obama admniistration. There is this myth, propagated by the Republican elite and further enhanced by the current Democrat dominated power structure, that the “war on terror” which was declared over by President Obama is still being fought despite thousands of miles of open border, unchecked student visas, and intelligence ignored from foreign sources warning us of pending attacks. In the end, the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic spying program exposed by the soon to assume room temperature Edward Snowden is more about controlling our freedoms and manipulating financial markets along with the electoral process to guarantee a total new order does in fact preside over our nation within the next 6 months to a year.


First, let us rewind to ancient history where after the first Presidential debate in 2012, the Obama campaign was reeling, the over confidence was replaced with concern and the fundraising concerns of the summer didn’t create the media hyped popularity contest the President sought versus Mr. Plain Jane, Mitt Romney. When Romney unloaded on Obama venting the frustrations of about 60% of the population, the entire campaign was on their heels, as if their pre-debate intelligence and surveillance was inaccurate or erroneous to such an extent the Messiah appeared dumbfounded on stage as he expected clone of McCain to appear, not an assertive conservative attacking daring to attack his record in office.
That mistake, the errors of the staffers and professional political consultant class would not be repeated throughout the rest of the 2012 Presidential campaign.


From that point forward the President’s poise and knowledge of the weak points within the Republican candidate’s approach allowed his media driven appearance to be one of a self-confident leader to the sheeple and the old adage that changing our nation’s course would destroy our future took hold within the senile, stupid, and weak minded. Yet Romney had an initial impact during the first debate on the imbecilic and slovenly, yet nobody within the Republican/Neo-Con movement could explain how Romney lost the momentum beyond the old tried and true “it’s the mainstream media’s fault,” along with other moronic assessments.


Perhaps if the Republican elite had reviewed their own past, that of a certain egomaniac who like Obama thought he was above the Constitution, that analysis could have provided the answers they were looking for such as the license number of the truck which hit them driven by Barry and loaded above the legal weight limit with fertilizer.


The next step is to review the news in summary which occurred since the Tea Party revolt of the 2010 election which blindsided the Obama White House who considered the information from their consultant class superior and ignored the true depths of the grass roots movement created by his radical policy stances. After the shock wore off, it would appear based on the news cycle of recent weeks that a coordinated campaign, either implicitly or explicitly approved by the White House, was created to crush domestic dissent. The various government agencies enlisted to carry out this campaign against Obama’s enemies is extensive and Nixonian upon first review:


The Department of Energy – Action against Oil Companies, drillers, supporters within Republican districts to obstruct operations, limit exploration, and force many out of business using fines and court actions to impede normal business operations.


The Department of Labor – Using the NLRB (Boeing to South Carolina for example) and OSHA, regulatory impediments along with fines were imposed on any corporation operating in so-called “Red” states and supporters of Republicans causes. Labor actions against those companies and states which were ‘right to work’ states was encouraged across the spectrum further weakening Republican fund raising and conservative causes.


Housing and Human Services – The department used intimidation and coercion to force corporations to fund pro-Obamacare advocacy groups along with threatening any medical concern using regulatory impediments if they engaged in political actions against the will of the regime.


The Department of the Treasury – Specifically using the various regulatory bodies (SEC, for example) along with investigations against conservative CEO’s, COO’s, and CFO’s, and corporations to prevent funding to and support of Republican causes. By finding minor infractions some corporations withheld support for conservative candidates to avoid engaging in prolonged legal battles in Federal courts which they would eventually lose.


Internal Revenue Service – Well documented thus far, no further comment is necessary.


The Department of Justice – Specifically not just using the investigatory and legal system to attack Republican groups and supporters, sometimes using concocted charges, but by unleashing the Federal Bureau of Investigation on unwitting groups and individuals using threats and intimidation to curtail pro-Romney and pro-Republican/Libertarian candidate activities. These actions were not limited to in depth background checks but also asking embarrassing questions to friends, relatives, employers, and business associates in a manner to infer that the individual or groups involved might be engaged in anti-American activities that were a threat to the Republic or illegal. While many agents were professional in their actions and simply “following orders,” those of the new generation with the zeal to impose the will of the administration via intimidation pushed many first time volunteers and activists out of the political arena for fear of losing their jobs and liberty.


The Department of Homeland Security – Ever go to a Tea Party rally? Did anyone notice the individuals in the parking lots taking pictures of the license plates of attendees and the crowds along with video recordings to the activities? Ever notice that at any “Patriot” rally or pro-2nd Amendment meeting there were numerous strange faces not engaged in some cases or overly eager to engage and talk about the administration, security, and encouraging more meetings or self-inviting themselves to further functions? Yup, that’s our friendly DHS units attempting to infiltrate and find evidence of criminal or terrorist activity against the homeland. By the way, if one was engaged in anti-abortion, pro-Constitution, Libertarian Party, Ron Paul rallies, NRA, GOA, or other group meetings, there was always one agent from DHS or DoJ there for large assemblies, an informant in attendance otherwise.


With all of these departments engaged in snooping, persecuting, gathering intelligence, intimidating, investigating, and sometimes phony prosecutions of anti-Obama activists, is it really that much of a reach to determine that the NSA snooping extended to operations covering all aspects of the political campaign of 2012?


Uh, no.


Imagine the power of having daily briefings in real time with telephone conversations between key Romney campaign officials, RNC operatives, or pro-Conservative groups engaged in planning and strategy sessions about how to approach the Presidential or other elected offices. While Obama and his inner political circle might have only paid attention to 40% or so of the intelligence briefings regarding foreign threat assessment, I would be willing to wager George Soros’ fortune that they paid 100% attention to daily summaries and updates on activities, debate strategy sessions, and fundraising activities of their Republican opposition.


The concept is simple, yet unprovable unless there is a living twin of Snowden willing to come forward from the inner circles of our intelligence operations to shed light on the activities of the CIA and NSA from 2011 through the election period of 2012. The problem is that some of our career intelligence bureaucrats and managers might not even be aware that this occurred due to the use of contractors in many of the services! If a wealthy Eastern European investor owned a controlling position in one of America’s private security contractors which provided intelligence analysis services on a contract basis to the CIA, FBI, and NSA and that investor had a select team of operatives with massive access and security clearance employed within that corporation, there is nothing that would stop them from obtaining selected data be it from Romney’s personal phone conversations, laptop, or conference calls on a daily basis.


In September and October of 2012 the media and conservative radio/blogosphere was in an uproar because the Obama campaign appeared to be one step ahead of Romney on a daily basis. By using every agency within the United States government, as Nixon did, is is no wonder that in fact the Obama regime won re-election with such ease. Perhaps the investigation should steer from the platitudes of civil liberties, the Constitution, and personal freedom and focus on what it just actually might have been engaged in:


A program of sabotage, spying, and intimidation to ensure the re-election of President Obama and selected members of his political cult to finish the job he started in 2008.


Unfortunately that job is the destruction of our Republic and as of now, there is very little anyone can do to stop the implementation of the new world order and his personal anti-American agenda.

[American Patriot]

EXCLUSIVE: Google to DOJ: Let us prove to users that NSA isn't snooping on them

Published June 12, 2013

FoxNews.com

There is a "serious misperception" about the National Security Agency's PRISM program, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. On Tuesday the company pushed back against the layers of secrecy surrounding the agency's alleged blanket snooping on American citizens.

“We were as shocked about those revelations as anyone,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond told Fox News, in an exclusive interview with Fox News' Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge.

On Tuesday the Internet giant wrote on its official blog that it had sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller, asking the agencies to allow Google to release more information about the national security orders it had received.

Google's request comes days after the government publicly acknowledged that secret Foreign Inteligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests had been sent to Internet companies regarding their users' activity.

“A serious misperception has been created in the wake of the disclosures around the Verizon national security order, around phone records as well as the disclosures about the so-called PRISM program,” Drummond told Fox News.

Google is asking to be able to publish FISA court requests as part of its biannual "transparency report" in which the company lists the number and kind of user data requests it receives from the government, Drummond said.

"Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made," Drummond said in the letter.

Reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post stated that the NSA had “direct access” to the servers of Google, Facebook, and several other major internet companies. Drummond stressed that that simply wasn’t true -- but legal restrictions were preventing him from offering further details.

“There's no lockbox, there's no backdoor -- none of the other terms that you've seen in the past few days,” Drummond told Fox News. “We comply with orders, we deliver information when we receive these targeted orders."

Earlier Tuesday, Senate leaders emerged from a closed-door meeting with the NSA chief saying the story about Edward Snowden, the American who leaked details about secret U.S. surveillance programs, is enveloped in misinformation and called for public hearings.

The closed-door briefing follows a series of news stories about federal government programs that have been collecting information about millions, if not billions, of phone calls and Internet activities by Americans.

Sources familiar with the briefing also told Fox News that lawmakers were concerned about more bombshell revelations on super-secret U.S. surveillance.

Drummond stressed that it was important to remember that Google serves hundreds of millions of users and that "only a tiny fraction of our users have ever been subject to having their data requested" through such orders.

“There's no general surveillance here. We just really want to make the point that we have nothing to hide here at Google.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/...#ixzz2W0bSAM5l

[vector7]

(D) Maxine Waters: ‘Obama Has Put In Place’ Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’ (Video)

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:55



“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. “That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

Maxine Waters is the U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district, and previously the 35th and 29th districts, serving since 1991. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

[vector7]

Troops 'targeted by NSA for anti-Obama views'

Attorney claims visits from FBI, Secret Service about Web postings

Published: 16 hours ago Jerome R. Corsi About | Email | Archive Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter.

He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Corsi's latest book is the forthcoming "What Went Wrong?: The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time."



The NSA is systematically monitoring the Internet posts and telephone conversations of U.S. military returning from Afghanistan, according to a civil-liberties attorney.

“The FBI and the Secret Service are showing up to request an interview to question specific Internet posts the veteran has placed on websites such as Facebook,” explained attorney John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute.

Whitehead said the agencies are looking for “anti-Obama views that can be interpreted to reflect psychological problems of sufficient seriousness to disqualify the veteran from ever owning a firearm.”

Whitehead told WND credible sources within the National Security Agency have told him the NSA is downloading 1 trillion communications on the Internet per month, including posts to various websites, emails, instant message communications and texting messages.



As WND reported last week, Whitehead and the Rutherford Institute in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va., are representing Marine veteran Brandon Raub, 27, who was arrested by FBI and Secret Service agents for comments he made on Facebook expressing dissatisfaction with the present direction of the U.S. government.

Whitehead said his office has received numerous calls from U.S. military returning from Afghanistan with reports they are being visited by the FBI and Secret Service to ask questions about their Internet postings.

“We are advising veterans being visited by the FBI or the Secret Service to take the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions that might end up with a diagnosis of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, which goes into the veteran’s file and can be used in the future to prevent the veteran from purchasing a firearm,” he said.

Whitehead said that in most of the cases, there isn’t enough information to obtain a search warrant from a judge.

But if the veteran answers questions, he said, the Secret Service or the FBI might get a psychiatrist to visit with the vet for 10 or 15 minutes in the jail cell to acquire enough information to certify in front of a judge that the person should be placed in a civil commitment because of a psychological problem.

In February, Investors.com reported a complaint by Michael Connelly, executive director of the United States Justice Foundation, that veterans have been getting letters from the Veterans Administration informing them they have been declared mentally incompetent.

The vet must provide evidence to the contrary within 60 days. If the vet desires a hearing, he or she must inform the Veterans Administration within 30 days.

According to the provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act any person receiving a determination of incompetency can be prevented from purchasing, receiving, owning, or transporting a firearm or ammunition.

Ronald S. Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, testified before the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on May 10, 2007, that the term “adjudicated as a mental defective” is both stigmatizing and incompatible with modern terminology used in the diagnosis and treatment of people with a mental illness.

“No state official charged with carrying out the requirements of the Brady bill could possibly know what this means, as it is a term that has been obsolete for close to 40 years,” Honberg explained to Congress. “We have received emails and other communications in the past few weeks from people who are incredulous that such a term would still be used in federal law.”

Whitehead explained the problem is intensifying as an increasing percentage of the U.S. military serving in Afghanistan have become disillusioned with Obama administration policy toward the war.

“I’ve had veterans returning from Afghanistan tell me that they passed by the opium fields and it shocked me that the U.S. government was helping the Afghans plant that stuff,” Whitehead said.

“There’s a lot of corruption in the Afghanistan government, passing around bags of cash to top officials, and our troops are beginning to ask, ‘Why am I here?’

He said of these veterans “enlisted wanting to be a great soldier, but they are coming back disillusioned.”

“I’m getting a lot of reports that soldiers are getting pronounced PSTD and there’s nothing they can do about it,” he said. “Then they come home and the process continues. The NSA is targeting veterans, there’s no doubt about it.”

Whitehead said “the technology is driving the show now” at the NSA, with computer software identifying “problematic phrases” that target a person as a potential troublemaker.

He said that with the NSA is doing a trillion downloads a month, “the surveillance is pervasive.”

“Anything digital is subject to government investigation, typically without the person having any knowledge it is happening,” he said. “If you want to go on Google and be anti-war, you are going to end up in a file and you are going to be subject to further investigation.”

Whitehead warned that the telephone call interviewing him for this article was almost certainly being recorded by the NSA and that the contents would end up in a file both for him and for WND.

“The United States is already in a police state, such that the only question is how we are going to deal with it,” he stressed. “With Bush, the surveillance state was beginning. Under Obama, the NSA has blossomed to a whole new level unimaginable in an era only a few years ago before this computer technology existed.”

Whitehead told WND he was convinced Operation Vigilant Eagle was still in operation targeting military veterans as potentially dangerous “right-wing extremists,” even though the DHS, the Department of Defense and the FBI have dropped since 2009 any specific reference to the programs.

“When the drones get here, another Obama program, the drones are going to be awesome,” he warned.

“The drones will have scanning devices that can fly over your home and grab all the digital data in the place where you live. The drones are going to up the ante, there’s no doubt about it. The only question is whether this is still the United States of America.

There’s nowhere to hide anymore.”

[American Patriot]

(D) Maxine Waters: ‘Obama Has Put In Place’ Secret Database With ‘Everything On Everyone’ (Video)

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 12:55



“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. “That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

Maxine Waters is the U.S. Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district, and previously the 35th and 29th districts, serving since 1991. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

Well, you know... if she said so it must be true!

[Malsua]

She needs to be pushing a shopping cart somewhere. One that has all her possessions, next to her cardboard house.

[Malsua]

devices that can fly over your home and grab all the digital data in the place where you live

There's some tin foil.

[American Patriot]

Actually.....


If you think about this.... didn't Google get sued by the government for doing JUST that?

[vector7]

This is how bad this actually IS... being told NOT to read stories????? TYRANNY! Being told not to use the internet to read news is completely against the law, against the constitution, against our very moral fiber in this country. Fire me.

Military told not to read Obama-scandal news

Verizon phone records story off-limits to airmen

DOD Employees, Contractors ordered not to read any NSA Surveillance Stories

• By David Kravets
• 06.11.13
• 3:36 PM

Photo: The Washington Post

The Defense Department is instructing its employees and contractors not to seek out or download classified material from the public domain that was leaked last week to the Guardian and Washington Post — material detailing a massive, covert and government-run surveillance program.

According to a Friday memorandum from Timothy A. Davis, DOD security director:

Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites, disclosed to the media, or otherwise in the public domain remains classified and must be treated as such until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority. It is the responsibility of every DoD employee and contractor to protect classified information and to follow established procedures for accessing classified information only through authorized means. Leadership must establish a vigilant command climate that underscores the critical importance of safeguarding classified material against compromise.

Accordingly, we request all DoD components send prompt notification to your employees and contractors reminding them of these obligations. Procedures for responding to classified information found in the public domain are attached. These procedures will be promulgated in future DoD issuances.

A similar edict came down in 2010, when the President Barack Obama administration cautioned federal employees from reading or downloading classified U.S. diplomatic cables WikiLeaks had disclosed.

Hat Tip: Secrecy News

[American Patriot]

Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers


Posted 06/12/2013 06:34 PM ET

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won't snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That's right, the government's sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel's formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.

If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshipped.

The bureau didn't even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.

One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn't monitored, red flags didn't go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.

This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshippers.

What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...#ixzz2W6hMWlIM
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[vector7]

Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers

That's because...

Obama said: "America is not at war with Islam"

His Administration is focused on the real terrorists...

• Obama Says Tea Party is Racist
  
• Joe Biden likened tea partiers to terrorists
• Van Jones: Tea Party Out To Destroy America
• Democrats Screaming about Tea Party
• Rep. Maxine Waters says "Tea Party can go straight to hell"
  
• NAACP about to Vote on Teaparty movement
• Revolutionary Idea: The Tea Party Movement
  
• 2010 Tea Party Rally Aerial Photograph?
• IRS unfairly targeting Conservatives (Tea Party groups)
  
• The Left Plotting against the Tea Party

Obama said: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction" and "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam".

[American Patriot]

What Does the Gov’t Really Know About Your Phone Calls, Internet Activity?

Jun. 14, 2013 6:58am Billy Hallowell

Editor’s Note: The following article is a fact-check from the Associated Press.



WASHINGTON (AP) — Wondering what the U.S. government might know about your phone calls and online life? And whether all of this really helps find terrorists? Good luck finding solid answers.


Americans trying to wrap their minds around two giant surveillance programs are confronted with a mishmash of leaks, changing claims and secrecy. Members of Congress complain that their constituents are baffled – and many lawmakers admit they are, too.


Adding to the confusion and suspicion, those defending the programs — from President Barack Obama to the nation’s spy chief to lawmakers — have sometimes mangled the facts.
Pro-democractic legislator Claudia Mo Man-ching speaks next to a picture of U.S. President Barack Obama and Edward Snowden during a news conference in Hong Kong Friday, June 14, 2013. Two lawmakers in Hong Kong said on Friday that they had written to President Obama to try to persuade him not to bring charges against the former US intelligence contractor Snowden. Snowden revealed last weekend he was the source of a major leak of top-secret information on NSA surveillance, saying he was uncovering wrongdoing. He spoke to reporters from an undisclosed location in the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong. Credit: AP



Questions that could help sort things out often get the same answer: “That’s classified.”


“It’s very, very difficult, I think, to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law,” said Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a long-time champion of privacy rights.


The nation’s spy leaders promise to declassify more information about the programs, but say revealing too much would tip off terrorists and help them escape detection.


Only vague outlines of the two programs that suck up phone records and Internet data have been declassified since the first leaks were published last week in The Guardian and The Washington Post. There’s no website, no book, no investigative report for Americans to turn to for the official facts.
That magnifies the confusion sown by misleading, retracted or inflated claims. A look at some of the misstatements:
—
THE 9/11 ARGUMENT
The government’s surveillance powers were expanded after the intelligence failures of Sept. 11, 2001.


To explain why millions of telephone records are now stored in a digital library, the NSA chief raised as an example one of the 9/11 hijackers.


In a Senate hearing, Army Gen. Keith Alexander implied that had the program been around before 9/11, the intelligence community might have sifted through records of past calls to catch the hijackers before they crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.


He pointed to hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar.
“We didn’t have the data collected to know that he was a bad person,” Alexander said.
U.S. Army Gen. Keith Alexander, Director National Security Agency (NSA), and head of the US Cyber Command walks to a closed door U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee meeting, June 13, 2013 in Washington, DC. The committee is hearing testimony from members of the intelligence community on the collection of personal data that helped the NSA thwart a number of terror plots from ever unfolding both domestically and abroad. Credit: Getty Images

But the U.S. did know that Mihdhar was a bad guy. The CIA knew that Mihdhar had met with other al-Qaida operatives at a January 2000 gathering in Malaysia.
The big problem was the CIA failed to immediately share what it knew about Mihdhar.
The information wasn’t passed to the FBI until late August 2001. The FBI began searching for Mihdhar in early September, but it was too late.
—
THE FOILED SUBWAY BOMB
A 2009 plot to bomb the New York subways is being showcased as a triumph for expanded surveillance.
But the details are getting muddied.
First, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, credited the phone records data with thwarting al-Qaida bomber Najibullah Zazi’s plan.
Then, talking points declassified by the Obama administration and circulated to lawmakers attributed the success against Zazi to a different NSA program, the one called PRISM that taps into email and Internet traffic in search of terrorists.
The use of PRISM to catch Zazi does little to resolve whether the government needs a program that collects such vast amounts of data, sometimes sweeping up information on American citizens.
Even before the post-Sept. 11 expanded surveillance, the FBI had the authority to – and did, regularly – monitor email accounts linked to terrorists. Before the laws changed, the government needed to get a warrant by showing that the target was a suspected member of a terrorist group. In the Zazi case, that connection already was well-established.
—
THE `LEAST UNTRUTHFUL’ ANSWER
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper describes his attempt to dodge a question as “too cute by half.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, who posed the question in March, says Clapper failed to give a straight answer. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., suggests Clapper’s answer amounts to perjury and he should resign.
The exchange came at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing before the phone program had been divulged.
“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Wyden, D-Ore., asked Clapper.
“No, sir,” Clapper answered.
“It does not?” Wyden pressed.
Clapper reluctantly softened his answer somewhat: “Not wittingly,” he said. “There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect – but not wittingly.”
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, right, leaves a Senate Intelligence Committee meeting regarding National Security Agency programs, in Washington, Thursday, June 13, 2013. Credit: AP

Turns out they do file away phone records – not conversations, but the phone numbers of calls placed and received – on millions of Americans.
After that leaked to the public, Clapper tried to explain his answer in an NBC News interview. “I responded,” he said, “in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner.”
Wyden says he even gave Clapper a day to prepare his answer. And, Wyden says, he gave Clapper a chance to change his answer in private.
—
CONFUSION IN CONGRESS
Even one of the surveillance programs’ staunchest supporters had trouble keeping the basics straight.
Explaining the programs to reporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., initially described how the NSA uses pattern analysis to sort through millions of phone calls from the United States.
“You basically say, `Computer, tell me who has called Yemen once a week for the last month,’ ” Graham said. “They spit out a bunch of numbers.”
But intelligence officials say that doesn’t happen.
They say Americans’ phone records are only accessed if there is evidence connecting them to suspected terrorists – not just a pattern of calls, such as to a certain country.
After intelligence officials objected, Graham – a member of the Armed Services and Judiciary committees but not the Intelligence panel – said he had misspoken.
But his earlier words reflect privacy advocates’ fears about the sort of thing the government might do with its library of call records, if not now then maybe someday in the future.
—
OBAMA’S TAKE
The president tried to reassure Americans about the massive surveillance programs. But he left some misimpressions.
“With respect to the Internet and emails,” Obama said, “this does not apply to U.S. citizens.”
Indeed, intelligence agency leaders say that these programs can’t legally target Americans. That doesn’t mean their online activities won’t be swept up in the surveillance net, however.
Analysts watching a suspected terrorist see that person’s emails, Facebook friends and other online traffic that might include Americans.
And American communications can be accidentally captured by computer programs searching for data on terror suspects. John Negroponte, a former director of national intelligence, said such unintentionally gathered information wouldn’t be kept or used by agents.
US President Barack Obama speaks alongside US Vice President Joe Biden (L). Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Some Congress members bristled at the way Obama described briefings available to them: “Your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing,” he said.
Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said: “The impression has been created that people (are) parked in our office giving us daily briefings on this, or monthly briefings. And that’s not been the case.”
At a Senate hearing Wednesday, Johanns complained: “We’re all getting bombarded with questions that many of us at the rank-and-file level in the Senate cannot answer.”

[American Patriot]

CBS News: ‘Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party’

CBS News has confirmed that correspondent Sharyl Attkisson‘s computer was accessed by an “unauthorized” person or group, apparently looking for data. In a statement, a spokesperson for CBS News says that the company is “taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”
Last month, Attkisson revealed that her computer had been accessed, resulting in the Department of Justice coming out with a statement that it was not responsible for the intrusion. CBS News promised to investigate, and through a hired cyber-security firm, confirmed that indeed there had been an unauthorized access.
The CBS News statement is below.

“A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts.

While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.
This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.
CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”

[Toad]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57...s-phone-calls/

NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

by Declan McCullagh
June 15, 2013 4:39 PM PDT


The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatusworks domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

James Owens, a spokesman for Nadler, provided a statement on Sunday morning, a day after this article was published, saying: "I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans' phone calls without a specific warrant." Owens said he couldn't comment on what assurances from the Obama administration Nadler was referring to, and said Nadler was unavailable for an interview. (CNET had contacted Nadler for comment on Friday.)

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, being able to listen to phone calls would mean the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.
Nadler's initial statement appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president."

There are serious "constitutional problems" with this approach, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated warrantless wiretapping cases. "It epitomizes the problem of secret laws."

The NSA declined to comment to CNET. (This is unrelated to the disclosure that the NSA is currently collecting records of the metadata of all domestic Verizon calls, but not the actual contents of the conversations.)

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement on Sunday saying: "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress." Clapper's statement did not elaborate, however, on what "proper" authorization would be. Some reports have suggestedthat permission from a "shift supervisor" would also be required.

The Washington Post disclosed Saturday that the existence of a top-secret NSA program called NUCLEON, which "intercepts telephone calls and routes the spoken words" to a database. Top intelligence officials in the Obama administration, the Post said, "have resolutely refused to offer an estimate of the number of Americans whose calls or e-mails have thus made their way into content databases such as ­NUCLEON."

Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls -- in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established "listening posts" that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, "whether they originate within the country or overseas." That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.
William Binney, a former NSA technical director who helped to modernize the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network, told the Daily Caller this week that the NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. "They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that's what they record," Binney said.

Brewster Kahle, a computer engineer who founded the Internet Archive, has vast experience storing large amounts of data. He created a spreadsheet this week estimating that the cost to store all domestic phone calls a year in cloud storage for data-mining purposes would be about $27 million per year, not counting the cost of extra security for a top-secret program and security clearances for the people involved.

NSA's annual budget is classified but is estimated to be around $10 billion.

Documents that came to light in an EFF lawsuit provide some insight into how the spy agency vacuums up data from telecommunications companies. Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for over 22 years, disclosed in 2006 (PDF) that he witnessed domestic voice and Internet traffic being surreptitiously "diverted" through a "splitter cabinet" to secure room 641A in one of the company's San Francisco facilities. The room was accessible only to NSA-cleared technicians.

AT&T and other telecommunications companies that allow the NSA to tap into their fiber links receive absolute immunity from civil liability or criminal prosecution, thanks to a law that Congress enacted in 2008 and renewed in 2012. It's a series of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as the FISA Amendments Act.

That law says surveillance may be authorized by the attorney general and director of national intelligence without prior approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as long as minimization requirements and general procedures blessed by the court are followed.
A requirement of the 2008 law is that the NSA "may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States." A possible interpretation of that language, some legal experts said, is that the agency may vacuum up everything it can domestically -- on the theory that indiscriminate data acquisition was not intended to "target" a specific American citizen.

Rep. Nadler's statement that NSA analysts can listen to calls without court orders came during a House Judiciary hearing on June 13 that included FBI director Robert Mueller as a witness.

Mueller initially sought to downplay concerns about NSA surveillance by claiming that, to listen to a phone call, the government would need to seek "a special, a particularized order from the FISA court directed at that particular phone of that particular individual."
Is information about that procedure "classified in any way?" Nadler asked.
"I don't think so," Mueller replied.

"Then I can say the following," Nadler said. "We heard precisely the opposite at the briefing the other day. We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone simply based on an analyst deciding that...In other words, what you just said is incorrect. So there's a conflict."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence committee, separately acknowledged that the agency's analysts have the ability to access the "content of a call."

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the head of the House Intelligence committee, told CNN on Sunday that the NSA "is not listening to Americans' phone calls" or monitoring their e-mails, and any statements to the contrary are "misinformation." It would be "illegal" for the NSA to do that, Rogers said.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell indicated during a House Intelligence hearing in 2007 that the NSA's surveillance process involves "billions" of bulk communications being intercepted, analyzed, and incorporated into a database.

They can be accessed by an analyst who's part of the NSA's "workforce of thousands of people" who are "trained" annually in minimization procedures, he said. (McConnell, who had previously worked as the director of the NSA, is now vice chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden's former employer.)

If it were "a U.S. person inside the United States, now that would stimulate the system to get a warrant," McConnell told the committee. "And that is how the process would work. Now, if you have foreign intelligence data, you publish it [inside the federal government]. Because it has foreign intelligence value."

McConnell said during a separate congressional appearance around the same time that he believed the president had the constitutional authority, no matter what the law actually says, to order domestic spying without warrants.

Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente told CNN last month that, in national security investigations, the bureau can access records of a previously made telephone call. "All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not," he said. Clemente added in an appearance the next day that, thanks to the "intelligence community" -- an apparent reference to the NSA -- "there's a way to look at digital communications in the past."

NSA Director Keith Alexander said on June 12 that his agency's analysts abide by the law: "They do this lawfully. They take compliance oversight, protecting civil liberties and privacy and the security of this nation to their heart every day."

But that's not always the case. A New York Times article in 2009 revealed the NSA engaged in significant and systemic "overcollection" of Americans' domestic communications that alarmed intelligence officials. The Justice Department said in a statement at the time that it "took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance" with the law.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, says he was surprised to see the 2008 FISA Amendments Act be used to vacuum up information on American citizens. "Everyone who voted for the statute thought it was about international communications," he said.

Updated 6/16 at 11:15 a.m. PT The original headline when the story was published on Saturday was "NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants," which was changed to "NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls," to better match the story. The first paragraph was changed to add attribution to Rep. Nadler. Also added was an additional statement that the congressman's aide sent this morning, an excerpt from a Washington Post story on NSA phone call content surveillance that appeared Saturday, and remarks that Rep. Rogers made on CNN this morning. Updated 6/16 at 10:45 p.m. PT We added one paragraph with a statement provided by DNI James Clapper.]



Toad~ OK. This pretty much guts the 4th amendment unless something is done about it. A low level analyst, with no warrent, can just literally listen and read through what you do because they want to. This is F-ed up. Beyond over-reach.

[American Patriot]

Sounds a lot like "under reach" to me. They reach UNDER and rip things out of society, like Rights.

[American Patriot]

Is this guy some kind of Leftist Slimebucket then????? Read this carefully.

June 17th, 2013
02:11 PM ET


51 minutes ago Snowden gets 'highest honor' from Cheney


Posted by
CNN's Ashley Killough (CNN) – Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday called Eric Snowden a "traitor."

One day later, Snowden–the man who leaked information about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs–said he felt honored.

"This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead," Snowden purportedly wrote in a public, online chat Monday hosted by the Guardian newspaper.


"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American," he added.


In the discussion, he answered questions on why he revealed the National Secret Agency's classified programs.


Since revealing his identity a little more than a week ago, Snowden has become a controversial figure–celebrated by some, reviled by others.


A CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning indicates that 52% of the public disapproves of Edward Snowden's actions, with 44% saying they approve of the leaks by the former government contractor who worked for the National Security Agency.


Republican Rep. Peter King said last week he was a "defector" who's endangering U.S. national security.


Cheney described Snowden as a "traitor" on "Fox News Sunday" saying his actions were "one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the U.S."


Asked if Cheney thought Snowden was spying for China, he said he was "deeply suspicious."


"It's not a place you would ordinarily want to go if you're interested in freedom, liberty and so forth, so it raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did that," he said.


Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong, said in the web chat that he chose the spot because it allowed him the "cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained."


Reacting to accusations of spying, Snowden said it was "smear" he had "anticipated."


"Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now," he wrote.


Snowden went on to say that the "more panicked talk we hear from people like (Cheney), (Sen. Dianne) Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are."


"If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school," he said.


Cheney maintained Sunday that the top secret surveillance operations set in place during the George W. Bush administration were good programs and help prevent terrorist attacks.