US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Tracy Riddle]

Don't know if this has been posted before.

The Complete Annotated History Of Spying (On Ourselves) by Tyler Durden

[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves"]http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves

[/URL]http://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline
[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves"]



[/URL]

[Peter Lemkin]

Don't know if this has been posted before.

The Complete Annotated History Of Spying (On Ourselves) by Tyler Durden

[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves"]http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves

[/URL]http://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline
[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-25/complete-annotated-history-spying-ourselves"]



[/URL]

Interesting as it is depressing..... The fact it was put up by zerohedge [from the EFF] made me to thinking....they can listen in on who is about to buy/sell/hedge/etc. what stock or metal or commodity - so the all-pervasive-ear at NSA is the ultimate tool for insider trading and can make themselves or others rich - or ruin anyone they please, economically, [as well as other ways], at times. The opportunity for blackmail or even information if properly 'placed' could ruin someone's life or loves or job or ability to survive has always been there - and I'll bet my arm has been used thousands of times more than the interdiction of any real terrorists [not just watching our own ones]. And the 'beat' goes on...along with the murder/trial/entrapment of several who've tried to report on or stop this madness. :darthvader:

[Peter Lemkin]

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Snowden's Revelation Paves the Way for Federal Lawsuit Against NSA

By Thom Hartmann [/TD]
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed multiple lawsuits against the NSA for spying on Americans, but until now the government has convinced courts to block them.










You need to know this. Thanks to Edward Snowden, a federal court may finally hear the Electronic Frontier Foundation's case defending our Fourth Amendment rights. Long before the whistle-blower exposed top secret NSA documents, the EFF was fighting to protect our privacy.

The organization has filed multiple lawsuits against the NSA for spying on Americans, but until now the government has been able to convince the courts to block the EFF cases using legal technicalities like "standing" and "state secrets." But, those technical hurdles have been cleared since our nation found out about the NSA's massive surveillance programs.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White rejected the government's attempt to block the lawsuit using the so-called "state secrets" defense. Judge White dismissed other parts of the lawsuit, but allowed the Fourth Amendment claims to go forward. He ordered both parties to present more evidence on the constitutionality of government surveillance, and requested a briefing from officials explaining exactly how leaked NSA documents affected national security. The ruling was not a clear win for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but it removed one of the huge barriers the organization faced in its legal challenge.

Cindy Cohen, the EFF's legal director, said, "That is huge. That was the centerpiece of the government's defense."

When Edward Snowden revealed that Americans were, in fact, being spied on, the EFF and other privacy organizations cleared the first major hurdle, as they can now prove they have a right to challenge government surveillance in court. And, this recent ruling removed the NSA's second line of defense to a legal challenge. The only barrier now to a constitutional challenge is so-called "sovereign immunity" - which means these organizations can't sue the government unless the government allows them to do so. It is still a major hurdle, but the EFF isn't giving up without a fight. Stay tuned.

[Jim Hackett II]

EFF hurrah!
They've been there before....

[Peter Lemkin]

EFF hurrah!
They've been there before....

To be honest, I think in the current 'climate' it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell....but it may wake some people up, IF it gets any coverage and is not crushed before it gets going [as has been done effectively each time before]! The Judiciary is like that under the Reich, IMHO [with a few exceptions at lower levels, usually]...the Judge knows and believes the Government MUST prevail...never mind the law...let alone justice. Power must be protected....and the more powerful, the more the protection. Any notion of equality, checks and balances, no one and no entity above the law, all equal under the law, etc. are all gone...long, long gone. Its power and money v. those that ain't got any.

[Jim Hackett II]

I was applauding somebody suing as opposed to any less substantial reaction.

EFF and ACLU might be able to raise a "stink'.
Most folks just yawn.

[Peter Lemkin]

Jimmy Carter Supports Snowden; Admits to Press: "America Has No Functioning Democracy"
July 18, 2013
Found this in one of Germany's biggest newspapers; Spiegel. Of course we won't hear about Carter's comments in any American Press. To say "America has no functioning Democracy," is quite the statement by a former President.
A direct link to that article, using google translate, can be found here.
Ex-President Carter: "The invasion of privacy has gone too far"
The Obama administration tried to placate Europe's anger over spying programs. Not as ex-President Jimmy Carter: The Democrat attacked the U.S. intelligence sharp. The disclosure by whistleblowers Snowden was "useful."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was in the wake of the NSA Spähskandals criticized the American political system. "America has no functioning democracy," Carter said Tuesday at a meeting of the "Atlantic Bridge" in Atlanta.
Previously, the Democrat had been very critical of the practices of U.S. intelligence. "I think the invasion of privacy has gone too far," Carter told CNN. "And I think that is why the secrecy was excessive."Overlooking the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said Carter, whose revelations were long "likely to be useful because they inform the public."
Carter has repeatedly warned that the United States sharply declined due to excessive restriction of civil rights, their moral authority. Last year he wrote in an article in the "New York Times", new U.S. laws "never before seen breach our privacy by the government" allowed the.
Carter was the 39th President of the United States, who ruled from 1977 until 1981. During his tenure, he tried to align U.S. foreign policy that is more about human rights after his retirement from active politics for his humanitarian work, he received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize .
In Atlanta, he also expressed his overall pessimistic about the global situation. There is currently no reason for him to be optimistic, Carter said, referring to the situation in Egypt, which had fallen into a military dictatorship. He also lamented the growing political divide in the United States, the excessive influence of money in U.S. election campaigns and the confusing American election rules. The ex-president whose "Carter Center" operates worldwide including election monitoring, announced skeptical whether the United States, the standard that applies when reviewing the Center of elections might be fulfilled.
As a bright spot, however, Carter called the triumph of modern technology that would have caused some of the countries of the Arab Spring of democratic progress. Exactly these developments but are endangered by the NSA Spähskandal as major U.S. Internet platforms such as Google or Facebook lose credibility worldwide.

[Magda Hassan]

We wont even mention the irony of the US not extraditing Louis Posada to Venezuela for real crimes where he is to stand trial for terrorism charges and murder and bombing of a Cubana air plane. Nor that the US protects and refuses extradition of the former President of Bolivia Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada on charges of genocide.

An Open Letter to the Media on the 'Irony' of Snowden's Request for Asylum in Venezuela and Ecuador

by Latin America Experts

The supposed "irony" of whistle-blower Edward Snowden seeking asylum in countries such as Ecuador and Venezuela has become a media meme. Numerous articles, op-eds, reports and editorials in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and MSNBC have hammered on this idea since the news first broke that Snowden was seeking asylum in Ecuador. It was a predictable retread of the same memelast year when Julian Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and the Ecuadorian government deliberated his asylum request for months.

Of course, any such "ironies" would be irrelevant even if they were based on factual considerations. The media has never noted the "irony" of the many thousands of people who have taken refuge in the United States, which is currently torturing people in a secret prison at Guantanamo, and regularly kills civilians in drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries. Nor has the press noted the "irony" of refugees who have fled here from terror that was actively funded and sponsored by the U.S. government, e.g. from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, and other countries.
But in fact the "irony" that U.S. journalists mention is fantastically exaggerated. It is based on the notion that the governments of Venezuela under Chávez (and now Maduro) and Ecuador under Correa have clamped down on freedom of the press. Most consumers of the U.S. media unfortunately don't know better, since they have not been to these countries and have not been able to see that the majority of media are overwhelmingly anti-government, and that it gets away with more than the U.S. media does here in criticizing the government. Imagine if Rupert Murdoch controlled most U.S media outlets, rather than the minority share that his News Corp actually owns then you'd start to have some idea what the media landscape in Ecuador, Venezuela and most of Latin America looks like.
The fact is that most media outlets in Ecuador and Venezuela are privately-owned, and opposition in their orientation. Yes, the Venezuelan government's communications authorities let the RCTV channel's broadcast license expire in 2007. This was not a "shut down"; the channel was found to have violated numerous media regulations regarding explicit content and others the same kind of regulations to which media outlets are subject in the U.S. and many other countries. Even José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch a fierce critic of Venezuela has said that "lack of renewal of the contract [broadcast license], per se, is not a free speech issue." Also rarely mentioned in U.S. reporting on the RCTV case is that the channel and its owner actively and openly supported the short-lived coup d'etat against the democratically-elected government in 2002.
A July 10th piece from the Washington Post's editorial board which has never hid its deep hatred of Venezuela, Ecuador and other left governments in Latin America describes another supposed grave instance of the Venezuelan government clamping down on press freedoms. The editorial, which was given greater publicity through Boing Boing and others, describes the case of journalist Nelson Bocaranda, who is credited with breaking the news of Chávez's cancer in June 2011. The Post champions Bocaranda as a "courage[ous]" "teller of truth" and dismisses the Venezuelan government's "charges" against him as "patently absurd." In fact, Bocaranda has not been charged with anything; the Venezuelan government wants to know whether Bocaranda helped incite violence following the April 14 presidential elections, after which extreme sectors of the opposition attacked Cuban-run health clinics and homes and residences of governing party leaders, and in which some nine people were killed mostly chavistas. The government cites a Tweet by Bocaranda in which he stated false information that ballot boxes were being hidden in a specific Cuban clinic in Gallo Verde, in Maracaibo state, and that the Cubans were refusing to let them be removed. Bocaranda later deleted the Tweet, but not before it was seen by hundreds of thousands (an image of it can be seen here). So while the Post dismisses the case against Bocaranda as "absurd," the question remains: why did Bocaranda state such specific information, if he had no evidence to support it? Indeed, any such evidence would be second hand unless Bocaranda had seen the supposed "hidden" ballot boxes and the actions by the Cubans himself. The Venezuelan government's summons for Bocaranda to explain himself is being characterized as a grave assault on press freedom, and perhaps it is an over-reaction after all, many journalists report false information all the time. But wasn't Bocaranda's Tweet irresponsible, especially given the context of a volatile political situation?
In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa has been widely condemned in the U.S. media in much reporting as well as commentary for suing a prominent journalist, Emilio Palacio, for defamation. The defamatory content was, in fact, serious. It relates to a 2010 incident in which Correa was first assaulted and then later held captive by rebelling police in what many observers deemed an attempt at a coup d'etat. Military forces ultimately rescued Correa. But in a February 2011 column referring to the episode, Palacio alleged that Correa had committed "crimes against humanity," and that he had ordered the military forces to fire on the hospital where he was being held at the time. So Correa sued Palacio for defamation and won. What some U.S. media outlets have failed to mention is that he subsequently pardonedPalacio, and had made clear from the beginning that he would have dropped the lawsuit if Palacio ran a correction. In other words, all that Correa did was exercise his right as a citizen under the law to sue someone who had printed an outrageous lie about him. This is a right that most elected officials have in most countries, including the United States.
Former AP reporter Bart Jones has written:

Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt -- and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez's government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves.

Considering the massive extent of "national security" overreach following the 9/11 attacks, it is almost incomprehensible to imagine what a U.S. administration's reaction to a coup attempt would be, but it certainly would not be as restrained as in Ecuador or Venezuela, where a fiercely critical press not only exists, but thrives.
Many commentators have cited Reporters Without Borders and other media watchdog groups' criticisms of Ecuador's proposed new "Organic Law of Communication." In an example of true irony, such supposedly objective journalists have been more critical of Ecuador's proposed media reforms than RSF itself has been, which noted that:

…we think that other provisions conform to international legal standards. They include restrictions on broadcasting hours for the protection of minors, the prohibition of racist and discriminatory content and the prohibition of deliberate calls for violence.
Finally, the provisions governing nationally-produced broadcasting content are broadly similar to those in force in most other countries.

Organizations such as RSF and Freedom House are supposed to be impartial arbiters of press freedom around the world and are rarely subject to scrutiny. Yet both have taken funding from the U.S. government and/or U.S.-government supported organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (which was set up to conduct activities "much of [which]" the "CIA used to fund covertly," as the Washington Post reported at the time, and which also provided funding and training to organizations involved in the afore-mentioned 2002 Venezuelan coup) and other "democracy promotion" groups. The NED has spent millions of dollars in Venezuela and Ecuador in recent years to support groups opposed to the governments there. This conflict of interest is never noted in the press, and RSF and Freedom House, when they are cited, are invariably presented as noble defenders of press freedom, for whom ulterior motives are apparently unimaginable.
The true irony in the cases of Snowden, Assange, Manning and others is that the U.S. government, while claiming to defend freedom of the press, speech and information, has launched an assault on the media that is unprecedented in U.S. history. The extreme lengths to which it has gone to apprehend (witness the forced downing of President Evo Morales' plane in Austria) and punish (Bradley Manning being the most obvious example) whistle-blowers is clear. Apparently less understood by some U.S. journalists is that it is part of an assault on these very freedoms that the U.S. government pretends to uphold. The U.S. government's pursuit of Wikileaks through grand jury and FBI investigations, and open condemnation of Julian Assange as a "terrorist" is a blatant attack on the press. It seems too many journalists forget or willingly overlook that Wikileaks is a media organization, and that the leaks that have so infuriated the U.S. government, from the "Collateral Murder" video to "Cablegate", Wikileaks published in partnership with major media outlets including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and others. Now, as Edward Snowden's leaks are published in The Guardian and other outlets, efforts have been launched to delegitimize journalist Glenn Greenwald, and some in the media have been all too willing to take part in attacking one of their own, simply for exposing government abuse i.e. doing journalism.
There is a long history of partnership between traditional, corporate media outlets in the U.S. and those in Latin America. Due to a variety of reasons, including educational, class and often racial backgrounds, journalists throughout the hemisphere often tend to share certain biases. It is the journalist's duty to be as objective as possible, however, and to let the media consumer decide where the truth lies. Likewise, eagerly going along with double standards that reinforce paradigms of "American exceptionalism" and that overlook the U.S.' long, checkered human rights history and minimize the importance of over a century of U.S. intervention and interference in Latin America does a great injustice to journalism and the public. Likewise, media distortions of the state of democracy and press freedoms in countries that are routinely condemned by the U.S. government such as Venezuela and Ecuador - contribute to a climate of demonization that enables U.S. aggression against those countries and damages relations between the people of the U.S. and our foreign neighbors.

Sincerely,
Thomas Adams, Visiting Professor, Tulane University
Marc Becker, Professor, Department of History, Truman State University
Julia Buxton, Venezuela specialist
Barry Carr, Honorary Research Associate, La Trobe University, Australia
George Ciccariello-Maher, Assistant Professor, Drexel University
Aviva Chomsky, Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies, Salem State University
Luis Duno-Gottberg, Associate Professor, Caribbean and Film Studies, Rice University
Steve Ellner, Professor, Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela
Arturo Escobar, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Nicole Fabricant, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Towson University
Sujatha Fernandes, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
John French, Professor, Department of History, Duke University
Lesley Gill, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University
Greg Grandin, Professor, Department of History, New York University
Daniel Hellinger, Professor, Department of Political Science, Webster University
Forrest Hylton, Lecturer, History and Literature, Harvard University
Chad Montrie, Professor, Department of History, UMASS-Lowell,
Deborah Poole, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University,
Margaret Power, Professor, Department of History, Illinois Institute of Technology
Adolph Reed, Jr., Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
Gerardo Renique, Associate Professor, Department of History, City College of the City University of New York
Suzana Sawyer, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California
T.M. Scruggs, Professor Emeritus, School of Music, University of Iowa

Steve Striffler, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of New Orleans
Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor, Department of History, Pomona College
Sinclair Thomson, Associate Professor, Department of History, New York University
Jeffery R. Webber, Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London
Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

[Magda Hassan]

Germany intelligence cooperated with NSA as Merkel denied knowledge report

Get short URL
Published time: July 21, 2013 10:56
Edited time: July 22, 2013 08:48

A man wears a mask of U.S. President Barack Obama during a protest in support of former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden in front of Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, July 4, 2013.(Reuters / Thomas Peter)






Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, along with the domestic intelligence agency the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), used American National Security Agency's (NSA) XKeyScore program, according to Spiegel which claims to have seen the US intelligence service's secret documents.Der Spiegel magazine has revealed German intelligence operated one of NSA's spying programs. Chancellor Angela Merkel had denied any previous knowledge of NSA's tactics, adding that she first learned about them through the media.
The BfV office had the XKeyScore program, which was installed to "expand their ability to support NSA as we jointly prosecute CT (counterterrorism) targets." And the BND office was tasked with showing the BfV how to operate the program, the secret documents said.
An internal NSA presentation from 2008 revealed that XKeyScore is able to expose any terms a person under surveillance has typed into a search engine and receive a "full intake" of all unfiltered data over a period of several days, including content of communications.
The program uses metadata information about data connections to access the targeted information.
The documents also disclosed that up to 500 million German data connections were accessed monthly by the NSA. The majority of the connections were collected through the XKeyScore program.
An aerial view of the construction site of the new Federal Intelligence Service (BND) headquarters in Chausseestrasse in the district of Mitte in Berlin.(Reuters / Robert Grahn)


Documents also reveal cooperation between the NSA and Germany recently strengthened, referencing BND head Gerhard Schindler's "eagerness and desire".
"The BND has been working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws to provide greater opportunities of intelligence sharing," Spiegel quotes the NSA as saying in January. And in 2012 Germany showed a "willingness to take risks and to pursue new opportunities for cooperation with the US."
The document further stated that BND was NSA's "most prolific partner" in information gathering in Afghanistan.
The magazine reports that the relationship between the two is close "on a personal level" and at the end of April, just before Edward Snowden's first revelations about NSA spying programs, a 12-member high-level BND delegation was invited to the NSA to meet specialists on the subject of "data acquisition."
The BND, BfV and the NSA have refused to comment about their connection.
In the meantime, Chancellor Merkel spoke out strongly in favor of an international agreement to protect electronic data.
"We should be able, in the 21st century, to sign global agreements," Merkel told the weekly Welt am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday. "If digital communication raises new questions worldwide, then we should take up the challenge. Germany is working for that."
Angela Merkel is facing re-election on September 22 and has received pressure from critics to admit what she knew about the US online surveillance.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel.(AFP Photo / Johannes Eisele)


It emerged recently that Germany happens to be the most-snooped-on EU country by the American National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA's real-time online surveillance PRISM program allows US intelligence agencies to intercept virtually any communications over the internet, phone calls and makes possible direct access to files stored on the servers of major internet companies.
In early July, US fugitive Edward Snowden accused Germany and the US of partnering in spy intelligence operations, revealing that cooperation between the countries is closer than German indignation would indicate.
Chancellor Merkel declared that she learnt about the US surveillance programs, such as the NSA's PRISM spy program, "through the current reporting" in the media.
Yet, Angela Merkel in interview to Die Zeit weekly stressed that "America has been, and is, our most loyal ally over the decades," but pointed out that Washington should clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of European countries and EU facilities, noting that "the Cold War is over."
The German government subsequently summoned US Ambassador Philip Murphy to Berlin to explain the incendiary reports.
http://rt.com/news/germany-nsa-usa-xkeyscore-378/

[Jan Klimkowski]

"We should be able, in the 21st century, to sign global agreements," Merkel told the weekly Welt am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday. "If digital communication raises new questions worldwide, then we should take up the challenge. Germany is working for that."

Fixed the quote:

"We should be able, in the 21st century, to sign global agreements enabling us to spy on the common Volk everywhere," Merkel told the weekly Welt am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday. "If digital communication raises new snooping opportunities worldwide, then we should take up the challenge. Germany is working for that."