US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

The details get worse BY THE DAY! Even if they were to stop the collection tomorrow [trust me they will NOT!], they already have enough information to entrap, spy upon, blackmail and destroy the Constitutional Rights of all Americans and similar to worse for World Citizens. They will never destroy what they've been colllecting - even if they ever say they will and did..they will not. I don't believe any of the alleged destruction of records by the CIA, FBI, Military etc. et al. They just move the data files [in whatever form or a new form] into a 'do not file file' that is secret to all but a top few. Big Brother won't become a reality - IT IS A REALITY! The only shoe yet to drop, IMO, is they've not yet admitted that the NSA computers automatically combine this purloined and illegal communications intercepts with [to name only a few]: your credit and banking history/activities; your criminal record; your drivers license and car registration information; your school records; your employment records; your travel records from airlines and other transport; your physical path through life as traced by mobile phone and credit card as well as license plate readers, etc.; your friends and acquaintances; your blood type, iris scan and finger prints, facial features and information on your body; your medical records; what you read at the library and books you buy; your relatives; outstanding parking tickets; images of you from spycams; your tax records....and much more.....everything!
You think TIA [Total Information Awareness] went away?....wake up! Our WORST NIGHTMARES are REALITY and getting worse FAST. I can't think of anything but a revolution or tactical strikes destroying all NSA data that could remedy all this [best if from insiders - real whistling BLOWERS!]. The system is incapable of reforming itself or 'oversight'. Forget that! None of this protects the Nation - it only protects and gives power to the Elites and harms and disenfranchises from the explicit Constitutional and implicit human protections outlined in various laws, normative civil behaviors and international treaties to privacy and presumption of innocence, etc.

[Jim Hackett II]

OMG ain't even close y'all.

:jawdrop::finger:

I am a citizen not a subject.
Like Paul said, 'Ya gotta try my ass."

Not any more...

[Carsten Wiethoff]

"I have just delivered documents from the Russian Federal Migration Service. He can now leave the transit zone," Snowden's lawyer told Interfax on Thursday (Aug. 1). WikiLeaks reported that Snowden was granted refugee status in the country. Paul Sonne of the Wall Street Journal reported that his lawyer said the temporary asylum was granted for one year, and added that Snowden had already left the airport as of 8 a.m. Thursday.

[Peter Lemkin]

"I have just delivered documents from the Russian Federal Migration Service. He can now leave the transit zone," Snowden's lawyer told Interfax on Thursday (Aug. 1). WikiLeaks reported that Snowden was granted refugee status in the country. Paul Sonne of the Wall Street Journal reported that his lawyer said the temporary asylum was granted for one year, and added that Snowden had already left the airport as of 8 a.m. Thursday.

I wish him well. The CIA will be trying to capture him or 'neutralize' him....possible, but a tad more difficult in Russia than in most other countries. I'm sure he'll hire body guards and take precautions. Maybe someday he'll get on a fishing boat from Vladivostok to Venezuela or Ecuador somehow. I'm not a big fan of Putin [understatement]; but he is not a big fan of the USA, and thus allowed Snowden asylum. Sadly, he is not allowed to speak further against the NSA until he moves on. Best to you Edward Snowden! F**k the NSA and all who try to protect it/defend it!

[Peter Lemkin]

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"If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that'll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities." -- Philip K. Dick, author of Minority Report

On any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on, and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.


A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you're walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. As I point out in my new book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this doesn't even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts, and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.


The revelations by Edward Snowden only scrape the surface in revealing the lengths to which government agencies and their corporate allies will go to conduct mass surveillance on all communications and transactions within the United States.


Erected in secret, without any public input, these surveillance programs amount to an electronic concentration camp that houses every single person in the United States today. Indeed, government whistleblower Russ Tice, who exposed the NSA's warrantless surveillance of American phone calls as far back as 2005, insists that despite Obama administration claims that the NSA is simply collecting metadata, the NSA is in fact retrieving "the contents of emails, text messages, Skype communications, and phone calls, as well as financial information, health records, legal documents, and travel documents."


These communications are being stored in the NSA's Utah Data Center, a massive $2 billion facility that will be handling yottabytes of data (equivalent to one septillion bytes--imagine a one followed by 24 zeroes) on American communications. This Utah facility is opening amidst a backlash against NSA surveillance. Most recently, the Obama administration and the NSA went into overdrive to quash an amendment sponsored by Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have cut off funds to the NSA if it collects surveillance data on American citizens who are not under criminal investigation. It was a bold move, especially when one considers that the NSA operates off a budget of approximately $10 billion. After all, when the government no longer listens to the citizenry--when it no longer abides by the Constitution, which is our rule of law--and when it views the citizenry as a source of funding and little else, we have no choice but to speak to the government in a language it understands--money.


Unfortunately, lobbyists and the Washington elite succeeded in defeating the amendment 217-205. Not surprisingly, many of those who voted down the bill were also recipients of campaign funds from the lucrative security/surveillance sector.


In the face of such powerful lobbyists working in tandem with our so-called representatives, any hope of holding onto even a shred of privacy is rapidly dwindling. Indeed, the life of the average American is an open book for government agents. As Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the American surveillance state, points out, government agencies operate based upon a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act that allows them to extract massive amounts of data from third-party agencies, enabling them to collect information on "bulk medical, financial, credit card, and gun-ownership records" or lists of "readers of books and magazines deemed subversive.'"


Cell phones are equally vulnerable, serving as a "combination phone bug, listening device, location tracker, and hidden camera." Indeed, it's incredibly easy to activate a cell phone's GPS and microphone capabilities remotely. For example, the FBI uses the "roving bug" technique, which allows agents to remotely activate the microphone on a cellphone and use it as a listening device. A federal judge actually ruled in 2006 that this was a constitutional technique when it was used to listen to two alleged mobsters, despite the fact that no phone call was taking place at the time.


With private corporations also taking advantage of this technology, the outlook is decidedly grim. In an attempt to mimic the tracking capabilities of online retailers, brick-and-mortar stores now utilize WIFI-enabled devices to track the movements of their customers by tracking their phones as they move throughout the store. The data gathered by these devices include "'capture rate' (how successful window displays are at pulling people into the store); number of customers inside the store; customer visit duration and frequency; customer location within the store; people who walk by the store without coming in; and the amount of foot traffic around the store."


Combined with facial-recognition technology, our cell phones have become a tell-all about our personal lives. For example, one Russian marking company, Synqera, "uses facial-recognition technology to tailor marketing messages to customers according to their gender, age, and mood." As one company representative noted, "if you are an angry man of 30, and it is Friday evening, [the Synqera software] may offer you a bottle of whiskey."


Americans cannot even drive their cars without being enmeshed in this web of surveillance. As confirmed by an ACLU report entitled, "You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements," the latest developments in license-plate readers enable law enforcement and private agencies to track the whereabouts of vehicles, and their occupants, all across the country.


License-plate readers work by recognizing a passing license plate, photographing it, and running the information against a pre-determined database that lets police know if they've got a "hit," a person of interest, though not necessarily a suspected criminal. There are reportedly tens of thousands of these license-plate readers now affixed to police cars and underpasses in operation throughout the country. The data collected from these devices is also being shared between police agencies, as well as with fusion centers and private companies.


Indeed, while all drivers' data is being collected, only a fraction of the data collected constitutes a "hit." An even smaller fraction of those "hits" actually result in an arrest. Overall, the hit rate for criminal activity gleaned from the license pictures is usually between .01% and .3%, meaning that over 99% of the people being unnecessarily surveilled are entirely innocent.


The implications for privacy are dire. All of the data points collected by license-plate readers can be traced and mapped so that a picture of a vehicle's past movements can be re-constructed. Furthermore, the photographs produced by license-plate readers "sometimes include a substantial part of a vehicle, its occupants, and its immediate vicinity."


In addition to tracking tens of thousands of innocent people, the data collected by license-plate readers is often kept far beyond any reasonable period of time. Data-retention policies vary widely, from the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which deletes non-hits immediately, versus some localities that hold on to data for weeks, months, or years. Some localities hold on to the information indefinitely.


To cap it off, private companies are also getting into the data-collection game, as data collected on innocent drivers is being shared between both government agencies and corporations. One such business, Final Notice, offers the information they gather to police agencies and intends to start selling the information to other groups soon, including bail bondsmen, private investigators, and insurers.


Another company, MVTrac, claims to have data on "a large majority" of vehicles in the US, and the Digital Recognition Network (DRN) claims to have a network of affiliates of more than 550. These affiliates feed over 50 million plate reads into a national database containing "over 700 million data points on where American drivers have been."


This is the United States of America today, where liberty and privacy are the currency for any and all essential services. Short of living in a cave, cut off from all communications and commerce, anyone living in the concentration camp that is America today must cede his privacy and liberty to a government agency, a corporation, or both, in order to access information via the internet, communicate with friends and family, shop for food and clothing, or travel to work.


We have just about reached the point of no return. "If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we are all going to live to regret it," warned Senator Wyden. "The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed."

[Magda Hassan]

Don't remember this being covered by the Chillicot Inquiry...?

[Magda Hassan]

This government IP address: 156.33.241.5 has been banned from Wikipedia for vandalizing the Edward Snowden page and labeling him a "traitor". It traces back to the US senate
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[/URL]

User talk:156.33.241.5

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For this reason, a message intended for one user may be received by another, and a block intended for disruptive users may also affect innocent users. If you are editing from this address and are frustrated by irrelevant messages, you can avoid them by creating an account for yourself. Sometimes, in response to vandalism, you may be temporarily unable to create an account.
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August 2013

Hello, I'm Ginsuloft. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Edward Snowden seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Ginsuloft (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Might want to look a bit closer:
NetRange: 156.33.0.0 - 156.33.255.255 CIDR: 156.33.0.0/16 OriginAS: AS3495 NetName: USSAA OrgName: United States Senate OrgId: USSAA Address: 2 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N.E. 6TH FLOOR City: WASHINGTON DC StateProv: DC PostalCode: 20510 Country: US I guess we know who's paying him.Amitabho Chattopadhyay (talk) 01:24, 3 August 2013 (UTC) That's an assumption of bad faith. People sometimes edit in their personal capacity from a work computer. The real issue is that the edit violates WP:NPOV. Jehochman [SUP]Talk[/SUP] 15:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC) The following is a personal opinion based on my own ideas of what is true: A prime example of Government entities trying to influence the thoughts and opinions of their own citizens and others through any means necessary. Wake up United States Senate, people are learning the truth for themselves no matter how hard you try to sweep it under the rug. Not only that, but the mere fact that you are trying so desperately to discredit Edward Snowden only shows how deep your web of internet surveillance runs. If your ultimate goal is and truly was to protect American citizens, wouldn't you be spending more of your time and resources defending yourselves rather than using it to sling mud at a so called "traitor"? GoldenWolfMuse (talk) 10:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
As an experienced wikipedian and a site administrator, I can tell you that such things have happened in the past, and all they accomplished was to embarrass the person or persons behind the edits. If that was your goal, keep it up. If it was not, I suggest you find a better use for your time. See U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia for more information on past incidents of this nature. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Good lord, is the US government even trying to be subtle here? --Veyneru (talk) 17:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC) "We the people", huh?
--Rubicon88 (talk) 01:14, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
For the record, the constitutional definition of treason is very specific, and it does not include whistleblowing. Snowden let the American public know about literally BILLIONS of counts of illegal wiretapping perpetrated against them by the criminals in the NSA. Snowden is not only an innocent man, he is a hero who has made great personal sacrifices for our liberty. If you have a problem with that, then you need to read the constitution and your oath of office a few more times. 98.248.220.168 (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

[Magda Hassan]

New revelations: Germany sends 'massive amounts' of phone, email data to NSA

Published time: August 07, 2013 21:13
Edited time: August 08, 2013 09:28 Get short URL



Germany's BND intelligence service sends "massive amounts" of intercepts to the NSA daily, according to a report based on Edward Snowden's leaks. It suggests a tight relationship has been developed between the two agencies which the BND claims is legal.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Snowden and obtained by Der Spiegel revealed that the 500 million pieces of phone and email communications metadata collected by the NSA in Germany last December were "apparently" provided with the BND's approval.

The data was allegedly handed over at two collection sites as part of the operation titled "Germany Last 30 days." One of those collection sites has been identified as the Bavarian BND facility at Bad Aibling, which the NSA is said to have officially left back in 2004.

Der Spiegel's investigation, which cites BND sources, says that the code name of the Bad Aibling facility is mentioned in Snowden's papers as one of the signals intelligence activity designators (SIGADs) employed by the US spy agency to collect the data.

The BND source added that the mentioned name is "associated with telecommunications surveillance in Afghanistan."

Officially, however, Berlin is still waiting for an answer from Washington as to where in Germany the metadata documented in the NSA files was obtained, according to Der Spiegel. The clarification of what and who are behind the so-called SIGADs, and what sort of information was passed on, is an extremely delicate matter for both the BND and the Chancellery - with Angela Merkel's chief of staff Ronald Pofalla being nominally in charge of coordinating the country's intelligence agencies.


The details in the recent report have sparked more uneasy questions to be fired at Merkel's government. Hans-Christian Stroebele of Germany's Green party has demanded an "immediate investigation" of allegations, reminding that it has been claimed up to now that the Americans had abandoned Bad Aibling years ago and transferred control to Germany.

"Now we are reading that the NSA expanded their facility there, received data on site and also analyzed it there. That is a completely new development; that's news that we have to follow up on," said Stroebele, who is also a member of the German parliament's intelligence oversight committee.

Frustrated that he and other committee members learned about the BND's data transfers to the NSA from a media report, Stroebele stressed that "the government is playing the wrong game there."

But officials from the German foreign intelligence service responded by saying the practice is completely legal, adding that the two agencies have been closely working together for decades.

"The BND has worked for over 50 years together with the NSA, particularly when it comes to intelligence on the situation in crisis zones. The cooperation with the NSA in Bad Aibling serves exactly these goals and it has taken place in this form for over ten years, based on an agreement made in the year 2002," the BND said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.

According to Snowden's leaks, not only have the German agents enjoyed access to the NSA's latest tools, such as XKeyscore, but the US agents have also shown a keen interest in several BND programs which, according to the report, were deemed even more effective than those of the NSA.

But the BND has assured that no data transferred to the NSA contains information on German citizens which, according to the German agency's chief Wolfgang Bosbach, would explain why the government never mentioned the vast data transfers during the testimony they gave to parliamentary committees after the NSA scandal was unveiled.

"The transfer of data clearly did not involve German citizens but rather data that the BND had collected in accordance with its statutory mission," Bosbach said.

"Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain," the BND said in response to inquiries, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. The agency added that there is currently "no reason" to believe that "the NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany."



The BND is strictly forbidden from monitoring the communications of German citizens by the G-10 law, a regulation anchored in the country's constitution that limits the powers of the intelligence agencies.

However, it does not concern foreign intelligence, which, according to the report, includes hundreds of thousands of records from Middle Eastern satellite telephone providers, thousands of mobile communications, and daily eavesdropping on some 62,000 emails.

"The NSA benefits from this collection, especially the…intercepts from Afghanistan, which the BND shares on a daily basis," the report says.

Such large-scale data transfer became possible after the BND established a direct electronic connection to the NSA network in Bad Aibling, it claims.
When the scandal initially emerged, German Chancellor Merkel claimed that she learnt about the US surveillance programs through press reports, and that she had had no knowledge of the BND's collaboration with the NSA.

Merkel, who is under pressure from critics ahead of the September 22 election, also stressed that Germany "is not a surveillance state."

However, she seemingly justified the NSA's job, saying that "the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future." While being asked to clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of European countries and EU facilities, Merkel stressed that the US will remain Germany's "most loyal ally."
http://rt.com/news/germany-nsa-sharing-s...lance-179/

[Jeffrey Orling]

So it's all (maybe) coming out that these spy agencies are in everyone's business all over the world and have been doing it for a long time. Well duh.... they wouldn't admit it and when caught will off some BS rationale and nothing will change. They love the internet!

[Peter Lemkin]

This government IP address: 156.33.241.5 has been banned from Wikipedia for vandalizing the Edward Snowden page and labeling him a "traitor". It traces back to the US senate
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[/URL]

User talk:156.33.241.5

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For this reason, a message intended for one user may be received by another, and a block intended for disruptive users may also affect innocent users. If you are editing from this address and are frustrated by irrelevant messages, you can avoid them by creating an account for yourself. Sometimes, in response to vandalism, you may be temporarily unable to create an account.
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August 2013

Hello, I'm Ginsuloft. Wikipedia is written by people who have a wide diversity of opinions, but we try hard to make sure articles have a neutral point of view. Your recent edit to Edward Snowden seemed less than neutral to me, so I removed it for now. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Ginsuloft (talk) 20:54, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Might want to look a bit closer:
NetRange: 156.33.0.0 - 156.33.255.255 CIDR: 156.33.0.0/16 OriginAS: AS3495 NetName: USSAA OrgName: United States Senate OrgId: USSAA Address: 2 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N.E. 6TH FLOOR City: WASHINGTON DC StateProv: DC PostalCode: 20510 Country: US I guess we know who's paying him.Amitabho Chattopadhyay (talk) 01:24, 3 August 2013 (UTC) That's an assumption of bad faith. People sometimes edit in their personal capacity from a work computer. The real issue is that the edit violates WP:NPOV. Jehochman [SUP]Talk[/SUP] 15:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC) The following is a personal opinion based on my own ideas of what is true: A prime example of Government entities trying to influence the thoughts and opinions of their own citizens and others through any means necessary. Wake up United States Senate, people are learning the truth for themselves no matter how hard you try to sweep it under the rug. Not only that, but the mere fact that you are trying so desperately to discredit Edward Snowden only shows how deep your web of internet surveillance runs. If your ultimate goal is and truly was to protect American citizens, wouldn't you be spending more of your time and resources defending yourselves rather than using it to sling mud at a so called "traitor"? GoldenWolfMuse (talk) 10:00, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
As an experienced wikipedian and a site administrator, I can tell you that such things have happened in the past, and all they accomplished was to embarrass the person or persons behind the edits. If that was your goal, keep it up. If it was not, I suggest you find a better use for your time. See U.S. Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia for more information on past incidents of this nature. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:40, 3 August 2013 (UTC)Good lord, is the US government even trying to be subtle here? --Veyneru (talk) 17:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC) "We the people", huh?
--Rubicon88 (talk) 01:14, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
For the record, the constitutional definition of treason is very specific, and it does not include whistleblowing. Snowden let the American public know about literally BILLIONS of counts of illegal wiretapping perpetrated against them by the criminals in the NSA. Snowden is not only an innocent man, he is a hero who has made great personal sacrifices for our liberty. If you have a problem with that, then you need to read the constitution and your oath of office a few more times. 98.248.220.168 (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

If any buildings should know about traitors, it would be those of the 'government' - only a handful of those that work in them are not. Wouldn't even surprise me if it was a staff person, but one of our 'representatives' in their 'spare time' [when not taking bribes from Corporations, Banks, War Profiteers and passing new draconian neo-fascist police state legislation.] The traitors would best be found on Capitol Hill, IMO.