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Gary Edwards

U.S. Patriots Union: - 0 views

www.patriotsunion.org

US-Patriots-Union Defenders-of America Declaration-to-Restore-The-Constitution Balance-of-Powers-Act Impeach-Obama

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12
     
    These guys are on fire! Sight includes "A Declaration to Restore The Constitutional Republic" and, a "Balance of Powers Act" that would restore the sovereignty of the States under the ninth and tenth amendments. The spokesperson for this group of Patriotic veterans is General Paul Vallely.  The Declaration itself is in PDF format, and is quite the lenghthy bill of particulars against Obama, the ruling elites from both parties, and the Federal Government establishment.  There is also a video of the 11.11.11 Veterans Day Memorial that led to the creation of the Partiots Union, The Defenders of America, and the Declaration to Restore The Constitution.  Incredible stuff. excerpt: An undisclosed number of American Veterans and former service members have come together to prepare and present this Call-to-Action on behalf of the U.S. Constitution, the Republic, the Rule of Law and equal justice for all freedom loving citizens of the United States of America. Acting together as one, via The Veteran Defenders of America, co-sponsored by civilian patriot group The Unites States Patriots Union, LLC - we issue the following CALL for peaceful disobedience. 1. We CALL upon every member of federal, state and local government, legislative, judicial, law enforcement and military, who have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitutional Republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic, to act upon those oaths for the stated purpose of restoring the Constitutional Republic. 2. We CALL upon ALL veterans and veteran organizations in America, who still believe in their  oath to protect and defend, to unite with us at once - in this Declaration to Restore the Constitutional Republic. 3. We CALL for ALL citizens who still desire freedom and liberty, to stand with us in peaceful protest, and carry our demands to right the wrongs against our nation in the preservation of freedom, liberty, justic
Gary Edwards

JB Williams -- Congress Must Immediately Impeach Entire Obama Administration - 0 views

www.newswithviews.com/...williams180.htm

Impeachment Impeach-Obama JB-Williams newswithviews

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Mar 12
     
    A well written list of particulars calling for the impeachment of the entire Obama administration.  The article ends with an appeal to restore the Constitution, identifying two groups in particular: US Patriots Union and the US Veterans "Defenders of America".  Outstanding stuff.  When you read this you will know you're in the presence of true Patriots. http://www.patriotsunion.org/DECLARATION-RESTORE-THE-CONSTITUTIONAL-REPUBLIC.pdf http://www.veterandefenders.org/ excerpt: The Obama Administration has intentionally and criminally bankrupted what was once the most productive, prosperous and powerful nation on earth. This is nothing compared to Obama's other first term achievements. Via their Federal "wealth redistribution" bailouts, the Obama Administration seized control of General Motors, screwed every individual who ever invested in the company and steered the company through managed bankruptcy so that it would emerge the property of labor unions, not the people who had invested in it for years. The Obama Administration has since seized control of Energy, Banking, Insurance, Health Care, Food production and distribution, manufacturing, water supply and outlawed free speech on public lands to protect elected servants from an increasingly angry society that currently gives Obama, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court their lowest approval ratings in U.S. history. The Obama Administration designed and launched the so-called Arab Spring across the Middle East, attacking Jews and Christians alike and unseating leaders of sovereign nations and redistributing political power throughout the region to the Muslim Brotherhood, purposefully responsible for total civil unrest around the globe and rising gas prices at the pumps. Last Friday evening, Obama issued yet another Executive Order seizing unbridled power over every aspect of American life, all the way down to the water in your toilet bowl and the garden in your back yard, sharing that power with each mem
Gary Edwards

It's the Profiling, Stupid! - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/18651

NSA NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jun 13
     
    Good article briefly describing th ehistory of the NSA and how it has evolved to the politicized monster it has become today. excerpt: "Last week, Barack Hussein Obama deflected new concerns about the National Security Administration's intrusive domestic data-mining operations, saying, "If people can't trust ... the executive branch ... to make sure we're abiding by the Constitution, due process, and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here." Barack, we have some problems here. Of course, trusting the Executive Branch is not the issue. The problem is Obama's life-long record of deceit and deception, and his utter contempt for Rule of Law. Amidst recent revelations that Obama's black-bag cutouts inspired his "low-level" union cadres at the IRS to target his Patriot and Tea Party political enemies list, and scripted a cover-up of the Benghazi murders in order that it not derail his 2012 re-election campaign momentum, is it conceivable that his "low-level" union cadres at the NSA might collect intelligence data on U.S. citizens to profile those whom oppose Obama? As with the other scandals, Obama's political handlers and their Leftmedia talkingheads are obfuscating the facts regarding NSA data collection. They ignore legitimate civil liberty concerns, and focus instead on the question of whether such data is essential to our national security. Allow me to reframe a quote from James "Ragin' Cajun" Carville's political playbook about focusing on the big issue, and adapt it for the big data debate: "It's the profiling, stupid!" The question is not whether intelligence data collection is critical to our nation's ability to defend itself -- good intelligence is, and has always been a critical component of national defense and security. The overarching questions are, what is the scope of domestic NSA intelligence gathering, and what is the potential for an administration to use that information to profile and target political opponents? Here is a ver
Gary Edwards

The Patriot's Declaration - Voice of Essential Liberty - 0 views

patriotpost.us/...19

patriot Patriot-Post Patriotism Liberty-Amendments

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • that fiscal responsibility be enumerated in our Constitution by way of a Balanced Budget Amendment, including zero base-line accounting principles, to be put before the states and the people;
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13
       
      If, under the "Enumerated Powers Act/Amendment", ALL legislation requires the siting of specific Constitutional authority, wouldn't that negate the need for a Balanced Budget Amendment?  Tons of outrageous stuff in the Federal Budget would need to be examined and properly "enumerated".  And that would put an end to it?  Just asking :)
  • that said Amendment contain a provision requiring a three-fifths majority of votes by members of Congress to raise direct or indirect taxes, and acknowledgment that the legislature has no authority to raise taxes for purposes that are not expressly authorized by the Constitution;
  • that said Amendment contain a provision that direct taxes be levied at an equal ratio to all Americans, ensuring that the cost-burden of government is shared equally by all, and consistent with Article I, Section 9, which provides "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" which would unduly single out individuals or minority groups for undue punishment;
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • that said Amendment contain a provision that the withholding of taxes by an employer is the option of the taxpayer;
  • EIGHTH
  • that said Amendment acknowledge the interdependence of economic freedom and political freedom by provision that any bill before Congress must enumerate its implications against the exercise of free enterprise;
  • NINTH
  • Legislature Accountability Amendment
  • that a
  • to establish term limits for all members of Congress, similar to that of the 22nd Amendment, Section 1, limiting terms for the Executive, be put before the states and the people; and,
  • TENTH
  • Rule of Law
  • because
  • established through the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, entitles the People to unalienable Rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and severely limits the government from any infringement upon those rights, then any member of the executive, legislative or judicial branch in violation of the Rule of Law established through our Constitution, is subject to impeachment and criminal prosecution.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Aug 13
       
      YES!!! Now we're talking tough.
  • THUS, be it known that for the support of this Declaration in defense of the Rule of Law established by our Constitution, it is, with firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, that we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor
  • Note to signers: The Patriot Declaration is not a petition. It is a "Declaration of Cause and Necessity" and stands on its own as an resolution of intent for all who sign it, as due notice for those who would abandon their oath to "Support and Defend the Constitution" and abuse their office to the detriment of individual liberty and states rights.
  • Preamble to the Patriot Declaration
  • Patriot Declaration
  • THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,
  • We the People of these United States, in order to restore a more perfect Union, re-establish Justice, re-insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, pledge to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, as established at great cost in lives and treasure by our Founders and defended by generations since, and we demand that those in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of our national government, likewise honor their oaths, and commit to undertake the following actions to restore constitutional integrity and Rule of Law:
Gary Edwards

The Empire Takes a Hit: NSA Update - 2 views

........................................................................................ NSA Conversation with retired lawyer and Open Source legal expert, "Marbux". ...........................

Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel NSA

started by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 13 no follow-up yet
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Ten Commandments for a Better American World | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...ts_for_a_better_american_world

war & peace terrorists™ U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • My War on Terror Letter to an Unknown American Patriot By Tom Engelhardt Dear American Patriot, I wish I knew your name. I’ve been thinking about you, about all of us actually and our country, and meaning to write for a while to explain myself.  Let me start this way: you should feel free to call me an American nationalist.  It may sound ugly as hell, but it’s one way I do think of myself. True, we Americans usually reserve the more kindly word “patriot” for ourselves and use “nationalist” to diss other people who exhibit special feeling for their country.  In the extreme, it’s “superpatriot” for us and “ultranationalist” for them. In any case, here’s how my particular form of nationalism manifests itself. I feel a responsibility for the acts of this country that I don’t feel for those of other states or groups.  When, for instance, a wedding party blows up thanks to a Taliban roadside bomb, or the Islamic State cuts some poor captive’s head off, or Bashar al-Assad’s air force drops barrel bombs on civilians, or the Russians jail a political activist, or some other group or state commits some similar set of crimes, I’m not surprised.  Human barbarity, as well as the arbitrary cruelty of state power, are unending facts of history. They should be opposed, but am I shocked? No.
  • Still -- and I accept the irrationality of this -- when my country wipes out wedding parties in other lands or organizes torture regimes and offshore prison systems where anything goes, or tries to jail yet another whistleblower, when it acts cruelly, arbitrarily, or barbarically, I feel shock and wonder why more Americans don’t have the same reaction. Don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t blame myself for the commission of such acts, but as an American, I do feel a special responsibility to do something about them, or at least to speak out against them -- as it should be the responsibility of others in their localities to deal with their particular sets of barbarians. So think of my last 12 years running TomDispatch.com as my own modest war on terror -- American terror.  We don’t, of course, like to think of ourselves as barbaric, and terror is, almost by definition, a set of un-American acts that others are eager to commit against us.  “They” want to take us out in our malls and backyards.  We would never commit such acts, not knowingly, not with malice aforethought.  It matters little here that, from wedding parties to funerals, women to children, we have, in fact, continued to take “them” out in their backyards quite regularly. Most Americans would admit that this country makes mistakes. Despite our best efforts, we do sometimes produce what we like to call “collateral damage” as we go after the evildoers, but a terror regime? Not us. Never.
  • And this is part of the reason I’m writing you. I keep wondering how, in these years, it’s been possible to hold onto such fictions so successfully. I wonder why, at least some of the time, you aren’t jumping out of your skin over what we do, rather than what they’ve done or might prospectively do to us. Let’s start with an uncomfortable fact of our world that few here care to mention: in one way or another, Washington has been complicit in the creation or strengthening of just about every extreme terror outfit across the Greater Middle East. If we weren’t their parents, in crucial cases we were at least their midwives or foster parents.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Start in the 1980s with the urge of President Ronald Reagan and his fundamentalist Catholic spymaster, CIA Director William Casey, to make allies of fundamentalist Islamic movements at a time when their extreme (and extremist) piety seemed attractively anticommunist.  In that decade, in Afghanistan in particular, Reagan and Casey put money, arms, and training where their hearts and mouths were and promoted the most extreme Islamists who were ready to give the Soviet Union a bloody nose, a Vietnam in reverse.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Mar 15
     
    Highly recommended reading. But note that, while I've never had occasion to correct Tom Engelhardt before, he errs in attributing the beginning of U.S. involvement with what we now call Al-Qaeda to the Reagan era. In fact, that honor belongs to the Carter Administration, specifically to then National Security Advisor and arch-anti-Communist Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, who wanted to give the Soviet Union its own "Viet Nam moment."  
Paul Merrell

Ukrainian Nazis Pay Private Military Company Academi (formerly Blackwater) for Training... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5422667

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy Blackwater neo-Nazis

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian Government’s Tass ‘news’ agency is alleging that “The US private military company Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) … has confirmed to the Kiev authorities its readiness to start training an experimental battalion of 550 men as of January at the request of Ukraine’s General Staff,” according to an unnamed source, which source is probably one of the few remaining anti-nazi bureaucrats still remaining in the Ukrainian Government. The reported price of this Blackwater (a.k.a. “Xe,” a.k.a. “Academi”) training contract is $3.5 million. Furthermore, “‘Ukraine has said it is ready to pay the money on the condition of assistance from the Ukrainian association Patriot, providing technical and financial support for the project,’ the source said.” That organization is Patriot of Ukraine. If this report in Tass is true, then the Ukrainian Government, which now is being funded almost entirely by U.S. taxpayers (inasmuch as it no longer meets the financial requirements of the IMF and EU, both of which receive funding from both U.S. and European taxpayers), and for which the U.S. Congress just passed and the U.S. President just signed into law in December authorization of a $450 million donation, is now co-funding this military training, along with — as wikipedia describes “Patriot of Ukraine” (but with wikipedia’s footnotes removed) —
  • a Ukrainian nationalist organization with racist and neo-Nazi political beliefs. It constitutes a paramilitary wing of the Social-National Assembly of Ukraine (S.N.A.), an assemblage of neo-Nazi organizations and groups founded in 2008 that share the social-national ideology and agree upon building a social-national state in Ukraine. Both the “Patriot of Ukraine” and the S.N.A. engage in political violence against minorities and their political opponents. The leader of the “Patriot of Ukraine” and of the Social-National Assembly is Andriy Biletsky. The S.N.A. derived from “the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine,” whose name was derived from the National Socialist Party of Germany — the original Nazis. America’s CIA hides its longstanding support of nazis after World War II (see this and this), but the Bushes and Obama have continued it even decades after the Soviet Union and its communism ended. Consequently, in 2004, the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine was advised by the CIA to, and it did, change its name to the “Freedom Party,” or “Svoboda,” because that sounds better to Americans.
Gary Edwards

Google News - 0 views

news.google.com/?ar=1375391426

Libertarians freedom-liberty freedom-tyranny authoritarianism-individual-liberty

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13
     
    WOW!!! Incredible presentation concerning the history of Freedom vs. Tyranny. WOW!! If ever there's a MUST Watch, this is it. Very impressive and sweeping comparison of how authoritarian collectivist seize power in a free society and establish their tyrannies. My notes are listed below: How to recognize potential tyrants and keep them from seizing power. The urge to save humanity is always used to justify those who want to rule humanity. - ML Menken Daniel Webster on the Constitution Obstacles to Tyranny : Limited powers of government .... Due Process .... Presumption of Innocence .... Freedom to Dissent .... Armed Populace: The right to be Armed! Due Process .... 5th Amendment .... Emergency powers. there is no authorization in the US Constitution to suspend Due Process or any aspect of the Bill of Rights .... Asset Seizure Laws for criminal activities (alleged - without warrant or court order) .... Eminent Domain: seizure of private property for government uses: 2005 Kelo vs New London seizure based on jobs (economy) and tax revenue possibilities. .... 6th Amendment - right to trial by jury : plea bargaining admonition based on facing the awesome power of the government to prosecute no matter what - intimidation and threat of personal destruction. .... Forced confessions through plea bargaining. .... Indefinite detention without trial or charges: President has power to kill or issue orders without warrant, charges or trial .... Presumption of Innocence: Probable Cause .... Random stops at Border check points. 5th Amendment protections violated .... Sobriety Check Points: 4th and 5th Amendments violated - no presumption of innocence .... Random detention and questioning: airport security pat downs, housing projects, bus transportation .... The Right to Privacy: financial transactions and the IRS audit (without warrant or accusation) .... Warrant-less Spying .... Agents writing their own search warrants .... Snatch and Peek Freedom to Disse
Paul Merrell

Obama to Call for End to N.S.A.'s Bulk Data Collection - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eek-nsa-curb-on-call-data.html

surveillance state NSA call-metadata NSA-reform Obama legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency’s once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that — if approved by Congress — would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials.Under the proposal, they said, the N.S.A. would end its systematic collection of data about Americans’ calling habits. The bulk records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than they normally would. And the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order. In a speech in January, President Obama said he wanted to get the N.S.A. out of the business of collecting call records in bulk while preserving the program’s abilities. He acknowledged, however, that there was no easy way to do so, and had instructed Justice Department and intelligence officials to come up with a plan by March 28 — Friday — when the current court order authorizing the program expires.
  • As part of the proposal, the administration has decided to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the program as it exists for at least one more 90-day cycle, senior administration officials said. But under the plan the administration has developed and now advocates, the officials said, it would later undergo major changes. The new type of surveillance court orders envisioned by the administration would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received, the officials said. They would also allow the government to swiftly seek related records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.
  • The N.S.A. now retains the phone data for five years. But the administration considered and rejected imposing a mandate on phone companies that they hold on to their customers’ calling records for a period longer than the 18 months that federal regulations already generally require — a burden that the companies had resisted shouldering and that was seen as a major obstacle to keeping the data in their hands. A senior administration official said that intelligence agencies had concluded that the operational impact of that change would be small because older data is less important.The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program — sometimes known as the 215 program, after Section 215 of the Patriot Act — to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist. It was part of the secret surveillance program that President George W. Bush unilaterally put in place after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, outside of any legal framework or court oversight.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the administration’s proposal a “sensible outcome, given that the 215 program likely exceeded current legal authority and has not proved to be effective.” While he said that he would like to see more overhauls to other surveillance authorities, he said the proposal was “significant” and addressed the major concerns with the N.S.A.’s bulk records program. Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union said, “We have many questions about the details, but we agree with the administration that the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of call records should end.” He added, “As we’ve argued since the program was disclosed, the government can track suspected terrorists without placing millions of people under permanent surveillance.”
  • In recent days, attention in Congress has shifted to legislation developed by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee. That bill, according to people familiar with a draft proposal, would have the court issue an overarching order authorizing the program, but allow the N.S.A. to issue subpoenas for specific phone records without prior judicial approval.
  • The Obama administration proposal, by contrast, would retain a judicial role in determining whether the standard of suspicion was met for a particular phone number before the N.S.A. could obtain associated records.The administration’s proposal would also include a provision clarifying whether Section 215 of the Patriot Act, due to expire next year unless Congress reauthorizes it, may in the future be legitimately interpreted as allowing bulk data collection of telephone data.The proposal would not, however, affect other forms of bulk collection under the same provision. The C.I.A., for example, has obtained orders for bulk collection of records about international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union.
  • The government has been unable to point to any thwarted terrorist attacks that would have been carried out if the program had not existed, but has argued that it is a useful tool.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Mar 14
     
    "The N.S.A. uses the once-secret call records program ... to analyze links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist." Correction: "The N.S.A. *claims* to use the ..." 
Paul Merrell

Do We Really Want a New World War With Russia? | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

m.journal-neo.org/...nt-a-new-world-war-with-russia

war & peace Russia weaponos SU-34 electronic-countermeasures Bumblebees

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Washington continues making an international fool of herself by her inability to effectively counter the impression around the world that Russia, spending less than 10% of the Pentagon annually on defense, has managed to do more against ISIS in Syria in six weeks than the mighty US Air Force bombing campaign has done in almost a year and half. One aspect that bears attention is the demonstration by the Russian military of new technologies that belie the widely-held Western notion that Russia is little more than a backward oil and raw material commodity exporter. Recent reorganization of the Russian state military industrial complex as well as reorganization of the Soviet-era armed forces under Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s term are visible in the success so far of Russia’s ISIS and other terror strikes across Syria. Clearly Russian military capabilities have undergone a sea-change since the Soviet Cold War era. In war there are never winners. Yet Russia has been in an unwanted war with Washington de facto since the George W. Bush Administration announced its lunatic plan to place what they euphemistically term “Ballistic Missile Defense” missiles and advanced radar in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and Turkey after 2007. Without going into detail, BMD technologies are the opposite of defensive. They instead make a pre-emptive war highly likely. Of course the radioactive ash heap in such an exchange would be first and foremost the EU countries foolish enough to invite US BMD to their soil.
  • What the Russian General Staff has managed, since the precision air campaign began September 30, has stunned western defense planners with Russian technological feats not expected. Two specific technologies are worth looking at more closely: The Russian Sukoi SU-34 fighter-bomber and what is called the Bumblebee hyperbaric mortar weapon.
  • The plane responsible for some of the most damaging strikes on ISIS and other terror enclaves in Syria is manufactured by the Russian state aircraft industry under the name Sukhoi SU-34. As the Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the aircraft, “The Su-34 is meant to deliver a sufficiently large ordnance load to a predetermined area, hit the target accurately and take evasive action against pursuing enemy planes.” The plane is also designed to deal with enemy fighters in aerial combat such as the US F-16. The SU-34 made a first test flight in 1990 as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos of the Yeltsin years caused many delays. Finally in 2010 the plane was in full production. According to a report in US Defense Industry Daily, among the SU-34 features are: • 8 ton ordnance load which can accommodate precision-guided weapons, as well as R-73/AA-11 Archer and R-77/AA-12 ‘AMRAAMSKI’ missiles and an internal 30mm GSh-301 gun. • Maximum speed of Mach 1.8 at altitude.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • • 3,000 km range, extensible to “over 4,000 km” with the help of additional drop tanks. The SU-34 can also refuel in mid-air. • It can fly in TERCOM (Terrain Contour Matching) mode for low-level flight, and has software to execute a number of difficult maneuvers. • Leninets B004 phased array multimode X-band radar, which interleaves terrain-following radar and other modes.
  • Clearly the aircraft is impressive as it has demonstrated against terrorist centers in Syria. Now, however, beginning this month it will add a “game-changer” in the form of a new component. Speaking at the Dubai Air Show on November 12, Igor Nasenkov, the First Deputy General Director of the Radio-Electronic Technologies Concern (KRET) announced that this month, that is in the next few days, SUKHOI SU-34 fighter-bombers will become electronic warfare aircraft as well. Nasenkov explained that the new Khibiny aircraft electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems, installed on the wingtips, will give the SU-34 jets electronic warfare capabilities to launch effective electronic countermeasures against radar systems, anti-aircraft missile systems and airborne early warning and control aircraft. KRET is a holding or group of some 95 Russian state electronic companies formed in 2009 under the giant Russian state military industry holding, Rostec.
  • Russia’s advances in what is euphemistically termed in military jargon, Electronic Counter Measures or ECM, is causing some sleepless nights for the US Pentagon top brass to be sure. In the battles in eastern pro-Russian Ukraine earlier this year, as well as in the Black Sea, and now in Syria, according to ranking US military sources, Russia deployed highly-effective ECM technologies like the Krasukha-4, to successfully jam hostile radar and aircraft. Lt. General Ben Hodges, Commander of US Army Europe (USAREUR) describes Russian ECM capabilities used in Ukraine as “eye-watering,” suggesting some US and NATO officers are more than slightly disturbed by what they see. Ronald Pontius, deputy to Army Cyber Command’s chief, Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, told a conference in October that, “You can’t but come to the conclusion that we’re not making progress at the pace the threat demands.” In short, Pentagon planners have been caught flat-footed for all the trillions of wasted US taxpayer dollars in recent years thrown at the military industry.
  • During the critical days of the March 2014 Crimean citizens’ referendum vote to appeal for status within Russia, New York Times reporters then in Crimea reported the presence of Russian electronic jamming systems, known as R-330Zh Zhitel, manufactured by Protek in Voronezh, Russia. That state-of-the-art technology was believed to have been used to prevent the Ukrainian Army from invading Crimea before the referendum. Russian forces in Crimea, where Russia had a legal basing agreement with Kiev, reportedly were able to block all communication of Kiev military forces, preventing a Crimean bloodbath. Washington was stunned.
  • Thereafter, in April, 2014, one month after the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, President Obama ordered the USS Donald Cook into the Black Sea waters just off Crimea, the home port of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, to “reassure” EU states of US resolve. Donald Cook was no ordinary guided missile destroyer. It had been refitted to be one of four ships as part of Washington’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System aimed at Russia’s nuclear arsenal. USS Donald Cook boldly entered the Black Sea on April 8 heading to Russian territorial waters. On April 12, just four days later, the US ship inexplicably left the area of the Crimean waters of the Black Sea for a port in NATO-member Romania. From there it left the Black Sea entirely. A report on April 30, 2014 in Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta Online titled, “What Frightened the American Destroyer,” stated that while the USS Donald Cook was near Crimean (Russian by that time) waters, a Russian Su-24 Frontal Aviation bomber conducted a flyby of the destroyer. The Rossiyskaya Gazeta went on to write that the Russian SU-24 “did not have bombs or missiles onboard. One canister with the Khibin electronic warfare complex was suspended under the fuselage.” As it got close to the US destroyer, the Khibins turned off the USS Donald Cook’s “radar, combat control circuits, and data transmission system – in short, they turned off the entire Aegis just like we turn off a television by pressing the button on the control panel. After this, the Su-24 simulated a missile launch at the blind and deaf ship. Later, it happened once again, and again – a total of 12 times.”
  • While the US Army denied the incident as Russian propaganda, the fact is that USS Donald Cook never approached Russian Black Sea waters again. Nor did NATO ships that replaced it in the Black Sea. A report in 2015 by the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office assessed that Russia, “does indeed possess a growing EW capability, and the political and military leadership understand the importance…Their growing ability to blind or disrupt digital communications might help level the playing field when fighting against a superior conventional foe.” Now new Russian Khibini Electronic Counter Measure systems are being installed on the wingtips of Russia’s SUKHOI SU-34 fighter-bombers going after ISIS in Syria.
  • A second highly-advanced new Russian military technology that’s raising more than eyebrows in US Defense Secretary ‘Ash’ Carter’s Pentagon is Russia’s new Bumblebee which Russia’s military classifies as a flamethrower. In reality it is a highly advanced thermobaric weapon which launches a warhead that uses a combination of an explosive charge and highly combustible fuel. When the rocket reaches the target, the fuel is dispersed in a cloud that is then detonated by the explosive charge. US Military experts recently asked by the US scientific and engineering magazine Popular Mechanics to evaluate the Bumblebee stated that, “the resulting explosion is devastating, radiating a shockwave and fireball up to six or seven meters in diameter.” The US experts noted that the Bumblebee is “especially useful against troops in bunkers, trenches, and even armored vehicles, as the dispersing gas can enter small spaces and allow the fireball to expand inside. Thermobarics are particularly devastating to buildings — a thermobaric round entering a structure can literally blow up the building from within with overpressure.”
  • We don’t go into yet another new highly secret Russian military technology recently subject of a Russian TV report beyond a brief mention, as little is known. It is indicative of what is being developed as Russia prepares for the unthinkable from Washington. The “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” is a new Russian nuclear submarine weapons system designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions. Reportedly the Status-6 will cause what the Russian military terms, “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. They state that its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” (say, New York or Boston or Washington?) would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity for a long time.” Status-6 reportedly is a massive torpedo, designated as a “self-propelled underwater vehicle.” It has a range of up to 10 thousand kilometers and can operate at a depth of up to 1,000 meters. At a November 10 meeting with the Russian military chiefs, Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would counter NATO’s US-led missile shield program through “new strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses.” Presumably he was referring to Status-6.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    Not to mentiont that Russia has deployed its S-400 surface to air defense system to Syria, which is 2 generations later than the currently deployed U.S. Patriot systems. The S-400 can knock down aircraft or missiles flying up to 90,000 feet and travels at over 17,000 mph, very near Earth escape velocity. It has a lateral range of nearly 300 miles.
Paul Merrell

Court asked to kill off NSA's 'zombie dragnet' of Americans' bulk phone data | US news ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-dragnet-bulk-phone-data-court

surveillance state NSA bulk bulk-collection telephone-metadata litigation 2nd-Circuit

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The leading civil liberties group in the United States has requested a federal court to stop the National Security Agency from collecting Americans’ phone data in bulk through the end of the year.
  • While the surveillance dragnet was phased out by Congress and Barack Obama last month, an American Civil Liberties Union suit seeks to end a twilight, zombie period of the same US phone records collection, slated under the new law to last six months. “Today the government is continuing – after a brief suspension – to collect Americans’ call records in bulk on the purported authority of precisely the same statutory language this court has already concluded does not permit it,” the ACLU writes in a motion filed on Tuesday before the second circuit court of appeals.
  • The venue is significant. On 7 May, as Congress debated ending the domestic phone-records collection, the second circuit ruled the collection was illegal. Yet it did not order Obama’s administration to cease the bulk collection, writing that a preferable option would be to stay out of the unfolding legislative battle over the future scope of US surveillance. That debate ended on 2 June with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which reinstated expired provisions of the Patriot Act that the government had since 2006 relied upon – erroneously, in the second circuit’s view – for the bulk collection. Yet it ended the NSA’s bulk US phone records collection and created a new mechanism for the NSA to gather “call data records” from telecoms pursuant to a court order.
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  • Within hours of signing the bill, Obama requested that the secret surveillance panel known as the Fisa court reinstate the dragnet, relying on a provision permitting a six-month “transition” period. Judge Michael Mosman granted the request on 29 June. The ACLU, which was the plaintiff in the case the second circuit decided, has indicated since the Fisa court began considering resumption of the dragnet that it would seek an injunction. Its major contention in support of the requested injunction is that despite the Freedom Act’s provision for a transition period, the underlying law authorizing the bulk surveillance remains the same Patriot Act provisions that the second circuit held do not justify the NSA phone-records collection. “There is no sound reason to accord this language a different meaning now than the court accorded it in May. [The Patriot Act] did not authorize bulk collection in May, and it does not authorize it now,” reads the ACLU brief.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Obama Evader - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...Obama-Evader

Obama Globalist Daily-Bell Power-Elites CFR Amero Continental-Union Patriot-Act NDAA

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Nov 12
     
    "Obama - Globalist Evader Sunday, November 11, 2012 - by Staff Report Obama answers questions about the CFR and Patriot Act ... In this 2008 campaign / townhall video, Obama says that he sees no evidence towards a continental government, yet in other videos he has stated ... "world order that I think we'd all like to see." - YouTube Dominant Social Theme: All of this conspiracy talk is paranoid and unproductive. Free-Market Analysis: Thank goodness for the Internet. Even if you are an Obama supporter, this 2008 video should shock you. In it, Obama sidesteps questions about his membership in the elitist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and professes to be profoundly troubled by then-President George W. Bush's executive orders reducing US constitutional freedoms. Today, we know that Obama did nothing to defend US civil liberties once he was put in office. Not only did he not reduce George Bush's most invasive executive orders, he added to them. Notably, Obama created a list of US citizens that his administration believes pose an imminent threat to the nation and should be assassinated via drone targeting if possible. It has been pointed out that killing citizens without due process is profoundly authoritarian and violates every aspect of constitutional rights. Dangerous or not, those who the administration believes are an "imminent threat" still are entitled to due process. For some reason, Obama and those who surround him believe they are not. What's also troubling, from our point of view, is the reverence with which the audience treats Barack Obama, thanking him for not taking "lobbyist" funds (whatever that means) and applauding enthusiastically as he evades one question after another. Listen to Obama dodge the real issue - that he is the globalists' point man in the US, the individual the power elite plans to elevate still higher. There is a reason Obama will not reveal his background; it likely shows quite clearly who he really works for ... and wh
Paul Merrell

ECHELON: NSA's Global Electronic Interception - 0 views

web.archive.org/...echelon-dc.htm

surveillance state NSA ECHELON Five-Eyes Duncan-Campbell NSA-history

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • 12 August 1988  Cover, pages 10-12   Somebody's  listening  . . . and they don't give a damn about personal privacy or commercial confidence. Project 415 is a top-secret new global surveillance system. It can tap into a billion calls a year in the UK alone. Inside Duncan Campbell on how spying entered the 21st century . . .  They've got it taped In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time   American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance system. According to information given recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies to monitor and analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for the moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). But the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be closely involved with the new network, including those from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of China. New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built around the world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning international telecommunications traffic.
  • Both the new and existing surveillance systems are highly computerised. They rely on near total interception of international commercial and satellite communications in order to locate the telephone or other messages of target individuals. Last month, a US newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, revealed that the system had been used to target the telephone calls of a US Senator, Strom Thurmond. The fact that Thurmond, a southern Republican and usually a staunch supporter of the Reagan administration, is said to have been a target has raised fears that the NSA has restored domestic, electronic, surveillance programmes. These were originally exposed and criticised during the Watergate investigations, and their closure ordered by President Carter. After talking to the NSA, Thurmond later told the Plain Dealer that he did not believe the allegation. But Thurmond, a right-wing Republican, may have been unwilling to rock the boat. Staff members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said that staff were "digging into it" despite the "stratospheric security classification" of all the systems involved. The Congressional officials were first told of the Thurmond interception by a former employee of the Lockheed Space and Missiles Corporation, Margaret Newsham, who now lives in Sunnyvale, California. Newsham had originally given separate testimony and filed a lawsuit concerning corruption and mis-spending on other US government "black" projects. She has worked in the US and Britain for two corporations which manufacture signal intelligence computers, satellites and interception equipment for NSA, Ford Aerospace and Lockheed. Citing a special Executive Order signed by President Reagan. she told me last month that she could not and would not discuss classified information with journalists. But according to Washington sources (and the report in the Plain Dealer, she informed a US Congressman that the Thurmond interception took place at Menwith Hill, and that she p
  • A secret listening agreement, called UKUSA (UK-USA), assigns parts of the globe to each participating agency. GCHQ at Cheltenham is the co-ordinating centre for Europe, Africa and the Soviet Union (west of the Ural Mountains). The NSA covers the rest of the Soviet Union and most of the Americas. Australia--where another station in the NSA listening network is located in the outback--co-ordinates the electronic monitoring of the South Pacific, and South East Asia.
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  • During the Watergate affair. it was revealed that NSA, in collaboration with GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr Benjamin Spock. Another target was former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. Then in the late 1970s, it was revealed that President Carter had ordered NSA to stop obtaining "back door" intelligence about US political figures through swapping intelligence data with GCHQ Cheltenham.
  • ince then, investigators have subpoenaed other witnesses and asked them to provide the complete plans and manuals of the ECHELON system and related projects. The plans and blueprints are said to show that targeting of US political figures would not occur by accident. but was designed into the system from the start. While working at Menwith Hill, Newsham is reported to have said that she was able to listen through earphones to telephone calls being monitored at the base. Other conversations that she heard were in Russian. After leaving Menwith Hill, she continued to have access to full details of Menwith Hill operations from a position as software manager for more than a dozen VAX computers at Menwith which operate the ECHELON system. Newsham refused last month to discuss classified details of her career, except with cleared Congressional officials. But it has been publicly acknowledged that she worked on a large range of so-called "black" US intelligence programmes, whose funds are concealed inside the costs of other defence projects. She was fired from Lockheed four years ago after complaining about the corruption, and sexual harassment.
  • he largest overseas station in the Project P415 network is the US satellite and communications base at Menwith Hill. near Harrogate in Yorkshire. It is run undercover by the NSA and taps into all Britain's main national and international communications networks (New Statesman, 7 August 1980). Although high technology stations such as Menwith Hill are primarily intended to monitor international communications, according to US experts their capability can be, and has been, turned inwards on domestic traffic. Menwith Hill, in particular, has been accused by a former employee of gross corruption and the monitoring of domestic calls. The vast international global eavesdropping network has existed since shortly after the second world war, when the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand signed a secret agreement on signals intelligence, or "sigint". It was anticipated, correctly, that electronic monitoring of communications signals would continue to be the largest and most important form of post-war secret intelligence, as it had been through the war. Although it is impossible for analysts to listen to all but a small fraction of the billions of telephone calls, and other signals which might contain "significant" information, a network of monitoring stations in Britain and elsewhere is able to tap all international and some domestic communications circuits, and sift out messages which sound interesting. Computers automatically analyse every telex message or data signal, and can also identify calls to, say, a target telephone number in London, no matter from which country they originate.
  • If Margaret Newsham's testimony is confirmed by the ongoing Congressional investigation, then the NSA has been behaving illegally under US law--unless it can prove either that Thurmond's call was intercepted completely accidentally, or that the highly patriotic Senator is actually a foreign spy or terrorist. Moreover NSA's international phone tapping operations from Menwith Hill and at Morwenstow, Cornwall, can only be legal in Britain if special warrants have been issued by the Secretary of State to specify that American intelligence agents are persons to whom information from intercepts must or should be given. This can not be established, since the government has always refused to publish any details of the targets or recipients of specific interception warrants.
  • Both British and American domestic communications are also being targeted and intercepted by the ECHELON network, the US investigators have been told. The agencies are alleged to have collaborated not only on targeting and interception, but also on the monitoring of domestic UK communications. Special teams from GCHQ Cheltenham have been flown in secretly in the last few years to a computer centre in Silicon Valley near San Francisco for training on the special computer systems that carry out both domestic and international interception.
  • The centre near San Francisco has also been used to train staff from the "Technical Department" of the People's Liberation Army General Staff, which is the Chinese version of GCHQ. The Department operates two ultra-secret joint US-Chinese listening stations in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, close to the Soviet Siberian border. Allegedly, such surveillance systems are only used to target Soviet or Warsaw Pact communications signals, and those suspected of involvement in espionage and terrorism. But those involved in ECHELON have stressed to Congress that there are no formal controls over who may be targeted. And I have been told that junior intelligence staff can feed target names into the system at all levels, without any check on their authority to do so. Witnesses giving evidence to the Congressional inquiry have discussed whether the Democratic presidential contender Jesse Jackson was targeted; one source implied that he had been. Even test engineers from manufacturing companies are able to listen in on private citizens' communications, the inquiry was told. But because of the special Executive Order signed by President Reagan, US intelligence operatives who know about such politically sensitive operations face jail sentences if they speak out--despite the constitutional American protection of freedom of speech and of the press. And in Britain, as we know, the government is in the process of tightening the Official Secrets Act to make the publication of any information from intelligence officials automatically a crime, even if the information had already been published, or had appeared overseas first.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 14
     
    From the original series of ariticles * in 1988 * that first brought the Five Eyes' nation's ECHELON surveillance project to light. But note the paragarph about the disclosure during the Watergate scandal (early 1970s) about domestic digital surveillance of antiwar leaders and Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver.    
Paul Merrell

Why Today's Landmark Court Victory Against Mass Surveillance Matters | American Civil L... - 0 views

www.aclu.org/...inst-mass-surveillance-matters

surveillance state NSA litigation Patriot-Act ACLU 2nd-Circuit

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 May 15 - No Cached
  • In a landmark victory for privacy, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously today that the mass phone-records program exposed two years ago by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is illegal because it goes far beyond what Congress ever intended to permit when it passed Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The ruling in ACLU v. Clapper is enormously significant, and not only because the program in question — the first to be revealed by Edward Snowden — is at the heart of a legislative reform effort playing out right now, or because it sparked the most significant debate about government surveillance in decades. The decision could also affect many other laws the government has stretched to the breaking point in order to justify dragnet collection of Americans’ sensitive information. Under the program, revealed in the Guardian on June 5, 2013, telecommunications companies hand over to the NSA, on a daily basis, records relating to the calls of all of their customers. Those records include information about who called whom, when, and for how long. The ACLU sued the NSA over the program just days after it was revealed, and we took the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals after it was dismissed by a district court.
  • A few points on what makes the decision so important. 1. It recognizes that Section 215 of the Patriot Act does not authorize the government to collect information on such a massive scale.
  • 2. The decision’s significance extends far beyond the phone records program alone. It implicates other mass spying programs that we have learned about in the past two years and — almost certainly ­— others that the government continues to conceal from the public. For example, we know that the Drug Enforcement Administration, for decades, employed a similar definition of “relevance” to amass logs of every call made from the United States to as many as 116 different countries. The same theory was also used to justify the collection of email metadata. Both those programs have been discontinued, but the legal reasoning hasn’t, and it could very well be the basis for programs the government has never acknowledged to the public, including the CIA’s bulk collection of Americans’ financial records.
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  • 4. The importance of adversarial review. The court recognized that public, adversarial litigation concerning the lawfulness of this spying program was vitally important to its decision — and it drew a direct contrast to the secret, one-sided proceedings that occur in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  • 3. Metadata is incredibly sensitive and revealing. The government has long argued that the phone records program doesn’t reveal the contents of calls, and as such, it is not an invasion of privacy. But metadata, especially in aggregate, can be just as revealing as content, painting a detailed picture of a person’s life. 
  • 5. The congressional reforms under consideration just don’t cut it. Ahead of Section 215’s sunset on June 1, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to push through a straight reauthorization of the provision, extending its life by another five years. After today’s decision came down, he took to the floor to defend the program — a position altogether at odds with the appeals court decision, with the conclusions of multiple executive-branch review groups who found the program hasn’t been effective in stopping terrorism, and with the clear consensus that supports far-reaching surveillance reform. Another bill in play (which the ACLU neither supports nor opposes), the USA Freedom Act of 2015, doesn’t go nearly far enough, most notably in ensuring that the government cannot engage in broad collection of innocent Americans’ private information.
Gary Edwards

Obama's Fairness Doctrine by Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning - 0 views

dailyreckoning.com/obamas-fairness-doctrine

Bill-Bonner daily-reckoning Obama-Fairness-Doctrine

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Jan 12
     
    Excellent commentary.  Nails it, big time.  But for sure this is not good news for Americans concerned about the future of Liberty and the US Constitution.  For patriots this is A Must Read! excerpt: We had been invited to watch the State of the Union address with a group of dinosaurs…a group approaching extinction with dignity and intelligence. You might call them 'thinking conservatives,' 'paleo-conservatives' or 'constitutionalists.' Whatever they were, they were not like the scoundrels currently running for the Republican nomination or the yahoos who vote for them. They were more like a renegade, retrograde group…like a secret society of White Russian intellectuals after the Revolution of 1917. They cling to hope…that the nation will come to its senses…that the constitution will again be honored…and that the old republic, established by the founding fathers, will be resurrected… …they will hang on to their hope…until they are hanged by a rope. "What do you mean?" "I mean…it is on the road to hell… This isn't just about losing money. Heck, the US is going broke. But you can go broke with honor. Good people go broke. Smart people go broke. Dumb people go broke. You can't go to hell with honor. Bad people go to hell."
Paul Merrell

NSA head: We need bulk collection | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...a-head-we-need-bulk-collection

surveillance state NSA Rogers Congress bulk-collection

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The head of the National Security Agency on Thursday told Senate lawmakers that preventing his agency from collecting Americans’ information in bulk would make it harder to do its job.Under questioning before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Adm. Michael Rogers agreed that ending bulk collection would “significantly reduce [his] operational capabilities.”ADVERTISEMENT“Right now, bulk collection gives us the ability ... to generate insights as to what’s going on,” Rogers told the committee.The NSA head also referenced a January report from the National Academy of Sciences that concluded there is “no software technique that will fully substitute for bulk collection” because of the ability to search through the storehouse of old information. “That independent, impartial, scientifically-founded body came back and said no, under the current structure there is no real replacement,” Rogers said.Rogers was questioned on Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Intelligence Committee who has become its most vocal privacy hawk.
  • In response to the NSA head’s comments, Wyden pointed to a 2013 White House review group, which found that one controversial NSA bulk collection program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that the information obtained by the NSA “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using” other means.The debate follows on a congressional clash earlier this year over the NSA’s bulk collection of records about the phone calls of millions of Americans. The records contained information about whom people called and when but not what they talked about.
  • After a brief lapsing of some portions of the Patriot Act, Congress eventually reined in the NSA by forcing it to go through the courts to search private phone companies’ records for a narrower set of records. Many privacy advocates treated the new law, called the USA Freedom Act, as a significant victory, through national security hawks worried that it would make it harder for the NSA to track terrorists.Under the new system — which has not gone into effect yet — the amount of time it takes to obtain those records “is probably going to be longer I suspect,” Rogers said.Though the phone records database has been the NSA’s most prominent bulk collection program, it is not the only one. The agency’s collection of vast amounts of Internet data has alarmed many privacy advocates and is the target of a current lawsuit from Wikipedia and the American Civil Liberties Union. 
Paul Merrell

War escalating in the Mideast - 0 views

The war in Syria is escalating rapidly; is it too late to prevent that war from engulfing the Mideast and possibly beyond? I'm posting snapshots of multiple reports in a single post today because o...

war & peace Syria Israel Turkey Saudis Lebanon Russia Hisbollah Iraq

started by Paul Merrell on 22 May 13 no follow-up yet
Paul Merrell

ACLU Demands Secret Court Hand Over Crucial Rulings On Surveillance Law - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...221667

surveillance state FISA-Court opinions disclosure litigation ACLU

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a motion to reveal the secret court opinions with “novel or significant interpretations” of surveillance law, in a renewed push for government transparency. The motion, filed Wednesday by the ACLU and Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, asks the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which rules on intelligence gathering activities in secret, to release 23 classified decisions it made between 9/11 and the passage of the USA Freedom Act in June 2015. As ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Patrick Toomey explains, the opinions are part of a “much larger collection of hidden rulings on all sorts of government surveillance activities that affect the privacy rights of Americans.” Among them is the court order that the government used to direct Yahoo to secretly scanits users’ emails for “a specific set of characters.” Toomey writes: These court rulings are essential for the public to understand how federal laws are being construed and implemented. They also show how constitutional protections for personal privacy and expressive activities are being enforced by the courts. In other words, access to these opinions is necessary for the public to properly oversee their government.
  • Although the USA Freedom Act requires the release of novel FISA court opinions on surveillance law, the government maintains that the rule does not apply retroactively—thereby protecting the panel from publishing many of its post-9/11 opinions, which helped create an “unprecedented buildup” of secret surveillance laws. Even after National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the scope of mass surveillance in 2013, sparking widespread outcry, dozens of rulings on spying operations remain hidden from the public eye, which stymies efforts to keep the government accountable, civil liberties advocates say. “These rulings are necessary to inform the public about the scope of the government’s surveillance powers today,” the ACLU’s motion states.
  • Toomey writes that the rulings helped influence a number of novel spying activities, including: The government’s use of malware, which it calls “Network Investigative Techniques” The government’s efforts to compel technology companies to weaken or circumvent their own encryption protocols The government’s efforts to compel technology companies to disclose their source code so that it can identify vulnerabilities The government’s use of “cybersignatures” to search through internet communications for evidence of computer intrusions The government’s use of stingray cell-phone tracking devices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) The government’s warrantless surveillance of Americans under FISA Section 702—a controversial authority scheduled to expire in December 2017 The bulk collection of financial records by the CIA and FBI under Section 215 of the Patriot Act Without these rulings being made public, “it simply isn’t possible to understand the government’s claimed authority to conduct surveillance,” Toomey writes. As he told The Intercept on Wednesday, “The people of this country can’t hold the government accountable for its surveillance activities unless they know what our laws allow. These secret court opinions define the limits of the government’s spying powers. Their disclosure is essential for meaningful public oversight in our democracy.”
Paul Merrell

The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...issing-evidence-of-russia-gate

surveillance state NSA Binney Russia-Gate

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support the dangerous claims about Russian ‘hacking” of Democratic emails especially when some  veteran U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were guilty. One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: “I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules.”
  • I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with spying and America’s expanding national security state.
  • Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about bugging.  Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election?  Can Trump thank Russia for the result? Binney:  We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July.  First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know.  Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything.    Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T facility in San Francisco. This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens.  If they wanted only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they surface on the coast of the United States.  But they are not there, they are distributed among the US population. Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA would absolutely know about it. Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically, in Russia or anywhere else.  If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai.  The NSA had these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.
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  • The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a charade.  It was a download and not a transfer across the Web.  The Web won’t manage such a high speed.  It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed.  You would have to have high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us.  There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here. Bernstein: So was this a leak by somebody at Democratic headquarters? Binney: We don’t know that for sure, either.  All we know was that it was a local download.  We can likely attribute it to a USB device that was physically passed along.
  • Right now, our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways.  Mueller did it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution.
  • Bernstein:  There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate investigation.  It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because the Russians undermined the election. Binney: I have seen no evidence at all from anybody, including the intelligence community.  If you look at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, they state on the first page that “We have high confidence that the Russians did this.”  But when you get toward the end of the report, they basically confess that “our judgment does not imply that we have evidence to back it up.” Bernstein:  It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election.  You’re saying it was actually selected individuals from just three agencies.  Is there anything to the revelations that FBI agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president? Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a frame-up.  It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself internally. Bernstein:  I take it you are not a big supporter of Trump. Binney:  Well, I voted for him.  I couldn’t vote for a warmonger like Clinton.  She wanted to see our planes shooting down Russian planes in Syria.  She advocated for destabilizing Libya, for getting rid of Assad in Syria, she was a strong backer of the war in Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Third group wants in on Larry Klayman NSA case - POLITICO.com - 0 views

www.politico.com/...n-klayman-nsa-case-196194.html

surveillance-state NSA Klayman 215-metadata civil-liberties

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • A third civil liberties organization is asking a federal appeals court for time to defend the only federal court ruling challenging the legality of the National Security Agency's bulk collection of information on U.S. telephone calls. The Center for National Security Studies, a D.C.-based group which advocates for individual liberties and government transparency, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Friday to allow the group time to argue that U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon's ruling that the counterterrorism program appeared to be illegal was correct, albeit on different grounds than Leon identified. Leon found the program likely unconstitutional as a violation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. However, CNSS and other advocates have argued that Leon never should have reached the constitutional issues because the NSA's bulk telephone metadata program was never authorized by Congress.
  • Government lawyers and numerous judges from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have concluded that the Section 215 of the Patriot Act creates a legal basis for the program, but that depends on the debatable notion that all U.S. telephone data are "relevant" to future terrorism investigations. Critics of that rationale say it would allow the government to collect virtually any type of data because it could become useful in the future. CNSS's motion filed Friday asks for 10 minutes of argument time on Nov. 4, when the D.C. Circuit takes up the government's appeal of Leon's ruling as well as several related appeals. The motion (posted here) says both the Justice Department and the conservative legal activist who brought the underlying lawsuits, Larry Klayman, are opposing the request for extra time. Last week, two other organizations?—the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation—asked together to join in the arguments on Klayman's case. The government and Klayman did not oppose that motion.
  • Some opponents of the NSA surveillance program are clearly nervous about leaving the arguments against the program solely to Klayman, a longtime conservative activist known as a rhetorical bombthrower.  In an online commentary last week, Klayman called for the U.S. military to use tactical nuclear weapons against the Islamic State militant group. However, he predicted that President Barack Obama will not do so because he "simply has no stomach for killing his creed en masse." The D.C. Circuit has not yet ruled on either of the motions to join in next month's arguments.
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