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Paul Merrell

In Hearing on Internet Surveillance, Nobody Knows How Many Americans Impacted in Data Collection | Electronic Frontier Foundation - 0 views

www.eff.org/...w-many-americans-impacted-data

surveillance state NSA 702 FISA legislation backdoor-serches stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • The Senate Judiciary Committee held an open hearing today on the FISA Amendments Act, the law that ostensibly authorizes the digital surveillance of hundreds of millions of people both in the United States and around the world. Section 702 of the law, scheduled to expire next year, is designed to allow U.S. intelligence services to collect signals intelligence on foreign targets related to our national security interests. However—thanks to the leaks of many whistleblowers including Edward Snowden, the work of investigative journalists, and statements by public officials—we now know that the FISA Amendments Act has been used to sweep up data on hundreds of millions of people who have no connection to a terrorist investigation, including countless Americans. What do we mean by “countless”? As became increasingly clear in the hearing today, the exact number of Americans impacted by this surveillance is unknown. Senator Franken asked the panel of witnesses, “Is it possible for the government to provide an exact count of how many United States persons have been swept up in Section 702 surveillance? And if not the exact count, then what about an estimate?”
  • Elizabeth Goitein, the Brennan Center director whose articulate and thought-provoking testimony was the highlight of the hearing, noted that at this time an exact number would be difficult to provide. However, she asserted that an estimate should be possible for most if not all of the government’s surveillance programs. None of the other panel participants—which included David Medine and Rachel Brand of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board as well as Matthew Olsen of IronNet Cybersecurity and attorney Kenneth Wainstein—offered an estimate. Today’s hearing reaffirmed that it is not only the American people who are left in the dark about how many people or accounts are impacted by the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of the Internet. Even vital oversight committees in Congress like the Senate Judiciary Committee are left to speculate about just how far-reaching this surveillance is. It's part of the reason why we urged the House Judiciary Committee to demand that the Intelligence Community provide the public with a number. 
  • The lack of information makes rigorous oversight of the programs all but impossible. As Senator Franken put it in the hearing today, “When the public lacks even a rough sense of the scope of the government’s surveillance program, they have no way of knowing if the government is striking the right balance, whether we are safeguarding our national security without trampling on our citizens’ fundamental privacy rights. But the public can’t know if we succeed in striking that balance if they don’t even have the most basic information about our major surveillance programs."  Senator Patrick Leahy also questioned the panel about the “minimization procedures” associated with this type of surveillance, the privacy safeguard that is intended to ensure that irrelevant data and data on American citizens is swiftly deleted. Senator Leahy asked the panel: “Do you believe the current minimization procedures ensure that data about innocent Americans is deleted? Is that enough?”  David Medine, who recently announced his pending retirement from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, answered unequivocally:
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Senator Leahy, they don’t. The minimization procedures call for the deletion of innocent Americans’ information upon discovery to determine whether it has any foreign intelligence value. But what the board’s report found is that in fact information is never deleted. It sits in the databases for 5 years, or sometimes longer. And so the minimization doesn’t really address the privacy concerns of incidentally collected communications—again, where there’s been no warrant at all in the process… In the United States, we simply can’t read people’s emails and listen to their phone calls without court approval, and the same should be true when the government shifts its attention to Americans under this program. One of the most startling exchanges from the hearing today came toward the end of the session, when Senator Dianne Feinstein—who also sits on the Intelligence Committee—seemed taken aback by Ms. Goitein’s mention of “backdoor searches.” 
  • Feinstein: Wow, wow. What do you call it? What’s a backdoor search? Goitein: Backdoor search is when the FBI or any other agency targets a U.S. person for a search of data that was collected under Section 702, which is supposed to be targeted against foreigners overseas. Feinstein: Regardless of the minimization that was properly carried out. Goitein: Well the data is searched in its unminimized form. So the FBI gets raw data, the NSA, the CIA get raw data. And they search that raw data using U.S. person identifiers. That’s what I’m referring to as backdoor searches. It’s deeply concerning that any member of Congress, much less a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, might not be aware of the problem surrounding backdoor searches. In April 2014, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged the searches of this data, which Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall termed “the ‘back-door search’ loophole in section 702.” The public was so incensed that the House of Representatives passed an amendment to that year's defense appropriations bill effectively banning the warrantless backdoor searches. Nonetheless, in the hearing today it seemed like Senator Feinstein might not recognize or appreciate the serious implications of allowing U.S. law enforcement agencies to query the raw data collected through these Internet surveillance programs. Hopefully today’s testimony helped convince the Senator that there is more to this topic than what she’s hearing in jargon-filled classified security briefings.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 May 16
     
    The 4th Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and *particularly describing the place to be searched, and the* persons or *things to be seized."* So much for the particularized description of the place to be searched and the thngs to be seized.  Fah! Who needs a Constitution, anyway .... 
Gary Edwards

Political Editors: Dick Morris Corrects the Record on Hillary Clinton - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44049

Hillary Political-Corruption

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Then Bill discusses Hillary’s legal career at the Rose Law firm. He doesn’t mention that she made partner when he was elected governor and was only hired when he got elected as attorney general. "He makes as if it was a public service job — it wasn’t. Her main job was to get state business, and she got tens-of-millions of dollars of state business, then hid her participation and the fees by taking an extra share of non-state business to compensate for the fees on state business that she brought in. Her other job was to call the state banking commissioner any time one of her banks got into trouble to get them off.
  • "Bill speaks at length how Hillary was a mother, juggling career and family, taking Chelsea to soccer games and stuff — that’s non-sense. Hillary was a mother but Chelsea in the Arkansas governor’s mansion had a staff of nannies and agents to drive her around and people to be with her, and Hillary didn’t have to bother with any of that. All of that was paid for by the state. "He says she became the warrior in chief over the family finances and that was true, and the result is she learned how to steal. "She accepted a $100,000 bribe from the poultry industry in return for Bill going easy on regulating them, despite new standards. Jim Blair, the poultry lobbyist, gave her $1,000 to invest in the Futures Market and lined up seven to eight other investors and their winnings were all deposited into Hillary’s account. She made $100,000 in a year and she was out. That essentially was a bribe.
  • ”[She did] a phony real-estate deal for Jim McDougal and the Madison Bank to deceive the federal regulators by pretending someone else was buying the property. She was called before a grand jury in 1995 about that but, conveniently, the billing records were lost, couldn’t be found and there wasn’t proof that she worked on it.
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  • “Bill talks about her work on the health care task force but doesn’t say the reason it didn’t pass was the task force was discredited because the meetings were all held in secret. A federal judge forced them open and fined the task force several hundred thousand dollars because of their secrecy. "He says that after the health care bill failed in 1994, Hillary went to work on adopting each piece of it piecemeal — mainly health insurance for children. "That is completely the opposite of the truth. The fact is when that bill failed, I called Hillary and I suggested that she support a proposal by Republican Bob Dole that we cover children, and she said, ‘We can’t just cover one part of this. You have to change everything or change nothing.’ Then in 1997 when I repeated that advice to Bill Clinton, we worked together to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program. I found a lot of the money for that in the tobacco settlement that my friend Dick Scruggs was negotiating.
  • "Then Bill extols her record in the U.S. Senate. In fact, she did practically nothing. There were seven or eight bills that she introduced that passed; almost all of were symbolic — renaming a courthouse, congratulating a high school team on winning the championship. There was only one vaguely substantive bill, and that had a lot of co-sponsors of whom Hillary was just one.
  • "Then he goes to her record in the State Department and manages to tell that story without mentioning the word Benghazi, without mentioning her secret emails, without mentioning he was getting tens of millions — $220 million in speaking fees in return for favorable actions by the State Department.
  • "Also totally lacking in the speech was anything about the war on terror — terror is a word you don’t hear at the Democratic Convention. "Bill says that Hillary passed tough sanctions on Iran for their nuclear program. The opposite is true. "Every time a tough sanction bill was introduced by Senators Menendez or Kirk, Hillary would send Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman to Capital Hill to testify against it and urge it not to pass, and it was over Hillary’s objections that those sanctions were put into place.
  • ”[Liberal columnist] Maureen Dowd called the speech by Bill Clinton “air brushed.” “It was a hell of a lot more than that — it was fiction. (Also see Morris’s comments after Clinton’s DNC acceptance speech. "It’s strategy and message will be interdicted by reality at every turn. … She basically has no message. … Her entire campaign is, ‘I’m a woman and I am running against Donald Trump. … She bean her speech by saying let’s compromise and work together. Is there any woman in the world less likely to compromise?”)
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16
     
    "Dick Morris is a nationally recognized political campaign adviser, analyst and author. He was the senior political adviser to Bill Clinton before and after his occupation of the White House. He was campaign manager of Clinton's 1996 re-election, and the architect of his successful "triangulation" rhetorical ruse. Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos said of Morris, "No single person had more power over [Bill Clinton]." This week, in a message entitled "What Bill Left Out, Morris corrected the record regarding Clinton's glowing remarks about Hillary Clinton, her personal attributes and professional achievements. Morris's insights into the Clintons are priceless. What follows is a transcript of Morris's comments: "Bill Clinton talked at length about Hillary's idealistic work in college and law school, but he omits that she was defending the Black Panthers who killed security guards; they were on trial in New Haven. She monitored the trial while she was in law school to find evidence that could be grounds for reversal in the event they were convicted. "That summer she went to work for the True-Haft (SP) law firm in CA, headed by True Haft who is the head of the CA Communist Party and that's when she got involved with Saul Alinsky, who became something of a mentor for the rest of her life. "Then Bill says that she went off to Massachusetts and he went to Arkansas, and eventually Hillary followed her heart to join him in Arkansas. He omits that she went to work for the Watergate Committee and was fired from that job for taking home evidence and hiding documents that they needed in the impeachment inquiry. Then she took the DC Bar exam and flunked it, she went to Arkansas because that is the only bar exam she could pass. "He talked about how in the 1970's she took all kinds of pro-bono cases to defend women and children. In her memoirs, she cites one which was a custody case and that's it. In fact, in 1975 she represen
Gary Edwards

Paul Albaugh: Death and Hillary Clinton - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44198

Hillary

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Did Clinton’s emails seal this man’s fate? As National Review’s Jim Geraghty notes, “[I]t’s unnerving to see she was discussing such material on an insecure system. We don’t know for certain that the Iranians had successfully hacked into Clinton’s server — as FBI Director Comey said, hackers are good at covering their tracks — but it seems foolish to assume Tehran could not. Friendly references to Amiri in private email by Hillary and her staff would destroy his claims to his captors that he wasn’t voluntarily helping American intelligence.” More likely than Iran doing the hacking is that Russia is the culprit. The two nations are thick as thieves when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, and it’s extremely likely that Moscow has some valuable dirt on Clinton, some of which was perhaps shared with the mullahs.
  • So what of Clinton’s emails? In 2010, Jake Sullivan sent two emails about a week apart to Hillary’s private server. Neither of the emails mentioned Amiri by name, but the first email notes that the videos were a “psychological” issue and that “our friend has to be given a way out.” The second email, sent two days before CNN reported a $5 million payout, warned of “problematic news stories” to come as a cover for Amiri’s return to Iran. So while the emails didn’t mention Amiri by name, Iranian intelligence could have no doubt figured out that the person she was referring to in these emails was indeed Amiri. This is what FBI Director James Comey meant when he called Hillary “extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
  • There are other untimely, mysterious deaths in the last six weeks as well — all with ties to the Clintons. Last week, there were two deaths within two days. The first was a prominent Clinton critic, researcher and reporter for the American Free Press named Victor Thorn. He was found in his home, dead of a gunshot wound to the head, in what has been reported as a suicide. It was his 54th birthday. The second was a Bernie Sanders supporter named Shawn Lucas, who was serving the Democrat National Committee and former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz with a class action lawsuit for alleged fraud and rigging the primary election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He was found dead on Aug. 2, on the floor of his bathroom. There are several others who have died strange and untimely deaths with unsatisfactory explanation. But the common denominator is that they were somehow tied to or knew something about the Clintons and had either reported or were about to blow the whistle on their wrongdoings.
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  • It feels like the 1990s all over again, when Vince Foster and numerous others met an untimely and suspicious demise. This is the Hillary Clinton that the Leftmedia doesn’t want you to know about. The same woman who recently said that she may have “short circuited” her recent email explanation. Speaking of deaths and lies, the parents of two Benghazi victims — Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, and Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods — filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Clinton Monday. The two allege that Clinton’s “reckless handling” of classified information contributed to their sons' deaths. And while the circumstances surrounding the Iranian scientist or the two Americans are mysterious, we know that Clinton is responsible for the deaths of Smith, Woods and two others in Benghazi. And then she lied about it for political gain. Indeed, she lied to the public and then has the audacity to lie and say that she didn’t lie. This woman is filled with corruption and lies yet she is the “most qualified person ever” to run for president? Too few seem to know about her wrongdoings and malicious behavior. Or they don’t care.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16
     
    "For as long as the Clintons have been in the national spotlight, people linked to them have turned up dead. We're sure that's only the stuff of mythology among the "vast right-wing conspiracy," but this week brings news of more of the same. Despite FBI and Leftmedia attempts to keep Americans as uninformed as possible about Hillary Clinton's history of corruption and lies, there is new information about the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist named Shahram Amiri. Normally, the death of a foreigner wouldn't catch the attention of many Americans. But in this case, Amiri was in contact with Clinton via email, and the circumstances and timing of his death are more than suspicious. Who was this man that was just publicly hanged shortly after returning to Iran? Amiri was one of Iran's nuclear scientists, and in 2009 he disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, and he reappeared in several online videos in the United States. The timing of his disappearance was at the height of Western efforts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. In 2010, he returned to Iran, and was greeted with a hero's welcome. Soon after, he disappeared again. This past weekend, he was publicly tried and executed. According to an Iranian judiciary spokesman, Amiri had access to Iran's secret and classified information and was linked to Iran's number one enemy (and financier), America. He was also accused of providing the U.S. with vital and secret information about Iran. So what happened between his 2010 return to Iran and this past weekend? Well, the revelations of Hillary Clinton's email scheme and the release of her emails, which contained several references to Amiri. "
Gary Edwards

Arnold Ahlert: Russia Would Love a Third Obama Term - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/43984

Hillary

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • New York Post columnist John Crudele obliterates the despicable word-parsing. “Clinton was so careless when using her BlackBerry that the Russians stole her password,” he writes. “All Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gang had to do was log into Clinton’s account and read whatever they wanted.” When it comes to the DNC hack, “The Russians did it” is the theme-du-jour. Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook stated Sunday that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” The campaign itself echoed that assertion. “This is further evidence the Russian government is trying to influence the outcome of the election.”
  • The reliably leftist Politico — so far left that reporter Ken Vogel remains employed there despite sending a story to the DNC before he sent it to his own editor — is quite comfortable advancing that agenda, using it as a vehicle to buff up Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. “Former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Clinton say that Putin was personally stung by Clinton’s December 2011 condemnation of Russia’s parliamentary elections, and had his anger communicated directly to President Barack Obama,” Politico reports. “They say Putin and his advisers are also keenly aware that, even as she executed Obama’s ‘reset’ policy with Russia, Clinton took a harder line toward Moscow than others in the administration. And they say Putin sees Clinton as a forceful proponent of ‘regime change’ policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival.” Yet even Politico is forced to admit the payback angle is “speculation,” and that some experts remain “unconvinced that Putin’s government engineered the DNC email hack or that it was meant to influence the election in Trump’s favor as opposed to embarrassing DNC officials for any number of reasons.”
  • Americans would also be wise to remain highly skeptical of this claim for any number of reasons. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asserts there is “there is no proof whatsoever” Russia is behind the hack and that “this is a diversion that’s being pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.” To be fair, Assange is a Russian sympathizer, and leftists aren’t the only ones attributing the hack to the Russians. The same FBI that gave Clinton a pass will be investigating the DNC hack, and at some point the bureau will reach a conclusion. In the meantime, it might be worth considering that this smacks of a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign similar to the one Clinton and several other Obama administration officials engineered with regard to Benghazi. While Clinton was never held personally or legally accountable for the deaths of four Americans, it is beyond dispute that she lied unabashedly about a video causing the attack, while sending her daughter a damning email at 11:12 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012, admitting the administration knew “the attack had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.” The theme of this coordinated narrative? Clinton campaign chair John Podesta referred Monday night to “a kind of bromance going on” between Putin and Trump. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook echoed that assertion, insisting the email dump comes on the heels of “changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The Leftmedia were equally obliging. “The theory that Moscow orchestrated the leaks to help Trump … is fast gaining currency within the Obama administration because of the timing of the leaks and Trump’s own connections to the Russian government,” reports the Daily Beast. Other Leftmedia examples abound. “Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered,” shouted the New York Times. “Because the leaks are widely suspected of being the result of a Russian hacking operation, they can be used to reinforce the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is rooting for Trump and that Trump, in turn, would be too accommodating to Moscow,” adds the Los Angeles Times. “Why would Russian President Vladimir Putin want to help Donald Trump win the White House?” asks NPR. “If you want to indulge in a bit of conspiracy theory, remember that Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised candidate Trump as recently as June,” states the Burlington Free Press.
  • Ultimately, here’s the question: If the Russians could access the DNC server, they could certainly access Clinton’s unsecure server. And if they could access Clinton’s server, including the 33,000 emails she deleted (maybe some were about how the Clintons profited from selling American uranium to Russia), ask yourself who they’d rather have in the Oval Office: Donald Trump, who professed admiration for Putin but remains a highly unpredictable individual — or Hillary Clinton, who could be subjected to blackmail for as long as eight years? Russia’s clear objective would be to have the weakest American leadership they can get. Blackmail aside, what would be weaker than an extension of Obama’s presidency?
  • Moreover, it is just as likely a number of the so-called “experts” as well as Clinton’s useful idiot media apparatchiks have considered the blackmail possibility and are trying to divert attention from it with a phony Trump connection story. Democrats can theorize, complain and blame to their hearts' content, but none of it obscures the reality that the DNC — and by extension Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party — are a conglomeration of morally bereft, utterly incompetent individuals wholly ill-equipped to handle internal security, much less national security. And they are aided and abetted by an equally corrupt media, more than willing to abide that potentially catastrophic reality as long as it gets a Democrat in the Oval Office. WikiLeaks has promised additional dumps with be forthcoming. How much deeper Democrats sink is anyone’s guess.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Aug 16
     
    "If one lives by the vulnerable server, one dies by the vulnerable server. As the week unfolds, America is witnessing the ultimate unmasking of the Democrat Party, an entity whose self-aggrandizing claims of unity, fairness and intellectual honesty have been revealed as utterly fraudulent by a flood of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks. Moreover, a stunning level of hypocrisy attends the entire exposure, as DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is sent packing for this breach of confidential party information, while Hillary Clinton, whose equally accessible private server contained far more critical top-secret information, officially became the party's standard-bearer. But not to worry, assured FBI Director James Comey, who insisted there was no direct evidence that Clinton's server had been hacked by hostile actors - before adding it was possible that hostile actors "gained access" to Clinton's accounts. Clinton was equally adept at making semantical distinctions. "If you go by the evidence, there is no evidence that the system was breached or hacked successfully," Clinton said. "And I think that what's important here is follow the evidence. And there is no evidence. And that can't be said about a lot of other systems, including government systems.""
Paul Merrell

Mike Morell's Kill-Russians Advice - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...e-morells-kill-russians-advice

Auction 2016 Trump Putin CIA Morrell false-flag Iraq-War WMDs

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Washington’s foreign policy hot shots are flexing their rhetorical, warmongering muscles to impress Hillary Clinton, including ex-CIA acting director Morell who calls for killing Russians and Iranians, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. By Ray McGovern Perhaps former CIA acting director Michael Morell’s shamefully provocative rhetoric toward Russia and Iran will prove too unhinged even for Hillary Clinton. It appears equally likely that it will succeed in earning him a senior job in a possible Clinton administration, so it behooves us to have a closer look at Morell’s record. My initial reaction of disbelief and anger was the same as that of my VIPS colleague, Larry Johnson, and the points Larry made about Morell’s behavior in the Benghazi caper, Iran, Syria, needlessly baiting nuclear-armed Russia, and how to put a “scare” into Bashar al-Assad give ample support to Larry’s characterization of Morell’s comments as “reckless and vapid.” What follows is an attempt to round out the picture on the ambitious 57-year-old Morell.
Paul Merrell

FBI Investigating Clinton Foundation Corruption DoJ Objections - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219426

Auction 2016 Hillary Clinton-Foundation FBI criminal-investigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Having detailed Clinton-appointee Loretta Lynch’s DoJ push-back against the FBI’s Clinton Foundation probe, it seems Director Comey has decided to flex his own muscles and save face as DailyCaller reports, multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official.
  • However, as DailyCaller reports, The FBI is undertaking multiple investigations involving potential corruption changes against The Clinton Foundation… The investigation centers on New York City where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities. Prosecutorial support will come from various U.S. Attorneys Offices — a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations. The New York-based probe is being led by Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.  The official said involvement of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York “would be seen by agents as a positive development as prosecutors there are generally thought to be more aggressive than the career lawyers within the DOJ.” … The former official said the investigation is being coordinated between bureau field offices and FBI managers at headquarters in Washington, D.C. The unusual process would ensure senior FBI supervisors, including Director James Comey, would be kept abreast of case progress and of significant developments. The reliance on U.S. attorneys would be a significant departure from the centralized manner in which the FBI managed the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server and email addresses. That investigation was conducted with agents at FBI headquarters, who coordinated with the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD).
Paul Merrell

Lawmakers warn of 'radical' move by NSA to share information | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...tutional-dangerous-nsa-changes

surveillance state NSA raw-data-sharing

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is expressing alarm at reported changes at the National Security Agency that would allow the intelligence service’s information to be used for policing efforts in the United States.“If media accounts are true, this radical policy shift by the NSA would be unconstitutional, and dangerous,” Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Blake FarentholdBlake FarentholdLawmakers warn of 'radical' move by NSA to share information Overnight Tech: Netflix scores win over Postal Service Lawmakers go green for St. Patrick's Day MORE (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the spy agency this week. “The proposed shift in the relationship between our intelligence agencies and the American people should not be done in secret.ADVERTISEMENT“NSA’s mission has never been, and should never be, domestic policing or domestic spying.”The NSA has yet to publicly announce the change, but The New York Times reported last month that the administration was poised to expand the agency's ability to share information that it picks up about people’s communications with other intelligence agencies.The modification would open the door for the NSA to give the FBI and other federal agencies uncensored communications of foreigners and Americans picked up incidentally — but without a warrant — during sweeps.  
  • Robert Litt, the general counsel at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told the Times that it was finalizing a 21-page draft of procedures to allow the expanded sharing.  Separately, the Guardian reported earlier this month that the FBI had quietly changed its internal privacy rules to allow direct access to the NSA’s massive storehouse of communication data picked up on Internet service providers and websites.The revelations unnerved civil liberties advocates, who encouraged lawmakers to demand answers of the spy agency.“Under a policy like this, information collected by the NSA would be available to a host of federal agencies that may use it to investigate and prosecute domestic crimes,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel and the American Civil Liberties Union. “Making such a change without authorization from Congress or the opportunity for debate would ignore public demands for greater transparency and oversight over intelligence activities.”In their letter this week, Lieu and Farenthold warned that the NSA’s changes would undermine Congress and unconstitutionally violate people’s privacy rights.   
  • “The executive branch would be violating the separation of powers by unilaterally transferring warrantless data collected under the NSA’s extraordinary authority to domestic agencies, which do not have such authority,” they wrote.“Domestic law enforcement agencies — which need a warrant supported by probable cause to search or seize — cannot do an end run around the Fourth Amendment by searching warrantless information collected by the NSA.”
Gary Edwards

How American Corporations Transformed from Producers to Predators - 1 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...om-producers-to-predators.html

Agenda-21 Banksters Pantheists Corporatists Yves-Smith Sustainability

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Apr 12
     
    Bankster hunter and economist Yves Smith has posted a collection of comments from William Lazonick, professor of economics and director of the UMass Center for Industrial Competitiveness. His book, "Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy? Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States" (Upjohn Institute, 2009) won the 2010 Schumpeter Prize. Lazonick traces the history of US Corporations as they transitioned from their historical reliance on investing in the productive capacity of their employees to, the financial game of increasing their share prices. He class this the "financialization" of Corporate America. And it's been a disaster. The history looks like a very good read, but i really disagree with Lazonick's recommendations. Maybe the title of his book is a dead giveaway of where Lazonick's head is really at. He uses the word "sustainability". A word that has come to represent the tyranny of a new world order: Globalism. This is where the Banksters and Corporatist impose a tyranny of financial control using a mechanism of United Nations "Agenda 21" based socialism. Sustainability is the unifying themes linking the tyranny of UN Agenda 21 to pantheistic socialism and control of globalist Banksters and their Corporate cronies. So his remedies trouble me greatly. And what would i do? End all income tax (and the IRS), and levy an immediate 33% tariff on all imports. Of course, that will be difficult because the Globalist (Banksters, Corporatists, Pantheists and Agenda 21 types) all support open trade policies. Good read though.
Gary Edwards

The Vetting - Exclusive - Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii' - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

Obama birthers

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 May 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 May 12
     
    excerpt: Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."  The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.  Kill shot quote from Obama's Literary Agency promo booklet: Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.   He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago's South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.
Gary Edwards

Dreams From My Real Father (Full Movie) | Before It's News - 0 views

beforeitsnews.com/...My_Real_Father_Full_Movie.html

Joel-Gilbert Obammunism Dreams-of-my-real-father Marxism saul-alinsky

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Jul 12
     
    Incredible!!  I saw the interview Alex Jones of InfoWars had with Joel Gilbert about his research into the real Barack Housain Davis-Obama.   this is the movies Joel made based on those years of research. Note that Joel's research indicates that Obama's real father is the Marxist Frank Marshall Davis.  Which means he is a natural born citizen.  Albeit one that changed his citizenship when his mother married Sotero, the Indonesian.  Obama never reinstated his lost citizenship, failing to register for the draft at 18 yrs of age.  He also attended  aprivate school in Hawaii and Occidental on a foreign exchange student scholarship. excerpt: Published on Jul 6, 2012 by Rickvsnewworldorder What are the true origins of Obama's life and politics? At age 18, Barack Obama admittedly arrived at Occidental College a committed revolutionary Marxist. What was the source of Obama's foundation in Marxism? Throughout his 2008 Presidential campaign and term in office, questions have been raised regarding Barack Obama's family background, economic philosophy, and fundamental political ideology. Dreams from My Real Father is the alternative Barack Obama "autobiography," offering a divergent theory of what may have shaped our 44th President's life and politics. In Dreams from My Real Father, Barack Obama is portrayed by a voiceover actor who chronicles Barack Obama's life journey in socialism, from birth through his election to the Presidency. The film begins by presenting the case that Barack Obama's real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA propagandist who likely shaped Obama's world view during his formative years. Barack Obama sold himself to America as the multi-cultural ideal, a man who stood above politics. Was the goat herding Kenyan father only a fairy tale to obscure a Marxist agenda, irreconcilable with American values? This fascinating narrative is based in part on 2 years of research, interviews, newly unearthed footage and photos, and the wr
Gary Edwards

The Black Banners : Six Questions for Ali Soufan-By Scott Horton (Harper's Magazine) - 0 views

harpers.org/...hbc-90008292

Ali-Soufan FBI 911-Conspiracy-facts

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jan 12
     
    3. The major still-unanswered question from 9/11 may be this: Why did the CIA keep information about Khalid Al-Mihdhar - the 9/11 team member who was identified before the attacks as having a U.S. visa and tracked into the United States - secret from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies? Clearly this information could have been used to stop the 9/11 plot, yet CIA officials lied about it repeatedly, and have never been held to account either for their failure to inform or their lies. Do you have an answer? My hands started shaking. I didn't know what to think. "They just sent these reports," the [CIA chief of station*] said, seeing my reaction. I walked out of the room, sprinted down the corridor to the bathroom, and fell to the floor next to a stall. There I threw up. I sat on the floor for a few minutes, although it felt like hours. What I had just seen went through my mind again and again. The same thought kept looping back: "If they had all this information since January 2000, why the hell didn't they pass it on?" My whole body was shaking… I got myself to the sink, washed out my mouth, and splashed some water on my face. I covered my face with a paper towel for a few moments. I was still trying to process the fact that the information I had requested about major al-Qaeda operatives, information the CIA had claimed they knew nothing about, had been in the agency's hands since January 2000. The SWAT agent asked, "What's wrong, bud? What the hell did he tell you?" "They knew, they knew." -From The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. (*Redacted in original - text restored by Harper's). Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton & Co., © 2011 Ali Soufan. Sadly no. To date we've never been told why the information wasn't passed to the team investigating the USS Cole attack, the State Department, or the Immigration and Naturalization Service, nor why he wasn't put on a no-fly list, al
Gary Edwards

Bain Capital's Staples vs Obama's Bankrupt Solyndra - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...3933704577532981276269006.html

Bain-Capital Romney Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jul 12
     
    Good article describing the success of Romney's Bain Capital. Does not mention that Obama is outsourcing NASA!!!! And to the Russians no less. Otherwise, great background info on Bain and Romney's role as innovative founder. Bain became the model for an entire industry. excerpt: Mr. Romney has attacked Mr. Obama's Solyndra investment in particular, but he hasn't linked it consistently to the President's failed model of government-led investing or contrasted it with the successful culture Mr. Romney built at Bain. Enlarge Image Associated Press What Bain did is what all successful organizations do: Seek to deliver products and services that are better, faster, cheaper. In some instances that means fewer employees, even if Mr. Obama still can't or won't grasp the concept that we live in a competitive world. How many readers of this editorial have jobs today because the founders of their companies figured out how to spend more money on a slower manufacturing process to create goods of lower quality? *** Overall, Bain capitalism means more successes than failures, and many more jobs. In March of this year, the managing directors of Bain Capital wrote to their investors and reported that, over the firm's 28 years, companies backed by Bain have grown their revenues more than twice as fast "as both the S&P and the U.S. economy." The managers went on to note that after Bain invested, companies have grown their revenues by more than $105 billion globally, including $80 billion in the United States. Bain-backed companies, they added, have opened more than 5,000 stores and facilities during their ownership. Mr. Romney may have thought that debating Bain was a distraction from focusing on the failed Obama economy. But with Mr. Obama using Bain as his main argument against Mr. Romney's record as a job creator, the Republican has no choice but to fight back or he'll lose the election. Americans will choose Bain capitalism over Solyndra crony capitalism,
Gary Edwards

Do Obama's Executive Orders Reveal A Pattern? by Warren Beatty at American Thinker - 0 views

www.americanthinker.com/printpage

executive-orders Obammunism Tyranny

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Jul 12
     
    The Obama Executive Orders are frightening steps on the road to the destruction of our beloved Constitution and the implementation of totalitarian tyranny. The thing is, neither Obama or Congress can issue an executive order or pass a law that compromises the Constitution, including the rights and liberty of individual citizen and the States. The Constitution is a document of strictly "enumerated powers" - NOT "implied powers". These executive orders are un Constitutional!!!!!! excerpt: President Barack Hussein "kill list" Obama has offered over 900 Executive Orders (EO), and he is not even through his first term. He is creating a wonderland of government controls covering everything imaginable, including a list of "Emergency Powers" and martial law EOs. And while Obama is busy issuing EOs to control everything inside the US, he has been issuing EOs to force us to submit to international regulations instead of our US Constitution. And comments by North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue and former OMB director Peter Orszag only contribute to this pattern. Is it now time to start connecting the dots? Obama signed EO 13603 on March 22, 2012. Then he signed EO 13617 on June 25, 2012, declaring a national emergency. Then he signed EO 13618 on July 6, 2012. In EO 13603, entitled, "National Defense Resources Preparedness," Obama says (among other things) that [we must]: be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements; Obama has the power, through this EO, to "nationalize" (not seize) private assets in order to protect national interests. Further, the EO effectively states that he can: 1. "identify" requirements for emergencies 2. "assess" the capability of the country's industrial and technological base 3. "be prepared" t
Paul Merrell

Ron Wyden: the future of NSA programs is being determined now | World news | theguardian.com - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ates-obama-end-data-collection

surveillance state NSA Wyden Obama Snowden 1.7-million-docs perjury Rand Paul

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Privacy advocates pressed Barack Obama to end the bulk collection of Americans’ communications data at a series of meetings at the White House on Thursday, seizing their final chance to convince him of the need for meaningful reform of sweeping surveillance practices. A key US senator left one meeting at the White House with the impression that President Obama has yet to decide on specific reforms. “The debate is clearly fluid,” senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a longtime critic of bulk surveillance, told the Guardian after the meeting. “My sense is the president, and the administration, is wrestling with these issues,” Wyden said. Other groups were meeting presidential aides on Thursday afternoon, including the representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) and the Open Technology Institute. Expectations were mounting that Obama will propose changing the National Security Agency’s controversial database of all domestic phone call records.
  • Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said he viewed the coming days and weeks, ahead of an announcement by Obama about the future scope of surveillance, to be decisive for the debate triggered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.  “What I’d say to Americans is that the future of these programs is being determined now,” Wyden said. “For those like me, who believe that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive, this is the time to weigh in.”
  • Speaking after the meeting with legislators, White House spokesman Jay Carney described the conversation as an opportunity for Obama to “solicit their input”, rather than brief them on his decisions about the future scope of surveillance activities.  The White House held meetings on Wednesday with the leadership of the intelligence agencies, including NSA director Keith Alexander and director of national intelligence James Clapper, as well as with Obama’s privacy and civil liberties advisory group. On Friday, Obama’s staff is expected to meet representatives of major technology firms, ostensibly to continue deliberations.  Shortly before the legislators’ meeting began, two of the attendees, House intelligence committee leaders Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, issued a statement describing a classified Defense Department report that they said alleged that Snowden’s leaks –which they said totaled 1.7m intelligence files and impacted intelligence operations of all military branches – could “gravely impact” US national security. 
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  • A spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which spearheaded the report, said the report was an “initial assessment”, and the work of the Information Review Task Force was “ongoing”. But neither the House intelligence committee leaders nor the DIA would provide additional information substantiating the allegations of Snowden’s impact.  “The report is classified and is not releasable,” said the DIA spokesman, who would not agree to be quoted by name. The classified interim assessment was delivered to the House and Senate intelligence committees on 6 January, and the DIA spokesman said there is no deadline for a final report, nor a mandate to make such a report public. 
  • Snowden's attorney, Ben Wizner, described the report as an attack on the journalism produced by the Snowden disclosures. "In truth, Mike Rogers is only indirectly attacking Snowden. He’s directly attacking the journalists who have reported on these revelations. There is not a shred of evidence that any adversary has had any access to any document other than those published by journalists, and they haven't contradicted that," Wizner told the Guardian. "We shouldn’t have any confidence in the accuracy of this innuendo. The government has shown time and again they have very little idea of what Snowden had access to."
  • Speaking outside the White House after a separate meeting with Obama, senator Rand Paul also stepped up his calls for government leniency toward Snowden, contrasting his treatment with Clapper, who has admitted misleading the Senate about surveillance. "Those who call for some sort of frontier justice for [Snowden] need to understand the laws needs to apply equally," Paul told reporters. "James Clapper by all accounts committed perjury which is punishable by five years in prison and if you want to throw the book at Snowden, it's a little hard to say 'Oh, but we're not going to do anything about James Clapper lying to Congress.'"
  • Asked if he was making a direct comparison, Paul added: "It's not my job to compare them or contrast what they did, but what James Clapper did has greatly harmed the credibility of the intelligence agencies ... he has really greatly damaged the intelligence community. It's arguable." After meeting with Obama, Wyden saw the debate over surveillance winding toward a conclusion. “This is crunch time. The decisions are going to be made in the very near future,” Wyden said. “The president made clear he wanted to hear from us. I’m going to keep urging members of Congress and the public to stand on the side of real reform and end intrusive surveillance practices that in effect violate the liberties of our people without making us safer.”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 14
     
    Wyden  says it's time to get involved. Wyden is one of my senators and is about to get an email informing him that if he believes Barack Obama is the person who will decide this issue, he'd better think that over a bit more.  
Paul Merrell

U.S. Military and Intelligence Officials to Obama: "Assad NOT Responsible for Chemical Attack" | Global Research - 1 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5348576

war & peace Syria false-flag must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap? Precedence: IMMEDIATE We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.” We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.
  • The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today. Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you. We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
  • That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.” This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
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  • There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war. According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured. We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons. In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
  • Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria. At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
  • We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13
     
    This report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity is almost certainly the most credible report contradicting the White House's "intelligence summary" that included zero evidence supporting the claim that Syrian government forces had unleashed the August 21, 2013 chemical attack in Ghoutu, near Damascus and less than five miles away from the just-arrived UN investigative team.  Spread it far and wide. 
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Sep 13
     
    Wow!! The cover-up of this false flag operation designed to get us into another civil war is incredible. Yet the truth continues to leak out. The ruling elites must be so pissed right now. The Internet is changing the world balance of power - in real time no less. And we are witness. Awesome stuff Paul.
Paul Merrell

IC ON THE RECORD * ODNI STATEMENT on the Unauthorized Disclosure of... - 1 views

icontherecord.tumblr.com/...the-unauthorized-disclosure-of

surveillance state NSA DNI-Clapper Clapper NSA-capabilities

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • September 6, 2013 It should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract our adversaries’ use of encryption.  Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today, terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities.  Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that.  While the specifics of how our intelligence agencies carry out this cryptanalytic mission have been kept secret, the fact that NSA’s mission includes deciphering enciphered communications is not a secret, and is not news. Indeed, NSA’s public website states that its mission includes leading “the U.S. Government in cryptology … in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies.” The stories published yesterday, however, reveal specific and classified details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity. Anything that yesterday’s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions.
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Sep 13
     
    Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is displeased by the disclosures of its decryption capabilities revealed by the New York Times, based on Edward Snowden-leaked documents.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Noticeably absent from DNI Clapper's reaction is the slightest hint of respect for privacy rights of American citizens. Isn't it past time that this gentleman lose his job, to be replaced by a strong civil libertarian? 
Paul Merrell

GCHQ head Sir Iain Lobban stands down | UK news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ad-sir-iain-lobban-stands-down

surveillance state GCHQ Lobban resignation

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The Foreign Office confirmed that the head of GCHQ, the British spy agency at the centre of the Edward Snowden leaks controversy, is to stand down.The departure of Sir Iain Lobban, 53, who has been GCHQ director since July 2008, was being presented by the government as a long-planned move rather than being linked to the Snowden row.The Foreign Office said: "Iain Lobban is doing an outstanding job as director GCHQ. Today is simply about starting the process of ensuring we have a suitable successor in place before he moves on as planned at the end of the year."
Paul Merrell

DNI Clapper: Transparency is the Way Forward - Secrecy News - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/...dni-transparency

surveillance state NSA clapper transparency

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The primary lesson that emerges from the unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence information by Edward Snowden is that U.S. intelligence agencies must be more transparent in their operations, said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper yesterday. “The major takeaway for us, certainly for me, from the past several months is that we must lean in the direction of transparency, wherever and whenever we can,” DNI Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “With greater transparency about these intelligence programs the American people may be more likely to accept them,” he said, promising “further declassification.” Another possibility, he acknowledged, is that even with greater transparency the American people will choose not to accept certain kinds of intelligence programs. “If dealing with reduced capacities is what we need to ensure the faith and confidence of the American people and their elected representatives, then we in the intelligence community will work as hard as we can to meet the expectations before us,” DNI Clapper said.
  • The primary lesson that emerges from the unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence information by Edward Snowden is that U.S. intelligence agencies must be more transparent in their operations, said Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper yesterday. “The major takeaway for us, certainly for me, from the past several months is that we must lean in the direction of transparency, wherever and whenever we can,” DNI Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “With greater transparency about these intelligence programs the American people may be more likely to accept them,” he said, promising “further declassification.” Another possibility, he acknowledged, is that even with greater transparency the American people will choose not to accept certain kinds of intelligence programs.
  • Already, the Snowden disclosures have caused “profound damage” to U.S. intelligence, the DNI said. “What Snowden has stolen and exposed has gone way, way beyond his professed concerns with so-called domestic surveillance programs. As a result, we’ve lost critical foreign intelligence collection sources, including some shared with us by valued partners.” “Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed to prevent even more damage to U.S. security,” the DNI said. The use of the word “accomplices” appeared to suggest that the DNI views the journalists who possess and report on the Snowden documents as Snowden’s partners in crime, and even as criminals themselves. “Is it now the official view of the Obama administration that these journalists and media outlets are ‘accomplices’ in what they regard as Snowden’s crimes? If so, that is a rather stunning and extremist statement,” wrote Glenn Greenwald, who first reported on the Snowden releases last June.
Paul Merrell

When the CIA's Empire Struck Back | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5367816

surveillance state Pike-Committee CIA NSA spying-history must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In the mid-1970s, Rep. Otis Pike led a brave inquiry to rein in the excesses of the national security state. But the CIA and its defenders accused Pike of recklessness and vowed retaliation, assigning him to a political obscurity that continued to his recent death. Otis Pike, who headed the House of Representatives’ only wide-ranging and in-depth investigation into intelligence agency abuses in the 1970s, died on Jan. 20. A man who should have received a hero’s farewell passed with barely a mention. To explain the significance of what he did, however, requires a solid bit of back story.
  • Rep. Otis Pike, D-New York, took over what became known as the “Pike Committee.” Under Pike, the committee put some real teeth into the investigation, so much so that Ford’s White House and the CIA went on a public-relations counterattack, accusing the panel and its staff of recklessness. The CIA’s own historical review acknowledged as much:
  • “The final draft report of the Pike Committee reflected its sense of frustration with the Agency and the executive branch. Devoting an entire section of the report to describing its experience, the committee characterized Agency and White House cooperation as ‘virtually nonexistent.’ The report asserted that the executive branch practiced ‘footdragging, stonewalling, and deception’ in response to committee requests for information. It told the committee only what it wanted the committee to know. It restricted the dissemination of the information and ducked penetrating questions.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Essentially, the CIA and the White House forbade the Pike report’s release by leaning on friendly members of Congress to suppress the report, which a majority agreed to do. But someone leaked a copy to CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, who took it to the Village Voice, which published it on Feb. 16, 1976. Mitchell Rogovin, the CIA’s Special Counsel for Legal Affairs, threatened Pike’s staff director, saying, “Pike will pay for this, you wait and see … We [the CIA] will destroy him for this. … There will be political retaliation. Any political ambitions in New York that Pike had are through. We will destroy him for this.” And, indeed, Pike’s political career never recovered. Embittered and disillusioned by the failure of Congress to stand up to the White House and the CIA, Pike did not seek reelection in 1978 and retired into relative obscurity.
  • But what did Pike’s report say that was so important to generate such hostility? The answer can be summed up with the opening line from the report: “If this Committee’s recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional lawmaking are, today, beyond the lawmaker’s scrutiny.” In other words, Otis Pike was our canary in the coal mine, warning us that the national security state was literally out of control, and that lawmakers were powerless against it. Pike’s prophetic statement was soon ratified by the fact that although former CIA Director Richard Helms was charged with perjury for lying to Congress about the CIA’s cooperation with ITT in the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, Helms managed to escape with a suspended sentence and a  $2,000 fine.
  • As Pike’s committee report stated: “These secret agencies have interests that inherently conflict with the open accountability of a political body, and there are many tools and tactics to block and deceive conventional Congressional checks. Added to this are the unique attributes of intelligence — notably, ‘national security,’ in its cloak of secrecy and mystery — to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries. “Wise and effective legislation cannot proceed in the absence of information respecting conditions to be affected or changed. Nevertheless, under present circumstances, inquiry into intelligence activities faces serious and fundamental shortcomings. “Even limited success in exercising future oversight requires a rethinking of the powers, procedures, and duties of the overseers. This Committee’s path and policies, its plus and minuses, may at least indicate where to begin.” The Pike report revealed the tactics that the intelligence agencies had used to prevent oversight, noting the language was “always the language of cooperation” but the result was too often “non-production.” In other words, the agencies assured Congress of cooperation, while stalling, moving slowly, and literally letting the clock run out on the investigation. The Pike Committee, alone among the other investigations, refused to sign secrecy agreements with the CIA, charging that as the representatives of the people they had authority over the CIA, not the other way around.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 14
     
    The Senate's Church Committee gets all the publicity but the House Pike Committee did much of the heavy lifting in the mid-1970s investigation of spy agency abuse. This is a good solid overview of that committee's work in historical context and a troubling reminder that the NSA's current confrontational tactics with Congress are nothing new.
Gary Edwards

Gold Price "Manipulated For A Decade", Repeatedly Slammed Lower, Bloomberg Reports | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...lammed-lower-bloomberg-reports

GOLD LiBOR

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Mar 14
     
    "While the FT promptly retracted an article on precisely the topic of gold manipulation from earlier this week (recorded for posterity here), Bloomberg appears to not have had the same "editorial" concerns and pressures, and today released an article once again slamming the final conspiracy theory that while every other asset class is manipulated, gold is in a pristine class of its own, untouched by close-banging, price fixing traders or central bankers, and reports that "the London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say." Of course, over the past 5 years we have reported time and again how official gold manipulation started in earnest some time in the 1960s (who can forget the "reshuffle club") but we will start with a decade. Here is what BBG finds: Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University's Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody's Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.   "The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality," they say in the report, which hasn't yet been submitted for publication. "It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring."   The paper is the first to raise the possibility that the five banks overseeing the century-old rate -- Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Nova Scotia, HSBC Holdings Plc and Societe Generale SA -- may have been actively working together to manipulate the benchmark. It also adds to pressure on the firms to overhaul the way the rate is calculated. Authorities around the world, already inv
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