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Paul Merrell

Spying by N.S.A. Ally Entangled U.S. Law Firm - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nsnared-american-law-firm.html

surveillance state NSA ASD NSA-targets law-firms

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The list of those caught up in the global surveillance net cast by the National Security Agency and its overseas partners, from social media users to foreign heads of state, now includes another entry: American lawyers. A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance. Related Coverage Text: Document Describes Eavesdropping on American Law FirmFEB. 15, 2014 The government of Indonesia had retained the law firm for help in trade talks, according to the February 2013 document. It reports that the N.S.A.’s Australian counterpart, the Australian Signals Directorate, notified the agency that it was conducting surveillance of the talks, including communications between Indonesian officials and the American law firm, and offered to share the information.
  • The Australians told officials at an N.S.A. liaison office in Canberra, Australia, that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included” in the intelligence gathering, according to the document, a monthly bulletin from the Canberra office. The law firm was not identified, but Mayer Brown, a Chicago-based firm with a global practice, was then advising the Indonesian government on trade issues. On behalf of the Australians, the liaison officials asked the N.S.A. general counsel’s office for guidance about the spying. The bulletin notes only that the counsel’s office “provided clear guidance” and that the Australian agency “has been able to continue to cover the talks, providing highly useful intelligence for interested US customers.” The N.S.A. declined to answer questions about the reported surveillance, including whether information involving the American law firm was shared with United States trade officials or negotiators.
  • Most attorney-client conversations do not get special protections under American law from N.S.A. eavesdropping. Amid growing concerns about surveillance and hacking, the American Bar Association in 2012 revised its ethics rules to explicitly require lawyers to “make reasonable efforts” to protect confidential information from unauthorized disclosure to outsiders.Last year, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, rebuffed a legal challenge to a 2008 law allowing warrantless wiretapping that was brought in part by lawyers with foreign clients they believed were likely targets of N.S.A. monitoring. The lawyers contended that the law raised risks that required them to take costly measures, like traveling overseas to meet clients, to protect sensitive communications. But the Supreme Court dismissed their fears as “speculative.”The N.S.A. is prohibited from targeting Americans, including businesses, law firms and other organizations based in the United States, for surveillance without warrants, and intelligence officials have repeatedly said the N.S.A. does not use the spy services of its partners in the so-called Five Eyes alliance — Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand — to skirt the law.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The N.S.A.’s protections for attorney-client conversations are narrowly crafted, said Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University’s School of Law. The agency is barred from sharing with prosecutors intercepted attorney-client communications involving someone under indictment in the United States, according to previously disclosed N.S.A. rules. But the agency may still use or share the information for intelligence purposes. Andrew M. Perlman, a Suffolk University law professor who specializes in legal ethics and technology issues, said the growth of surveillance was troubling for lawyers. He helped create the bar association’s ethics code revisions that require lawyers to try to avoid being overheard by eavesdroppers. “You run out of options very quickly to communicate with someone overseas,” he said. “Given the difficulty of finding anything that is 100 percent secure, lawyers are in a difficult spot to ensure that all of the information remains in confidence.” 
  • Still, the N.S.A. can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad, such as Indonesian officials. The N.S.A. is then required to follow so-called minimization rules to protect their privacy, such as deleting the identity of Americans or information that is not deemed necessary to understand or assess the foreign intelligence, before sharing it with other agencies. An N.S.A. spokeswoman said the agency’s Office of the General Counsel was consulted when issues of potential attorney-client privilege arose and could recommend steps to protect such information. “Such steps could include requesting that collection or reporting by a foreign partner be limited, that intelligence reports be written so as to limit the inclusion of privileged material and to exclude U.S. identities, and that dissemination of such reports be limited and subject to appropriate warnings or restrictions on their use,” said Vanee M. Vines, the spokeswoman.
  • In justifying the agency’s sweeping powers, the Obama administration often emphasizes the N.S.A.’s role in fighting terrorism and cyberattacks, but disclosures in recent months from the documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show the agency routinely spies on trade negotiations, communications of economic officials in other countries and even foreign corporations.
  • Other documents obtained from Mr. Snowden reveal that the N.S.A. shares reports from its surveillance widely among civilian agencies. A 2004 N.S.A. document, for example, describes how the agency’s intelligence gathering was critical to the Agriculture Department in international trade negotiations. “The U.S.D.A. is involved in trade operations to protect and secure a large segment of the U.S. economy,” that document states. Top agency officials “often rely on SIGINT” — short for the signals intelligence that the N.S.A. eavesdropping collects — “to support their negotiations.”
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14
     
    Outrageous.
Paul Merrell

Obama Pins Fate of Nuclear Pact on Documents From an Iranian "Curveball" - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...ents-from-an-iranian-curveball

war & peace Iran Iranian-nukes-myth Israel neocons Iran-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Obama administration officials insist "possible military dimensions" of Iran’s nuclear program must be resolved to the satisfaction of the IAEA to complete a nuclear agreement. But the term refers to discredited intelligence from suspect sources. One of the issues Obama administration officials are insisting must be resolved to the satisfaction of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before any nuclear agreement may be concluded involves "possible military dimensions." That term refers to documents long discredited by German intelligence but which the United States and the IAEA have maintained came from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program. A former senior German official has now revealed that the biggest collection of documents cited as evidence of such a covert Iran program actually came from a member of the Iranian terrorist organization Mujihedin-E-Khalq (MEK) and that German intelligence sought to warn the George W. Bush administration that the source of the documents was not trustworthy.
  • The use of those documents to make a case for action against Iran closely parallels the Bush administration's use of the testimony of the now-discredited Iraqi exile called "Curveball" to convince the US public to support war against Iraq. The parallel between the two episodes was recognized explicitly by the German intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), according to Karsten Voigt, who was the German Foreign Office's coordinator of North American-German relations. Voigt provided details of the story behind the appearance of the mysterious Iran nuclear documents in an interview with this writer last March for a book on the false narrative surrounding Iran's nuclear program that is newly published, Manufactured Crisis. 
  • In 2004, Powell and his State Department team still regarded the MEK as a disreputable terrorist organization, but the neoconservatives in the administration viewed it as useful as an anti-regime tool. The MEK was known to have served the interests of Israel's Mossad by providing a way to "launder" intelligence claims that Israel wanted to get out to the public but didn't want identified as having come from Israel. In the best-known case, the group's political front organization, the National Council of Resistance in Iran, had revealed the location of the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in an August 2002 press conference, but it had been given the coordinates of the construction site by Israeli intelligence, according to both a senior IAEA official and an Iranian opposition group source, cited by Seymour Hersh and New Yorker writer Connie Bruck, respectively. The purported Iranian documents conveyed by the MEK to Western intelligence also displayed multiple indications of having been fabricated by an outside actor. The clearest and most significant anomaly was that the drawings of efforts to redesign the Shahab-3 missile to accommodate a nuclear weapons showed a missile that had already been abandoned by Iran's Defense Ministry by the time the drawings were said to have been made, as was confirmed by former IAEA deputy director general for safeguards, Olli Heinonen, in an interview with this writer. The Iranian abandonment of the earlier missile design became known to foreign analysts, however, only after Iran flight-tested a completely new missile design in August 2004 - after the "laptop documents" had already been conveyed to the BND by its MEK source. Whoever ordered those drawings was unaware of the switch to the new missile design, which would rule out a genuine Iranian Defense Ministry or military program.
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  • A former IAEA official familiar with those documents recalled in interview with Truthout that senior officials at the IAEA were immediately suspicious of the entire collection of documents given to the agency in 2005. "The documents were never really convincing," said the former official. The creators of the documents had taken publicly available information about people, organizations and location and had "woven their own narrative" around them, he said. Furthermore, he recalled finding anomalies in the stamps and signature blocs of documents. The fabricated documents, depicting Iran as redesigning their missile reentry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear weapon, among other things, fit into a Bush administration strategy - coordinated with Israel - that was aimed at justifying a military confrontation with Iran. The working assumption, as was revealed by David Wurmser, special assistant to Bolton and then to Cheney, in October 2007, was that the United States would probably need to use force to bring about that change once Iraq was brought under control. Bolton recalls in his memoirs that his aim was to move the Iran nuclear issue out of the IAEA to the United Nations Security Council, where the Bush administration would call for international action against Iran, and failing that, take unilateral action.
  • The IAEA got more documents and intelligence directly from Israel in 2008 and 2009 claiming Iranian work on nuclear weapons, according to then-IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei. The intelligence passed on by Israel included the claim that Iran had installed a large metal cylinder for high explosives tests at its Parchin military facility in 2000, which it intended to use for hydrodynamic tests of nuclear weapons designs. But the IAEA never revealed the information had come from Israel, covering up the primary fact relevant to its reliability and authenticity. The Safeguards Department had been prepared as early as 2009 to publish a dossier on what it called the "possible military dimensions" of the Iranian nuclear program that would accept all the intelligence reports and documents provided by Israel as genuine and accurate. But ElBaradei's successor, Yukiya Amano, waited to do so until November 2011, when the Obama administration was ready to organize an international coalition for harsh sanctions against Iran's oil export sector. The Obama administration returned to the "possible military dimensions" last November, insisting on a provision in the interim Iran nuclear agreement that required Iran to "resolve" all the "concerns" about that issue. A "senior administration official" briefing the press on the agreement November 24 said there would be no final agreement unless Iran showed that it had "come into compliance with its obligations under the NPT and its obligations to the IAEA."
  • In response to a request from Truthout for a confirmation or denial of the revelation by Karsten Voigt of the MEK role in transmitting the purported Iranian documents to the BND in 2004, NSC officials declined to comment on the matter, according to NSC spokesperson Bernadette Meehan. Some observers believe US negotiators hope to get Iran to admit to having had a nuclear weapons program. However, Iran is certainly not going to admit that the documents and intelligence reports it knows to be fabrications are true. But the Obama administration may well believe so strongly in the Iran nuclear narrative it inherited from the Bush administration and in the idea that the sanctions against Iran confer ultimate negotiating leverage on the United States that it sees an Iranian confession as a realistic goal. In any case, the decision to introduce the falsified evidence of the past into the final negotiations is bound to bring them to an impasse unless the United States is prepared to back down.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 14
     
    Neocons in the Obama administration are at it again, fueling the Iranian nukes myth with fabricated intelligence on behalf of Israel. 
Paul Merrell

The NSA is still violating Americans' rights, despite what James Clapper says | Rand Paul | Comment is free | theguardian.com - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ting-american-rights-rand-paul

surveillance state Clapper Rand Paul 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Director of Intelligence James Clapper now says the National Security Agency (NSA) should have been more open about the fact that they were spying on all Americans. I'm glad he said this. But there is no excuse for lying in the first place.
  • But Clapper is being somewhat disingenuous here. Part of the reason our government does some things behind Americans' backs is not for security, but because certain activities, if known, would outrage the public. Spying on every American certainly falls into this category. I also believe it is blatantly unconstitutional, and bringing these activities to light would immediately spark debates the NSA would rather not hear.The notion that if the NSA had informed us they were monitoring every American would somehow make it OK, does not make it OK. Explaining why you are violating the Fourth Amendment does not invalidate the Fourth Amendment.
  • Americans have a right to know when their rights are being violated, but that's where my agreement with Director Clapper, or at least agreement with his latest statement, ends.The Fourth Amendment states that warrants issued must be specific to a person, place or task and this provision of the Bill of Rights exists explicitly to guard against the notion of a general warrant, where government can plunder through anyone's privacy at will.The NSA's metadata collection program is a general warrant for the modern age, reflecting the same kind of tyranny our nation's founders fought a revolution to make sure would never happen again.It shouldn't happen again, and I will keep fighting to protect the US constitution I took an oath to uphold.It's time to trash the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans, for good.
Paul Merrell

It's WWIII between CIA and Senate | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...-alarmed-by-alleged-cia-spying

surveillance state CIA targets Senate-Intelligence-Committee torture

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Senators on Wednesday expressed alarm at explosive allegations that the CIA might have spied on their computers to keep tabs on their controversial review of Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques.ADVERTISEMENTLawmakers from both parties said that if the allegations against the CIA prove true, intelligence officials might have violated the law — and certainly violated the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.“I’m assuming that’s it’s not true, but if it is true, it should be World War III in terms of Congress standing up for itself against the CIA, ” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill.Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confirmed Wednesday that the CIA inspector general was investigating accusations that the covert agency had peered into the panel’s computers. But she didn’t comment on reports that the investigator has referred the matter to the Justice Department.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an ex officio member of the Intelligence panel, said the charge of spying is “extremely serious.”“There are laws against intruding and tampering, hacking into, accessing computers without permission. And that law applies to everybody,” he said.Brennan in a statement said he was "dismayed" by the “spurious allegations,” which he said were "wholly unsupported by the facts."
  • His statement was released Wednesday evening as McClatchy reported that the computer spying was allegedly discovered when the CIA confronted the Senate Intelligence panel about documents removed from the agency’s headquarters."I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the Executive Branch or Legislative Branch," Brennan said.“Until then, I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers."The allegations escalated a long-simmering feud between Democrats on the Intelligence panel and the CIA over the committee’s classified interrogation report, which provides an exhaustive look at the treatment of detainees in the years after Sept. 11.Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.) and two other Democrats on the Intelligence panel have criticized the CIA and its director, John Brennan, for blocking their efforts to declassify the 6,300-page investigation.“The CIA tried to intimidate the Intelligence Committee, plain and simple,” Udall said. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make sure the CIA never dodges congressional oversight again.”
  • Senators have said their review, which was completed in December 2012, is harshly critical of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, concluding that they were ineffective and did not contribute to the capture of Osama bin Laden.Udall and other Democrats say the report needs to be released because it will "set the record straight" about the use of techniques that critics say amount to torture.While Democrats on the panel backed the report’s findings, most of the Intelligence Committee Republicans dissented.The CIA has objected to some of the report’s conclusions as well, though Udall says its internal review contradicts the agency’s public statements.Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who has joined Udall in pressing for the release of the report, said the allegations about CIA spying show the lengths that the agency will go to protect itself.“I think it’s been pretty clear that the CIA will do just about anything to make sure that this detention and interrogation report doesn’t come out,” Heinrich told The Hill.
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  • Other Republicans on the Intelligence panel said the spying charges should be investigated, but they expressed concerns about the leak of the inspector general investigation.“I have no comment. You should talk to those folks that are giving away classified information and get their opinion,” Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said when asked about the alleged intrusions.Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) appeared to allude to the CIA snooping at an Intelligence Committee hearing last month when he asked Brennan whether the Computer Crimes and Abuse Act applied to the agency.Wyden said Wednesday that Brennan responded in a letter the law did apply.“The Act, however, expressly ‘does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity … of an intelligence agency of the United States,’ ” Brennan wrote in the letter that Wyden released.McClatchy news service reported that the Intelligence Committee determined earlier this year the CIA had monitored computers it provided to the panel to review top-secret reports, cables and other documents.It’s still unclear whether the alleged monitoring would have violated the law.
  • Udall sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday calling for declassification of the committee’s report, where he alleged the CIA’s “unprecedented action against the committee” was tied to agency's internal review of the interrogation policies.Udall first raised issues with the internal review of the interrogation techniques at the confirmation hearing of Caroline Krass's nomination as CIA general counsel, which took place in December.He said that the review, conducted under former CIA Director Leon Panetta, corroborated the findings of the Senate Intelligence report and contradicted the public statements from the agency.Udall has placed a procedural hold on Krass’s nomination and told reporters Wednesday that it would remain in place until the CIA meets his requests for more information about the internal review.White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the spying allegations Wednesday, referring questions to the CIA and Department of Justice.Carney said that "as a general matter," the White House was in touch with the Intelligence Committee."For some time, the White House has made clear to the chairmen of the Senate Select committee on intelligence that the summary and conclusions of the final RDI report should be declassified with any redactions necessary to protect national security," he said.
  • Heinrich said he hoped the CIA intrusions, if confirmed, would push the White House to get involved in the dispute between the agency and the committee over the report.“It would be easy for me to get very upset about these allegations, but I think we need to keep our eye on that ball, because that is a really important historical issue, and people need to understand who made what decisions and why,” he said.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14
     
    Jack Kennedy had the right idea: abolish the CIA.
Paul Merrell

The FBI's Own Hostage Crisis - Newsweek - 0 views

mag.newsweek.com/...fbi-s-hostage-crisis.html

spook-agencies CIA cover-up Iran

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • By  Jeff Stein 0 Share Last Thursday, an urgent call went out from CIA headquarters to the spy agency's director, John Brennan, who was giving a speech to a graduating class at The Farm, the CIA's training facility near Williamsburg, Va. Brennan was warned that the Associated Press and The Washington Post were about to publish the results of a long investigation revealing that Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who had gone missing while "on private business" in Iran six years ago, had actually been working for the CIA. A handful of national security reporters in D.C. had known of Levinson's CIA connection for years but agreed to sit on it, accepting the CIA's rationale that publishing the information could endanger the life of Levinson, who was ostensibly pursuing an investigation of cigarette smuggling for a private client when he went missing on Iran's Kish Island in March 2007. Levinson was thought to be in Iranian hands. On Thursday morning, the entreaties of lower ranking CIA officials to the AP and Washington Post not to publish the story were rebuffed. Other high-ranking Obama administration officials, including White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, as well as FBI Deputy director Mark Giuliano, made the same argument to the reporters and their editors. By the time Brennan got his warning from headquarters, however, it was too late to for him to make an appeal. The story, by the AP's Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who had recently left AP to join The Washington Post, was online.
Paul Merrell

Officials' defenses of NSA phone program may be unraveling - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback tipping-point

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe. But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.
  • From the moment the government’s massive database of citizens’ call records was exposed this year, U.S. officials have clung to two main lines of defense: The secret surveillance program was constitutional and critical to keeping the nation safe. But six months into the controversy triggered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the viability of those claims is no longer clear.
  • In a three-day span, those rationales were upended by a federal judge who declared that the program was probably unconstitutional and the release of a report by a White House panel utterly unconvinced that stockpiling such data had played any meaningful role in preventing terrorist attacks.Either of those developments would have been enough to ratchet up the pressure on President Obama, who must decide whether to stand behind the sweeping collection or dismantle it and risk blame if there is a terrorist attack.Beyond that dilemma for the president, the decision by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon and the recommendations from the review panel shifted the footing of almost every major player in the surveillance debate.NSA officials, who rarely miss a chance to cite Snowden’s status as a fugitive from the law, now stand accused of presiding over a program whose capabilities were deemed by the judge to be “Orwellian" and likely illegal. Snowden’s defenders, on the other hand, have new ammunition to argue that he is more whistleblower than traitor.
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  • Similarly, U.S. officials who have dismissed NSA critics as naive about the true nature of the terrorist threat now face the findings of a panel handpicked by Obama and with access to classified files. Among its members were former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morrell and former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard A. Clarke, both of whom spent years immersed in intelligence reports on al-Qaeda.A day after the panel’s report was made public, U.S. officials said its findings had stunned senior officials at the White House as well as at U.S. intelligence services, prompting a scramble to assess the potential effect of its proposals as well as to calculate its political fallout.The president is “faced with a program that has intelligence value but also has political liabilities,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official. “Now that he has a set of recommendations from a panel he appointed, if he doesn’t follow them people are going to say, ‘are they just for show?’ Or if he does follow them, he scales back a program that he supported.”Members of the panel met with Obama on Wednesday and said he was receptive to the group’s findings.
  • “Obama didn’t say, we accept this on the spot,” Clarke said in an interview. “But we didn’t get a lot of negative feedback. They’re going to talk to the agencies and see what the agencies’ objections are and then make their decisions.”White House officials declined to comment on specific recommendations Thursday, but press secretary Jay Carney signaled that the administration remains reluctant to dismantle the data-collection program. “The program is an important tool in our efforts to combat threats against the United States and the American people,” Carney said.Several current and former U.S. officials sought to downplay the impact of the court case and the review panel, saying that their influence is likely to be offset by the work of an internal White House group made up of national security officials who are regular consumers of NSA intercepts and may be more cautious about curtailing the agency’s capabilities.
  • However, the developments this week were a reminder that the outcome may be beyond Obama’s control. Leon’s ruling set in motion a legal battle that may culminate in a ruling by the Supreme Court. The panel’s findings gave new momentum to lawmakers who have introduced legislation that would bring an end to the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records.
  • As part of their initial research, members of the review panel spent a day at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. But officials said that neither the NSA chief, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, nor Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper was given a copy of the report in advance or a chance to comment on its findings.A DNI spokesman declined to comment, but officials said U.S. intelligence officials would evaluate the panel’s proposals and prepare material for the White House on the potential effects of implementing its recommendations.
Paul Merrell

Glenn Greenwald: The NSA Can "Literally Watch Every Keystroke You Make" - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37255.htm

surveillance state NSA NSA-backdoors China

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • On Sunday, the German publication Der Spiegel revealed new details about secretive hacking—a secretive hacking unit inside the NSA called the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. The unit was created in 1997 to hack into global communications traffic. Still with us, Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, and Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden. Glenn, can you just talk about the revelations in Der Spiegel?
  • And one of the ways that they’re doing it is that they intercept products in transit, such as if you order a laptop or other forms of Internet routers or servers and the like, they intercept it in transit, open the box, implant the malware, factory-seal it and then send it back to the user. They also exploit weaknesses in Google and YouTube and Yahoo and other services, as well, in order to implant these devices. It’s unclear to what extent, if at all, the companies even know about it, let alone cooperate in it. But what is clear is that they’ve been able to compromise the physical machines themselves, so that it makes no difference what precautions you take in terms of safeguarding the sanctity of your online activity.
  • But we’ve actually been working, ourselves, on certain stories that should be published soon regarding similar interdiction efforts. And one of the things that I think is so amazing about this, Amy, is that the U.S. government has spent the last three or four years shrilly, vehemently warning the world that Chinese technology companies are unsafe to purchase products from, because they claim the Chinese government interdicts these products and installs surveillance, backdoors and other forms of malware onto the machinery so that when you get them, immediately your privacy is compromised. And they’ve actually driven Chinese firms out of the U.S. market and elsewhere with these kinds of accusations. Congress has convened committees to issue reports making these kind of accusations about Chinese companies. And yet, at the same time, the NSA is doing exactly that which they accuse these Chinese companies of doing. And there’s a real question, which is: Are these warnings designed to steer people away from purchasing Chinese products into the arms of the American industry so that the NSA’s ability to implant these devices becomes even greater, since now everybody is buying American products out of fear that they can no longer buy Chinese products because this will happen to them?
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  • And the final thing I want to say is, you know, all this talk about amnesty for Edward Snowden, and it’s so important that the rule of law be applied to him, it’s really quite amazing. Here’s Michael Hayden. He oversaw the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program implemented under the Bush administration. He oversaw torture and rendition as the head of the CIA. James Clapper lied to the face of Congress. These are felonies at least as bad, and I would say much worse, than anything Edward Snowden is accused of doing, and yet they’re not prosecuted. They’re free to appear on television programs. The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme. And that’s why a hardened felon like Michael Hayden is free to walk around on the street and is treated on American media outlets as though he’s some learned, wisdom-drenched elder statesman, rather than what he is, which is a chronic criminal.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 13
     
    Greenwald asks a very good question about the U.S. government accusing the Chinese government of cyber-espionage and the government's finding that Chinese-manufactured ware pose a security risk. Was that intended to drive people to purchase hardware that comes equipped with NSA backdoors? The flip side, of course, is whether the world should be beating feet to purchase their hardware from the Chinese in order to escape the NSA backdoors. Then there is the question of how those backdoors might have made their way into the hardware devices without the acquiescence of their manufacturers, who surely would have realized that their businesses might take enormous financial hits if knowledge of the backdoors became public? Bribing key staff? The manufacturers named in the Der Spiegel article surely are going to face some hard questions and they may face some very unhappy shareholders if their stock prices take a dive. It would be fun to see a shareholder's derivative class action against one of these companies for having acquiesced to NSA implantation of backdoors, leading to the disclosure and the fall in stock price. Caption the case as Wall Street, Inc. v. National Security Agency, dba Seagate Technology, PLC, then watch the feathers and blood fly.  "Seagate is the company the world trusts to store our lives - our files and photos, our libraries and histories, our science and progress."   Yes, and your stockholders trusted you not to endanger their investment by adding NSA backdoors in your products.
Paul Merrell

National intelligence chief declassifies Bush-era documents on NSA programs | World news | theguardian.com - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ligence-bush-era-nsa-documents

surveillance state NSA litigation NSA-domestic-surveillance origins

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The director of national intelligence on Saturday declassified more documents that outline how the National Security Agency was first authorised to start collecting bulk phone and internet records in the hunt for al-Qaida terrorists and how a court eventually gained oversight of the program, after the justice department complied with a federal court order to release its previous legal arguments for keeping the programs secret.
  • "There has never been a comprehensive government release ... that wove the whole story together: the timeline of authorizing the programs and the gradual transition to (court) oversight," said Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group suing the NSA to reveal more about the bulk records programs. "Everybody knew that happened, but this is the first time I've seen the government confirm those twin aspects." That unexpected windfall of disclosures early on Saturday came with the release of documents outlining why issuing the information would damage national security. The US district court in the northern district of California in the fall had ordered the Obama administration to make public the documents, known as state secrets declarations. The justice department issued the declarations late on Friday in two ongoing class action cases: Shubert v Bush, now known as Shubert v Obama, on behalf of Verizon customers; and Jewel v NSA, on behalf of AT&T customers. Calls to the justice department and the director of national intelligence's office were not answered.
  • "In September, the federal court in the northern district of California ... ordered the government to go back through all the secret ex parte declarations and declassify and release as much as they could, in light of the Snowden revelations and government confirmations," Rumold said. "So what was released late last night was in response to that court order."
Paul Merrell

Fire DNI James Clapper: He lied to Congress about NSA surveillance. - Slate Magazine - 0 views

www.slate.com/...ss_about_nsa_surveillance.html

surveillance state NSA clapper lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Jul 13
     
    Slate calls on Obama to sack Director of National  Intelligence James Clapper because of his lies.
Paul Merrell

NSA Director Alexander Defends Surveillance at Black Hat | Threatpost - 0 views

threatpost.com/...101541

surveillance state NSA Alexander NSA-capabilities lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13
     
    "There are allegations [the NSA] listen to all our emails; that's wrong. We don't," Alexander said, adding that of 54 different terrorist-related activities identified through PRISM, 42 of which were disrupted, including 13 in the U.S., and 25 in Europe. "And if we did, we would be held accountable. There is 100 percent auditability on what we do." Technically accurate but materially misleading (only those with text-to-voice capabilities "listen" to emails). Meanwhile, assuming that Alexandeer meant to say "reading" instead of "listening to," the linked Guardian UK reporting on the NSA XScore program brands Gen. Alexander as a liar. 
Gary Edwards

NSA Whistleblowers: NSA Collects 'Word for Word' Every Domestic Communication | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5344851

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower William-Binney

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 04 Aug 13
     
    "Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Metadata Is Sadly Mistaken PBS interviewed NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Russell Tice this week. Binney is the NSA's former director of global digital data, and a 32-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a "legend" within the agency.  Tice helped the NSA spy with satellites for 20 years. Binney and Tice confirmed that the NSA is recording every word of every phone call made within the United States:"
Paul Merrell

US drug agency gets intel from NSA, then lies about its origins to build cases | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...out-its-origins-to-build-cases

security state NSA DEA lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • On Monday, Reuters reported on previously undisclosed documents showing that a secret Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) unit uses information collected by intelligence agencies—including the National Security Agency (NSA)—to build evidence for criminal cases. The true origin of this information is usually concealed from defense lawyers—and sometimes even prosecutors and judges—to seemingly do an end-run around the normal court procedures for a criminal defendant’s right to discovery.
  • “There’s nothing that allows lying to judges about the source of information in a criminal case,” Jennifer Granick, an attorney and the director of Civil Liberties at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, told Ars. Similarly, others have already started to speak out against the practice. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a statement. "When law enforcement agents and prosecutors conceal the role of intelligence surveillance in criminal investigations, they violate the constitutional rights of the accused and insulate controversial intelligence programs from judicial review," wrote ACLU Deputy Legal director Jameel Jaffer. "Effectively, these intelligence programs are placed beyond the reach of the Constitution, where they develop and expand without any court ever weighing in on their lawfulness. This is inappropriate, dangerous, and contrary to the rule of law."
Gary Edwards

What the hell just happened? 'Tyranny By Executive Order' | by Constitutional Attorney Michael Connelly, J.D. | RedFlagNews.com - 0 views

www.redflagnews.com/...l-attorney-michael-connelly-jd

Tyranny-by-Executive-Order

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Aug 13
     
    "What the hell just happened? That is the question that many Americans should be asking themselves following the news conference where Obama unveiled his plan for destroying the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. At first glance it appeared to be a case of Obama shamelessly using the deaths of innocents, and some live children as a backdrop, to push for the passage of radical gun control measures by Congress. Most of these have no chance of passing, yet, Obama's signing of Executive orders initiating 23 so called Executive actions on gun control seemed like an afterthought. Unfortunately, that is the real story, but it is generally being overlooked. The fact is that with a few strokes of his pen Obama set up the mechanisms he will personally use to not only destroy the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but also the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments. It will not matter what Congress does, Obama can and will act on his own, using these Executive actions, and will be violating both the Constitution and his oath of office when he does it. Here are the sections of the Executive Order that he will use: "1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system." What exactly is relevant data? Does it include our medical records obtained through Obamacare, our tax returns, our political affiliations, our military background, and our credit history? I suggest that all of the above, even if it violates our fourth Amendment right to privacy will now be relevant data for determining if we are allowed to purchase a firearm. "2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system." This should be read in conjunction with section 16 of the order that says: "16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors
Paul Merrell

IC ON THE RECORD - 0 views

icontherecord.tumblr.com

surveillance state NSA FBI ICR disclosures

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Aug 13
     
    New Office of the Director of National Intelligence Tumblr web site that Obama ordered to be created, collecting information about the U.S. Intelligence Community, IC on the Record. Presumably "IC" stands for "Intelligence Community."  Content includes declassified documents, official statements, testimony, and other materials. I'll aim to mark any pages bookmarked from this site with an "ICR" tag. 
Gary Edwards

Who owns the Bank of England? |Dark Politricks - 0 views

www.darkpolitricks.com/...who-owns-the-bank-of-england

banksters Banksters-of-America Rothschild-Bank-of-England

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Sep 13
     
    "Who owns the Bank of England? A brief history of World Banksters By Dark Politricks First a few historical comments by people who helped create two of the worlds most famous central banks, the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." - Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence The Bank of England was created in 1694 by a Scotsman William Paterson who famously said: The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing. - William Paterson The history of the Bank of England and how it was taken over by one powerful family hundreds of years ago. Up until 1946 when it was nationalised the Bank of England was a private run bank that lent money it created out of nothing to the English government and was paid back with interest. A very famous story relates to the Bank of England and the infamous Rothschilds, that all powerful banking family. This story was re-told recently in a BBC documentary about the creation of money and the Bank of England. It revolves around the Battle of Waterloo in which Nathan Rothschild used his inside knowledge of the outcome and his faster horses and couriers to play the market by getting the result of the battle before anyone else knew the outcome. He quickly sold his English bonds and gave all the traders who looked to him for guidance the impression that the French had won at Waterloo. The other traders all rus
Paul Merrell

Lavon Affair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Lavon_Affair

war & peace Israel false-flag U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The Lavon Affair refers to a failed Israeli covert operation, code named Operation Susannah, conducted in Egypt in the Summer of 1954. As part of the false flag operation,[1] a group of Egyptian Jews were recruited by Israeli military intelligence for plans to plant bombs inside Egyptian, American and British-owned civilian targets, cinema, library and American educational center. The attacks were to be blamed on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian Communists, "unspecified malcontents" or "local nationalists" with the aim of creating a climate of sufficient violence and instability to induce the British government to retain its occupying troops in Egypt's Suez Canal zone.[2] The operation caused no casualties, except for those members of the cell who committed suicide after being captured.
  • After Israel publicly denied any involvement in the incident for 51 years, the surviving agents were officially honored in 2005 by being awarded certificates of appreciation by Israeli President Moshe Katzav.[3]
  • In the early 1950s, the United States initiated a more activist policy of support for Egyptian nationalism; this was often in contrast with British policies of maintaining its regional hegemony. Israel feared that this policy, which encouraged Britain to withdraw its military forces from the Suez Canal, would embolden Egyptian President Nasser's military ambitions towards Israel. Israel first sought to influence this policy through diplomatic means but was frustrated.[4] In the summer of 1954 Colonel Binyamin Gibli, the chief of Israel's military intelligence, Aman, initiated Operation Susannah in order to reverse that decision. The goal of the Operation was to carry out bombings and other acts of terrorism in Egypt with the aim of creating an atmosphere in which the British and American opponents of British withdrawal from Egypt would be able to gain the upper hand and block the British withdrawal from Egypt.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • According to historian Shabtai Teveth, who wrote one of the more detailed accounts, the assignment was "To undermine Western confidence in the existing [Egyptian] regime by generating public insecurity and actions to bring about arrests, demonstrations, and acts of revenge, while totally concealing the Israeli factor. The team was accordingly urged to avoid detection, so that suspicion would fall on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'."[2]
  • The top-secret cell, Unit 131,[5] which was to carry out the operation, had existed since 1948 and under Aman since 1950. At the time of Operation Susannah, Unit 131 was the subject of a bitter dispute between Aman (military intelligence) and Mossad (national intelligence agency) over who should control it. Unit 131 operatives had been recruited several years before, when the Israeli intelligence officer Avram Dar arrived in Cairo undercover as a British citizen of Gibraltar called John Darling. He had recruited several Egyptian Jews who had previously been active in illegal emigration activities and trained them for covert operations.
  • Aman decided to activate the network in the Spring of 1954. On July 2, the cell firebombed a post office in Alexandria,[6] and on July 14, it bombed the libraries of the U.S. Information Agency in Alexandria and Cairo and a British-owned theater.
  • Before the group began the operation, Israeli agent Avri Elad (Avraham Zeidenberg) was sent to oversee the operations. Elad assumed the identity of Paul Frank, a former SS officer with Nazi underground connections. Avri Elad allegedly informed the Egyptians, resulting in the Egyptian Intelligence Service following a suspect to his target, the Rio Theatre, where a fire engine was standing by. Egyptian authorities arrested this suspect, Philip Natanson, when his bomb accidentally ignited prematurely in his pocket. Having searched his apartment, they found incriminating evidence and names of accomplices to the operation.
  • Several suspects were arrested, including Egyptian Jews and undercover Israelis. Colonel Dar and Elad had managed to escape. Two suspects, Yosef Carmon and Hungarian-born Israeli Meir Max Bineth committed suicide in prison.
  • The Egyptian trial began on December 11 and lasted until January 27, 1955; two of the accused (Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar) were condemned to execution by hanging, two were acquitted, and the rest received lengthy prison terms. The trial was criticised in Israel as a show trial, although strict Israeli military censorship of the press, at the time, meant that the Israeli public was kept in the dark about the facts of the case and, in fact, were led to believe that the defendants were innocent.[7] There were allegations that evidence had been extracted by torture.[8] After serving seven-year jail sentences, two of the imprisoned operatives (Meir Meyuhas and Meir Za'afran) were released in 1962. The rest were eventually freed in February 1968, in a secret addendum to a prisoner of war exchange.
  • Soon after the affair, Mossad chief Isser Harel expressed suspicion to Aman concerning the integrity of Avri Elad. Despite his concerns, Aman continued using Elad for intelligence operations until 1956, when he was caught trying to sell Israeli documents to the Egyptians. Elad was tried in Israel and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. During Elad's imprisonment in Ayalon Prison, the media were only able to refer to him as the "The Third Man" or "X" due to government censorship.[9] In 1976, whilst living in Los Angeles, Elad publicly identified himself as the "Third Man" from the Lavon Affair.[9] In 1980, Harel publicly revealed evidence that Elad had been turned by the Egyptians even before Operation Susannah.
  • Operation Susannah and the Lavon Affair turned out to be disastrous for Israel in several ways: Israel lost significant standing and credibility in its relations with the United Kingdom and the United States that took years to repair.[11] The political aftermath caused considerable political turmoil in Israel that affected the influence of its government.[12] In March 2005, Israel publicly honored the surviving operatives, and President Moshe Katsav presented each with a certificate of appreciation for their efforts on behalf of the state, ending decades of official denial by Israel.[13]
Paul Merrell

Secrecy News From All Over - Secrecy News - 0 views

blogs.fas.org/...all-over

surveillance state FISA email-metadata government secrecy declassification

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The Director of National Intelligence yesterday declassified and released hundreds of pages of records concerning collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, illuminating the origins of bulk collection of email metadata, as well as interactions with the FISA Court and Congress.
  • By themselves, the latest disclosures (provided in response to FOIA litigation brought by ACLU and EFF) are unlikely to resolve ongoing disputes about NSA intelligence gathering. The legitimacy of bulk collection of email and telephone metadata may ultimately be more of a value judgment rather than a factual or legal one. At a minimum, perhaps the new documents will provide a more substantial basis for informed debate. But there is disagreement even about that. “Some would like to believe these disclosures have started a debate about the propriety and efficacy of NSA surveillance programs but, in fact, to a substantial degree, recent unauthorized disclosures have ended the debate because, once disclosed, the programs at issue become substantially less effective,” according to a November 12 report from the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The nation will suffer as a result.”
  • The Public Interest Declassification Board will hold an open meeting at the National Archives on Thursday, November 21. The Board proposes to focus on prioritizing topics and events for declassification. The intended emphasis is on declassification of historical records, but it need not be limited to that. Although willful abuse of classification authority is not unheard of, there seems to be no case in which it has ever been penalized. “I am extremely concerned that the integrity of the classification system continues to be severely undermined by the complete absence of accountability in instances such as this clear abuse of classification authority,” wrote J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, in an October 18 letter. He was responding to the controversial classification of evidence concerning the defilement of human remains in Afghanistan.  See Marine Corps fight escalates over handling of case involving troops urinating on corpses, Washington Post, November 15;  and Marine Corps Commandant Accused of Improper Classification, Secrecy News, July 30.
Gary Edwards

Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank: David Reilly - Bloomberg - 1 views

www.bloomberg.com/...barney-frank-david-reilly.html

Dodd-Frank-Act banksters financial-collapse Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Nov 13
     
    excerpt: "While banks opposed the legislation, they should cheer for its passage by the full Congress in the New Year: There are huge giveaways insuring the government will again rescue banks and Wall Street if the need arises. Nuggets Gleaned Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank's handiwork: -- For all its heft, the bill doesn't once mention the words "too-big-to-fail," the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery. -- Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for "no-more-bailouts" talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate's health-care bill look minuscule. -- Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can't authorize these funds unless "there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back." Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well. More Bailouts -- The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms' debts. Bondholders can sleep easy -- there are more bailouts to come. -- The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis. -- Don't worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on "whether setting up an electronic database" would be a help. Maybe they'll even get to use that Internet thingy. -- This group, among its many powers, can restrict the ability of a financial firm to trade for its own account. Perha
Paul Merrell

Two Navy admirals suspended as military cracks down on misconduct - Washington Times - 0 views

www.washingtontimes.com/...spended-as-military-cracks-dow

U.S. DoD Navy corruption admirals

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • The Navy has suspended two admirals in a broadening bribery scandal that already has ensnared three senior naval officials.Involving charges of prostitution and payoffs, the scandal is the U.S. military’s highest-profile case of officer misconduct this year — part of a trend that has caused deep concern among Pentagon officials. The number of substantiated cases of misconduct has increased steadily since 2008, according to statistics by the Defense Department’s inspector general.The Navy is investigating Vice Adm. Ted Branch, director of naval intelligence, and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, director of intelligence operations, on accusations of “illegal and improper relations” with a defense contractor who scammed the Navy of millions of dollars and bribed naval officials with hookers and gifts over several years.Neither admiral has been charged with a crime or violation, but the Navy said the accusations against them involve “inappropriate conduct prior to their current assignments and flag officer rank.”So far, three Navy officials have been arrested and charged with giving classified information to Malaysian defense contractor Leonard Glenn Francis in exchange for concert tickets, prostitutes and other illicit gifts.
  • The contractor’s company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia Ltd., serviced naval ships in Southeast Asia, and the classified information helped him win Navy contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The information included ship movements and scheduled port visits, and data about internal Navy investigations of the company.
Gary Edwards

The Sides Are Forming For The Coming Civil War. | Militia News - 1 views

www.militianews.com/rming-for-the-coming-civil-war

Obammunism financial-collapse financial-oligarchs banksters

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • America is in the choosing sides phase of the coming civil war. To use a college recruiting phrase, it is accurate to state that the letters of intent to join one side or another have mostly been signed and the commitments offered. However, there is one big uncommitted piece, but very soon the sides will be drawn.
  • The Chess Pieces of Civil War What is going on today in America all about choosing sides. There are clear lines being formed in the United States. The recruiting pool consists of the Department of Homeland Security, the American military, local law enforcement, the Russian troops pouring into the United States, the trickle of Chinese troops coming into the country through Hawaii and, of course, the poor, the middle class and elite. This is the recruiting pool which will form the chess pieces of the coming American Civil War. Even if all parties in this country wanted the country to continue, even in its present mortally wounded state, it would be foolish to believe that it could continue for much longer.
  • Barring a false flag event, US martial law will have a trigger event, which will lead to martial law, that will be financial and it will naturally occur as we are already on a collision course with destiny.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • The net result of these staggering numbers can only end one way, and that is with a financial collapse, followed by a bank holiday, rioting in the streets and the full roll out of martial law. These financial numbers guarantee that the party cannot continue much longer. Since America, in her present form, cannot continue much longer without experiencing a cataclysmic shift, we would be wise to realize what resources are going to be the impetus for civil war. When you play the board game, Monopoly, the properties on Boardwalk are among the most coveted. It is no different in real life. The biggest prize of the coming conflict is real estate. Homes, office buildings and shopping malls are the most coveted prize. The MERS mortgage fraud continues unabated as millions of homes have been confiscated through mortgage fraud. When the dollar is worthless and is awaiting its replacement (e.g. the Amero or the Worldo), real estate will be more valuable than gold.
  • Other big game that is being hunted by both sides in the coming civil war will be bank accounts, which must be looted before the dormant computer digits we call money can be converted into hard assets. That is why my advice is, and has been, convert your cash into tangible assets which can enhance your survivability in the upcoming crash.
  • Also, your pensions, your 401K’s and your various entitlement programs are also at risk as evidenced by Secretary of Treasury Jack Lew’s “borrowing” from various Federal retirement accounts in order to increase the debt ceiling fight that will resurface in Congress, again, early next year.
  • Again, my advice is to convert your assets in tangible items which will aid in getting you through some very dark days coming up in the near future.
  • Before the cognitive dissonance crowd rears their ugly heads and accuses me of fear mongering, ask yourself what the elite did prior to the crash of the economy in 1929. For example, Joseph Kennedy took his money out of the stock market the day BEFORE it crashed. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Westinghouse, et al., all took their money out just prior to the crash, leaving the ignorant masses unaware of what was coming. Don’t make the same mistake.
  • I have news for you, there are Federal officials in every town, city and county in America. If one violates HR 347, they will be immediately arrested and charged with a felony.
  • The NDAA constitutes another big fence being built around the people in which all due process will soon be gone. The NDAA will allow the administration the “legal” right to secretly remove any burgeoning leadership of citizen opposition forces.
  • There are three paramount numbers that every American should be paying attention to and they are (1) national deficit ($17 trillion dollars), (2) the unfunded liabilities debt ($238 trillion dollars), and (3) the derivatives/futures debt (one quadrillion dollars which is 16 times the entire wealth of the planet.
  • In short, this spells the potential enslavement of the American people.
  • For those of you who still have your blinders on, research the NDAA and EO 13603 and then when you realize that I am correct in my interpretation, ask yourself one question; If the powers that be were not going to seize every important asset, then why would the government give itself the power to do just that?
  • And while you are at it, remember the Clean Water Act gives the EPA to control all private property as well as the precious resources of all water. And then of course, the FDA and the conflicts with local farmers is escalating.
  • And if this is not enough to convince the sheep of this country that the storm clouds are overhead, then take a look at HR 347 which outlaws protesting and takes away the First Amendment. This unconstitutional legislation makes it illegal to criticize the President and the government, as a whole, in the presence of Federal officials.
  • The second provision which will allow this country to quickly transition to martial law is Executive Order (EO) 13603 which allows the President to take control over any resource, property and even human labor within the United States. This EO gives the President unlimited authority including the ability to initiate a civilian draft as well as a military draft.
  • I just saw the Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire, and this is eerily similar to what I saw in the movies in that the people are being provoked to revolution.
  • in the TV show, Revolution, the most evil entity in the series is the re-emergence of the United States government and the heroes of the show are rebelling against the abuse.
  • It seems like everywhere we turn in the media, the people are being encouraged to rise up now and challenge authority. I am sure the establishment would rather confront a small group of dissidents and squelch the rebellion now, before the numbers can become significant and overwhelming to the establishment and this theme is being carried out in the media.
  • The final action will consist of gun confiscation and one side of the coming conflict is attempting to position themselves to do that in the near future and that would be the DHS, the Russians and the Chinese.
  • I cannot think of another legitimate reason which would describe why they are here.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Nov 13
     
    While I'd be the first to agree that the degree of fiscal mismanagement of this nation's economy is beyond insane and have to admit that I see very little to admire in Barack Obama's presidency, the meme about Executive Order 13603 authorizing confiscation of any property and enslavement of the American public needs to be put to rest. See http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2012.html#13603 E.O. 13603 is not much more than an updating of similar executive orders issued by prior presidents beginning with Dwight Eisenhower. In fact, in skimming it a few minutes ago, I didn't see anything drastically different from some of the prior related orders. E.g., it reflects that a bunch of agencies that were formerly either independent or under other departments are now under the newish Department of Homeland Security, whose Secretary now gets the authority formerly delegated to other department and agency heads. If blame must be cast, it belongs on the Congress that enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950, 50 U.S.C. 2061, et seq. The executive order does no more than obey that Act's instructions. For example there is a section authorizing pre-emption of manufacturing capacity of critical industries over any existing civilian contracts in the event of a national emergency, but that language is in the statute as well. But that power hasn't had much traction since Harry Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry to break a nationwide strike. The Supreme Court swatted down that effort as an abuse of a power that would be lawful in a true emergency, like another major. But even that semi-radical "survival" power is ameliorated by other provisions of the statute and the order that authorize loan guarantees for companies' construction and maintenance of critical productive capacity. Much of that has been implemented over the years as outright grants. So for example, many chemical manufacturing plants were built with Defense Production Act funds, with
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