The NSA-(Just because we REALLY should discuss this)

[FiredMotorCompany]

J. Edgar Hoover would be SO scary today.

 

New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach Programs Cover 75% of Nation's Traffic, Can Snare Emails

 

Where you you draw the line? When do you say, "Enough"?

 

Strange how we still have more privacy on a land line phone call because it DOES require a subpoena, yet no other communication is exempt. With the possible exception of the USPS having not been outed as opening your mail and reading it........yet.

 

How well would you sleep if you knew the government was watching your laptop webcam, cellphone speaker, smart t.v., email, google searches, tracking your movements by gps on your car or cellphone, flying drones with heat signature scanners, body cameras on police officers during day-to-day patrols............

 

Hello, Big Brother.

[FiredMotorCompany]

As some complacent members here are content with the NSA, well.......because they would only spy on those who have done something........and the NSA would only do what they were supposed to do.........and since they don't communicate with "foreigners" they are not concerned their communications would be monitored..........I regret to deflate your "raft" of denial and confront you with another revelation that the NSA, much like the other government spy agencies, CIA,FBI, IRS.....are not abiding the law.

 

Even when courts rule their programs are unconstitutional. But then, who in today's government cares much for the constitution. It's just a nuisance to be ignored. Certainly not the elected Executive and his Department of Justice.

 

 

 

2011 Ruling Found an N.S.A. Program Unconstitutional

A recently revealed National Security Agency program that searches the contents of Americans’ international Internet communications for people who mention foreigners under surveillance violated the Constitution for several years, according to an October 2011 top secret court ruling made public on Wednesday.

[Langston Hughes]

You're being disingenuous. Your "give a damn" survives today to defend the current administration with such profound defenses as

"Well Bush did it ______________.

Fill in the blank (too, first, worse, longer, costlier, inhumanely).

 

And it quits after that.

 

So you were all against what Bush did, as you state, but you don't give a damn if Obama does it.

 

You just showed how shallow you are. And a sycophant.

 

No, that's not what I said thank you for playing. I didn't show anything, you and your biased perception showed us how you feel towards liberals. That is you view everything in a paranoid twisted way, unable to see simple and obvious statements as just that.

 

I listened to conservatives defend the shit outta warrant less wiretaps, the patriot act, Gitmo, the torture of prisoners and eventually I succumbed to the reality that it's going to happen, like it or not. Then you turn around and suggest that i'm a sychopant? That's fucking rich, because the people in the republican party demanded that we get over it and accept this as the new normal and when i did, then well now it's wrong because Obama is doing it.

 

And now that i'm not mad about it, i'm just an Obama slappy. Time to get the fuck over your self-righteous ass and understand that I just don't give a damn anymore. It''s wrong, Obama's wrong but i'm not getting into a lather about it because when the time to do something about it was at hand, the conservative fucking boot-lickers agreed with Bush. 12 years later it's not going to stop. So whine and cry about it like it fucking matters, but it doesn't because we are not turning back the clock now.

 

Hey look there's a windmill for you tilt at.

 

Edited August 22, 2013 by Langston Hughes

[fmccap]

http://www.dailypaul.com/296675/fisa-court-that-oversees-the-nsa-declares-that-that-the-nsa-lied-repeatedly-to-the-court?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailypaul%2FFClq+%28The+Daily+P.Au.L+-+Peace+|+Gold+|+Love%29&utm_content=FaceBook

 

And then there is the matter of the three FISA opinions that found the NSA's action's unconstitutional...

[FiredMotorCompany]

I expect to hear "I haven't done anything so why do I need privacy".

 

But none who do say that ever explain where they DO expect to have privacy. So, I guess they live in a glass house and discuss everything in their lives on Facebook or in the middle of a police station.

 

It's just the Fourth Amendment were talking about. Why worry?

 

Because every apathetic victim jeopardizes those who prefer to not surrender their rights so easily.

[FiredMotorCompany]

This may actually solve the voter I.D. problem.

 

NSA has your cellphone, email, and other identifying info. Traffic cameras are everywhere. Facial recognition software is perfected.

 

To vote, you walk up to the registrar and have your photo taken. No fingerprints needed, but it would be nice to cross reference them with criminal investigations at the same time.

 

Voila! Each polling place could kick out anyone who has previously voted.

 

We could also cross-reference traffic citations, warrants, child support, alimony, escapee status, check fraud, ..........

 

 

Shouldn't be a problem for a few here who claim they have nothing to hide.

[RangerM]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10263880/NSA-employees-spied-on-their-lovers-using-eavesdropping-programme.html

 

The employees even had a code name for the practice – "Love-int" – meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners.

 

Dianne Feinstein, a senator who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said the NSA told her committee about a set of "isolated cases" that have occurred about once a year for the last 10 years. The spying was not within the US, and was carried out when one of the lovers was abroad.

 

One employee was disciplined for using the NSA's resources to track a former spouse, the Associated Press said.

Those isolated cases are the ones either known, or acknowledged.

 

It's not a real stretch to think someone could have used their abilities for other (more sinister) reasons.

[FiredMotorCompany]

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"I'll only stick it in a little."

 

 

Two statements that are likely said by government employees or officials.

[FiredMotorCompany]

Sure, you think you have nothing to hide. So why do you want privacy. Because you don't have any, believe it or not.

And therefore, why not have glass walls and microphones blasting your personal conversations throughout your neighborhood.

 

The government would NEVER abuse their powers. Just research MLK and the J. Edgar Hoover files.

 

Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s

 

 

For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.

A New York training site for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which includes federal and local investigators. AT&T employees are embedded in the program in three states.

Jameel Jaffer of the A.C.L.U. says a slide presentation on the Hemisphere Project raises “profound privacy concerns.”

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

The project comes to light at a time of vigorous public debate over the proper limits on government surveillance and on the relationship between government agencies and communications companies. It offers the most significant look to date at the use of such large-scale data for law enforcement, rather than for national security.

The scale and longevity of the data storage appears to be unmatched by other government programs, including the N.S.A.’s gathering of phone call logs under the Patriot Act. The N.S.A. stores the data for nearly all calls in the United States, including phone numbers and time and duration of calls, for five years.

Edited September 2, 2013 by FiredMotorCompany

[FiredMotorCompany]

How to lie without technically lying.

Your government is adept at it.

 

How the NSA Misleads the Public Without Technically Lying

The Wall Street Journal published an important investigation last week, reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) has direct access to many key telecommunications switches around the country and has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. Notably, NSA officials repeatedly refused to talk about this story on theirconference call with reporters the next day. Instead the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA released a statement about the story later that evening.

If you read the statement quickly, it seems like the NSA is disputing the WSJ story. But on careful reading, they actually do not deny any of it. As weve shown before, often you have to carefully parse NSA statements to root out deception and misinformation, and this statement is no different. Theyve tried to deflect an accurate story with their same old word games. Heres a breakdown:

 

 

The NSA does not sift through and have unfettered access to 75% of United States online communications...The report leaves readers with the impression that the NSA is sifting through as much as 75% of the United States online communications, which is simply not true.

 

Of course, the Wall Street Journal never says the NSA sifts through 75% of US communications. They reported the NSAs system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic. The NSA's new term sift is undefined, but regardless of what the NSA is doing or not doing to 75% of Americans emails, they do have the technical capacity to search through it for key wordswhich they do not deny.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2013 by FiredMotorCompany

[Edstock]

The Best #NSAPickupLines Ever

Click on the link for more.

 

#NSAPickUpLines Girl, you must have fallen from heaven because there is no tracking data to indicate how you arrived at this location.

#NSAPickUpLines I would ask for your number, but I already have it.

#NSAPickUpLines. I'd like to know more about you. Just kidding, I already know everything.

#NSAPickUpLines I knew you'd be here.

#NSApickuplines You look way prettier in person than through your webcam.

[FiredMotorCompany]

The Best #NSAPickupLines Ever

 

Click on the link for more.

 

#NSAPickUpLines Girl, you must have fallen from heaven because there is no tracking data to indicate how you arrived at this location.

#NSAPickUpLines I would ask for your number, but I already have it.

#NSAPickUpLines. I'd like to know more about you. Just kidding, I already know everything.

#NSAPickUpLines I knew you'd be here.

#NSApickuplines You look way prettier in person than through your webcam.

We found common ground. Too bad the lines are funny because they're true.

[FiredMotorCompany]

"As long as one person exists who can dare to defend you, yet shall live; but you shall live as you do now, surrounded by my many and trusty guards, so that you shall not be able to stir one finger against the republic: many eyes and ears shall still observe and watch you, as they have hitherto done, though you shall not perceive them."

 

 

Are we not now considered by Cicero to be treated as Catiline?

 

Cicero-Roman, philosopher, politician,lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist.

[FiredMotorCompany]

All the outrage against Bush for his NSA and intelligence data gathering as affronts to civil liberties and erosions of constitutional rights, are forgotten when Obama does it.

 

The initial efforts were self-limited to then current policies regarding the targeting of foreign participants or their domestic contacts.

 

Yet, in 2011, under the Obama administration, these were expanded in longer data storage and essentially unlimited authority to collect data from every American. Thanks to secret courts.

 

Sure, we can trust our government. If they "stick it to us" it's only for our own good. They'd never mislead or lie to us.

 

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

 

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

 

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Benjamin Franklin

Edited September 9, 2013 by FiredMotorCompany

[Edstock]

Are we not now considered by Cicero to be treated as Catiline?

 

Cicero-Roman, philosopher, politician,lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist.

 

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

 

In some ways, it's a question of balance. The FInancial TImes has a fine interview with John Le Carré, who comments,

 

 

He’s long been out of that world but remains respectfully discreet about the confidences he picked up. That sense of correctness has a broader resonance, informing, when we discussed it recently, his views about Edward Snowden’s revelations of the extraordinary scale of US surveillance of its own citizens as well as those of other countries. He tells me he is horrified: “There seems to be no limit to the violations to their hard-won liberties that Americans will put up with in the catchall name of counter terror.” But he also recognises that “no country can allow its secret servants to whistle-blow with impunity”.

[FiredMotorCompany]

In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk realizes that the genetically superior Khan, while extremely intelligent, only thinks 2 dimensionally. Kirk uses the cover of the nebula to translate in the third, z-axis, away from the attacking Khan.

Kirk's ploy works and Khan is ultimately destroyed.

 

We, as Americans, and the people in general, must realize that those in power are not working in 2 dimensions, either/or, left/right, republican/democrat, us/them, etc....they work in 3 or more dimensions. And keeping us occupied with these magician's misdirection techniques leaves us fighting amongst ourselves while they work their mischief.

 

Start questioning why we are led to fight obvious yet intractable fights for causes we should not be involved in. Or fight each other and by doing so, weakening ourselves and our opponents while those with a stake in the outcome manipulate public emotional affiliations.

[FiredMotorCompany]

Upon reading this article, I have no doubt it will be scoffed at.

 

But, at some level, it proposes the same kind of failure prone assumptions the government made with Obamacare.

It pre-supposes that Americans are a static element. That the American people will climb aboard and react compliantly.

 

If such steps as those proposed in the article were implemented, every politician would adapt to the new normal, but the outcome would remain the same.

 

Loopholes, such as claims of privacy for personal hygiene, will be abused just as commonly as existing attempts to regulate influence from outside parties are now. And bedrooms and bathrooms would be havens of freedom from surveillance....unlike the American citizens rights to privacy.

 

But, there is some comic karma undertones to it.

 

Nixon Had It Right: The Government Should Be Wiretapped

Back in 2003, it was already well established that the US federal government was using new surveillance powers found in the Patriot Act to investigate crimes unrelated to terrorism. In 2001, the ACLU detailed how the FBI issued 143,074 national security letters (which come with gag orders), resulting in 53 criminal referrals, of which only one was for terrorism. And, in October, NSA Chief Gen. Keith Alexander stated that only one or two terrorists plots were thwarted because of federal surveillance of telephone conversations.

 

If we acknowledge that federal surveillance powers are being used to fight non-terrorism crimes, then perhaps we should rethink the very idea of surveillance—and imagine what other crimes could be fought in this way. Call this a thought experiment: What if we inverted the federal government's surveillance philosophy, or modulated it, folding it back onto federal officials? If knowledge and data are power, then why not empower Americans with a tool that could impose ethics on our political institutions?

 

This is, more or less, what WikiLeaks and Anonymous have sought to do for the last few years. But, this approach requires either waiting for whistleblowers to speak, or hackers to purloin vital documents. What if we didn't have to rely on whistleblowers, hackers, and activists to break the truth out of vaults full of secrets? What if if every public move made by a government official, from bureaucrat to politician, was recorded, filed, streamed, and otherwise posted online for all to see? Perhaps then government decision-making could be straightened out.

 

[Lucifer]

People used to make fun of George W. Bush for using pen and paper (and not email). The joke is on them. The NSA doesn't (and probably couldn't) monitor a letter sent via USPS or other courier.

 

Why would you think they don't or couldn't?

[RangerM]

 

Why would you think they don't or couldn't?

The don't because of sheer volume, and the number (and distribution) of locations makes getting everything impossible. FedEx is at least more possible since there are fewer sorting stations.

 

Once you start taking into account that letters are folded, and in an envelope (which may or may not have security printing on the inside, like these) so the text becomes garbled, you realize that no computer/scanner is good/fast enough to read its contents.

 

At best (using current technology), they can track letters from their point of pick up to the point it's delivered; although they still can't know who mailed it and they can't read it without opening it.

Edited November 8, 2013 by RangerM

[Langston Hughes]

The don't because of sheer volume, and the number (and distribution) of locations makes getting everything impossible. FedEx is at least more possible since there are fewer sorting stations.

 

Once you start taking into account that letters are folded, and in an envelope (which may or may not have security printing on the inside, like these) so the text becomes garbled, you realize that no computer/scanner is good/fast enough to read its contents.

 

At best (using current technology), they can track letters from their point of pick up to the point it's delivered; although they still can't know who mailed it and they can't read it without opening it.

Nothing we know of, but anyways It seems to me that everything he ordered was eventually put to electronic versions within minutes.

[RangerM]

Nothing we know of, but anyways It seems to me that everything he ordered was eventually put to electronic versions within minutes.

I can't speak to what was and wasn't scanned to electronic PDF during the Bush administration; although most/all of it is supposed to be archived. But I do know that when there is only one written copy, it is impossible to intercept indirectly.

 

Emails get copied over and over again (on the local machine and the various servers/routers) as the packets meander their way from Point A to B. Other electronic communications are also easily collected with simple receivers. (even without physically tapping the lines!)

 

I remember seeing a story about how the Russians could supposedly intercept individual typewriter keystrokes from IBM Selectric typewriters because different keys produced different electronic signatures. Seems a little far-fetched, but who knows?

[FiredMotorCompany]

In the early 1980s, I was working at Warner Robbins AFB, building an Avionics Development Facility. The building was enclosed in a Faraday Cage to limit EMF radiation. While revisiting after completion for punch list items, I noticed a Class A Motor Home parked outside with unusual equipment and antennae. When I asked a member of the personnel, they described how (during the Cold War, btw) fluctuations in the incoming power grid and electronic circuitry radiation of computers in operation could be intercepted and analyzed by our enemies to discover aspects of what operations are being performed and what is being typed on a console.

 

I've also seen articles how the reflected illumination from a CRT screen (due to the interlaced electron scan beam) could be used to interpolate what is being displayed.

And laser beam reflections used to listen to audio from the interior of a building by analyzing the frequency and amplitude fluctuations and reproducing the sound waves that caused the glass to vibrate.

 

 

I haven't seen it in many years, but if memory serves, I think most of the technology used in "Blue Thunder" have become reality and are in use today.

Edited November 9, 2013 by FiredMotorCompany

[RangerM]

What's amazing to me is looking at what those guys could come up with, using the (seemingly) limited technology of the time. Even the ingenuity of the non-techies of the time could be impressive. (thinking of my farmer grandfather, here)

 

Today's "tech-savvy" generation seems to sandbox themselves to only what they can do on an iPad or other devices' ecosystems.

[Langston Hughes]

What's amazing to me is looking at what those guys could come up with, using the (seemingly) limited technology of the time. Even the ingenuity of the non-techies of the time could be impressive. (thinking of my farmer grandfather, here)

 

Today's "tech-savvy" generation seems to sandbox themselves to only what they can do on an iPad or other devices' ecosystems.

Really? You think todays top 1% of techies is not able to match the previous couple of generations? Don't let your age or nostalgia color your views, that sells them short.

[FiredMotorCompany]

Really? You think todays top 1% of techies is not able to match the previous couple of generations? Don't let your age or nostalgia color your views, that sells them short.

Put those same top 1% of today's techies into 1960s and see if they could sent men to the moon on a rocket with the computing power of a Casio Calculator watch.

And they did it within the decade. Though, not without a high cost in lives and money.