how we crept into the total surveillance society
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Thursday, October 9, 2025 17:04
VIEWED: 6528
PAGE 3 of 5
Couple of notes here.
First, the current intel crowd is essentially a bunch of ideological morons, cause the competent ones bailed out after Valerie got shafted, and most of the best tech folk would not work for the Feds cause of their very nature, leaving them with dregs and scum.
See, when you're looking for a needle in a haystack, adding more hay is the dumbest thing ever.
Second, because they are stupid and subcompetent, and obediant little drones of the just-following-orders type, it never occurs to them to even question whether some of the information they collect has been fed to them deliberately in order to poison the well with contradictory, confusing, or just plain false data, because they don't question - if they did they'd not be working for the Feds, so their blithe acceptance of all that they gather can be turned against them rather handily.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeedTheMole
Just for reference.
-F
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The Ten Most Disturbing Things You Should Know About the FBI Since 9/11
By ACLU
08 July 13
1. USA Patriot Act Abuse
The recent revelation about the FBI using the Patriot Act's "business records provision" to track all U.S. telephone calls is only the latest in a long line of abuse. Five Justice Department Inspector General audits documented widespread FBI misuse of Patriot Act authorities (1,2,3,4,5), and a federal district court recently struck down the National Security Letter (NSL) statute because of its unconstitutional gag orders. The IG also revealed the FBI's unlawful use of "exigent letters" that claimed false emergencies to get private information without NSLs, but in 2009 the Justice Department secretly re-interpreted the law to allow the FBI to get this information without emergencies or legal process. Congress and the American public need to know the full scope of the FBI's spying on Americans under the Patriot Act and all other surveillance authorities enacted since 9/11, like the FISA Amendments Act that underlies the PRISM program.
2. 2008 Amendments to the Attorney General's Guidelines
Attorney General Michael Mukasey re-wrote the FBI's rulebook in the final months of the Bush administration, giving FBI agents unfettered authority to investigate people without any factual basis for suspecting wrongdoing. The 2008 Attorney General's Guidelines created a new kind of intrusive investigation called an "assessment," which required no "factual predicate" before FBI agents could search through government or commercial databases, conduct overt or covert FBI interviews, and task informants to gather information about people or infiltrate lawful organizations. In a two-year period from 2009 to 2011, the FBI opened over 82,000 "assessments" of individuals or organizations, less than 3,500 of which discovered information justifying further investigation.
3. Racial and Ethnic Mapping
The 2008 Attorney General's Guidelines also authorized "domain management assessments" which allow the FBI to map American communities by race and ethnicity based on crass stereotypes about the crimes they are likely to commit. FBI documents obtained by the ACLU show the FBI mapped entire Chinese and Russian communities in San Francisco on the theory that they might commit organized crime, all Latino communities in New Jersey and Alabama because a street gang has Latino members, African Americans in Georgia to find "Black separatists," and Middle-Eastern communities in Detroit for terrorism investigations. The FBI's racial and ethnic mapping program is simply racial and religious profiling of entire communities.
4. Unrestrained Data Collection and Data Mining
The FBI has claimed the authority to secretly sweep up voluminous amounts of private information from data aggregators for data mining purposes. In 2007 the FBI said it amassed databases containing 1.5 billion records, which were predicted to grow to 6 billion records by 2012, or equal to "20 separate ‘records' for each man, woman and child in the United States." When Congress sought information about one of these programs, the FBI refused to give the Government Accountability Office access. That program was temporarily defunded, but its successor, the FBI Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, currently has 360 staff members running 40 separate projects. Records show analysts are allowed to use data mining tools to establish "risk scores" for U.S. persons. A 2013 IG audit questioned the task force's effectiveness, concluding it "did not always provide FBI f
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I just thought I'd tack this on:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/13/us-usa-banks-spying-idUSBRE9
2C12720130313
(Reuters) - The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.
The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.
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http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-obamas-attack-civ
il-liberties-has-gone-way-beyond-imagination
Noam Chomsky: Obama's Attack on Civil Liberties Has Gone Way Beyond Imagination
April 26, 2013 |
Mike Stivers: Anyone following issues of civil liberties under Obama knows that his administration's policies have been disastrous. The signing of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which effectively legalizes indefinite detention of US citizens, the prosecution of more whistleblowers than any previous president, the refusal to close Guantanamo, and the adoption of ruthless positions in trials such as Hedges vs. Obama and Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project
don't even encapsulate the full extent of the flagrant violations of civil, political and constitutional rights. One basic question that a lot of people seem to be asking is, why? What's the rationale?
Noam Chomsky: That's a very interesting question. I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don't seem easy to explain. In many ways the worst is what you mention, Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project [4]. That's an Obama initiative and it's a very serious attack on civil liberties. He doesn't gain anything from it – he doesn't get any political mileage out of it. In fact, most people don't even know about it, but what it does is extend the concept of "material assistance to terror" to speech.
The case in question was a law group that was giving legal advice to groups on the terrorist list, which in itself has no moral or legal justification; it's an abomination. But if you look at the way it's been used, it becomes even more abhorrent (Nelson Mandela was on it until a couple of years ago [5].) And the wording of the colloquy is broad enough that it could very well mean that if, say, you meet with someone in a terrorist group and advise them to turn to nonviolent means, then that's material assistance to terrorism. I've met with people who are on the list and will continue to do so, and Obama wants to criminalize that, which is a plain attack on freedom of speech. I just don't understand why he's doing it.
The NDAA suit, of which I'm a plaintiff - it mostly codifies existing practice. While there has been some protest over the indefinite detention clause, there's one aspect of it that I'm not entirely happy with. The only protest that's being raised is in response to (indefinite) detention of American citizens, but I don't see why we should have the right to detain anyone without trial. The provision of the NDAA that allows for this should not be tolerated. It was banned almost eight centuries ago in the Magna Carta.
It's the same with the drone killings. There was some protest over the Anwar Al-Awlaki killing because he was an American citizen. But what about someone who isn't an American citizen? Do we have a right to murder them if the president feels like it?
On Obama's 2012 election campaign web site, it clearly states that Obama has prosecuted six whistleblowers under the Espionage Act [6]. Does he think he's appealing to some constituency with that affirmation?
I don't know what base he's appealing to. If he thinks he's appealing to the nationalist base, well, they're not going to vote for him anyway. That's why I don't understand it. I don't think he's doing anything bes
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In Midst of Scandal, NSA Gets New Mega-Warehouse for Data
Fri, 06/14/2013 - 7:00am
Associated Press, Brady McCombs
An aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah – the nation's new billion-dollar epicenter for fighting global cyberthreats. Image: AP Photo, Rick BowmerAn aerial view of the NSA's Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah – the nation's new billion-dollar epicenter for fighting global cyberthreats. Image: AP Photo, Rick BowmerThe nation's new billion-dollar epicenter for fighting global cyber threats sits just south of Salt Lake City, tucked away on a National Guard base at the foot of snow-capped mountains. The long, squat buildings span 1.5 million square feet, and are filled with super-powered computers designed to store massive amounts of information gathered secretly from phone calls and emails.
Two small, weathered signs in the sagebrush greet interlopers to this place with a stark warning: "Military reservation. No trespassing." But there is no visible marker bearing the facility's name and operator: The Utah Data Center, brought to you courtesy of the National Security Agency.
When it opens this fall, the facility will be the NSA's largest data storage center in the U.S. Just don't ask Utah officials, and certainly not the residents of tiny Bluffdale, just north of the new center, to tell you exactly what will go on inside. They either don't know, or aren't saying. And the NSA is famously tight-lipped.
"We know it's a spy center. But who are they spying on?" sais Connie Robbins, an upholstery shop owner who lives in Bluffdale, a community of 8,000 some 25 miles south of Salt Lake City that is known for its rodeo and annual Old West Days.
The dearth of information has perpetuated a mystery that has spawned dozens of theories and a spoof website that even includes a phony code name for the facility: "Bumblehive," a play on Utah's nickname of the "Beehive State."
Last week's revelation that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. phone records along with digital communications stored by nine major Internet providers illustrates how aggressively personal information is being congregated and analyzed – and shines a brighter light on what will be going on in secret at the Utah facility, scheduled to open in October.
NSA officials say the center will play a key role in the nation's effort to protect national security networks, and allow U.S. authorities to monitor for potential cyberthreats. In an email, agency spokeswoman Vanee Vines writes that "many unfounded allegations have been made about the planned activities" of the center.
"NSA would like to confirm, on the record, that the Utah Data Center is a state-of-the-art data facility designed to support the U.S. intelligence community's efforts to further strengthen and protect the nation. Its operations will be lawfully conducted in accordance with U.S. laws and policies," Vines writes.
She provided no additional details, however.
Richard "Dickie" George, who retired from the NSA in 2011 after 40 years, said the facility isn't nearly as interesting or mysterious as some think. He calls it little more than a giant storeroom. Inundated with increasing volumes of secretly taped phone calls, intercepted emails and poached records of online purchases, the NSA needed a mega-warehouse to put it all, he said.
"It's just a big file cabinet out in the Western area," said George, once a senior technical leader at the agency. "There is no spying going on there."
NSA agents elsewhere will comb through the data stored in Utah as the agency attempts to understand how terrorist groups operate and who plays what roles, George said. Emails, articles, websites and videos on the Internet may hold clues about such activities, he said.
James Bamford, the author of several books on the NSA who last year wrote about the Utah center in Wired magazine, asserts that the
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What does "collect it all" mean? Exactly what it says - Alexander took a "collect it all" surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one.
... as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications."
"'He is absolutely obsessed and completely driven to take it all, whenever possible," said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official and whistleblower. The continuation of Alexander's policies, Drake said, would result in the 'complete evisceration of our civil liberties.'"
That is the definition of a ubiquitous surveillance state - and it's been built in the dark, without the knowledge of the American people or people around the world, even though it's aimed at them. How anyone could think this should have all remained concealed - that it would have been better had it just been left to fester and grow in the dark - is truly mystifying.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/424-national-security/18421-th
e-crux-of-the-nsa-story-collect-it-all
The Crux of the NSA Story: 'Collect it All'
By Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UK
15 July 13
The actual story that matters is not hard to see: the NSA is attempting to collect, monitor and store all forms of human communication.
The Washington Post this morning has a long profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, director the NSA, and it highlights the crux - the heart and soul - of the NSA stories, the reason Edward Snowden sacrificed his liberty to come forward, and the obvious focal point for any responsible or half-way serious journalists covering this story. It helpfully includes that crux right in the headline, in a single phrase:
What does "collect it all" mean? Exactly what it says; the Post explains how Alexander took a "collect it all" surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one:
"At the time, more than 100 teams of US analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency's powerful computers.
"'Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack,' said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan's implementation. 'Collect it all, tag it, store it. .?.?. And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it...
"It also encapsulated Alexander's controversial approach to safeguarding Americans from what he sees as a host of imminent threats, from terrorism to devastating cyberattacks.
"In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications."
Aside from how obviously menacing and even creepy it is to have a state collect all forms of human communication - to have the explicit policy that literally no electronic communication can ever be free of US collection and monitoring - there's no legal authority for the NSA to do this. Therefore:
[E]ven his defenders say Alexander's aggressiveness has sometimes taken him to the outer e
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There is a timeline they've drawn up https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline with interesting facts like: "Department of Justice Confirms NSA Does Not Need Court Order Every time it Searches Databases of Americans' Calling Information"
This gives a fair summary:
Last night, we received confirmation from a report in the Guardian that the National Security Agency (NSA) is currently collecting the call records of every Verizon customer in America. The NSA order forces Verizon to provide "on an ongoing daily basis" all call records for any call "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” and any call made "between the United States and abroad."
And that’s not all. Today, the Washington Post and the Guardian published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies. The government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.
Mounting Evidence of the NSA Warrantless Surveillance
EFF has so much evidence of the surveillance now that we've created a timeline.
In brief, America first learned about the secret surveillance in a 2005 New York Times exposé which disclosed one aspect of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. We learned that the Bush Administration had been illegally tapping phone lines in the U.S. without warrants or court permission immediately following the 9/11 attacks. President Bush himself admitted at least some of what the government was doing.
In early 2006, EFF received photos and blueprints from former AT&T technician Mark Klein. These undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility in San Francisco which sends copies of all AT&T customers’ emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to the NSA.
Later in 2006, USA Today and a number of other newspapers published a story disclosing that the NSA had compiled a massive database of call records from American telecommunications companies, which included AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South. This was confirmed by a number of members of Congress.
Information has continued to trickle out over time. In 2009, the New York Times reported the NSA was still collecting purely domestic communications in a "significant and systematic" way after the FISA Amendments Act was passed in 2008.
Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Verizon
The news of the last few days has confirmed the records portion of the surveillance, and gave us some additional hints about the government’s arguments in support of its actions. The secret court order issued to Verizon was a Section 215 order (50 U.S.C. sec. 1861), a controversial legal instrument greatly expanded when George Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law on October 26, 2001. It allows the government to seek "any tangible things" in connection with an authorized investigation and is often known as the "business records" provision of FISA.
Section 215 allows for secret court orders to records that are "relevant" to a government investigation – a far lower threshold and more expansive reach than a warrant based on probable cause. The list of possible "tangible things" the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver’s license records to Internet browsing history.
We've long suspected that the government has been using Section 215 to conduct dragnet surveillance. Now we have incontrovertible evidence. Senator Ron Wyden has warned that "when the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry."
Senator Wyden is right.
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Some of you may recognize the speaker.
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One of the most important points was they said that there was not a single instance where the evidence or the information obtained by NSA help prevent a single instance of terrorism or actually help any terrorism investigation.
So, here you are spending billions of dollars and the exact result is absolutely zero. So you have got this massive intrusion and violation of privacy rights, you have got a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, you need a judicial warrant to do that and it has not even stopped a single instance of violence or terrorism. The whole program is hundreds of billions of dollars spent and the return is absolutely zero which is mind-boggling.
Another report came out to say that really what the NSA is after is looking for material to blackmail people to force them to do things. When you are spying on Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany and other world leaders, this is offensive towards friends but also very dangerous and certainly illegal and it is going to create all sorts of problems for people.
Another report came out to say that the NSA is in fact also doing industrial espionage on behalf of American companies. So they are spying on industrial for trade purposes in secret.
They are also spying on government negotiations with regard to beans and agricultural products. This has got nothing to do with terrorism or national security but everything you do about illegal spying and getting information through improper sources.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, here you are spending billions of dollars and the exact result is absolutely zero.
Bingo.
They exist for themselves, of themselves, and will do literally ANYTHING to maintain that sweet flood of largesse... just ask John Kennedy, oh, wait, you CAN'T, oh well...
Which begs the question of who really runs this fucking country, yes ?
Were it me, I would put a 50KT tactical into Langley, Quantico, and Ft Meade, posthaste, and consider the collateral a necessary price, because the gravest threat our country has ever faced, is from our own so-called-protectors.
Quote:
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
-James Madison
-Frem
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