Free Republic

New research published by Stanford Univeristy Wednesday reveal phone and Internet metadata collected by the NSA can expose far more information about an individual than the agency admits, including, “medical conditions, financial and legal connections, and even whether they own a gun.” Two of the school’s computer science graduate students were able to uncover the sensitive personal details of individuals from phone data details, like the numbers of callers and recipients, the location of callers, phone serial numbers and the length of conversations — all of which are data the signals intelligence agency collects in bulk both domestically and internationally....

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein "reluctantly" accused the CIA on Tuesday of spying on her committee. The CIA should be very afraid. DiFi has stood out as Langley's fiercest Democratic defender. Now she threatens to become the agency's biggest nightmare. Edward Snowden accused Feinstein of hypocrisy for protesting when spooks spy on Congress but not protesting when people spy on regular folk. Others hailed her for courageously standing up to CIA thuggery. Me? I cannot fathom why the CIA would pick this fight, although that doesn't mean Feinstein's wrong. How did this convoluted story begin? As every newspaper reader...

America as a police state no longer is a conspiracy spin, but now is a very painful reality! While the USA has only 5% of the world’s population, our country now jails 25% of the world’s prisoners. This scary news stream rolled across the bottom of our TV screens this week and a great new book about what’s being done to average citizens is a must read! “Deep State: Inside the Government’s Secrecy Industry” is a big reveal for we ordinary citizens who are being watched 24/7 by a statist government that refuses to police itself. “We have more in...

A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley. The subtle reference in a Tuesday letter from Senator Mark Udall to Obama, seeking to enlist the president’s help in declassifying a 6,300-page inquiry by the committee into torture carried out by CIA interrogators after 9/11, threatens to plunge the White House into a battle between the agency and its Senate overseers.

Giant Eagle won't say much about the information it collects on people who enroll in its rewards program to earn savings on food and fuel, but it knows who has a weakness for Goldfish crackers. GNC can see when your New Year's resolution ended. And Dick's Sporting Goods has a pretty good idea who will return to its stores this spring to gear up for baseball or softball season. Consumers willingly — if unwittingly — provide trillions of “data points” to companies about their purchases, intimate habits and even where a computer mouse hovers on a computer screen without clicking....

When a hypertotalitarian banana republic takes another turn for the gigasurreal, even Elon Musk is speechless. In the most glaring example of how farcical idiocy has become the new normal, we will remind readers (especially those who do not follow us on twitter), of the following blurb from last night:

The government is considering enlarging the National Security Agency's controversial collection of Americans' phone records...

Why should we worry about tyrants abroad who would like to strip us of our freedoms? Their ultimate goal is not to hijack our planes so they can fly them into buildings or set off bombs in densely populated areas. Would they be attempting to blow us up if we simply declared "we surrender, do with us as you wish"? No, if we did surrender to the jihadists, the end result would only be an expedited version of what this President is already orchestrating right before our eyes on a daily basis - with no opposition. The NSA surveillance is...

Seek 'biosignature' spying ability to 'identify, locate specific individuals'The federal government doesn’t just want the ability to track down your car; it wants to be able to track down your body as well. Just as details are emerging about a controversial, nationwide vehicle-surveillance database, WND has learned the federal government is planning an even more invasive spy program using “physiological signatures” to track down individuals. The goal of this research is to detect – as well as analyze and categorize – unique traits the government can exploit to “identify, locate and track specific individuals or groups of people.” According to...

I’m a national security hawk. But, I’m also a free-market, anti-crony capitalist. I’m a Catholic, I’m a dad and I’m a businessman. And an American. For all these reasons, I stand with Rand in his lawsuit against Barack Obama and his co-defendants: the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and FBI Director James Comey. “Paul’s suit, filed in conjunction with conservative group FreedomWorks,” says the New York Daily News, “alleges that the NSA’s bulk collection program, under which the agency has collected the telephone metadata of many Americans, violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution,...

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

by Gina Cassini | Top Right News First in the nation. On Monday, an Arizona state senate committee became the first legislative body in the country to pass a bill designed to thwart surveillance programs from the National Security Agency (NSA).Senate Bill 1156 (SB1156), the Arizona 4th Amendment Protection Act, was introduced by Sen. Kelli Ward and 14 other sponsors and co-sponsors. The bill faced its first hurdle today, with an important hearing and vote in the Senate’s Government and Environment committee, where it required passage by majority vote to move forward. After a lengthy debate with significant opposition from...

Officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are conducting a massive, NSA-esque data-mining project collecting account information on an estimated 991 million American credit card accounts. It was also learned at a Congressional hearing Tuesday that CFPB officials are working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency on a second data-mining effort, this one focused on the 53 million residential mortgages taken out by Americans since 1998.

The Startling New Way Big Brother Is Tracking Your Health January 28, 2014 by B. Christopher Agee As ObamaCare continues to eat away at the private American healthcare system that the rest of the world once envied, the federal government now has a hand in virtually all aspects of the medical industry. The intrusion is well-documented and is not limited to any particular federal agency. Among the most recent developments is the Environmental Protection Agency’s promise to scour social media posts for clues about potential outbreaks of disease. Apparently taking a page out of the NSA’s playbook, the EPA announced...

<p>A North Dakota farmer convicted of terrorizing law officers two years ago is the first American to be sentenced to prison with the help of a Predator drone, Forbes reported.</p> <p>Rodney Brossart, who was accused at the time of stealing six cows from a neighbor, was arrested after a summer-long standoff in 2011. Authorities say Brossart family members refused to allow deputies on their farmstead and didn't show up for court hearings.</p>

WASHINGTON—As the Obama administration considers ending the storage of millions of phone records by the National Security Agency, the government is quietly funding research to prevent eavesdroppers from seeing whom the U.S. is spying on, The Associated Press has learned. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has paid at least five research teams across the country to develop a system for high-volume, encrypted searches of electronic records kept outside the government's possession. The project is among several ideas that could allow the government to store Americans' phone records with phone companies or a third-party organization, but still search...

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents. The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in...

Pratt & Whitney said Monday it is cooperating with authorities after federal agents arrested a former employee for trying to ship documents to Iran related to the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The East Hartford defense contractor, the sole manufacturer of the aircraft's engine, declined to comment on how Mozaffar Khazaee, 59, slipped thousands of pages of documents, diagrams, blueprints and technical manuals out the door before he was laid off in August along with hundreds of other employees. Federal authorities arrested Khazaee at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday before he could board a plane...

The Obama administration plans to overhaul the nation’s security clearance system to prevent future intelligence leaks like the one by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. The changes, part of a package of reforms President Obama is expected to announce Friday during a speech at the Justice Department, will include more stringent — and more frequent  — vetting of security clearances, according to sources familiar with the administration’s plans.  The president is embracing some of the proposals offered by an advisory panel he appointed. The panel recommended security clearances become more highly differentiated and that a new clearance level be created...

President Obama is under pressure from all sides to announce major reforms to the National Security Agency on Friday. Privacy and civil liberties groups as well as lawmakers on the left have urged for a wholesale termination of much of the government’s snooping. Silicon Valley, home to some of Obama’s biggest supports, is also pressing for change. So are foreign leaders, rankled by the notion that their ally might be spying on them. The calls for reforms put Obama in a tough spot give his administration’s insistence that the NSA’s efforts are critical for national security. While Obama is sure...