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It would appear that the NSA is using vans to engage in surveillance against private citizens. As explained here: October 20, 2013 in Technology by Betsy facebook twitter digg redditemail “NSA Surveillance Network #1492″ Appears on Wireless Networks During California Internet Outage "Saturday night, around 8:30 Pacific Standard Time, Time/Warner Cable was knocked out in 3/4 of the state of California according to Cox Cable in San Diego. Before I called Cox Cable to confirm there was an outage, I checked my Macintosh’s laptop’s wireless network to see who else in the area was affected. To my surprise almost everyone...

<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>

A new Boeing Co. (BA) surveillance aircraft deployed to Japan last month isn’t yet effective at hunting submarines or performing reconnaissance over large areas -- two of its main missions, the Pentagon’s weapons tester found. Flaws in the $35 billion program included the plane’s radar performance, sensor integration and data transfer, Michael Gilmore, chief of the Pentagon testing office, wrote in his annual report on major weapons, which has yet to be released. He said the new P-8A Poseidon exhibited “all of the major deficiencies” identified in earlier exercises when subjected to more stressful realistic combat testing from September 2012...

The aerostats — that is the term for lighter-than-air craft that are tethered to the ground — are to be set aloft on Army-owned land about 45 miles northeast of Washington, near Aberdeen Proving Ground, for a three-year test slated to start in October. From a vantage of 10,000 feet, they will cast a vast radar net from Raleigh, N.C., to Boston and out to Lake Erie, with the goal of detecting cruise missiles or enemy aircraft so they could be intercepted before reaching the capital. Defense contractor Raytheon last year touted an exercise in which it outfitted the aerostats...

Last June, after news reports revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was surreptitiously collecting everyone's telephone records, President Obama called this massive dragnet a "modest encroachment" that "the American people should feel comfortable about." Last Friday, he portrayed the program as a significant threat to privacy. Which is it? Evidently the answer depends on the latest polls, which find that the American people are not as comfortable with the NSA's snooping as Obama said they should be. The president's obvious lack of conviction about the threat posed by mass surveillance makes it hard to believe he is serious about...

That? Oh, that’s just a mosquito, now tell me more about your top secret project. Do you ever feel frustrated that you can’t keep tabs on your significant other at all times? Nervous that everyone is hanging out without you? Curious about what the heck your neighbors are doing over there? Thankfully, there’s a Pocket Drone currently being funded on Kickstarter that will solve these problems and more. It only takes 20 seconds to unpack and launch. Then, you can load it up with any video camera you own, as long as the payload is less than half a pound....

Documents reveal demand for 116 more workers to review, investigate 'suspects'The number of people identified by the Obama administration as potential terrorists surged in the past two years, and the FBI now is preparing for another spike as it plans to intensify its scrutiny of foreign visitors and U.S. citizens, WND has discovered. The federal government will hire up to 116 full-time private-contractor personnel to help amass and screen data on persons whose movements or activities are brought to the attention of the Terrorist Screening Center, an FBI-administered interagency unit... TSC lacks authority to independently collect personal data or communications....

http://ct.symplicity.com/t/crz/c0693cfbd76baa83451f268f8dc9ca33/2218300138/realurl=http://www.cruz.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=811 January 17, 2014 Greetings, This week, once again, Washington politicians failed to listen to the American people. The Senate passed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, and the Majority Leader and Senate Democrats refused to reexamine the detrimental harms many families are facing due to Obamacare. The expansion of federal power and the lawlessness promoted among Senate Democrats and the President must stop. Just this year, President Obama has delayed the employer mandate by a year, without the approval of Congress. He has chosen to modify enforcement of drug crimes, without the approval of Congress. He has granted legal...

Last year, high-ranking NSA official Bill Binney said, “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.” Now, Binney says that the U.S. has already become a full-blown police state. Binney told Washington’s Blog on Wednesday that: “The main use of the collection from these [NSA spying] programs [is] for law enforcement. [See the 2 slides below].” “These slides give the policy of the DOJ/FBI/DEA etc. on how to use the NSA data. In fact, they instruct that none of the NSA data is referred to in courts – cause it has been acquired without a warrant.” “So, they...

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world - but not in the United States - that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks....

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials. The technology, which has been used by the agency since at least...

These days, we read about the latest reports from Edward Snowden but they’re old hat now. We all know the American government is spying on everyone. But as more leaks come out, it’s increasingly evident that the NSA’s nefarious behavior will leave a deep scar on Silicon Valley. Snowden whistleblowing and escaping from the NSA could be one of the most important boons for Asian tech companies and startups in the next decade. If, as Spiegel recently reported, the NSA has a backdoor into major US companies like Dell, Cisco, IBM, Western Digital, Seagate, and more, then Silicon Valley is...

The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when nobody is watching. So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside. They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations...

“[A security camera] doesn’t respond to complaint, threats, or insults. Instead, it just watches you in a forbidding manner. Today, the surveillance state is so deeply enmeshed in our data devices that we don’t even scream back because technology companies have convinced us that we need to be connected to them to be happy.” — Pratap Chatterjee, journalist What is most striking about the American police state is not the mega-corporations running amok in the halls of Congress, the militarized police crashing through doors and shooting unarmed citizens, or the invasive surveillance regime which has come to dominate every aspect...

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli leaves office Saturday, but he will continue to take on what he considers overreaching by the federal government. Cuccinelli will be the lead lawyer in a suit filed by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., against the Obama administration over the data-collection policies of the National Security Agency, according to The Associated Press. As attorney general, Cuccinelli took on the Obama administration in court over the Affordable Care Act and the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate emissions....

“Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?” This is the huge question U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is asking the National Security Administration in a new letter to the agency’s chief, Gen. Keith Alexander. If at first glance this seems like a legislator’s blind fishing expedition prompted by fact-free conspiracy theory, think again. As I noted in a NSFWCORP report back in August, there’s very good reason for every elected official in Washington to suspect – and fear – that the NSA is surveilling them. We already know...

The secret court that oversees the nation’s intelligence activities renewed its approval of the National Security Agency’s telephone-records program on Friday, granting the government a new three-month window to collect data on all Americans’ phone calls. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office announced the court’s ruling in a statement, though officials didn’t make the ruling itself public, saying it was going through declassification procedures. The decision marks the 36th time the program has been approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “It is the administration’s view, consistent with the recent holdings of the United States District Courts for...

The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting. In January 2010, numerous homeowners in San Antonio, Texas, stood baffled in front of their closed garage doors. They wanted to drive to work or head off to do their grocery shopping, but their garage door openers had gone dead, leaving them stranded. No matter how many times they pressed the buttons, the doors didn't budge. The...

Many Israelis were scandalized when documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that their best friend, America, had in 2009 targeted a former prime minister and defense minister for secret surveillance. But their political leaders were not surprised. For years, the United States has been running a complex eavesdropping and surveillance web to spy on friends and foes alike, including Israel. Satellites gather and transmit data to command centers, “informers” operate in the field and the most fertile sources of all are not human but the instruments which bug cell phones, tablets and social networks. The US National Security Agency, NSA,...

This is ‘very grave if true,’ says senior MK, calling it ‘classic espionage’ that Israel would not carry out against the US US intelligence not only spied on then-defense minister Ehud Barak’s offices during 2008-2009, but also maintained an apartment opposite Barak’s primary residence for that purpose, according to a report on Sunday, which came amid new revelations of the extent of US and British intelligence activity against Israel and other allies. In 2007, Israeli intelligence noted that the US government had rented an apartment across the street from Barak’s high-rise apartment in Tel Aviv, and observed “sizable amounts of...