Posted on 06/14/2013 8:45:37 PM PDT by chessplayer
I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities:
"What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . . . I can't speak to what we learned in there, and I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg . . . . I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."
The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Clapper is an enemy of the people. He is actively working to screw us.
Privacy World - The WORLD’S SHREWDEST PRIVACY NEWSLETTER
7 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine
Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up? He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world. He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn’t any privacy. He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded. Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine. Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us.
But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything. Essentially, his previous life is now totally over. And if the U.S. government gets their hands on him, he will be very fortunate if he only has to spend the next several decades rotting in some horrible prison somewhere. There is a reason why government whistleblowers are so rare. And most Americans are so apathetic that they wouldn’t even give up watching their favorite television show for a single evening to do something good for society. Most Americans never even try to make a difference because they do not believe that it will benefit them personally. Meanwhile, our society continues to fall apart all around us. Hopefully the great sacrifice that Edward Snowden has made will not be in vain. Hopefully people will carefully consider what he has tried to share with the world. The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine...
#1 “The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate.”
#2 “...I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”
#3 “The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.”
#4 “...I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”
#5 “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.”
#6 “With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”
#7 “Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President...”
#8 “To do that, the NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that’s the easiest, most efficient and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government, or someone that they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting YOUR communications to do so.”
#9 “I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinized most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians.”
#10 “...they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them.”
#11 “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded. ...it’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life.”
#12 “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
#13 “Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten
- and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”
#14 “I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”
#15 “I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”
#16 “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.”
#17 “I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act.”
#18 “There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich.”
#19 “The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things... And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that... because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny.”
#20 “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”
#21 “You can’t come up against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk.”
#22 “I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me.”
#23 “We have got a CIA station just up the road - the consulate here in Hong Kong - and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.”
#24 “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end.”
#25 “There’s no saving me.”
#26 “The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won’t be able to help any more. That’s what keeps me up at night.”
#27 “I do not expect to see home again.”
Would you make the same choice that Edward Snowden made? Most Americans would not. One CNN reporter says that he really admires Snowden because he has tried to get insiders to come forward with details about government spying for years, but none of them were ever willing to...
As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they’ve written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies. I always begged them to write about it or to let me do so while protecting their identities. They refused to come forward and believed my efforts to shield them would be futile. “I don’t want to lose my security clearance. Or my freedom,” one told me.
And if the U.S. government has anything to say about it, Snowden is most definitely going to pay for what he has done. In fact, according to the Daily Beast, a directorate known as “the Q Group”
is already hunting Snowden down...
The people who began chasing Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, according to former U.S. intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. The directorate, sometimes known as “the Q Group,” is continuing to track Snowden now that he’s outed himself as The Guardian’s source, according to the intelligence officers.
If Snowden is not already under the protection of some foreign government (such as China), it will just be a matter of time before U.S. government agents get him.
And how will they treat him once they find him? Well, one reporter overheard a group of U.S. intelligence officials talking about how Edward Snowden should be “disappeared”. The following is from a Daily Mail article that was posted on Monday...
A group of intelligence officials were overheard yesterday discussing how the National Security Agency worker who leaked sensitive documents to a reporter last week should be ‘disappeared.’
Foreign policy analyst and editor at large of The Atlantic, Steve Clemons, tweeted about the ‘disturbing’ conversation after listening in to four men who were sitting near him as he waited for a flight at Washington’s Dulles airport.
‘In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be disappeared recorded a bit,’ he tweeted at 8:42 a.m. on Saturday.
According to Clemons, the men had been attending an event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
As an American, I am deeply disturbed that the U.S. government is embarrassing itself in front of the rest of the world like this.
The fact that we are collecting trillions of pieces of information on people all over the planet is a massive embarrassment and the fact that our politicians are defending this practice now that it has been exposed is a massive embarrassment.
If the U.S. government continues to act like a Big Brother police state, then the rest of the world will eventually conclude that is exactly what we are. At that point we become the “bad guy” and we lose all credibility with the rest of the planet.
The above by Michael Snyder, Economic Collapse
Until next issue, stay cool and remain low profile!
Privacy World
Thanks for posting.
Snowden is a traitor. He violated his security clearance, betrayed his nation’s Signal’s Intelligence methods and sources.
“There is nobody who political officials and their supine media class hate more than those who meaningfully dissent from their institutional orthodoxies and shine light on what they do. The hatred for such individuals is boundless.”
Oh yes, it is nice to see that in print! Wilt the poison pens.
Well then, he’s a traitor who can be appreciated by those that are having their privacy breached and their votes taken away.
Laws mean NOTHING to Barry and his ilk.
Benghazi Barry is accumulating a great deal of information that will be used against opponents decades into the future.
There comes a time when you HAVE to play their games THEIR way-or you’re gonna end up disappeared.
This is NOT the America it used to be. It may have to be fought for in a different way.
Obama is the traitor, along with his czars like Van Jones, Bill Ayers, James Clapper, John Brennan (Muslim), etc. and his Muslim Brotherhood in the White House and State Dept. Obama could not pass an FBI security check, and his use of the IRS as a political machine shows his betrayal. He uses the FBI, CIA, EPA, Treasury, HHS, DHS to grab power for his Marxist/Muslim agenda.
We do not know yet whether Snowden is a patriot or a traitor. The out-of-control NSA under Obama may be the traitors. Watch out! CAIR has already announced that Muslims are above the law of the land. Obama may be setting up the Million Muslim March to provoke violence so he can establish martial law.
It's an interesting point.
The U.S. govt is the traitor, not Snowden. Thanks for letting us know you support a police state that Stalin could only dream of.
By the way, you don’t have to report my post to the govt. THEY ALREADY HAVE IT!
LOL, that's so 80s. You don't think Obama and his Narxist buddies aren't giving everything they can to our enemies??
Clinton facilitated the transfer of our Nuclear Weapon systems and advanced guidance systems to the Chinese.
Snowden may be a traitor to those who believe in the Marxists running our country into the ground.
So far what he has revealed is very important -- shows the real traitors to our Constitution is in our own government.
If the NSA is scooping everything then that is extremely ominous. Only evil can come from control of so much information.
Just supposing - what if we find out that Obama and the Dems were using PRISM info directly for political purposes?
More on Glenn Greenwald, 'Israel-Firsters,' and Idiot Editors (Updated)
From The Atlantic
Excerpt: " In the case of Greenwald, here is what I think, from afar, since we've never met. When I write that Greenwald's ostentatious anti-Israelism is "fine, of course," I'm not endorsing his views, I'm simply acknowledging that he has a right to say whatever he wants -- he has a right even to defend the use of the neo-Nazi-derived anti-Semitic slur "Israel-Firster" to describe Jews with whom he disagrees -- and I'm also acknowledging, in a way, that he is not sui generis: There have always been Jews who define themselves in opposition to Judaism, Marxists mainly," [truncated]
What difference at this point does it make?
I hope with all my essence for more “traitors” like Snowden. The actual traitors are the systemic creators/controllers of this horrific track-trace-database matrix of anti-liberty.
I thought the same. Obama and his Marxist comrades started, on the very first day in office, corrupting all our institutions.
I have no doubt he has turned the NSA to do his dirty work. Who knows what slime wormed their way into positions within the NSA.
After all, he is the President and he has shown the law means nothing to him.
It is very ominous to have so much data in the hands of such people -- they lust for absolute power and they are likely determined to farm as much of the data as possible to use when (if) he leaves office.
These people are evil.
What Snowden has revealed so far is chilling.
My hope is that other Patriots inside the NSA can do what is necessary to alert the people of the evil of a regime that is enveloping our Republic in a virtual Police State..
That may be.
But, at the same time, he has revealed how the federal government's intelligence apparatus is egregiously violating every American's constitutional rights.
One's bad. One's good. Judge him in the balance however you wish.
The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits.
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