Posted on 05/13/2014 4:04:19 PM PDT by robowombat
We Kill People Based on Metadata, Admits Former CIA/NSA Boss Written by Alex Newman
font size decrease font size increase font size Print E-mail We Kill People Based on Metadata, Admits Former CIA/NSA Boss Essentially confessing to mass murder and multiple other crimes, retired Gen. Michael Hayden, the former boss of both the NSA and the CIA, admitted that the Obama administration has been murdering people around the world based solely on the so-called metadata collected by U.S. intelligence agencies. The controversial insiders remarks confirmed growing fears and warnings by critics of the out-of-control federal government that, despite efforts to downplay its unconstitutional spying and assassination programs, Americans have much to be concerned about.
Hayden, a retired general and operative for the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, led the National Security Agency starting under the Clinton administration until 2005 the same NSA that whistleblower Edward Snowden had recently exposed lawlessly spying on Americans in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution. Before taking over in 2006 at the Central Intelligence Agency the outfit that has carried out much of the federal mass-murder via drone program Hayden oversaw the massive expansion of NSAs targeting of Americans.
While credible analysts and critics widely suspect federal officials are still hiding the truth, proponents of the illegal NSA espionage schemes tried to downplay its actions as the mere collection of metadata, rather than the actual content of calls and e-mails. Thanks to Haydens remarks last month at Johns Hopkins Universitys Foreign Affairs Symposium, though, Americans can begin to understand the enormity of the danger even in the unlikely event that authorities are telling the truth about how far the assaults on constitutionally protected privacy rights actually extend.
We kill people based on metadata, Hayden admitted. The startling confession, which has sparked headlines around the world, came after Hayden agreed with another participant at the symposium that metadata can reveal everything about a surveillance target. The other participant, Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole, had quoted NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker as saying, Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebodys life. If you have enough metadata, you dont really need content.
Hayden agreed, calling the description on the usefulness of metadata absolutely correct. Elements of the NSAs Orwellian, Fourth Amendment-shredding espionage regime targeting hundreds of millions of Americans officially came to light after former contractor Snowden leaked documents about it. The revelations sparked a massive public outcry, which officials tried to downplay by claiming that the only information being collected on Americans without warrants or even probable cause was metadata. That collected data, though, includes details such as who is communicating, when, where, for how long, with whom, and more.
Of course, it is now public knowledge that the Obama administration has murdered thousands of people around the world including women, children, and even an American teenager, using its drones and missiles. In fact, the White House even claims to believe it has the legal authority to murder its victims despite never charging or prosecuting them for a crime much less securing a conviction in a court of law. Immediately following the shocking admission and a brief pause, though, Hayden tried to suggest that the mass-murder program relying on metadata does not apply domestically.
But thats not what we do with this metadata, the former CIA and NSA boss said after pausing for a moment, perhaps realizing the gravity of the admission he had just made. Its really important to understand the program in its entirety, not the potentiality of the program, but how the program is actually conducted. In other words, after admitting that the federal government murders people based on metadata can you imagine if Putin admitted doing that? Hayden quickly tried to claim that the information collected on Americans is not used for that purpose. At least not yet.
It was not clear whether such data played a role in Obamas selection of the multiple Americans, including a 16-year-old boy in Yemen looking for his father, murdered by drone thus far. At the event, the ex-CIA and -NSA boss then continued trying to soothe public fears over the awesome powers usurped by the federal government.
According to Haydens version, the NSA has been obtaining phone records from companies since October of 2001. Much of the unconstitutional snooping regime has been justified under the misnamed Patriot Act. The NSA then puts them in a lockbox that is supposedly under very strict limitations in terms of access. Hayden then gave a hypothetical example of how a phone number connected to a supposed terrorist could be checked with lawlessly collected metadata to supposedly advance national security.
What it cannot do are all those things that ... allows someone to create your social network, your social interactions, your patterns of behavior, Hayden continued after dropping the bombshell confession. One could make the argument that could be useful, [or] that could be illegal, but its not done. In this debate, its important to distinguish what might be done with what is being done. With NSA bosses having been exposed lying even to lawmakers under oath, however, analysts say taking them at their word would be foolish at best.
Of course, the cat Hayden let out of the bag on metadata being used to select murder targets was not entirely a surprise to analysts who have been closely following developments in the growing cloud of scandal surrounding the NSA. In February, journalists Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, citing Snowdens leaks and comments by U.S. officials, had reported essentially the same thing: that metadata collected by the NSA is used to pick targets for extermination. Numerous innocent people have absolutely been killed under the program, according to a former drone operator quoted in their Intercept report.
In reality, since no trials were ever conducted and all people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, critics say all of the victims thus far have been innocent at least as far as the law is concerned. Estimates suggest thousands of people from Pakistan and Yemen to Afghanistan and Somalia many of them simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, known as collateral damage have been murdered by drones so far. Obama personally approves each assassination, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient confessed publicly.
Despite officials hiding behind the half-baked veneer of the terror war, the details and admissions offered by Hayden should be extremely alarming to everyday Americans. Indeed, in recent years, the federal government has produced official documents claiming that essentially anyone with an opinion it disagrees with may be a potential terrorist. That includes pro-life activists, liberty lovers, constitutionalists, libertarians, conservatives, Christians, environmentalists, states rights proponents, advocates for national sovereignty, veterans, Orthodox Jews, and more.
While the NSA lawlessly gathers the data, the CIA has been leading much of the assassination program. As The New American reported in 2011, the agencys mass-murder-via-drone program accelerated quickly under the Obama administration as victims from Africa to Asia were executed by missiles dropped from the sky. Even Americans are fair game, the administration claims. The developments were so extreme that a former senior intelligence official told the Washington Post that the CIA had been turned into one hell of a killing machine. Critics said that in addition to a brazen violation of the U.S. Constitution, the global murder programs may constitute war crimes as well.
In his May 10 report about the symposium and Haydens admission there, Georgetown Universitys Cole noted that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have come together to rein in some of the worst NSA abuses uncovered thus far. The effort, which would put a few tepid restrictions on the NSAs ability to continue violating Americans rights, is known as the USA Freedom Act. However, he added in the New York Review of Books, much more needs to be done to properly deal with the issue. The biggest mistake any of us could make would be to conclude that this bill solves the problem, Cole said. Photo of Michael Hayden: National Security Law Journal
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
Means of creation of the data
Purpose of the data
Time and date of creation
Creator or author of the data
Location on a computer network where the data were created
Standards used
For example, a digital image may include metadata that describe how large the picture is, the color depth, the image resolution, when the image was created, and other data.[2] A text document's metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is, when the document was written, and a short summary of the document.
Metadata are data. As such, metadata can be stored and managed in a database, often called a metadata registry or metadata repository.[3] However, without context and a point of reference, it might be impossible to identify metadata just by looking at them.[4] For example: by itself, a database containing several numbers, all 13 digits long could be the results of calculations or a list of numbers to plug into an equation - without any other context, the numbers themselves can be perceived as the data. But if given the context that this database is a log of a book collection, those 13-digit numbers may now be identified as ISBNs - information that refers to the book, but is not itself the information within the book.
In effect anything an individual uses or touches is fair game for assembling for ‘profiling ‘ purposes to make it possible to find, fix, and I predict in the not distant future eliminate troublesome Americans.
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