NSA taps in to user data of Facebook, Google and others.

[uncover]

.
.
The wet dream of OSA:

The National Security Agency (NSA) has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
.....

more in the "Guardian":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

the "Washinton Post":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

and the "New York Times":
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/nsa-verizon-calls.html?hp&_r=1&&pagewanted=all

 

[Lurker5]

Anyone smelling Nixon?

 

[Rene Descartes]

Overheard conversation between Davey Boy and the MAA

Davey Boy: That punk is a lame swab of crap. I want you to find out about every single time that flaming flit has beat off this past year.

MAA: Yes sir. I will get that flit's ass into a Sec Check immediately.

Davey Boy: Screw that. We don't have time to go through all thsoe $%&#ing formalities. Get one of your lackeys to hack into the government site and download every single morsel of dirt on this guy and filter out all the juicy jacking overts and all the time he was kissy kissy with some other guy. We are going to cream that piece of $#&% and expose him for the $%#& he is..

MAA: AyESir!



Rd00

 

[Infinite]

..

I'll just leave this here . . .

. . . oh, and this too.

 

[ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn]

It's about time the media finally decided to make this an issue ... it only took ten years

Unfortunately everyone will forget about it as soon more important news breaks such as Kim Kardashian getting a parking ticket

 

[Enthetan]

Drudge Report has been covering this all week. It's not just the NSA either, and it's not just FaceBook.

The feds have been getting back door access to the major email providers, social media. If it's on the Net, they've been twisting arms to get access to it. And no, they don't need no stinking warrants to scan your mail.

Choice links from Drudge
USA spends $80 billion year on secret information gathering...


NSA, FBI secretly mining data from Internet firms...

I'll post more after breakfast

 

[Enthetan]

It's about time the media finally decided to make this an issue ... it only took ten years

Unfortunately everyone will forget about it as soon more important news breaks such as Kim Kardashian getting a parking ticket

Obama's been taking it to a whole new level. Wholesale tapping of everybody's email. Using the IRS against political opponents. Etc, etc.

Question for the Democrats among us: just how comfortable are you to have that bureaucratic culture that finds this permissible, still in place when the next Republican administration takes over?

 

[La La Lou Lou]

Is this news?

Try talking on the phone and use words like terrorism, bomb, 911, Jihad you'll hear all kinds of clicks and whirs and you'll get weird crossed lines for ages. The same goes for email and internet message. Someone will be reading this in the UK and forwarding it to a man wearing dark glasses in a dark basement somewhere in the states. In the UK the average person is caught on CCTV cameras 30 times a day. They know when you want to scratch your arse before you do.

It's supposed to make you feel protected against the nasty militant Quaker extremists. In the end of the day it keeps people employed.

 

[Enthetan]

More links from Drudge

MICROSOFTYAHOOGOOGLEYOUTUBEFACEBOOKSKYPEAPPLE...

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
​

Postal service photographs front and back of EVERY piece of mail it processes...

 

[Enthetan]

And now for an observation that will give a warm and fuzzy feeling to all ESMB members:

Ever since the GO blowup, OSA has been using Private Investigators to find info about critics and ex's. One reason was to provide plausible deniability if the PI did anything illegal, being able to say the PI was an independent contractor hired by a lawyer, and the PI violated instructions against illegal acts.

The other big reason to use PI's is that most of the ones used are either former law enforcement, and/or have friends currently working inside various agencies, who can pass along info from law enforcement sources as a favor.

Consider OSA PIs having friends giving access to any of the info in the PRISM program. Hell, consider the PRISM program as it relates to maintaining privacy if you get ANY powerful politician or bureaucrat pissed off at you.

The PRISM program provides information and capabilities far beyond what any totalitarian state has EVER had access to.

 

[Enthetan]

Yet another lovely PowerPoint slide

 

[Enthetan]

William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades, said the David Petraeus sex scandal was most likely exposed using illegal surveillance of his email.

Video of interview at link.

 

[Wants2Talk]

Anyone smelling Nixon?

Anyone smell Obama?

 

[ChuckNorrisCutsMyLawn]

Obama's been taking it to a whole new level. Wholesale tapping of everybody's email. Using the IRS against political opponents. Etc, etc.

Question for the Democrats among us: just how comfortable are you to have that bureaucratic culture that finds this permissible, still in place when the next Republican administration takes over?

One surefire way of guaranteeing these intrusive practices do not stop is by making them political. I really do not care if democrats or republicans are involved all I know is

”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” -Ben Franklin [h=1][/h] [h=1][/h]

 

[Enthetan]

Interesting NY Times Interview with NSA whistle-blower William Binney, a mathematician and code-breaker who spent over 30 years at NSA, including being "Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group".

Interesting point, at 1:40 into the video, he's asked to confirm that the government can listen in on conversations using your cell phone, even when it's "off". He confirms that yes, they can.

Transcript of another interview here:

LI: Speaking of the average American citizen, how much data would you estimate the government has collected on them, and what type of information?

WB: It’s everything—phones, emails, twitter, any kind of digital communications that they’ve had. I think it’s into banking as well, but I don’t know that for sure. I do believe they’re doing it. My estimate is that there’s a little over 280 million Americans in the database, several times because one person can have a work phone, home phone, mobile phone, online banking, multiple email addresses. 280 million people are in there at least, and the ones that aren’t are babies in cribs, people in hospice, others not doing anything electronic. Each person is in there between several hundred and several thousand times. It’s aggregated data over a now 12 year period.

(snip)

LI: If you were asked to testify before Congress and give a statement, what message would you deliver?

WB: The intelligence community is feeding you a line of babble, and since you have no capacity to figure out what is right or wrong or mediocre in any of it, you simply take them at their word and that’s the wrong thing to do.

Congress does not want me testifying. If I do testify, they can no longer claim plausible deniability. That’s one of the reasons we’re not down there, all the whistleblowers.
​

 

[Enthetan]

Anyone smell Obama?

"Barry, you are not going to BELIEVE what Valerie Jarrett is doing right now"

 

[Gadfly]

Remember the movie, Enemy of the State, with Will Smith and Gene Hackman?

It was a fictional drama, BUT based on more than a little truth. Good movie.

"You know the Hubble Telescope that looks up to the stars? They've got over a hundred spy satellites looking down at us. That's classified."

The key idea was that the telecommunications industry had been in bed with the NSA and other spy agencies for MANY DECADES (that was back in 1998). Being able to monitor the activities of anyone at anytime was the the aim.

I suppose, if there were such a thing as truly honest leaders with a strong moral sense, it might be okay. But, due to the flawed nature of most human beings, such power should not be in anyone's hands. But, I don't see that there is any stopping it. The mega-global-corporations control the governments of the world to ensure that all remains "business as usual". In the end, really, all of this is to ensure that capitalism, as it exists today, stays firmly entrenched across the planet. THAT is the basic motivating force behind all of it.

 

[Enthetan]

Remember the movie, Enemy of the State, with Will Smith and Gene Hackman?

It was a fictional drama, BUT based on more than a little truth. Good movie.

Ten years ago I had bought my daughter a program to help her learn a foreign language. It head a neat little feature to get your pronunciation right, where you spoke into a mic and a little meter dial would display how close you got to saying the word right. Back then, I thought about how easy it was to have software monitoring a conversation, and trigger on certain words or names, or if a particular language was being spoken, or the voice-print of particular people. The hardware would not be expensive, just a circuit board in a very large array of such boards, each monitoring a conversation. An individual board could be made for a hundred dollars or less, if ordered in large quantities.

The feds could create a system to monitor all phone conversations for about as much money as they spend on office supplies.

 

[Enthetan]

I suppose, if there were such a thing as truly honest leaders with a strong moral sense, it might be okay. But, due to the flawed nature of most human beings, such power should not be in anyone's hands. But, I don't see that there is any stopping it. The mega-global-corporations control the governments of the world to ensure that all remains "business as usual". In the end, really, all of this is to ensure that capitalism, as it exists today, stays firmly entrenched across the planet. THAT is the basic motivating force behind all of it.

You're being one-dimensional. The elites are the elites, and they have more in common with each other than with you and me.

The senior Party members of China. The Russian "oligarchs" (the reincarnation of the inner Party in another form). The attendees of the latest Bilderberg Group meeting. The Saudi royal family.

All these "elites" have more in common with, and more loyalty to, each other than to the common people they rule over. The oligarchy's primary concern is the preservation of the oligarchy (the rule of the current "elites") and the imposition of a system wherein the elites stay on top, and the prevention of them being replaced by any young, intelligent "commoners".

They are the new nobility, the new "royals". In what way does the hereditary succession of rulers of North Korea not resemble traditional monarchies? You think the sons and daughters of senior Chinese Communist Party members are not going to have a pampered lifestyle, no matter now stupid and lazy they are? Or that the son of a factory worker has any chance of making it into a senior Party position these days?

 

[Gadfly]

You're being one-dimensional. The elites are the elites, and they have more in common with each other than with you and me.

The senior Party members of China. The Russian "oligarchs" (the reincarnation of the inner Party in another form). The attendees of the latest Bilderberg Group meeting. The Saudi royal family.

All these "elites" have more in common with, and more loyalty to, each other than to the common people they rule over. The oligarchy's primary concern is the preservation of the oligarchy (the rule of the current "elites") and the imposition of a system wherein the elites stay on top, and the prevention of them being replaced by any young, intelligent "commoners".

They are the new nobility, the new "royals". In what way does the hereditary succession of rulers of North Korea not resemble traditional monarchies? You think the sons and daughters of senior Chinese Communist Party members are not going to have a pampered lifestyle, no matter now stupid and lazy they are? Or that the son of a factory worker has any chance of making it into a senior Party position these days?

I agree with everything you said.

I have a very wide use of the term "capitalism". The privileged folks with money and power - wherever and however they got it and keep it. But, I should be more careful and not use it so freely. Capitalism is the system used and promoted by central bankers all across the world. It is the view that economies can be "controlled" by the inflow or outflow of "new money" (fiat money).

Today, are there central bankers in every country of the world?

Lowly people, here and there, do at times make it "to the top", but only if they forward the aims of those in power in a very competent and unique way. Otherwise, they go to Yale, Princeton and Harvard, just like their parents did, and they slip into the positions of power that keep it all moving along.