The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world. The Post cites documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials.
According to a secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters. In the last 30 days, the report Wednesday on the Post website said, field collectors had processed and sent back more than 180 million new records — ranging from “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.
The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. The Post said NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.
White House officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, declined to comment
Good ol' G. Gordon Liddy went to prison for only breaking into one hotel room, jus' saying...
Once again, the pretense for all this NSA surveillance, along with the Patriot Act, and other intrusions on Constitutional rights, was to protect us from Islamic terrorism.
But when Obama became president, he and his administration stopped calling Al Qaeda "islamic" or even "terrorist", and increasingly began applying that label of terrorist danger to conservatives, veterans and Tea Party members.
And now we're at a stage where the NSA admits they are recording 75% of all e-mail and voice communications. Of EVERY U.S. CITIZEN. That's in addition to Obama's suppression of the free press, abuse off the IRS to intimidate and stifle his political opposition, suing thestate of Arizona for defending its own borders, forcing Catholic schools and hospitals to provide contraceptive service that oppose their beliefs, and god knows what else.
Seriously, how can even Democrats support what Obama is doing?
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
If he had stayed, I would be more inclined to consider his intentions meritorious.
But, well, he jumped ship, and jettisoned all of his alleged conviction for, and love of, American privacy/liberty so he could seek shelter from the inevitable fallout in enemy territory--where I guarantee he is coughing up military secrets.
As far as I'm concerned, he's a defector.
And he has made it that much harder for me to increase my own security clearance.
So you guys back Snowden for leaking this assault on the liberty of Americans?
I've always been somewhat torn by Snowden and Assaunge as well.
On one hand, I tend to agree with the premise that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." On the other, I understand that some things need to be classified for national security purposes.
Basically, for me, it comes down to this: I oppose leaking information (like military intelligence) that could put people in harm's way, but don't oppose (and often support) leaking information of apparent government corruption that won't hurt troops in the field or other innocents.
To date, most of what I've seen Snowden leak has fallen into the latter category so I tend to support what he did even if I'm not completely supportive of his probable motives for doing so.
I might be slightest bit supportive of Snowden if 1) he hadn't entered his contract job in the NSA with the predetermined intent to get classified information and expose it, before he knew anything was wrong. It wasn't a case of being a loyal employee until he saw something unethical. he went in with that intent beforehand.
And 2) If he had fled to some third-world country, and not straight to China and Russia, who would do maximum damage to U.S. national security with anything they learned from Snowden. And regardless of Snowden's consent or not, have definitely drained Snowden's laptop he brought with him of every last scrap of classified information. Snowden had to know in advance that would be the result with any information he carried to those two countries (regardless of his consenting to disclose it or not), to the greatest enemies of the United States.
The fact that a reform of NSA hasn't already occurred, despite this enormous corporate-lobby pressure, is testament to how authoritarian the U.S. has become, and its accountability to no one, including the most powerful lobby interests.
1) are they doing this just because they can? (A Forbes article I read about the DHS accumulating 1.6 billion rounds speculates that it is only because they have the ability to do so, and not a more nefarious plan) or 2) Are they doing all this surveilence as part of a planned and orchestrated lockdown?
I frankly think the latter, because the economy is only being held afloat by trillions in Quantitative Easing, and they are preparing for the inevitable chaos when the system collapses.
On the NSA surveillance specifically, this one-hour (with commercials) special hosted by John Roberts, titled "Your Secret's Out", gives a concise overview of the NSA surveillance, and other surveillance by the government.
Especially chilling are the comments of two former NSA agents.
NSA reportedly amassing database of cell locations: NSA collects billions of records daily on location of cell phones abroad, including those belonging to Americans, as it adds to database used to track relationships worldwide.
You always make allegations but so far pppfffft. Like I said you'll be ok with it if there's ever another republican in the WH.
You know that isn't true, M E M. I complained about plenty of what W.Bush did as president. In particular the Patriot Act (which Obama promised to repeal, and instead renewed, by the way) that I said was unnecessary, and all that was needed was to enforce existing laws, not circumnavigate constitutional freedoms with the Patriot Act.
But never have you missed an opportunity to say "Well Republicans do it too.." even when that's clearly not the case.
Obama has a big-government authoritarian mindset like no other president in recent times, except for maybe Woodrow Wilson or FDR. And even your buddies in the liberal media who were unofficially part of the cheerleading section of Obama's 2012 campaign are increasingly pulling away from Comrade Obama.
There's a long laundry list of Obama's undermining of constitutional freedoms.
NSA has complete access to your iPhone, leaked docs show: A leaked NSA document, posted by tech news site The Daily Dot, describes a “software implant for the Apple iPhone” that can be used to gather information from the phone: It can turn on the microphone and camera, intercept text messages, creep through a contact list and more.
It is amazing, not only what they get away with, but even what they are capable of.
There's a light that comes on to show the microphone on the cel phone is on. And NSA (and probably other Federal law enforcement agencies) have a way to turn on the cel microphone without having the light come on to show it is activated.
Yeah, because they clearly control both houses and the presidency, and are in a position to do that. Republicans have certainly created multiple vocal committees to investigate these abuses.
Among the current Republicans, I would have the most confidence in Rand Paul as president to actually dial this authoritarianism back.
It disturbs me how often I read crucial news about the United States, that is not reported in the U.S., and I first see in British, Russian, or in this case first exposed in the German publication Der Spiegel, revealing the NSA's Tailored Access Operations unit (or TAO), used to hack into systems worldwide. And no doubt, companies and individuals in the U.S.
