Tim Brown ~ Former FBI Agent: All Phone Conversations are Recorded and Stored

LibertyBlitzkrieg May 5 2013 (Thanks, Gary)

Government recording ALL cell phone conversations [Video]

So it seems the surveillance state just had its coming out party on CNN.  In this interview with Erin Burnett, former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente admits that the feds have access to pretty much everyone’s telephone conversations.  Also pay attention to the smirk on his face as he admits this disturbing reality.

Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian wrote an excellent piece yesterday o this exact topic. Some of my favorite excerpts:

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

“All of that stuff” – meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant – “is being captured as we speak”.

Continue reading

Emily Flitter ~ Obama Administration To Give Spy Agencies Full Access To Your Finances

Govt Slaves March 13 2013

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.

Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of “suspicious customer activity,” such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.

The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.

Continue reading

Stephen Lendman ~ CISPA Is Back

Steve Lendman blog February 21 2013

It shouldn’t surprise. The 2011 Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) never really went away. It ducked and covered for another day.
It’s more about destroying personal freedom than online security. It gives government and corporate supporters unlimited power to access personal/privileged information online. 
Civil liberty protections are ignored. Security experts, academics, and other professionals expressed outrage. They called CISPA and John McCain’s SECURE IT Act measures that “allow entities who participate in relaying or receiving Internet traffic to freely monitor and redistribute those network communications” unjustifiably.
They encourage transferring private communications to government agencies. Accountability and transparency are lacking. Vague language describes network security attacks, threat indicators, and countermeasures.
Innocuous online activities can be called cybersecurity threats. Eroded privacy laws will be gutted. Web sites visited, personal emails, and other online contact may be freely accessed.
Obama’s State of the Union address stressed no-holds-barred cyberwar. Earlier he declared waging it globally.
In May 2009, he prioritized cybersecurity. He called cyber-threats “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.”
“America’s economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity,” he claimed.
He ordered a top-to-bottom assessment. A Cyberspace Policy Review followed. He supports draconian cybersecurity bills. Passage threatens constitutional freedoms.
His February 12 Executive Order (EO) called for “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.”
Threats continue to grow, it said. National security challenges must be met.
“It is the policy of the United States to enhance the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure and to maintain a cyber environment that encourages efficiency, innovation, and economic prosperity while promoting safety, security, business confidentiality, privacy, and civil liberties.”
“We can achieve these goals through a partnership with the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to improve cybersecurity information sharing and collaboratively develop and implement risk-based standards.”

Wayne Madsen ~ Big Brother Takes Over From Uncle Sam

Strategic Culture Foundation January 29 2013

A Single Intelligence Network For A New World Order

While budgets are being slashed by governments around the world, national intelligence agencies are not only flush with money but they are increasingly networking their resources against the “threat.” What is the threat? It is whatever national leaders and their governments deem it to be. One day it is “Al Qaeda,” the next day it is Iran, then North Korea, then global narco-terrorists, and so on and so on…

Just as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is becoming a global military past without a distinct enemy, the Central Intelligence Agency, Britain’s MI-6, and other intelligence agencies are increasingly pooling their intelligence and networking their information-sharing networks. To what purpose would such citadels of secrecy wish to cooperate? The answer is simple. In a world of the tiny minority “haves” and the super-majority “have nots”, the intelligence agencies, like national armed forces, believe there is safety in numbers. In a conflict between the minority super-wealthy and the rest of society, intelligence agencies are increasingly protecting the interests of corporations and not countries. Intelligence agencies, therefore, have decided to become a global Panopticon where no one can hide and no secrets are held.

For many years, attempts to create a worldwide database of personal data, beginning with basic criminal information, were forestalled by the fact that the chief promoter of such a combined on-line repository of information, the United States, lacked a government department akin to other nations’ Interior Ministries that would be natural partners of the Americans. The American Interior Department had nothing to do with internal security because it had jurisdiction over such areas as federal lands and national parks. The aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the United States created the impetus for the creation of global communication networks and data warehouses for use by intelligence agencies in the new Department of Homeland Security, America’s version of the Interior Ministry.

Continue reading

William Binney ~ ‘Everyone In US Under Virtual Surveillance’ – NSA Whistleblower

RT | December 5 2012

The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.

Binney, one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, resigned in 2001. He claimed he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called ‘Naris.’

This year, Binney received the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama, one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?

Continue reading

Zack Whittaker ~ Yes, The FBI And CIA Can Read Your Email. Here’s How

Govt Slaves | November 14 2012 | ZDNet

The U.S. government — and likely your own government, for that matter — is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques, or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary — sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without.

That tin-foil hat really isn’t going to help. Take it off, you look silly.

Gen. David Petraeus, the former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, resigned over the weekend after he was found to have engaged in an extra-marital affair. What caught Petraeus out was, of all things, his usage of Google’s online email service, Gmail.

This has not only landed the former CIA chief in hot water but has ignited the debate over how, when, and why governments and law enforcement agencies are able to access ordinary citizens’ email accounts, even if they are the head of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world.

If it makes you feel any better, the chances are small thatyour own or a foreign government will snoop on you. The odds are much greater – at least for the ordinary person (terrorists, hijackers et al: take note) — that your email account will be broken into by a stranger exploiting your weak password, or an ex-lover with a grudge (see “Fatal Attraction“).

Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data centers. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies can access — thanks to the shift towards Web-based email services in the cloud — but it’s not as exciting or as Jack Bauer-esque as one may think or hope for.

The easiest way to access almost anybody’s email nowadays is still through the courts. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s true.)

The ‘save as draft’ trick

Continue reading

Swedish Official Admits Toxic ‘Chemtrails’ Are Real, Not A Wild Conspiracy Theory

The Jeenyus Corner | October 11 2012

Those long, white streams of persistent, cloudy haze commonly blasted into blue skies by unmarked airplanes are not your typical contrails, says Swedish Green Party leader Pernilla Hagberg. As reported by the Swedish paper Katrineholms Kuriren, Hagberg, the first major political leader to come forward on the issue, has openly admitted that these unusual cloud trails, which fail to dissipate like normal contrails do, are actually a toxic mix of chemicals, viruses, and metals that she has collectively referred to as “chemtrails.”

According to Hagberg, the sprayings are a joint endeavor by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the Swedish government in her own country, to modify atmospheric conditions via deliberate aerosol spraying efforts. And included in this “dangerous” mix of aerosols are various chemical components, viruses and viral fragments, and metals such as aluminum and barium, which have already been shown to be accumulating in water supplies and soils around the world. (http://chemtrails.cc/)

Normal contrails, which are composed of mere water vapor that quickly dissipates after emission from jet engines, are far different from chemtrails, which gradually blanket the entire sky in a sea of white. The following video, put together by the FreeTruth Show, a YouTube-based radio broadcast, contains some imagery of what these chemtrails typically look like in the sky:

Continue reading

Joe Wolverton, II ~ Pointing Out The Peaks Of The Massive Surveillance Iceberg

The New American | September 5 2012

Every time a shutter blinks in one of the millions of cameras mounted on stoplights or building corners, the faces of those within the sight of the lens are instantly recorded and saved to a database kept somewhere for use by someone for some purpose.

The New American has been at the forefront of the coverage of the proliferation of many of the powerful and prolific surveillance technologies deployed in the United States. One of the most robust of these systems is the software connecting a network of cameras known as TrapWire.

TrapWire is a massive and technologically advanced surveillance system that has the capacity to keep nearly the entire population of this country under the watchful eye of government 24 hours a day. Using this network of cameras and other surveillance tools, the federal government is rapidly constructing an impenetrable, inescapable theater of surveillance, most of which is going unnoticed by Americans and unreported by the mainstream media.

Unlike other elements of the central government’s cybersurveillance program, word about TrapWire was not leaked by Obama administration insiders. The details of this insidious surveillance scheme were disclosed by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group founded by Julian Assange.

The TrapWire story percolated from the millions of e-mails from the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence-gathering firm Stratfor, published this year by WikiLeaks. Covering correspondence from mid-2004 to 2011, these documents expose Stratfor’s “web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods.”

As a review of the news shows, however, TrapWire is only one strand of the wide web of surveillance being woven around the world.

For instance, at an appearance at a computer hacking conference in July National Security Agency (NSA) chief General Keith Alexander made a pitch for giving his agency greater control over the traffic on the information superhighway:

Continue reading

Paul Joseph Watson ~ Spy Agency Has Google-Style Capability To Search All Communications

Infowars | Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The National Security Agency is storing all electronic communications and analyzing them in real time, according to former NSA employee turned whistleblower William Binney, who warns that the federal agency has a Google-style capability to search all conversations for keywords.

Since 2008, the NSA has had the legal power to intercept all phone calls, emails and text messages sent by American citizens without probable cause. However, although long suspected, the agency has never admitted that it is analyzing the content of such messages, conceding only that persons, dates and locations are part of the snooping process.

However, in a recent sworn declaration to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Binney, a former NSA employee with the signals intelligence agency within the DoD, divulges that the federal agency, “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”

Using as many as twenty data intercept centers throughout the United States which can each store an almost unimaginable quantity of information, Binney notes that, “The sheer size of that capacity indicates that the NSA is not filtering personal electronic communications such as email before storage but is, in fact, storing all that they are collecting.”

Continue reading

Judge Dale, Ret’d ~The Great American Adventure 1B – The Money’s Worth Nothing. So Is The Government

Judge Dale, Guest Writer for Shift Frequency | July 15 2012

Review Part 1 here

“Those who do not know their past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana

If you strongly disagree with anything I have written thus far great! Now prove that I am wrong. That said, be careful how you react because Americans have been taught from an early age to simply deny without proof anything that contradicts the imaginary template defined as “The American way of life.

I happen to know that everything that has been discussed herein is factual. I grant you these secrets of America are not easy to digest because deception never is an easy pill for anyone to swallow.  If ignorance truly is bliss you certainly can choose to remain apathetic and ignorant. Conversely, you can decide to begin to digest some hard core reality.

Some of your best friends may be lawyers, judges and politicians. Unfortunately they are all part of the lie and they all have sworn an oath to propagate the lie and deny the truth. So you may need to do some soul searching and investigation of your own.  Believe you me this was hard initially for me to accept too.

America’s Sleight-Of-Hand Debt-Based Monetary System & Federal Bureaucracy

The privately-owned corporate Federal Reserve System’s debt has been cleverly renamed “The National Debt” to suggest this is the American public debt. It is not America’s debt but rather Israel’s debt (paid via US aid packages) and the private Federal Reserve’s corporate debt . We have been deceived into thinking and believing the complete opposite by corporate slave drivers through their use of patriotic slogans like “This is the cost of freedom!”

If you want more proof examine the fine print of your savings and/or checking account contract. You will discover that each time you opened one of these accounts you agreed to be responsible for the repayment of the national debt.  Now why would that language ever be included in an application for a checking or savings account if the national debt already was our responsibility? The answer is so the banks may confiscate your assets without further permission.

Pretty clever on their part if I do say so.

Would it interest you to know that the FCC, CIA, FBI, IMF, NSA, IRS, OPM, ATF, DEA, NASA, INTERPOL, HS (Homeland Security) and all other members of the alphabet gang are privately owned corporations? None of them are or ever has been an agency of  “United States, Inc.”  The United States government always held some stock in these corporations but never outright owned or controlled any of them.  The National Security Agency (NSA) is actually a government within a government and is not subject to the dictates of the federal government.

All alphabet gang employees receive their paychecks from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which belongs to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is the property of the United Nations, which belongs to the royal and elite class of Europe.  All of the alphabet gangs are now the registered property of the United Nations.   And although President Wilson’s League of Nations never got off the ground, currently 192 of 195 countries (196 if you count Taiwan) are members of the United Nations. Interestingly enough one of the 2 exceptions to membership is the Vatican.

All of this deception is compounded by the refusal of ordinary Americans to realize, know or understand the secrecy and duplicity of privately-owned corporations being surreptitiously portrayed as American agencies and government. This has been coupled with the deceit and endless greed of the Vatican, Israel, European bankers and the royal and elite families of the world who have united together to fleece the American people. Unfortunately, the American public’s apathy and ignorance only serve to simplify their task.

Ancient System of Crowd and Mind Control

Continue reading

After 9/11 NSA Had Secret Deal With White House [Video]

Russia Today | July 10 2012 | Thanks, asp

RT talks to Andrew Drake, a former National Security Agency executive in the US who sacrificed his career to blow the whistle on wrong-doings inside the NSA.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF’s Lawsuit Over Government’s Massive Spying Program

Electronic Frontier Foundation | July 2 2012 | Thanks, asp

EFF Asks Court to Reject Stale State Secret Arguments So Case Can Proceed

San Francisco – Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF’s) lawsuit against the government’s illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.

In a motion filed today, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the “secret room” at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.

“For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We’re extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program.”

Continue reading

Madison Ruppert ~ Thanks to U.S. Appeals Court We Will Likely Never Know the Details of the NSA-Google Relationship

End The Lie | May 14 2012

Here at End the Lie we have devoted a significant amount of coverage to Google’s Big Brother activities – which are set to rise exponentially once their recent troubling patent is put into use – not the least of which includes deliberately stealing personal information from Americans with their Street View vehicles, as well as their connections to the U.S. government and intelligence community.

Note: if you would like to block at least some of Google’s tracking methods, you can read this easy to follow guide and implement some of the solutions today.

The tight-knit relationship between the American government (the intelligence community in particular) and Google is becoming increasingly plain to see.

This was made even more blatant in the decision of the Washington D.C. Circuit appeals court which allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to neither confirm nor deny their relationship with Google.

The NSA – the world’s largest surveillance agency which keeps tabs on Americans and people around the globe – has been given the authority to refuse to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) by the court.

The court ruled that one of the many FOIA exemptions covers any and all documents which supposedly may jeopardize the NSA’s national security mission and that they do not even have to respond to the request.

Potentially, by rejecting the request, they could supposedly reveal some critical secret details of the NSA-Google relationship, according to the court.

“If NSA disclosed whether there are (or are not) records of a partnership or communications between Google and NSA regarding Google’s security, that disclosure might reveal whether NSA investigated the threat, deemed the threat a concern to the security of U.S. Government information systems, or took any measures in response to the threat,” reads the court ruling.

“As such, any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA’s implementation of its Information Assurance mission,” they added.

Continue reading