Our government: details of their spying on us

[Sara S]

This is a remarkable round-up of the situation. Each point contains one or more links (not included - click through to the original article to see them) giving the background on which it is based. The writer has really been doing his homework. The USA owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Snowden and Greenwald for tearing the lid off this putrid can of worms.


You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On with Government Spying on Americans
New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day

Washington’s Blog
August 17, 2013

Revelations about the breathtaking scope of government spying are coming so fast that it’s time for an updated roundup:
- Just weeks after NSA boss Alexander said that a review of NSA spying found not even one violation, the Washington Post published an internal NSA audit showing that the agency has broken its own rules thousands of times each year
- 2 Senators on the intelligence committee said the violations revealed in the Post article were just the “tip of the iceberg”
- Glenn Greenwald notes: “One key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washing”.(Even so, the White House tried to do damage control by retroactively changing on-the-record quotes)
- The government is spying on essentially everything we do. It is not just “metadata” … although that is enough to destroy your privacy
- The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that “everything” is relevant … so it spies on everyone
- NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word
- It’s not just the NSA … Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS – concerned only with domesticissues – spy on Americans as well
- The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges
- Top counter-terror experts say that the government’s mass spying doesn’t keep us safe
- Indeed, they say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts.
- They say we can, instead, keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system
- There is no real oversight by Congress, the courts, or the executive branch of government. And seethis and this.

AD
State Of Mind: The Psychology Of Control, from the creators of A Noble Lie. A film that reveals much of what we believe to be truth is actually deliberate deception.

- Indeed, most Congress members have no idea what the NSA is doing. Even staunch defenders of the NSA now say they’ve been kept in the dark
- A Federal judge who was on the secret spying court for 3 years says that it’s a kangaroo court
- Even the current judges on the secret spying court now admit that they’re out of the loop and powerless to exercise real oversight- A former U.S. president says that the spying program shows that we no longer have a functioning democracy
- The chairs of the 9/11 Commission say that NSA spying has gone way too far
- Top constitutional experts say that Obama and Bush are worse than Nixon … and the Stasi East Germans
- While the government initially claimed that mass surveillance on Americans prevented more than 50 terror attacks, the NSA’s deputy director John Inglis walked that position back all the way to saying that – at the most – one (1) plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone. In other words, the NSA can’t prove that stopped any terror attacks. The government greatly exaggerated an alleged recent terror plot for political purposes (and promoted the fearmongering of serial liars). The argument that recent terror warnings show that NSA spying is necessary is so weak that American counter-terrorism experts have slammed it as “crazy pants”
- Even President Obama admits that you’re much less likely to be killed by terrorists than a car accident. So the government has resorted to lamer and lamer excuses to try to justify mass surveillance
- Experts say that the spying program is illegal, and is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War
- The top counter-terrorism Czar under Clinton and Bush says that revealing NSA spying programs does not harm national security
- The feds are considering prosecuting the owner of a private email company – who shut down his business rather than turning over records to the NSA – for refusing to fork over the information and keep quiet. This is a little like trying to throw someone in jail because he’s died and is no longer paying taxes
- Whistleblowers on illegal spying have no “legal” way to get the information out
- There are indications that the government isn’t just passively gathering the information … but isactively using it for mischievous purposes
- Spying started before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used to spy on Americans over the years
- Governments and big corporations are doing everything they can to destroy anonymity
- Mass spying creates an easy mark for hackers. Indeed, the Pentagon now sees the collection of “big data” as a “national security threat” … but the NSA is the biggest data collector on the planet, and thus provides a tempting mother lode of information for foreign hackers
- Mass surveillance by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and theentire U.S. economy. And see these reports from Boingboing and the Guardian
- IT and security professionals are quite concerned about government spying
- Some people make a lot of money off of mass spying. But the government isn’t using the spying program to stop the worst types of lawlessness
- Polls show that the public doesn’t believe the NSA … and thinks that the government has gone way too far in the name of terrorism
- While leaker Edward Snowden is treated as a traitor by the fatcats and elites, he is considered a hero by the American public
- Congress members are getting an earful from their constituents about mass surveillance
- The heads of the intelligence services have repeatedly been caught lying about spying. And even liberal publications are starting to say that Obama has been intentionally lying about spying
- Only 11% of Americans trust Obama to actually do anything to rein in spying
- A huge majority of Americans wants the director of intelligence – Clapper – prosecuted for perjury
- While the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever
- A Congressman noted that – even if a mass surveillance program is started for good purposes – it will inevitably turn into a witch hunt
- Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you
- Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe
- An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (and see this)
- High-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America
- A top NSA whistleblower says that the only way to fix things is to fire all of the corrupt government officials who let it happen. As the polls above show, the American public is starting to wake up to that fact

[arthunter]

This is excellent .. thank you for posting it, Sara ...

Here are the scary bits in my opinion ...

- Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you ...

and

Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe

and

- An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (and see this)

If you skip the rest of the links then you must read these ... This is beyond spying ... Controlling the population in this way is facism .... this is a very serious situation ....

This is a remarkable round-up of the situation. Each point contains one or more links (not included - click through to the original article to see them) giving the background on which it is based. The writer has really been doing his homework. The USA owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Snowden and Greenwald for tearing the lid off this putrid can of worms.


You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On with Government Spying on Americans
New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day

Washington’s Blog
August 17, 2013

Revelations about the breathtaking scope of government spying are coming so fast that it’s time for an updated roundup:
- Just weeks after NSA boss Alexander said that a review of NSA spying found not even one violation, the Washington Post published an internal NSA audit showing that the agency has broken its own rules thousands of times each year
- 2 Senators on the intelligence committee said the violations revealed in the Post article were just the “tip of the iceberg”
- Glenn Greenwald notes: “One key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washing”.(Even so, the White House tried to do damage control by retroactively changing on-the-record quotes)
- The government is spying on essentially everything we do. It is not just “metadata” … although that is enough to destroy your privacy
- The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that “everything” is relevant … so it spies on everyone
- NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word
- It’s not just the NSA … Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS – concerned only with domesticissues – spy on Americans as well
- The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally “launder” the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges
- Top counter-terror experts say that the government’s mass spying doesn’t keep us safe
- Indeed, they say that mass spying actually hurts U.S. counter-terror efforts.
- They say we can, instead, keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system
- There is no real oversight by Congress, the courts, or the executive branch of government. And seethis and this.

AD
State Of Mind: The Psychology Of Control, from the creators of A Noble Lie. A film that reveals much of what we believe to be truth is actually deliberate deception.

- Indeed, most Congress members have no idea what the NSA is doing. Even staunch defenders of the NSA now say they’ve been kept in the dark
- A Federal judge who was on the secret spying court for 3 years says that it’s a kangaroo court
- Even the current judges on the secret spying court now admit that they’re out of the loop and powerless to exercise real oversight- A former U.S. president says that the spying program shows that we no longer have a functioning democracy
- The chairs of the 9/11 Commission say that NSA spying has gone way too far
- Top constitutional experts say that Obama and Bush are worse than Nixon … and the Stasi East Germans
- While the government initially claimed that mass surveillance on Americans prevented more than 50 terror attacks, the NSA’s deputy director John Inglis walked that position back all the way to saying that – at the most – one (1) plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone. In other words, the NSA can’t prove that stopped any terror attacks. The government greatly exaggerated an alleged recent terror plot for political purposes (and promoted the fearmongering of serial liars). The argument that recent terror warnings show that NSA spying is necessary is so weak that American counter-terrorism experts have slammed it as “crazy pants”
- Even President Obama admits that you’re much less likely to be killed by terrorists than a car accident. So the government has resorted to lamer and lamer excuses to try to justify mass surveillance
- Experts say that the spying program is illegal, and is exactly the kind of thing which King George imposed on the American colonists … which led to the Revolutionary War
- The top counter-terrorism Czar under Clinton and Bush says that revealing NSA spying programs does not harm national security
- The feds are considering prosecuting the owner of a private email company – who shut down his business rather than turning over records to the NSA – for refusing to fork over the information and keep quiet. This is a little like trying to throw someone in jail because he’s died and is no longer paying taxes
- Whistleblowers on illegal spying have no “legal” way to get the information out
- There are indications that the government isn’t just passively gathering the information … but isactively using it for mischievous purposes
- Spying started before 9/11 … and various excuses have been used to spy on Americans over the years
- Governments and big corporations are doing everything they can to destroy anonymity
- Mass spying creates an easy mark for hackers. Indeed, the Pentagon now sees the collection of “big data” as a “national security threat” … but the NSA is the biggest data collector on the planet, and thus provides a tempting mother lode of information for foreign hackers
- Mass surveillance by the NSA directly harms internet companies, Silicon Valley, California … and theentire U.S. economy. And see these reports from Boingboing and the Guardian
- IT and security professionals are quite concerned about government spying
- Some people make a lot of money off of mass spying. But the government isn’t using the spying program to stop the worst types of lawlessness
- Polls show that the public doesn’t believe the NSA … and thinks that the government has gone way too far in the name of terrorism
- While leaker Edward Snowden is treated as a traitor by the fatcats and elites, he is considered a hero by the American public
- Congress members are getting an earful from their constituents about mass surveillance
- The heads of the intelligence services have repeatedly been caught lying about spying. And even liberal publications are starting to say that Obama has been intentionally lying about spying
- Only 11% of Americans trust Obama to actually do anything to rein in spying
- A huge majority of Americans wants the director of intelligence – Clapper – prosecuted for perjury
- While the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country – it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (background). That’s despite Obama saying he’s running the most transparent administration ever
- A Congressman noted that – even if a mass surveillance program is started for good purposes – it will inevitably turn into a witch hunt
- Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you
- Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe
- An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers (and see this)
- High-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America
- A top NSA whistleblower says that the only way to fix things is to fire all of the corrupt government officials who let it happen. As the polls above show, the American public is starting to wake up to that fact

[Aldo El Hefe]

There is a lot more to this spy problem, here are a few examples: People like to use smart phones for everything nowadays, that includes purchasing goods, financial transactions, posting on social networks, activating public and private electric vehicle chargers, taking photos of many things, intimate voice conversations and texts, navigation (GPS) and much more. Everything one does with a smartphone is logged including your location. I get a lot of offers for credit cards, and I always shred them without reading them, but last week I did read one and it said that due to new Homeland Security regulations one must use a street address when applying, no more post office boxes are allowed. And if one tries to purchase a money order at certain stores, they ask for your name ! (That is also a new Homeland (das Fatherland) security rule).

All new automobiles have a built in GPS system, mo tracking by the Feds. Even if one has a traditional mobile phone (not a smartphone), your calls are logged and very well could be monitored. If you join FaceBook , you will be asked many personal questions, and are asked to produce a facial recognition and iris scan photo. Now they are going to release new smartphones that use a thumbprint for a password ! If you use the internet and go to a site, your IP address shows up on their screen, the administrator can take that IP address and get the geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude), then enter them into a Google program and get your street address and photos of that address from Google street view (street spy). Next, they go to the reverse directory and get your phone number and name. Then they go to Spokeo and get the value of your property, the value of surrounding properties including names of owners or tenants, and for a fee they can get your life history.

If you use credit cards , debit cards or checks, all purchases are recorded and sent to third party marketers and the IRS. If you have a healthcare insurance policy, your complete intimate medical records are entered into the insurance Electronic Medical Records database, just in case you might ever need to file a claim or actually need any medical care. Those healthcare insurance corporations are allowed to ask questions now that were never allowed before, like do you smoke , do you drink, are you a bi-homo, do you have gay sex or group sex, do you shoot heroin, do you whiff cocaine, do you bubble up a crack pipe, do you own a gun and on and on. All your medical records are online and the people that view them have more intimate details of every citizen that has ever been available before.

They also have your social security number, from that they can access your , tax records, drivers license records, employment records, school records, criminal records, phone records, computer records, international travel records, internet records on social media posts, insurance claims records for disability, workers comp, vehicles and accidents and a whole lot more. All these things are real and happening right now, and I have to laugh when some people who don't know what is going on claim that washing machines and electric meters spy on individuals. Clueless !

This is a remarkable round-up of the situation. Each point contains one or more links (not included - click through to the original article to see them) giving the background on which it is based. The writer has really been doing his homework. The USA owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Snowden and Greenwald for tearing the lid off this putrid can of worms.


You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On with Government Spying on Americans
New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day

Washington’s Blog
August 17, 2013

Revelations about the breathtaking scope of government spying are coming so fast that it’s time for an updated roundup:...

[phredo]

And it's perhaps pertinent to recall that the whole War On Terror, the TSA, and the new levels of spying by government are all based on the lies of 9/11. That's not to say that such currents were not in existence before 9/11, but it certainly let the sob's kick it into high gear.

[Sara S]

Thanks to my long-time Cazadero neighbor, Jim McCrumb, who finds all these interesting things and send them to me (I don't spend much time at the computer.....).

This is excellent .. thank you for posting it, Sara ...

[podfish]

All these things are real and happening right now, and I have to laugh when some people who don't know what is going on claim that washing machines and electric meters spy on individuals. Clueless !

I take it your last sentence wasn't a typo - that you're pointing out that there is no need for a washing machine to spy on you.
This has been my point all along, too. There's so much incidental stuff going on that there's no need to look for complex conspiracies behind all this. It's tough enough to get people to really understand and believe how exposed they all are without asking them to also believe in the Carlyle Group's attempt to track us via our smart-meters.
If anything it's a miracle we aren't better tracked. There are chips in your car, and have been for years, that can monitor a lot of what you do while your driving. Insurance companies aren't allowed to use that information to deny your claims. Why? maybe because 'they' want the capabilities hidden from us, so they can use it for far more nefarious purposes. But it's actually more likely a remnant of our legal tradition that personal information collected privately is presumed to be safe from public scrutiny. This tradition is what's being broken down. The reason that these threats to privacy are so common now is that it's so much less visibly intrusive to sniff the airwaves than to send uniformed people into your home and workplace. It's not so much that there are new forces of oppression attempting to take over; it's that the existing authorities and private groups (e.g. business interests) now have tools that they can use without attracting much notice. As they get into the habit of doing so, our attempts at maintaining privacy and control over 'our' information seem more and more unreasonable to them, like granpa's attempt at keeping Google Earth from showing pictures of his farm. It's more a case of evolving (in the Darwinian sense, meaning undirected change) public ethics than it is of ascending new ubergovernments.

[arthunter]

Though it's important to realize how the spying is being done, the real important points in this article have to do with why it's being done .... is it to protect us from terrorists or to monitor our actions? ... are we to be targeted like the Occupy movement if we express dissatisfaction with current government policies? ... in this case we are deprived of our freedom of speech and our first amendment rights ... in this case we're back to Cointelpro government tactics and we are no longer in a free country, and that's huge!!!

I take it your last sentence wasn't a typo - that you're pointing out that there is no need for a washing machine to spy on you..

[podfish]

Though it's important to realize how the spying is being done, the real important points in this article have to do with why it's being done ....

I think that the how is the why. Like the punchline to the joke about the dog's behavior... they do it because they can.
We both agree this is activity that needs to be prevented as much as possible, and that it's ongoing. I'm encouraged most by the number of politicians who are finding it an attractive topic, and who are willing to make opposing the acquiring of surveillance data and its use a public issue.
Just look at how Facebook and Twitter are used. I suspect a big chunk of the less-youthful Sonoma county demographic has been able to pretty much ignore how that kind of information-sharing is woven into much of the modern world. People love having their Starbucks barista anticipate what they'll order, or offer them personalized deals based on their past behavior. This casual acceptance is the big enabler of intrusions on our privacy. There's an immense ambivalence about this even on the parts of those who observe and write about it. Still, there seems to be an ongoing tension where the extent of the personal exposure comes to the fore and its entwining with the purported benefits starts to seem kind of creepy, even to those who are otherwise quite unguarded.
Unless we cultivate a culture where this kind of intrusive surveillance is considered at least mildly immoral, and where feeling violated by it is considered normal, we'll enable its use. The benefits of Google Street-View are obvious, and most in this country don't care if they show up in it. It's kind of funny to see one of my neighbors walking a dog when I look at StreetView near my house. In other countries, that's not funny - it's a violation of privacy. Most Americans (if not most Waccos) like being able to go to StreetView to check out the parking near a restaurant in another town they may visit. They don't put this onto a continuum with the rest of their privacy loss, but they should.
So I'm not so worried about specifics, like which government agency is running which overly intrusive program. That always happens. I'm way more worried that our culture will tolerate it to defend us against trumped-up enemies, the way Egyptians seem to tolerate military rule to oppose religious rule, and even more that we'll tolerate it as the cost of the cool new commercial and social features the modern surveillance state enables. Unless there's ongoing scrutiny, it'll only get more intrusive. If fear of specific agencies, whether real or imagined, motivates opposition, that's better than acceptance. I just think it's more akin to any other civil rights issue. The culture used to be openly accepting of racist and sexist attitudes, and there's been a lot of progress in changing that. This issue seems quite akin.

[arthunter]

Podfish, ... I'm not too worried about complacency at the moment ... there are a lot of politicians and political groups taking action regarding this issue and I do believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg .... I expect more whistle-blowers and more exposure to come ....

It has become obvious that our constitutional rights have been violated and many Americans are not happy with that ... I'm reading about protests, legislative proposals and even militia groups and impeachment ... hard to know what's real and what's "internet bravado", but I do know that the subject is not going away ....

I think that the how is the why. Like the punchline to the joke about the dog's behavior... they do it because they can.....

[Aldo El Hefe]

I think many people have been misled about the new utility watt/hour meters that transmit data to the utility once every four hours on a proprietary radio channel.
Unlike the old electromechanical electric meters, these new so called SmartMetrs have digital displays, one is the total cumulative use of the meter from the day it was installed, and that is what is transmitted to the utility for revenue collection, and since they get an update every four hours, they can extrapolate how much the meter used per hour for Time Of Use (TOU) E6 rate schedules (if the account holder chooses).
The other display is an ammeter that shows how many watts are being used in real time, that is for the customers benefit only and is of no use to the utility, because all they use is the cumulative read. In the future, that real time display of the total load will be transmitted on a very low powered ZigBee radio channel to customer purchased "in home receivers/digital display monitors" (if the customer chooses to purchase one).
This is part of what is called "the smart grid legislation" and is one of many things in the legislation to help customers see what energy that the whole house is using in real time, and if they sit and stare at the display on their "in home monitor", they can see how much more electricity is used when an appliance is turned on, but that same consumption information is on the rating plate of all appliances and small devices too.
The new SmartMeters do not control any appliance or device in any building, and are not capable of determining what individual appliances or devices are using, all they can sense is the total load on the meter, and a separate meter is needed for each and every appliance or device for the utility to know what the electricity is being used for.
That is why the customer has to pay the utility to install a second meter for taking advantage of the new E9B rate schedule for electric vehicle chargers. And the customer also has to hire an electrician to do the second meter enclosure, new circuit to the charger(s), pay for permits and inspections and forbidden to hook anything else up to that meter (this costs the customer $3,000 to $8,000 on up). That is why I say these conspiracy people who think that SmartMeters know (and report) what individual appliances are using are paranoid and very uninformed.
The main problem that the conspiracy theorists have is they don't understand that:
An electrical meter is not a person.
The account holder responsible for paying the bill of that meter number may not reside at the dwelling, may use a fictitious personal or business name, or could be another party just helping out.
The utility company has no way of knowing at all, what appliances are served by said meter, and is forbidden by law ask.
The utility is also forbidden by law to ask the account holder, what activities are going on inside the building, whether they are actually living in the building, the names of ANY individuals residing in the building, the marital status, occupation, sexual preference, medical records history or any other personal information of anyone in the building and has no way to find out either.
The point I am making is that with all the other REAL programs that track individuals that have been going on for years, I think it's funny that people think SmartMeters track individuals.
Personally, I think these people should get a clue and learn more about the real threats to privacy, and shouldn't waste time on the science fiction stories.

I take it your last sentence wasn't a typo - that you're pointing out that there is no need for a washing machine to spy on you....

[arthunter]

Here's a good link for this thread - " 13 Things the Government is Trying to Hide from You"

https://www.alternet.org/civil-liber...you?paging=off

[Aldo El Hefe]

Here's a good link for this thread - " 13 Things the Government is Trying to Hide from You"

https://www.alternet.org/civil-liber...you?paging=off

I just read an article in the Marin IJ this morning about a program called "boyfriend tracker" that was available for sale in Brazil.
This was for smartphones only, but the program would effectively track the target smart phone everywhere, and even had a feature where one could call the targeted smart phone and turn it on (like pocket dialing) to record conversations and turn on the camera too !
I have read about this on the internet before, and I did believe it, but seeing it in the mainstream media helps confirm it. You can bet your bottom dollar that the government spooks and marketers can do it too.
I have had a wireless free house for over a year. There are no radio transmitters allowed in my house, and no SmartMeter was ever allowed on my property.
Anyone who comes to visit me must leave their smartphone in their vehicle, and forbidden to bring them into my house for many reasons.

[arthunter]

Another good article about the spying problem ...

https://truth-out.org/progressivepic...e-incompatible

[arthunter]

It just gets worse and worse .. is nothing sacred?

https://beforeitsnews.com/scandals/2...in.info%2FdEy5