Nothing is Private Under the False Flag of Terrorism.  In a possible preparation for the ability of the CIA to spy on American citizens with their household items, the NSA's Utah Data Center is located in the Utah desert in the foot hills of the Wasatch mountain range.  This is the centerpiece of the Global Information Grid; a military project that collects yottabytes of data.  They are listening to every conversation, reading every post, intercepting every text message under the false flag of terrorism.  The facility has the technological ability to record and analyze every communication in the world.  From emails to phone calls to text messages to chats; nothing is private anymore.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2013 by Andrew K. Dart

NSA snooping: Facebook reveals details of data requests.  Facebook received 9,000-10,000 requests for user data from US government entities in the second half of 2012.  The social-networking site said the requests, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, covered issues from local crime to national security.  Microsoft meanwhile said it received 6,000 and 7,000 requests for data from between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts.  Leaks by a former computer technician suggest the US electronic surveillance programme is far larger than was known.

Massive San Antonio NSA Data Center Raises Eyebrows.  Even as reports break about the size and scope of the National Security Agency's vast data storage center in Utah, new details are emerging about a second massive NSA center in San Antonio, Texas. [...] Originally, the NSA was much more transparent about the project, actually holding a job fair to promote their expansion in San Antonio.  But from 2007 on, the news about the site has been nonexistent.

Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks.  Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants.  New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations?

Keywords:  STELLARWIND, MAINWAY, MARINA, NUCLEON, PRISM.
U.S. surveillance targets Internet, phone metadata.  On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department's top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal.  President George W. Bush backed down, halting secret foreign-intelligence-gathering operations that had crossed into domestic terrain.  That morning marked the beginning of the end of Stellarwind, the cover name for a set of four surveillance programs that brought Americans and American territory within the domain of the National Security Agency for the first time in decades.  It was also a prelude to new legal structures that allowed Bush and then President Obama to reproduce each of those programs and expand their reach.

Obama is Abrading the Social Fabric.  [Scroll down]  In any event, with the FBI having ignored specific warnings from the Russians about the Boston bombers and the administration announcing it will provide military support for the Syrian rebels just as they in turn announce their affiliation with Al Qaeda, the need for this elaborate record-gathering becomes ever less clear.  From the outside it seems as if in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran, and Egypt we are doing everything in our power to strengthen our enemies.  What's the point then creating this expensive apparatus to permit listening to their communications as if we still regarded them as enemies?

NSA can 'listen to U.S. phone calls' without a warrant, according to congressman.  The National Security Agency can listen to domestic phone calls without a warrant, according to a disclosure by Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, made during a briefing to members of Congress last Thursday [6/13/2013].  Listening to phone calls without a warrant is illegal — but according to Mr Nadler, the NSA does not obtain a warrant to listen to calls.

Nadler Backtracks: NSA Does Need Court Order.  It turns out that the surveillance of Americans may be even more dangerous and unsupervised than had been heretofore acknowledged — but the powers that be aren't willing to admit it.  The National Security Agency (NSA) admitted in a secret briefing that its analysts can decide to listen to Americans' phone calls without legal authorization.  Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, revealed that during the briefing to members of Congress, the NSA allowed that phone calls could be monitored "simply based on an analyst deciding that."  This means low-ranking analysts may be listening to Americans willy-nilly.

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants.  The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said.  Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

The 'scandalanche' & the data-mining.  The data-mining program first started at least seven years ago, under the authorization of the Patriot Act — after a similar Pentagon-based data-collection program was killed in 2003.  Fact is, the NSA — once so secret that its very existence went officially unacknowledged — has been quietly monitoring Americans for years.  Indeed, domestic monitoring without a warrant was explicity OK'd in the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, so long as the ostensible purpose was to track plots originating outside the country.

How did mainstream media get the NSA PRISM story so hopelessly wrong?  If you don't understand the technical workings of these surveillance programs, you can't understand whether they're working as intended, you can't identify where the government has overstepped its bounds, and you can't intelligently debate the proper response.  The fact that the government has maintained rigid secrecy compounds the problem. [...] The basic facts in that story aren't news.  We've known since at least 2006 that the U.S. security establishment is collecting details of phone calls and mining that data to identify calling patterns consistent with terrorist activity.

Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home.  A recent briefing by senior intelligence officials on surveillance programs failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs.  Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon [6/13/2013] instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials.

Surveillance and Its Discontents.  The ObamaCare mandate-tax that commands Americans to buy a private product is far more offensive to the Constitution than NSA reading the emails of terrorists overseas.  The regulatory agencies claim — and use — the power to seize property and control individual conduct.  The very administration of the entitlement state depends on tracking (Social Security numbers), data-processing (Medicare benefits) and individual scrutiny (tax audits).  The IRS knows far more about American citizens than the NSA does, and while there is much speculation about the potential for surveillance abuse, we now have real evidence of corruption at the IRS.  So which is the greater scandal?

Sens. Wyden & Udall: We Have Seen No Evidence NSA Surveillance Has Prevented 'Dozens Of Terrorist Events'.  During yesterday's [6/12/2013] Congressional hearings on the NSA, agency head General Keith Alexander claimed that the NSA's massive surveillance program has successfully prevented "dozens of terrorist events," but did not go into specifics.  Today Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall called on Alexander to clarify those remarks, saying in a joint statement that neither of them have seen any evidence to support what he said.

Metadata helps find terrorists — and Obama voters.  Great cries of shock and disillusionment are echoing across many precincts of President Obama's political base, particularly among academics, civil libertarians, nonprofit activists and media celebrities.  The howls of distress stem from the chief executive's stunning reversal on the scope and constitutionality of domestic surveillance programs at the National Security Agency and elsewhere in the federal government.  Although he vociferously opposed these programs while campaigning for president in 2008 and before, Obama began singing quite a different tune once he began working in the Oval Office.

The Way They Are.  [Scroll down]  The Obama administration has already engaged in systematic and widespread hiring of left-wing political activists into career government positions at the Department of Justice and presumably elsewhere.  Taking this into account, it is merely logical to assume that over the past four years many of the administration's activist worms have found their way into the woodwork at NSA and its contractors.  Given recent revelations, it is also common sense to suspect that at least some federal and private sector people with "PRISM access" clearance are individuals willing and able to use and abuse their power for political purposes.

Americans who cherish freedom must push back against government surveillance.  On Thursday, I held a news conference announcing my intent to pursue legal action against the federal government for infringing on Americans' Fourth Amendment rights.  The National Security Agency's collection of Verizon's client data probably only scratches the surface.  A court order that allows the government to obtain a billion records a day and does not name an individual target is clearly beyond the scope of the Fourth Amendment, which states clearly that warrants must be specific to the person and the place.

Fearless Fosdick at work.  The Obama administration and its well-meaning defenders, including several Republican members of Congress, argue that just because the government can discover intimate details about everyone's life, beliefs, politics, sexual orientation, health, diseases and sexual infidelities doesn't mean it would, with the click of a computer mouse, ever identify and mark this person for personal attention.  (We trust the IRS, don't we?)  If the snoopery were as innocent as these defenders claim, the government wouldn't have gone to so much trouble — in "the least most untruthful manner" — to hide what it was doing.

U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms.  Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.  These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency.

Privacy Isn't All We're Losing.  The U.S. surveillance state as outlined and explained by Edward Snowden is not worth the price.  Its size, scope and intrusiveness, its ability to target and monitor American citizens, its essential unaccountability — all these things are extreme.  The purpose of the surveillance is enhanced security, a necessary goal to say the least.  The price is a now formal and agreed-upon acceptance of the end of the last vestiges of Americans' sense of individual distance and privacy from the government.

How Yahoo Fought PRISM — And Lost.  Yahoo, one of the companies named as part of the NSA's PRISM data collection program, didn't go quietly, according to a New York Times scoop posted late Thursday [6/13/2013].  The company was behind a 2008 court challenge to fight a court order requiring the company to give them data without a warrant, which they lost.  That, according to the Times, ushered the company into PRISM.

Tea Party on NSA Snooping: We Told You Not to Trust Big Government!  Everyone knows the IRS is a bunch of jerks.  But the NSA combing through people's phone calls and emails?  That's a whole different level of sinister.

The Sickening Snowden Backlash.  Since Edward Snowden came forward to identify himself as the leaker of the National Security Agency spying programs, the D.C. mandarins have been working overtime to discredit the man many view as a hero for revealing crucial information the government had wrongfully kept secret.  Apparently, if you think hiding information about spying on Americans is bad, you are misguided.  The real problem is that Snowden didn't understand that his role is to sit and be quiet while the "best and the brightest" keep Americans in the dark about government snooping on private citizens.

Lawmakers tire of playing '20 questions'in surveillance briefings.  Some members of the Congress say that getting straight answers from intelligence agencies about top-secret surveillance is like playing the game "20 Questions," where answers come only if a questioner knows exactly what to ask.

Spying on Americans: the Legal Status of Emails.  This topic has several main issues.  At the top of the list is President Obama's outrageous statement that Americans may need to give up some freedom for security from terrorism.  The president has no right to decide what degree of freedom Americans can have.  The freedom Americans have is defined not by any one elected official but by the Constitution.  The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution has very precise language that directly applies to the NSA's seizure of personal information.

The Founders warned us.  [Scroll down]  I was reminded of this exchange the other day when an author and one of the strongest backers of the Patriot Act, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., reacted angrily to the news that the Obama administration has been secretly monitoring, compiling and analyzing phone records from literally millions of Verizon customers and other cellphone and email user — all in the name of national security.  Even early champions such as Mr. Sensenbrenner never contemplated the broad seizure of data now being justified under laws they passed in the name of national security.

Blame Wyden, not Clapper, for 'lie' to Congress on NSA surveillance.  Outrage is brewing on the Left and Right over charges that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress about NSA data collection.  But the outrage is misdirected.  What is outrageous is not that Clapper tried to protect classified information in an open session, but that Senator Ron Wyden asked him the question in open session the first place.  Wyden, an opponent of the NSA program, asked Clapper in front of television cameras:  "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"  Wyden knew the answer.  He knew the answer was classified.  He knew that Clapper could not answer it in open session.  Yet he asked it anyway.

Lindsey Graham Says He Would Suggest Censoring The Mail, If He 'Thought It Necessary'.  Yahoo's Chris Moody reports that outspoken security hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would propose censoring American postal mail if he thought it a "necessary" method to protecting the United States from future terror attacks.  The senator compared the hypothetical situation to World War II, in which all Americans had a "mentality" that their way of life was "at risk," and thus surveillance was necessary.

The Editor says...
Brilliant idea, Senator.  The Postal Service can barely deliver the mail, with machines reading the zip codes to sort it all out.  Senator Graham's idea would bring mail delivery to a standstill -- with the exception of unsolicited junk mail.

Intelligence chief Clapper: I gave 'least untruthful' answer on U.S. spying.  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is really struggling to explain why he told Congress in March (see video above) that the National Security Agency does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans.  His latest take:  It's an unfair question, he said, like "When are you going to stop beating your wife?"  And it seems to depend on the meaning of "collect."  "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no,'" Clapper told NBC News on Sunday [6/9/2013].

Obama administration under pressure as US senators demand end to secrecy.  A bill, to be introduced in the Senate on Tuesday, would force the US government to disclose the opinions of a secretive surveillance court that determines the scope of the eavesdropping on Americans' phone records and internet communications.  Separately, a leading member of the Senate intelligence committee came close to saying that James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, misled him on the scope of government surveillance during a March hearing.

Sharpton: You Can't Blame Obama for Secret Surveillance.  Rev. Al Sharpton said Monday that President Barack Obama is not to blame for the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program — former President George W. Bush is, because laws allowing it were enacted under his administration.  These are laws put into effect under President Bush.  There are plenty of Democrats who are upset about this too.  I do not agree with the Patriot Act, but you can't blame President Obama for it," Sharpton said on MSNBC's "PoliticsNation."

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper jokes about reading people's emails at black-tie dinner.  Foot-in-mouth-prone Director of National Intelligence James Clapper spoke at a black-tie dinner honoring former CIA and National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden on Friday night and — just days after admitting that he'd provided false testimony to Congress in regards to the Prism program — started cracking jokes about reading people's emails.

Yahoo, Google, Facebook and more face fight to salvage reputations over NSA leaks.  Google. Apple. Facebook. Microsoft:  they are the brands that want the world to trust them with personal information, emails, photos, documents — yet they are now facing a battle to maintain that trust after disclosures that the US government was given access to their customers' data online via the Prism programme operated by the NSA.  The companies involved — Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple — vigorously deny giving the Obama administration backdoor access to users' internet information, but the potential damage to their brand reputation has left the companies floundering for a way to respond.

Google wants to tell you more about the info spy agencies are seeking.  Google is asking the Obama administration for permission to disclose more information about requests it gets from national intelligence agencies for its users' emails and other online communications.  The technology giant made the request in a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on Tuesday [6/11/2013].  Google is trying to counteract damaging media reports that the company allows the National Security Agency access to users' online communications.

Liberty vs security.  The row over government surveillance that is convulsing America has inevitably prompted questions about Britain's own online snooping.  That is only natural:  GCHQ is by far the largest (and most secretive) of our intelligence organisations, and its links with the National Security Agency are practically umbilical — central not just to the Special Relationship, but to keeping us safe from terrorists and foreign hackers.

NSA Debate Pits Far Left, Right Against the Middle.  Revelations of massive government collections of Americans' phone and email records have reinvigorated an odd-couple political alliance of the far left and right.

Obama tracking whatever you say and do. You're Americans?  [Scroll down]  Under the court order, "the information is classed as 'metadata,' or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access" ("NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily," Greenwald, The Guardian, June 5).  Furthermore, the Verizon court order is covered by "the so-called 'business records' provision of the Patriot Act ... That is the provision which (Sen. Ron) Wyden and (Sen. Mark) Udall have repeatedly cited when warning the public of what they believe is the Obama administration's extreme interpretation of the law to engage in excessive domestic surveillance."

Let's Rescue Metadata From the Spy Agencies.  Once the civil libertarians have had their say, let's hope the really interesting questions start being asked.  What is surveillance of telecommunications metadata really costing us?  Remember, this is not the same as listening to phone calls and reading emails, but collecting the outward characteristics of various electronic transactions and seeing how they relate to other transactions.  Does it yield actionable warnings?  Is it really a cost-effective contribution to security?  And the most interesting question of all:  If meta-surveillance is worth doing, who says the national-security types who have taken ownership of the technology are the best ones to extract the social gains from it?

What we know about the NSA's secret data data warehouse in Utah.  The long, squat buildings span 1.5 million square feet, and are filled with super-powered computers designed to store massive amounts of information gathered secretly from phone calls and emails.

The Fuse Has Been Lit: Seven Critical Points on Uncle Sam's Spying Program.  First, if the PRISM program and all the rest of the government's surveillance programs were so good and necessary, then why didn't the feds catch the Tsarnaev brothers, who earlier this year blew up the Boston Marathon?  Or Major Hassan, the 2009 Fort Hood mass-murderer?  Or the "underwear bomber," also from 2009, who nearly succeeded in blowing up the passenger jet flying into Detroit?  Second, if and when everything is revealed about PRISM and all the rest, it's likely that we will learn of important and inculpating connections between the National Security Agency (NSA), on the one hand, and many civilian agencies, on the other.

How can Google (or anyone) prove something is not happening in the super-secret NSA, or prove that the NSA can't do something extraordinary?
Exclusive: Google to DOJ: Let us prove to users that NSA isn't snooping on them.  There is a "serious misperception" about the National Security Agency's PRISM program, Google chief legal officer David Drummond said in an exclusive interview with Fox News.  On Tuesday [6/11/2013] the company pushed back against the layers of secrecy surrounding the agency's alleged blanket snooping on American citizens.  "We were as shocked about those revelations as anyone," Drummond told Fox News, in an interview with Fox News' Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge.

Obama-knows-best goes bust.  "Trust me" is President Barack Obama's preferred mode of action in times of crisis — and his go-to comment to nervous staffers has always been some version of "Relax, I got this."  But that message is an increasingly hard sell for Obama in his second term, following revelations that the man who once railed against the Bush administration over civil liberties abuses has himself surreptitiously quarterbacked the greatest expansion of electronic surveillance in U.S. history.

CNN's Jake Tapper Dismisses GOP Rep. Peter King's 'Slippery Slope' Demand NSA Journalists Be Prosecuted.  On Tuesday [6/11/2013], Rep. Peter King (R-NY) told CNN host Anderson Cooper that he believed the journalists who broke the story relating to the National Security Agency's communications monitoring programs should be prosecuted.  CNN host Jake Tapper addressed this claim on the network's morning show Starting Point where he dismissed King's claim saying that it was simply not a feasible course for the government to pursue.

Ted Cruz: Obama targeting enemies, can't be trusted.  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday decried the spread of unaccountable federal agencies like the IRS and National Security Agency caught prying into American lives, charging that President Obama's promise that his administration isn't snooping on citizens can't be trusted.  What's more, Cruz said that by spreading a broad net to include average Americans in its search for terrorists via the NSA, the administration missed catching actual U.S. enemies such as the Boston Marathon bombers and the Fort Hood, Texas killer.

Philadelphia Couple Join Class-Action Lawsuit Against NSA's Verizon Spying.  A Philadelphia couple has joined the first class-action lawsuit against the Obama administration over the National Security Agency's collection of millions of customer phone records from Verizon.  The plaintiffs are calling the domestic spy operation a breach of privacy.  Filed in federal court in Washington, DC on Sunday, the lawsuit names a host of heavy hitters including President Obama, the NSA, and the Department of Justice.

NSA revelations only 'the tip of the iceberg,' says Dem lawmaker.  The federal surveillance programs revealed in media reports are just "the tip of the iceberg," a House Democrat said Wednesday [6/12/2013].  Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said lawmakers learned "significantly more" about the spy programs at the National Security Agency (NSA) during a briefing on Tuesday with counterterrorism officials.  "What we learned in there," Sanchez said, "is significantly more than what is out in the media today."

White House: If lawmakers didn't know about NSA program, that's their fault.  Congressional ignorance about the National Security Agency's phone record collection exists because lawmakers skipped briefings on the program, according to President Obama's spokesman, who maintained that the program had sufficient congressional oversight.  "I think it's been amply demonstrated that with regards to both sections of the Patriot Act and the programs that exist under those authorities that members of Congress were briefed or had the opportunity to be briefed on them," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters during the gaggle today [6/12/2013].

Sensenbrenner: Obama Administration's NSA Assurances 'a Bunch of Bunk'.  Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who introduced the PATRIOT Act on the House floor in 2001, has declared that lawmakers' and the executive branch's excuses about recent revelations of NSA activity are "a bunch of bunk."  In an interview on Laura Ingraham's radio show Wednesday morning, [6/12/2013] the Republican congressman from Wisconsin reiterated his concerns that the administration and the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court have gone far beyond what the PATRIOT Act intended.  Specifically, he said that Section 215 of the act "was originally drafted to prevent data mining" on the scale that's occurred.

Did someone mention the Patriot Act?

NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999.  In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it's much more wide spread than you've heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.  Digging a little further, we found a 1999 article by leading European computer publication Heise which noted that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software.

The domino effect begins:
Atty. In Fla. Robbery Case Seeks NSA Phone Records.  The lawyer for a man on trial in a South Florida armored car robbery is seeking cellphone records possibly produced by a recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance program, according to federal court documents.

NSA "Whistleblower" An Enemy Agent?  The fingerprints of America's enemies and adversaries are all over the disclosures about the NSA's terrorist surveillance program.  It is significant that NSA contract employee Edward Snowden would flee to Hong Kong — controlled by China — and that he would select Glenn Greenwald, a far-left columnist, as his mouthpiece. [...] After first giving Greenwald and his then-secret source tons of favorable publicity and softball coverage, the media seem to be having second thoughts, with CNN asking about Snowden, "Is this guy a hero or a traitor?"

By Revealing Prism, Snowden May Have Committed Treason.  Like many others, we have raised constitutional questions about the expansive nature of the so-called Prism program that collects data on more than 100 million Americans.  That said, Snowden's revelation of Prism and U.S. intelligence data-mining efforts to the left-wing British newspaper the Guardian broke the law.  As a government contractor with top-security clearance, he agreed not to reveal the secrets that were entrusted to him, under penalty of U.S. law.  He violated that.

Ron Paul fears US will use a drone to take out Edward Snowden.  Former Republican Rep Ron Paul has revealed he is worried about the welfare of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who leaked the secret information about a classified U.S. government surveillance program.  'I'm worried about somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile,' Mr Paul explained in an interview this morning.  'I mean we live in a bad time where American citizens don't even have rights and that they can be killed, but the gentlemen is trying to tell the truth about what's going on.'

Is Edward Snowden's story unravelling? Why the Guardian's scoop is looking a bit dodgy.  Now that the dust has settled after the Edward Snowden affair, it's time to ask some tough questions about The Guardian's scoop of the week.  Snowden's story is that he dropped a $200,000 a year job and a (very attractive) girlfriend in Hawaii for a life in hiding in Hong Kong in order to expose the evils of the NSA's Prism programme.  But bits of the story are now being questioned.

NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Breaks Silence: 'I'm Neither Traitor Nor A Hero, I'm An American'.  Since Snowden's bombshell revelations were made abroad, some have suggested that he was aware that he was breaking U.S. law and sought the protection of foreign governments.  Snowden says that he does not consider himself to be a fugitive from justice.

Spy leaker Edward Snowden 'vows to fight extradition'.  The information leaked by Mr Snowden has undoubtedly angered the US government, but so far he has not been charged by the authorities, nor is he the subject of an extradition request.  Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

Why I Don't Care About Edward Snowden.  The Snowden narrative matters mostly to White House officials trying to deflect attention from government overreach and deception, and to media executives in search of an easy storyline to serve a celebrity-obsessed audience.

Edward Snowden and the selective targeting of leaks.  Edward Snowden's expansive disclosures to the Guardian and the Washington Post about various National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs have only two corollaries in contemporary history — the classified cache Bradley Manning allegedly released to WikiLeaks a few years ago and Daniel Ellsberg's dissemination of the voluminous Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971.

That's Officer Obama, walking the electronic beat.  Our constitutional republic is under attack.  It has been wounded by the rise of the national surveillance state. [...] We now know the NSA monitors the phone records, emails and Internet data of more than 120 million Americans.  For this, many Republicans and Democrats are calling him a "traitor."  The ruling class considers Mr. Snowden a digital Benedict Arnold.  The opposite is true.  He is a hero and patriot, who exposed the rampant abuses of power at the heart of the Obama regime.

Did Snowden have an accomplice?  The world of the NSA, and the contractors who support it, is filled with young men and women — many of whom are or once were enlisted military personnel — who may or may not have a college degree but have shown an aptitude for some element of NSA work.  All that said, we still don't know (at least publicly) exactly what Snowden's job was.  So questions remain about whether he should have had access to the materials he passed along to the Guardian and the Washington Post.  Or is there some "hole" in the NSA's internal IT system that allowed him to get around and get to materials he should not have been able to see, let alone download?

NSA Leaker Had Legal Means to Reveal Information.  The inspector general for the Defense Department runs a hotline for military and intelligence officials to report such conduct in ways that do not disclose classified information to the public.  Experts on national security whistleblower laws say Snowden could also have disclosed the information to members of Congress.

Edward Snowden: Whistleblower or double agent?  While some initially championed Edward Snowden, the 21st century mole holed up in Hong Kong, as a martyr, there also appears to be a growing backlash against the former NSA contractor.  And as the story slowly unfolds, one key question stands out: is Snowden the heroic whistleblower he claims to be or something more sinister?

Snowden Used Banned Flash Drive to Smuggle NSA Data.  Edward Snowden, who has admitted leaking top-secret documents detailing the NSA's phone and Internet surveillance programs, exceeded his authorized access to the agency's computer systems while managing to smuggle out classified documents on a portable USB drive.  The small data-storage device has been banned from use on secret military networks, including those of the National Security Agency, for at least five years, The Washington Times reports.

NSA leaker Ed Snowden used banned thumb-drive, exceeded access.  Questions were raised Friday about security procedures at the ultra-secret National Security Agency, after it emerged that Edward Snowden, the contract employee who leaked details of the agency's broad-scale data gathering on Americans, exceeded his authorized access to computer systems and smuggled out Top Secret documents on a USB drive — a thumb-sized data storage device banned from use on secret military networks.  "He should not have been able to do either of those things" without setting off alarm bells, said one private sector IT security specialist who has worked on U.S. government classified networks.  He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities of his current employer.

Fox's Brit Hume Dismisses NSA Uproar As 'Misplaced Hysteria'.  Appearing on FoxNews.com Tuesday afternoon [6/11/2013], Fox senior political analyst Brit Hume dismissed the uproar over the National Security Agency's snooping revelations as "misplaced hysteria," adding that he sees no "abuse" whatsoever in what has been revealed.  If anything, he said, NSA leaker Edward Snowden is the one who committed an abuse.  "Of the abuses that [Snowden] claims exist in this program," Hume continued, "his explanation has been vague to the point of non-existent."  He then told host Chris Stirewalt he doesn't see anything wrong with what has been revealed about the NSA's surveillance programs.

I suppose we will have to take his word for it because apparently it's all secret.
NSA chief: Surveillance programs thwarted 'dozens of terrorist plots'.  The director of the National Security Agency portrayed the collection of millions of U.S. telephone records each day as a limited program designed to thwart terrorist plots, but made it clear that the NSA needed only a "reasonable suspicion" of a terrorist link to search the vast databank, not a separate court order.

Obama's 2007 Promise: 'No More Illegal Wiretapping of American Citizens'.  His administration would not "spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime, " then-Senator Obama promised in a Woodrow Wilson International Center, Council on Foreign Relations speech on August 1, 2007:  "I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.["]  [Video clip]

It's The U.S. Constitution, Stupid!  The Obama administration has thrown out all the rules, insisting that when you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it's OK to seize the haystack, keep it permanently on record and to look for whatever needle they want at any time they want.  They say they're looking for terrorists but can't find or stop those they have in plain sight.  Such sweeping surveillance did not catch the "underwear" bomber who, thanks to sheer luck and alert passengers, failed to bring down an airliner over Detroit.  It did not catch the Tsarnaev brothers as they freely traveled to the terrorist haven they called home before bombing the Boston Marathon.  It did not stop Maj. Nidal Hasan before he slaughtered U.S. soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood.  It has not found those responsible for the attack in Benghazi.

Washington's dark secrets.  The secret court that apparently authorized this program operates nothing like the judicial branch contemplated by the Constitution as a check on abuses of governmental power and a neutral evaluator of whether governmental conduct complies with the Constitution.  Its decisions are made in secret and not generally subject to appellate review.  And there is no role built into the system for someone to counter the government's arguments.

ACLU Sues U.S. Over Phone Data Collection.  The National Security Agency's broad collection of U.S. phone customer data received its first significant legal challenge since the disclosure of the program last week.  The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, alleging that the National Security Agency was violating the ACLU's constitutional rights.  The ACLU said it is a customer of Verizon Communications Inc.'s Verizon Business Network Services and it said metadata from the ACLU's phone calls are being collected.

A.C.L.U. Sues to Bar 'Dragnet' Collection of Phone Records.  The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday [6/11/2013] filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its "dragnet" collection of logs of domestic phone calls, contending that the once-secret program — whose existence was exposed by a former National Security Agency contractor last week — is illegal and asking a judge to both stop it and order the records purged.

The Editor says...
The Muslim terrorists know the government monitors phone calls and correlates the numbers.  That's why they buy a thousand cell phones at a time and use them only once.

Is the American surveillance state out of control?  This week's Telegram is a highly charged debate about America and security.  Tim Stanley says the information released by Edward Snowden shows an Obama administration exercising "weird and creepy" control over its citizens.  Dan Hodges says the libertarian Left and Right are in an "unholy alliance", trying to scare voters about legitimate security measures.

US allies "stunned" at scope of NSA surveillance.  Who can blame them?  As the scope of the NSA surveillance programs became a little clearer since their exposure last week, the ostensible targets abroad turned out to be a little unhappy with Uncle Big Brother, too.

Hoyer: No comparison between Obama, Bush secret surveillance.  Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday defended the Obama administration's domestic spying programs, arguing that, unlike the secret surveillance under President George W. Bush, the current programs appear legal.

Progressives, Democrats must stand with New York Times against Obama on NSA phone records collection.  The events of the past month — from the Associated Press subpoena to the James Rosen search warrant to the revelation that our government has been indiscriminately collecting phone records data — have forced liberals to make a choice between complacency and outrage, between keeping silent because one of our own is in the White House and calling him out on betraying the principles for which we have fought for so long.

Two times the government used its anti-terrorism powers to target Americans not engaged in terrorism.  The revelations detailing the extent of the National Security Agency's espionage capabilities raises the specter that their powers could be misused to target Americans who have nothing to do with terrorism.  In fact, allegations of such misconduct already exist.  Here are two examples where anti-terrorism powers granted to law enforcement were allegedly used to target American citizens not engaged in terrorism.

Even law-abiding people should oppose surveillance.  [W]hy should law-abiding citizens mind federal surveillance?  The answer begins with this distressing reality:  None of us scrupulously obeys the law.  Technically speaking, we're all criminals.  Federal and state criminal statutes have multiplied like rabbits over the decades, and so now everyone breaks the law, probably every day. [...] Citizens that the federal government wants to indict, the federal government can indict if it monitors them closely enough.  That's why it's so disturbing to learn that the federal government doesn't need to obtain a warrant on us in order to get our emails and phone records.

The Totalitarianism at the Heart of the Obama Scandals.  [Scroll down]  Then of course the National Security Agency was caught recently collecting the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers.  But the intrusive secret data-mining didn't end there.  Through a top-secret communications surveillance program called PRISM, instituted during the War on Terror years of the Bush administration, the U.S. intelligence community can access the servers of nine Internet behemoths such as Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype and Facebook for a wide range of digital data.  That NSA service has grown exponentially under Obama, which is curious since he declared the War on Terror to be over.

Was President Obama the leaker?  [Scroll down]  But the Obama administration didn't release the details on these programs.  In fact, they've pursued an energetic war on the kinds of leaks that have led to details on these programs.  So for Obama to say he "welcomes" this debate is a bit rich.  He did everything in his power to keep it from happening.  He may still try and throw the people who did create this debate in jail.  Unless, of course, he actually was the leaker.

The Patriot Act is merely a fig leaf to cover what tyrants would do anyway.
Document: Sen. Obama Opposed 'Government Fishing Expeditions' Under Patriot Act.  A "Dear Colleague" letter signed by then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) in 2005 urged an end to "government fishing expeditions" under Section 215 of the Patriot Act to gather records on American citizens indiscriminately.  The letter was also signed by eight other Senators, including John Kerry (D-MA) and Chuck Hagel (R-ND), who currently serve in President Obama's Cabinet as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, respectively.

Big Brother Really Is Watching Us.  When Americans expressed outrage last week over the seizure and surveillance of Verizon's client data by the National Security Agency, President Obama responded:  "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother ... but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."  How many records did the NSA seize from Verizon?  Hundreds of millions.  We are now learning about more potential mass data collections by the government from other communications and online companies.  These are the "details," and few Americans consider this approach "balanced," though many rightly consider it Orwellian.

Verizon's Top Secret Deal With Pentagon Was Made Public in Regular, Annual Filing With SEC.  The Verizon explanation is not in the vague and cryptic memo the company issued last week after the Guardian exposed its program.  It came, instead, in the company's annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, included in Verizon's annual report to shareholders.

What If China Hacks the NSA's Massive Data Trove?.  In the wrong hands, it could enable blackmail on a massive scale, widespread manipulation of U.S. politics, industrial espionage against American businesses, and other mischief I can't even imagine.  The plan is apparently to store the data indefinitely, just in case the government needs it for future investigations.  Don't worry, national security officials tell us, we won't ever look at most of it.  Do you trust the government to keep it secure, forever, if others try to look?

Rasmussen: Only 30% of Americans Trust the Government over Surveillance.  According to a new Rasmussen poll, only 30% of Americans trust the government to use the Constitution as a guide for surveillance issues, while 52% of respondents do not.  When asked whether they believed Barack Obama when he said the government was not listening to their phone calls, 68% of those polled said that it was at least somewhat likely that Obama was not telling the truth.

Judge Napolitano To Shep Smith: NSA Leaker An 'American Hero' Who Exposed 'Extraordinary Violations'.  Appearing on Fox's Studio B this afternoon [6/10/2013], senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano gave a frank assessment of NSA leaker Edward Snowden as "an American hero" who went great lengths to expose "extraordinary violations" of fundamental American values within the government.  "I describe this man has an American hero," the judge told host Shepard Smith, "willing to risk life and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history."

"Anybody who thinks it is consistent with the Constitution for spies in the United States of America, working for the federal government, to spy on more than half the country, does not understand the Constitution, does not accept our values, does not understand our history and ought not be in office."

— Judge Andrew Napolitano        

Edward Snowden has exposed both the ambition and the incompetence of Obama's security state.  "We hack everyone everywhere," Snowden tells The Guardian, arguing that there's little material or moral difference between the US and China when it comes to privacy rights.  "You are not even aware of what is possible," he continues.  "We can plant bugs in machines.  Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine.  You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."  Snowden says that the NSA "routinely lies" about the scale of the surveillance, all of which implies that Verizon is simply the tip of the iceberg.

All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama.  To an increasing degree, we're counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils.  Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after.  Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant's checklist that they've provided their successors [...]

Where's the evidence that data mining saves lives?  We know that complete strangers are looking at our Facebook pages.  Should we be surprised that the government is too?  Probably not.  But you might be surprised to find out that all this information the NSA and other agencies are collecting is not very useful for stopping terrorists, which is why it's being collected in the first place.  To date, there have been practically no examples of a terrorist plot being pre-emptively thwarted by data mining these huge electronic caches.

White House Plays Down Data Program.  The Obama administration tried Saturday [6/8/2013] to marshal new evidence in defense of its collection of private Internet and telephone data, arguing that a secret program called Prism is simply an "internal government computer system" designed to sort through court-supervised collection of data, and that Congress has been briefed 13 times on the programs since 2009.

The horses have escaped the barn, and now Big Brother now tries to deny there were any horses.
U.S. Official Releases Details of Prism Program.  A top U.S. intelligence official on Saturday declassified some details about the purpose and operations of an effort that obtains information from U.S. Internet companies as part of foreign-surveillance efforts.  James R. Clapper, director of National Intelligence, issued a statement and fact sheet to correct what he characterized as "significant misimpressions" in articles by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, which asserted that the government had direct access to computer systems of nine technology companies.  The papers based their reports on a presentation from the National Security Agency that used a previously undisclosed term Prism.

Total surveillance society: The government claims the right to read everything.  We knew this administration didn't like the Second Amendment.  We knew it has reservations about the First Amendment, and now we learn that it has dispensed with the Fourth Amendment.  The only amendment the administration really likes is the Fifth.  The more we learn about the government's extraordinary ability to read emails, listen to telephone calls and track individual movements, the more frightened everyone should be.  New code names, such as Prism, the National Security Agency program that directly mines all information from Gmail, Facebook and other services, have replaced Echelon and Carnivore as scare words.

Glenn Beck, Michael Moore call NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a hero.  Conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck and liberal Hollywood movie-maker Michael Moore have found common ground on the National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden:  He's a hero.

It's A Small Step From Obama's Surveillance To Orwell.  President Obama says his domestic surveillance practices are "modest encroachments on privacy."  Sure.  And, as in Orwell's "1984," "Freedom Is Slavery" and "Ignorance Is Strength."  Barack Obama is now not only following George Orwell's model in his newly uncovered domestic spying practices; he's copying one of the most shocking aspects of the dystopian society Orwell conjured:  telling people the exact opposite of the truth with a straight face.  He boasted an executive branch with "the toughest transparency rules of any administration in history."

What the feds can learn from your digital crumbs.  If you've signed into Google and searched, saved a file in your Dropbox folder, made a phone call using Skype, or just woken up in the morning and checked your email, you're leaving a trail of digital crumbs. [...] Raytheon's Rapid Information Overlay Technology (or RIOT) software was built to make some of this searching easier.  Its government customers use it to compile case files of location data scraped from checkins on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and other public social outlets.

The Totalitarian Left is Back.  Nothing in the Patriot Act authorizes the government-wide abuse of power by the IRS, EPA, FBI, DOJ, and other agencies with the coercive powers against Americans and foreigners.  The fault is not in the Patriot Act, but in Obama's Chicago-style one-party machine style of governance.  And rather than defending our freedoms, the leftist media colluded with abuse of power until after the election of 2012.  The New York Times is the biggest gear in the Obama Machine and they know it.

Admitting the NSA is out of control is just the first step.  Members of Congress are expressing their concern and outrage over the latest revelations of widespread data gathering by the NSA.  It is astonishing that they have only just discovered this problem; it has a history going back 50 years, and they voted for much of the legislation which enabled this kind of widespread violation of citizen rights.

The NSA Squirrel!  The NSA snooping revelations create a huge fuss that distracts the press and prevents the public (especially conservatives) from learning the grueseome details of the 1000 page Schumer-Rubio immigration disaster now on the Senate floor — yet doesn't hurt Obama's approval ratings like the IRS scandal does.

The NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data.  The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.  The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

Obama Ordered List of Foreign Targets for Cyberwar Attack.  The Guardian has uncovered a Presidential Policy Directive in which Obama ordered national security and intelligence officials to compile a list of overseas targets for U.S. cyber attacks.  The directive — number 20 — was issued in October 2012 but never published.

It's about to get very ugly.  [Scroll down]  "If anyone thinks that what's going on right now with all of this surveillance of American citizens is to fight some sort of foreign enemy, they're delusional.  If people think that this 'scandal' can't get any worse, it will, hour by hour, day by day. [..."]

Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance.  In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday [6/7/2013] in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program.  When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world's largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled.  In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.  Twitter declined to make it easier for the government.  But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

PRISM Biggest Contributor to Obama Intel Briefings.  The National Security Agency's top-secret slide presentation detailing the PRISM system that collects the contents of emails, video and web chat, and photos states that PRISM is the biggest contributor of information to President Barack Obama's daily intelligence briefing, known officially as the President's Daily Brief (PDB).  In the last year, PRISM data was cited in Obama's PDB 1,477 times.

Prism: first they came for the online extremists.  Why worry when the government isn't ever going to be bothered about what you personally do?  But what you do online, who you choose to email, what you choose to watch, what you read, listen to and comment on, doesn't matter until the day it suddenly does.  You can raise your eyebrows at wholesale surveillance efforts until it's you that ends up wrongly flagged on a watch list or monitored closely because of your political beliefs or those of people you are acquainted with.

Lawmakers rebut Obama's data defense.  President Barack Obama's chief defense of his administration's wide-ranging data-gathering programs Friday:  Congress authorized them, with "every member" well aware of the details.  Not so, say many members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike.

Dem. Senator disputes Obama's claim that Congress was briefed.  Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Friday disputed a claim President Obama made at a press conference only moments earlier, when the president said that every member of Congress had been briefed on the National Security Agency's (NSA) domestic phone surveillance program.  Merkley said only select members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had been briefed on the program, and that he was only aware of it because he obtained "special permission" to review the pertinent documents after hearing about it second-hand.

Mystery deepens: Are tech behemoths participating in PRISM voluntarily?.  Go look at this post at TechCrunch rounding up reaction from Google, Facebook, Apple, etc.  All of them deny giving the feds "direct access" to their servers; some of them claim never to have even heard of PRISM until WaPo's story yesterday.  "But wait," you say, "what if they're being slippery in their statements and they actually gave the feds indirect access to their servers?"  That's possible.  Other people have noticed that loophole too.

Massive secret surveillance betrays Americans.  By any measure, the government's secret seizure of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records over the past seven years is outrageous.  But it shouldn't be the least bit surprising.  When a panicked Congress, driven by a panicked electorate, hands the government nearly unlimited power to collect people's records — then makes sure the intrusion will be kept secret — overreach is guaranteed.

President Obama Doesn't Welcome Debate, He Actively Thwarts It.  President Obama kept the data collection in question a highly classified state secret.  If it were up to the White House, we wouldn't know of the program's existence, ever.  As a consequence, there would have been no debate about its appropriateness.  If Obama values debate, he doesn't value it as much as keeping secrets that inevitably make debate impossible.

How to Keep the NSA at Bay: The Tricks From Privacy Experts.  You think because you live in the suburbs and you work at an insurance company that Big Brother will never come for you? [...] What if they transpose a digit or two and mix you up with a suspected terrorist and break down your door in the middle of the night and shoot your dog?

US officials long denied massive data trawling.  For years, top officials of the Bush and Obama administrations dismissed fears about secret government data-mining by reassuring Congress that there were no secret nets trawling for Americans' phone and Internet records.

Now It's Credit Cards and Correspondence; What Next?  The initial revelations about NSA's collection of metadata on telephone calls has triggered an avalanche of stories about previously unknown, or only suspected, surveillance projects.  First the Washington Post reported (maybe inaccurately) on the PRISM project; then the Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA also collects "purchase information from credit-card providers;" today it came out that the post office photographs the front and back of every piece of mail, and preserves the images for criminal/terrorist investigations.  Who knew?

Feds: Postal Service photographs every piece of mail it processes.
Ricin Suspect Was Tracked Via Mail Scanners.  [Scroll down]  According to FBI Agent James Spiropoulos, investigators accessed a Postal Service computer system that incorporates a Mail Isolation Control and Tracking (MICT) program which photographs and captures an image of every mail piece that is processed."  Agents were able to obtain front and back images of about 20 mail pieces that had been processed "immediately before the mail piece addressed to Mayor Bloomberg."

NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal.  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.

U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program.  The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

Mark Levin On NSA Tracking: "We Have The Elements Of A Police State Here".  On Thursday's broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto," conservative talk show host Mark Levin reacted to recent revelations that the National Security Agency had been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers.  He said that the NSA news in addition to other openings for intrusion by the federal government are the makings of a "police state."

New Phone Record Seizures Raise Fundamental Issues.  First we learn the federal government is harassing anti-big-government organizations and spying on journalists.  Now we find it collecting all phone records of over 100 million Americans.  Is this "limited government"?

Why the gov't source leaked PRISM.  "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type," the officer said.

Sources: NSA sucks in data from 50 companies.  In a statement, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that programs collect communications "pursuant to section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," and "cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S person, or anyone within the United States."  He called the leaks "reprehensible" and said the program "is among the most important" sources of "valuable" intelligence information the government takes in.

Apple, Google Deny Giving NSA 'Back Door' Access To Systems, Claim 'Never Heard Of PRISM'.  In light of revelations about the top secret PRISM program used by the FBI and NSA to mine data from users of nine of the largest American Internet companies, two of those companies are now denying any cooperation with the government on such a program.  Spokespeople for both Apple and Google have released statements that indicate if the government is obtaining data from their systems it is doing it without the companies' involvement.

'Fascism!': The Five's Beckel Explodes At Obama Administration Over 'Deplorable' NSA Phone Records Grab.  "I think it is one of the most outrageous examples of the stepping on the Constitution I've heard," Beckel began.  "They have no right to the phone records...  It is illegal, it is unconstitutional and it is deplorable.  I didn't like it when they did it during the Bush administration and I don't like when they're doing it now."  "They have taken this PATRIOT Act, which I think was the most dangerous act passed, and they have taken it and abused it," Beck added.

US Declassifies Phone Program Details After Uproar.  President Barack Obama declared Friday [6/7/2013] that America is "going to have to make some choices" balancing privacy and security, launching a vigorous defense of formerly secret programs that sweep up an estimated 3 billion phone calls a day and amass Internet data from U.S. providers in an attempt to thwart terror attacks.

'No Such Agency' spies on the communications of the world.  The National Security Agency, nicknamed "No Such Agency" because of its ultra-secrecy, is the government's eavesdropper-in-chief.  Charged primarily with electronic spying around the globe, the NSA collects billions of pieces of intelligence from foreign phone calls, e-mail and other communications.  But in the past two days, the focus has shifted to its role in compiling massive amounts of the same information on millions of ordinary Americans.

U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove.  The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities.

Phone Record Gathering Story Blown Out of Proportion.  Now, we begin to see the wages of having an administration that abuses its awesome powers, then, as night follows day, stonewalls and misleads Congress and the public.  Crucial national security measures, which operate on the forgiving assumption that government officials will conduct themselves honorably, are put at risk.  The Washington Post publishes a wildly exaggerated report this morning about the government's collection of telephone records for national security purposes.  Mind you, I said collection of telephone records, not wiretapping of telephone conversations, a critical distinction.

Thank You for Data-Mining.  Well, another day, another Washington furor.  This one is over a National Security Agency phone data monitoring program, but unlike the other White House scandals there seems to be little here that is scandalous.  The existence of the program was exposed years ago and such surveillance is a core part of the war on terror, if we can still use that term.

How Outraged Should You Be About the NSA Grabbing Your Phone Logs?  Washington is reeling after a court order was uncovered last night showing Verizon has secretly been handing over reams of customer phone records to the National Security Agency on a daily basis.  The records don't contain the content of phone calls — so, just to be clear, this isn't wiretapping — but they do contain information such as phone numbers, the location and duration of calls, and subscriber and handset ID numbers, all of which fall under the category of "telephony metadata."

The Editor says...
I beg to differ:  To wiretap someone's phone is "to make a connection to a telegraph or telephone wire in order to obtain information secretly."*  If I put a device across my neighbor's phone wires and recorded the numbers they called, without recording the voices on the line, I can assure you the District Attorney would still call it a wiretap.

Dems: Obama admin spying 'un-American, 'alarming'.  Bay State Democrats are slamming the Obama administration's actions as "un-American" for secretly collecting phone records from millions of average citizens, demanding the federal government stop its sweeping spy programs.  "This is absolutely un-American as far as I'm concerned, and I'm a strong supporter of the president," said U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Somerville.

The Editor says...
Well, Mr. Capuano, you voted for the guy, I didn't.  If it is "un-American" and Obama's doing it, and you are "a strong supporter of the president," then you are a strong supporter of that which is un-American.  Unless you'd like to lead the charge for impeachment, you should spare us your outrage.

Scope of phone records seizure causes alarm; data collection goes beyond Verizon.  The Obama administration on Thursday defended its secret seizure of the phone records of millions of U.S. citizens as part of counterterrorism efforts, while privacy advocates blasted the move as illegal and a debate erupted in Congress over the intended scope of a key surveillance law.  In a new development, the National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies in real time, obtaining audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails and other information, various news outlets reported.  The program is code-named PRISM.

Obama administration pushes back on NSA document leaks.  On top of a Guardian newspaper report that revealed how authorities were collecting phone records from millions, a Washington Post report detailed another program that scours major Internet companies including Google and Facebook for data.  A former senior NSA official confirmed to Fox News that the program was started in 2007 by the FBI and NSA and allows them to tap into top U.S. Internet companies to pull audio, video and other data.

Fear the cyber enemy within or without?  What is more troubling — governments that apparently disregard the privacy of our phone calls and online activity in the interests of national security, or governments that seem to put a higher priority on hi-tech inward investment than on protecting national security?  In the past 24 hours, we have had alleged examples of both.

Time to Dial Up Some Healthy Skepticism.  It's important to emphasize that the NSA isn't listening to the content of these calls.  Indeed, it couldn't if it wanted to, given the sheer volume of conversations.  It'd be like one person trying to eavesdrop on every single conversation in a packed football stadium.

The Editor says...
How is anyone outside the government able to state with any certainty that "the NSA isn't listening to the content of these calls"?  A week ago, nobody knew they were keeping track of the phone numbers being called, so if the NSA is recording as many calls as they can, it's obviously still secret, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Report: U.S. Agents Tapping Servers of Leading Internet Companies.  The U.S. government is reportedly mining data from at least nine leading Internet companies through a secret program code-named PRISM that is aimed at sifting through foreign communications traffic to track potential terrorists.  On the heels of a report earlier this week revealing the U.S. is collecting phone records from Verizon (VZ), the news is likely to raise the heat in a renewed debate about the government's surveillance authority.

If Mr. Obama had a closer relationship with the truth, I might give him the benefit of the doubt.
Obama: Surveillance programs involve 'modest encroachments' on privacy, help fight terror.  President Obama defended the government's internet surveillance as a "modest encroachment" on the privacy of Americans, but he maintained that the programs initiated by George W. Bush help keep Americans safe, adding that he increased oversight of the surveillance.

We should be shocked at the American tapping scandal, and shocked that Obama doesn't seem to care.  You know all those bearded survivalist types holed up in places like Idaho with their paranoid anti-government conspiracy theories?  Suddenly they're looking rather less paranoid.  The rest of us, by contrast, are rushing to adjust our world view.  The revelation that the U.S. Government systematically taps online communications challenges the way we think about freedom, the way we think about privacy, the way we think about the Internet and, not least, the way we think about America.

Dem. Senator Contradicts Obama: 'I Had No Idea' About PRISM.  Appearing on MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said that he was never briefed on the National Security Agency's sweeping PRISM program which databases electronic communications data.  Merkley said that he had no idea about the program and he suspects that a small number of members of the congressional intelligence committees were the only individuals informed of the program.

Your Computer is Bugging Your House.  The computer you are sitting at right now probably has a microphone.  It probably also has a camera looking at you this moment.  Is it sending sound and pictures from inside your house to the PRISM program at NSA?  Who knows?  But one thing is for sure — the technology is sitting there, on your desk.  Welcome to Winston's world.

Obama sponsored bill that would have made Verizon order illegal.  President Obama co-sponsored legislation when he was a member of the Senate that would have banned the mass collection of phone records that his administration is now engaged in.  The SAFE Act, introduced by former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would have amended the Patriot Act to require that the government have "specific and articulable facts" to show that a person is an "agent of a foreign power" before seizing their phone records.

Libertarians to Obama: Can You Hear Me Now?.  [Scroll down]  First reported [in The Guardian] and then subsequently confirmed by a lack of denial and background confirmations, the Obama administration has been mining the data of America's largest wireless provider, Verizon, which boasts some 115 million mobile subscribers.  The feds also seem to have been combing through phone records of the company's 14 million landlines, mostly in the Mid-Atlantic region.  But the massive cell network is the real data trove for federal agents.

Obama: Phone, Internet data collection not 'Big Brother'.  President Obama, speaking publicly for the first time about his administration's mass collection of phone and Internet data, said Friday that the programs have made a difference in tracking terrorists and are not tantamount to "Big Brother."

The Editor says...
Everybody wants the government to track terrorists, and either lock them up or deport them.  But the rubbery language being used to defend the PRISM program talks about tracking "potential terrorists," which could be anyone who disagrees with the government and its heavy-handed tactics.  The same terrorist-tracking computer systems are probably being used (or soon will be) to find people who cheat on their taxes, grow marijuana in their basements, or don't pay child support.  That's the way law enforcement people are when they get bored:  No offense is too petty to overlook.

Obama: If you can't trust government, we're going to have some problems.  President Obama this afternoon addressed recent reports of the National Security Agency secretly obtaining phone records and private data for surveillance.  During his speech he indicated that Americans needed to trust the system of government set up to thwart abuse.  "If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress, and don't trust federal judges, to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here."

Is this where your personal information will be stored?  The personal data and private online conversations that the National Security Administration is accused of mining could be stashed in a one million square-foot, $1.9 billion facility in the Utah Valley.  Concerns over what the government will store at the Utah Data Center have been reinvigorated by the revelation that U.S. intelligence agencies have been extracting audio, video, photos, e-mails, documents and other information to track people's movements and contacts.

Obama defends NSA's secret 'data-mining' and tries to dismiss it as 'a modest encroachment'.  President Obama delivered a passionate defense on Friday [6/7/2013] of national security programs that secretly acquire information about Americans' phone calls, saying criticism of them is all 'hype.'  'My assessment and my team's assessment was that [the programs] help us prevent terrorist attacks and that the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration [of calls] without a name attached... It was worth us doing.'  Obama made the remarks at a press conference in response to revelations about two separate programs used to spy on American citizens and foreign nationals.

Why PRISM is Different and Scarier Than Other NSA Spying.  The metadata collected by the National Security Agency from Verizon and other phone companies is an aggregation of phone numbers and lengths of calls, and does not harvest the content of the calls.  PRISM, first disclosed Thursday night by The Washington Post and The Guardian, is different.  According to the intelligence official who leaked the information to The Post:  "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type."

New York Times Editorial Board: 'The Administration Has Now Lost All Credibility'.  Reacting to the news that the administration's National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of every American customer of at least one telephone service provider, the New York Times minced no words in a scathing editorial criticizing the practice and the lack of forthrightness from the White House.  "The administration has now lost all credibility," the Times editorial read.  "Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

Update:
New York Times quietly changes published editorial to make it less [critical] of Obama.  The New York Times edited its damning editorial condemning the Obama administration for collecting phone call data from Americans to make it less stinging shortly after the editorial was published online Thursday afternoon.  The editorial originally declared that the Obama "administration has lost all credibility" as a result of the recently revealed news that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been secretly collecting call data from American users of Verizon under the authority of the Patriot Act.

If You Think Obama's Defense of NSA Monitoring Is 'Laughable,' You're Not Alone.  Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley told Megyn Kelly he is "astonished" at President Obama's dismissive attitude toward criticism of NSA monitoring.

NSA Whistleblower: 'Metadata' of Phone Call Can Be More Revealing Than Listening In.  Megyn Kelly got some revealing insights today from two NSA whistleblowers. [Video clip]

Obama's agenda scorched in firestorm.  [Scroll down]  In recent weeks, it has fueled outrage over the targeting by the Internal Revenue Service of conservative Tea Party groups seeking non-profit status, and over the use of secret subpoenas and search warrants against the Associated Press and Fox News in Justice Department investigations of news leaks.  Now the headlines are focused on governmental monitoring that touches not just reporters but, apparently, just about anyone who makes a phone call.  Thursday began with explosions over a story in The Guardian in London of a broad secret U.S. warrant for phone records from Verizon.

Mark Levin: 'We have the elements of a police state'.  On Thursday's [6/6/2013] broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Your World with Neil Cavuto," conservative talk show host Mark Levin reacted to recent revelations that the National Security Agency had been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers.  He said that the NSA news in addition to other openings for intrusion by the federal government are the makings of a "police state."  "I tell you what I make of this — we have the elements of a police state here, and I'm not overstating it," Levin said.

NSA collecting daily phone logs of millions of Verizon customers.  It's beginning to look like the Obama administration is not at all interested in targeting domestic surveillance in any way that might attempt to mitigate its violations of privacy or increase its odds of actually finding people doing something illegal.  Attorney General Eric Holder's Department of Justice cast a wide net in his search of AP phone logs, was the picture of intrusiveness in the James Rosen case, and now NSA is targeting millions of Americans for daily data collection?

Report: NSA is Collecting Phone Records of Verizon Customers.  The U.S. National Security Agency is reportedly collecting millions of Verizon (VZ) phone records after the government obtained a top-secret court order requiring the carrier hand over call data on all phone calls in its systems.  The White House on Thursday didn't back away from the report in the U.K.'s <>i>Guardian, with a senior Obama administration official defending the practice in general terms.

GCHQ 'has been accessing intelligence through internet firms'.  The Guardian newspaper claimed that it had obtained documents that show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year.  Intelligence reports from GCHQ are normally shared with Britain's security services MI5 and MI6.

NSA's Verizon Spying Order Specifically Targeted Americans, Not Foreigners.  The National Security Agency has long justified its spying powers by arguing that its charter allows surveillance on those outside of the United States, while avoiding intrusions into the private communications of American citizens.  But the latest revelation of the extent of the NSA's surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitly excluded those outside the United States.

President Obama's Dragnet.  [Scroll down]  The administration has now lost all credibility.  Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.  That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.  Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night [6/5/2013], we now know the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon's business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system.

Did someone mention the Patriot Act again?

Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order.  The National Security Agency appears to be collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation's largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order issued in April.  The order appears to require a Verizon subsidiary to provide the NSA with daily information on all telephone calls by its customers within the United States and from foreign locations into the United States.

Verizon scandal: Barack Obama's national security state is now beyond democratic control.  Of course, it isn't the first time that a US administration has spied on its own people.  The origins of this particular order lie first in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and then in Section 215 of the Patriot Act, backed by George W Bush and passed by Congress after 9/11.  Normally, domestic surveillance only targets suspicious individuals, not the entire population, but in 2006 it was discovered that a similarly wide database of cellular records was being collected from customers of Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth.  There was plenty of outrage and plenty of lawsuits, but the National Security Agency never confirmed that the programme had been shut down.

Al Gore calls Obama administration's collection of phone records 'obscenely outrageous'.  Former Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday night leveled some rare and harsh criticism at the Obama administration, attacking its reported collection of phone records for millions of Americans.  The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reported Wednesday evening that the National Security Agency has used a secret court order issued in April to collect the records of all phone calls made on the Verizon network.

Thank You, Unknown Patriot, for Exposing the Spying on Verizon Customers.  The federal government forced Verizon to turn over information on the phone calls of millions of innocent Americans and forbade them from telling anybody about it, The Guardian reports.  Kudos to Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Spencer Ackerman for the impressive scoop, and for posting the evidence here.  Who helped the journalists obtain that "top-secret" court order?  Hopefully, that's going to stay secret for a long time.  As Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt note in the New York Times, "The order was marked TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN, referring to communications-related intelligence information that may not be released to noncitizens. [...] In other words, it was likely leaked by someone who took a personal risk exposing it.

Senators: NSA phone sweeping has been going on since 2007.  The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday said senators were informed of the administration's sweeping surveillance practices, which they said have been going on since 2007.  "Everyone's been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Obama administration defends phone record collection.  The Obama administration on Thursday defended its collection of the telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, re-igniting a fierce debate over privacy even as it called the program critical to warding off an attack.

NSA out of control: We the people at fault.  Today, the front page of every major national news website is featuring reactions to Glenn Greenwald's explosive report on the FISA court order that "requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries."  That means that the government is collecting information on every call made on Verizon's service, regardless of probable cause or any suspicion that the parties have committed a crime.  The Fourth Amendment was written specifically to prohibit this activity by the government.  But they're doing it, unapologetically.

GOP Sen. Graham says he's 'glad' NSA is collecting phone records.  Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is "glad" that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.  Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job.  The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.

Sen. Rand Paul slams government phone spying.  Sen. Rand Paul said that it is "an astounding assault on the Constitution" for the National Security Agency to secretly collect telephone records from millions of Verizon customers.  The Kentucky Republican and likely 2016 presidential candidate suggested that the NSA's data collection of Verizon customers, detailed in a report Thursday [6/6/2013] in The Guardian, a British newspaper, violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

From Verizon's 'Can you hear me now' to NSA's "Yes, every eavesdropped word".  When "Big Brother is Watching You" was the cold war mantra of the day, there were no cellphones, no iPads, no satellite communications of any kind in the hands of the unwashed masses.  Today Big Brother is not watching you, he's stalking and harassing you — right in the place you call home.  There's nowhere to hide; nowhere to run to and no one to turn to in a world where a government that has learned how to slip being held accountable has all the tools on its side.

How Extensive is the NSA Domestic Surveillance of U.S. Media? Is it legal?  Just like the Posse Comitatus laws prohibit the use domestically of the military and militarized weapons inside the United States or against U.S. citizens, reserving those authorities and tools to policing agencies, the NSA's tools are restricted domestically from use against U.S. citizens and businesses.  A fact which is apparently lost on the Obama administration, as we already see in Jewel vs. NSA, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation is meticulously documenting.

NSA reportedly collecting phone records of millions, though officials had denied holding 'data' on Americans.  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was asked at a March hearing whether the National Security Agency collects any data on millions of Americans.  "No sir ... not wittingly," Clapper responded, acknowledging there are cases "where inadvertently, perhaps" the data could be collected.  NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander also told Fox News last year that the agency does not "hold data on U.S. citizens."

The Editor says...
Now that we know the government collects phone records, how is it possible to believe the assurances that the government doesn't listen to the phone calls of ordinary Americans?  More broadly, how many other "internet conspiracy theories" are actually true?

Author of Patriot Act says NSA phone records collection 'never the intent' of law.  The author of the Patriot Act said Thursday [6/6/2013] that a secret program under which the Obama administration was collecting phone records from millions of Americans is "excessive" and beyond the scope of the law.  Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who wrote the 2001 law, was among a host of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who raised alarm over the practice.

The Editor says...
If you can't foresee unintended consequences, you shouldn't write laws.

Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily.  The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.  The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Americans Daily.  Well here's another scandal ready for the Obama administration.  It was revealed today that the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon.  This top secret order was issued in April.

Privacy of World Citizens Wiped Out by USA.  The ribbon-cutting ceremony invite, sent to a select group of Utah politicians and dignitaries for the massive Utah Data Centre in Bluffdale, Utah, was as mysterious as the facility itself.  Canada Free Press (CFP) could find no pictures, no accounts of the event anywhere on the Internet today even though an earlier media release said reporters would be there.  The bigger-than-the-CIA National Security Agency (NSA) had previously stated that the facility would start operations in September, 2013.

Obama Scandal Brush Fires Spread.  [Quoting Cal Thomas: "]Remember it was conservative President Bush who wrote an executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to intercept the communications of Americans by e-mail and phone without a warrant.  That's worse than the AP phone record intrusion."

The Stasi IRS?  It's often been said the Internal Revenue Service is the most feared bureaucracy in the United States.  Little wonder. [...] Deep in the subterranean bowels of the IRS, there are electronic folders full of deeply personal, private information about nearly every American and every tax exempt organization.  We now know this treasure trove of information is exponentially expanding and has been put to the use for the aims of a corrupt administration interested in crippling political opposition such as the Tea Party movement.  The harassment of the Richmond Tea Party group, which applied for tax exempt status, exemplifies the badgering many conservative groups have received over the last few years.

Your Phone Records May Have Been Seized, Too — But You'll Never Know.  Members of the press and defenders of civil liberties are rightfully outraged over the Justice Department's seizure of phone records from Associated Press reporters.  But for those familiar with the strange new world of digital surveillance, the secret acquisition of phone logs and emails is only an unusually public example of something that is disturbingly widespread, highly secret[Scroll down]  and completely legal.

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?  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.

DOJ Won't Require Warrants for Email, Chat Seizures.  In blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the Department of Justice has apparently declared that they do not require warrants for grabbing Americans' emails and Facebook chats.  The ACLU has gotten hold of the documents from the FBI and DOJ that show that a subpoena, which comes from a prosecutor, is all that is necessary to seize emails and chats.

ALL Digital Communications In The United States Are Being "Captured" By Government Surveillance Systems.  You may be reading this article in the privacy of your own home, but somewhere in a National Security Agency control center your every move is being tracked.  What time you logged on this morning, the web site you visited, how long you stayed and even what you said in the comments section — all of it — has been cataloged and possibly even flagged for suspicious activity.

Biometric Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform.  The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.  Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named "photo tool," a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver's license or other state-issued photo ID.

Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy.  Law enforcement agencies are increasingly using sophisticated cameras, called "automated license plate readers" or ALPR, to scan and record the license plates of millions of cars across the country. [...] Photographing a single license plate one time on a public city street may not seem problematic, but when that data is put into a database, combined with other scans of that same plate on other city streets, and stored forever, it can become very revealing.

CIA, Other Spy Agencies Could Be Snooping on You and Your Bank Accounts.  The Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and other United States government spy agencies could receive full access to huge amounts of financial data on Americans and others who do banking in the United States, according to a report from the Reuters news agency.  Reuters reports its personnel have read a March 4 Treasury Department document that describes a developing plan by the Obama administration to allow government spy agencies to obtain, track and analyze the financial records of anyone with a bank account in the United States.  The CIA and other spy agencies have never been allowed to operate inside the nation's borders except in rare case-by-case instances.

Ruling Protects Bank, Phone, Other Records from FBI 'Security Letters'.  A federal judge in San Francisco has declared "national security letters" from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to banks, phone companies, and other businesses to be unconstitutional.  The March 15 ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Illston declared the letters do not "serve the compelling need of national security."  The FBI has been issuing thousands of letters annually on its own authority and with no judicial review to obtain confidential customer information.  The letters also order the companies not to disclose the demands for information to targeted customers or others.  The FBI began issuing the letters after the USA Patriot Act became law in 2011.

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?.  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.

Big Government Mind-Readers.  A massive new NSA data center in Utah is under construction, which will be awfully handy for Big Government or anyone else who seeks the power that comes with control over information and the gateways to the networks it uses — all in one convenient, central location.  So far, many questions about NSA's "spy center" have gone unanswered as "classified" and "secret."

FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as "Top Priority" for 2013.  Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time.  But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a "top priority" this year.

Silly extremist: the government has no designs on your firearms.  See?  No black helicopters here.  Just the innocent sharing of data between states and the federal government.  For the children!

National Databases: Collecting Student-Specific Data is unnecessary and Orwellian.  Home School Legal Defense Association has long opposed the creation of a national database of student-specific data.  We believe that such national databases threaten the privacy of students, could be abused by government officials or business interests that may gain access to the data, threaten the safety of young people if their data is breached, and are not necessary in order to educate young people.

ATF Seeks 'Massive' Database of Personal Info: 'Assets, Relatives, Associates and More'.  A recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reveals that the agency is seeking a "massive" online database capable of pulling up individuals' personal information, connections and associates.

Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment.  Ironically, while SWAT teams probably got their biggest boost initially from conservatives, many fear law enforcement is becoming a tool to enforce leftist ideology.  University criminal justice programs turn out graduates indoctrinated in liberal theology, which carries into modern law enforcement bureaucratic culture.  Today this trend is reflected in reports coming out of the Department of Homeland Security, the military, and various law enforcement "fusion" centers, that identify gun-owners, patriots, ex-military, Christians, pro-life activists, and tea party members as "potential domestic terrorists."

Why Data Mining Won't Stop Terror.  In the post-9/11 world, there's much focus on connecting the dots.  Many believe data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots.  But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn't tenable for that purpose.  We're not trading privacy for security; we're giving up privacy and getting no security in return.

US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email.  The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country's private, civilian-run infrastructure.  As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.

Obama's Tyranny: Petty or Something More Sinister?.  We have a Department of Homeland Security that has become one of the largest bureaucracies in the history of our government in the space of 11 years.  There is very little accountability and DHS has extraordinary powers to infringe the constitutional rights of our citizenry.  Drones, computer monitoring, and wiretaps are all allowed under the Obama Administration's overwhelming control of the mechanisms of state.  Just the other day, DHS announced plans to scan even more private e mail traffic.  There is a simple word for all of this; tyranny.

How Many Millions of Cellphones Are Police Watching?  In response to a congressional inquiry, mobile phone companies on Monday finally disclosed just how many times they've handed over users' cellphone data to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.  By the New York Times' count, cellphone companies responded to 1.3 million demands for subscribers' information last year from law enforcement.  Many of the records, such as location data, don't require search warrants or much court oversight.  Both police and cell service providers had long resisted releasing details on the scope of cellphone surveillance.

Judge strikes down federal surveillance law.  A federal judge has ruled unconstitutional national security provisions that permit federal investigators to access customer information from some companies without court approval.  The provisions 'suffer from significant constitutional infirmities,' and violate the First Amendment and separation of powers, Judge Susan Illston of the District Court for the Northern District of California wrote in an order on Thursday [3/14/2013].

Judge rules secret FBI national security letters unconstitutional.  A federal judge has struck down a set of laws allowing the FBI to issue so-called national security letters to banks, phone companies and other businesses demanding customer information.  U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said the laws violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles and ordered the government to stop issuing the secretive letters or enforcing their gag orders, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Federal Judge Finds National Security Letters Unconstitutional, Bans Them.  Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled in a decision released Friday [3/15/2013].  U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration's surveillance practices.  She also ordered the government to cease enforcing the gag provision in any other cases.  However, she stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Homeland Security Releases Binder Detailing Internet Monitoring.  The binder includes an extensive list of key words and search terms carefully watched by analysts in multiple agencies including the Directorate for National Protection and Programs, Directorate for Science and Technology, Office of Health Affairs, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and others.

Congress Has Enough Time to Keep Spying on You, Forever.  You will be utterly unsurprised to learn that the same United States Senate that hasn't passed a (legally required) budget resolution since 2009, that legislates via perpetual self-made crises and lards nearly all laws with brazenly fictitious sunset provisions and distant spending cuts, has managed to fit into its busy schedule of anti-gun press conferences and drunk-driving arrests an "unusual special session" to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 before the law turns into a pumpkin on Jan. 1.

Why Are People More Scared of Facebook Violating Their Privacy than Washington?  The traditional media response to the [FISA] reauthorization battle has been remarkably nonexistent.

Senate Approves Warrantless Phone Tapping for Next Five Years.  In 2007, the Senate voted to grant blanket immunity to companies like AT&T, which conspired with the NSA to monitor American digital conversations without government oversight after 9/11.  Today's vote continues that immunity, and provides further carte blanche for the American intelligence-gathering apparatus.  Phone calls, texts, and emails are all fair game — and a judge doesn't have to give the OK, so long as it's in the name of counterterrorism.  Which is a very easy guise.

Remember When the Left Used to Freak Out About News Like This?  The One campaigned in 2008 under a platform of getting rid of Bush's policies in this area (and almost every other area for that matter), but in fact warrantless wiretaps have skyrocketed under Obama.

Why We Should All Care About Today's Senate Vote on the Warrantless Domestic Spying Bill.  The FISA Amendments Act continues to be controversial; key portions of it were challenged in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court this term.  In brief, the law allows the government to get secret FISA court orders — orders that do not require probable cause like regular warrants — for any emails or phone calls going to and from overseas.  The communications only have to deal with "foreign intelligence information," a broad term that can mean virtually anything.

Congress Approves the FISA Warrantless Spying Bill for Five More Years.  Today, after just one day of rushed debate, the Senate shamefully voted on a five-year extension to the FISA Amendments Act, an unconsitutional law that openly allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans' overseas communications.  Incredibly, the Senate rejected all the proposed amendments that would have brought a modicum of transparency and oversight to the government's activities, despite previous refusals by the Executive branch to even estimate how many Americans are surveilled by this program or reveal critical secret court rulings interpreting it.

Prez wants to spy on US.  Can you imagine what would have happened if the Bush administration had implemented "no-probable-cause" searches like these?  Actually they tried to.  The Republican Congress stopped it.  So Obama's doing it the "executive order" way:  He's launched widespread spying on we the people, directly from the White House, without going through our elected representatives.  And where are the liberals?  Where are Michael "War Crimes" Moore and Keith "Bush Is A Fascist" Olbermann?

New Anti-Crime Cameras Being Installed Downtown.  Officials said 38 anti-crime cameras will soon be installed in downtown Los Angeles.  In the coming weeks, this new equipment will replace cameras which have been broken or failing for years.

The Editor says...
While the word "wiretap" is used by the dumbed-down news media for the benefit of the poorly educated masses, the interception of telephone calls by the feds is done without making connections to actual wires.  This issue is about eavesdropping on international phone calls, and almost all international calls are carried by microwave and satellite links which are easy to listen in on.

Why We Don't Trust Democrats With National Security.  The Democratic Party has decided to express indignation at the idea that an American citizen who happens to be a member of al Qaeda is not allowed to have a private conversation with Osama bin Laden.  If they run on that in 2008, it could be the first time in history a Republican president takes even the District of Columbia.

'Warrantless' searches are not unprecedented.  Previous administrations, as well as the court that oversees national security cases, agreed with President Bush's position that a president legally may authorize searches without warrants in pursuit of foreign intelligence.

It's not that hard to grasp, folks:  'Spying' saves lives.  The argument for allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans is simple:  It works.

Spies like us.  Try as I might, I can't muster outrage over what appears to be a reasonable action in the wake of 9/11.  As a rule, I'm as averse as anyone to having people "spying" on me.  I'm also as devoted to protecting civil liberties as any other American.  But the privilege of debating our constitutional rights requires first that we be alive.  If federal agents want to listen in on suspected terrorists as they plot their next mass murder, please allow me to turn up the volume.

Liberal judge:  Federal District Judge James Robertson, who resigned from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court in protest over secret wiretaps ordered by President Bush, is regarded in Washington legal circles as one of President Bill Clinton's most liberal and partisan judicial appointments.

The Left's privacy hypocrites.  The hindsight hypocrisy of the civil-liberties absolutists never ceases to amaze.  And their selective outrage over privacy violations never ceases to aggravate. … The left believes the government should do whatever it takes to fight terrorists — but only when the terrorists look like Timothy McVeigh.  If you're on the MCI Friends and Family plan of Osama bin Laden and Abu Zubaydah, you're home free.

The anti-anti-terrorists:  The current hysteria over the president's authorization of some domestic intercepts by the National Security Agency reminds me of similar reaction by liberals to the Cold War.  Instead of recognizing communism as a clear and present danger to freedom and liberty here and abroad, many liberals decided the real threat to those values came from anti-communism itself.

None Dare Call it Hypothetical.  In Washington, D.C., a local talk-radio host poses a provocative question:  What if international terrorists were plotting a Super 9/11 that would kill not just 3,000 Americans — mere child's play for these nuts — but might wipe 30,000, 300,000, or even "a city of 3,000,000 off the face of the planet"?  Would the president then be justified in a few technically illegal wiretaps to detect them in time?  The question practically answers itself.

Secret court modified wiretap requests.  Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.  A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined.

Let Bush, NSA do their jobs.  Like it or not — and you can bet the Defeatist Party does not — Bush was right on when he insisted in a recent press conference that he most certainly does have the constitutional authority to order such warrantless surveillance, an opinion he has based correctly and, in no small part, on the permission slip Congress signed when lawmakers authorized him to conduct the war on terror.

On the other hand...
One branch of government is so much more efficient than three.  [President] Bush has shown an alarming tendency to cut the legislative and judicial branches out of decisions about how to prosecute a war on terrorism that will continue long after he leaves office.  This combination of unilateralism with a perpetual state of emergency is a recipe for tyranny.

Wiretaps fail to make a dent in terror war; al Qaeda used messengers.  The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda.  U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States.  They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages.  Instead, they employ couriers.

The Agency That Could Be Big Brother.  Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the [NSA] and came away stunned.  "That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people," he said in 1975, "and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything:  telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter.  There would be no place to hide."  He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. "could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back."

Clinton Lawyer Claims Bush Doesn't Have Same Powers He Asserted Clinton Had.  There's a new lexicon that's developed, "domestic spying," which is contemptible.  It's not what this is all about.  The press has done an intentionally miserable job at explaining this program and the law and the history surrounding the program.

MRC Study:  Evening News Shows Claim NSA Spies on "Americans," Not "Terrorists".  Over at www.mrc.org, we've just posted a new study of how ABC, CBS and NBC have covered the NSA surveillance story. It's just as awful as you expected — most network stories were framed around the idea that the program is probably illegal and a shocking violation of Americans' civil liberties.

Sometimes in Polling, It's All in the Question.  What does the public think about the Bush administration's wiretapping program?  It depends on how you ask the question.  A half dozen polls on the issue have turned up different conclusions, and a key distinction appears to be the way pollsters identify the people who might have their emails and phone calls monitored as part of an effort to fight terrorism.  Recent poll questions have referred to "suspected terrorists," "people in the United States" and "American citizens."

US sues New Jersey over phone company subpoenas.  The U.S. government has sued the New Jersey Attorney General's office on grounds of security concerns to prevent it from asking telephone companies if they gave customer call records to the National Security Agency.

Justice Department's Warrantless Spying Increased 600 Percent in a Decade.  The Justice Department use of warrantless internet and telephone surveillance methods known as pen register and trap-and-trace has exploded in the last decade, according to government documents the American Civil Liberties obtained via a Freedom of Information Act claim.

ACLU: Obama Has Quadrupled Warrantless Wiretaps.  The ACLU released a report this week that shows that under Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder, warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American's electronic communications is "sharply on the rise."

Say good-bye to privacy thanks to Stellar Wind.  The American republic, or any society so desiring emancipation to have its citizens live free and unfettered lives, must allow liberated and confidential communication.  Liberty and human dignity demand nothing less.  All of this is about to change.

New Details on NSA's 'Spy Center' and Secrets From Domestic Eavesdropping Operation 'Stellar Wind'.  [Scroll down]  Wired also includes a former NSA official going on the record for the first time on the secret, domestic spying program Stellar Wind and its role in data communication collection, which when the Bluffdale facility is complete will be stored there.  Former senior NSA "crypto-matematician" William Binney, who helped develop NSA's spying capabilities before leaving in 2001, explains how the NSA deliberately violated the Constitution, which was the reason why he left, in setting up warrentless wiretapping to the extent that they did.  Wired reports that much of NSA's wiretapping practices now were made legal under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

NSA keeping details about data center quiet.  The agency building 1 million square feet of enclosed space, including 100,000 square feet of space just for computers that will gather and digest intelligence information, continues to do what it does best — keep secrets — when asked about the project.  The NSA sent a short statement to the Deseret News on Friday [3/16/2012], but only after Wired Magazine compiled a voluminous story published the same day.

NSA's Spy Program "Stellar Wind" Exposed.  The National Security Agency, awash with funds provided by Congress, is nearly finished constructing its Utah Data Center as the collection point for data provided from around the country and around the world.  Its purpose:  "to intercept, decipher, analyze and store vast swaths of the world's communications ... [including] all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches."

NSA Building is the Largest Spy Center Ever.  NSA spy centerIn the little town of Bluffdale, Utah, between the Wasatch Range and the Oquirrh Mountains, the National Security Agency (NSA) is building what will be the nation's largest spy center, reports Wired, a print magazine and online publication reporting on technological developments and their effects, including electronic privacy.

Big Brother FBI Data-Mining Programs Resurrect "Total Information Awareness".  From the wholesale use of informants and provocateurs to stifle political dissent, to Wi-Fi hacking and viral computer spyware to follow our every move, the FBI has turned massive data-mining of personal information into a growth industry.  In the process they are building the surveillance state long been dreamed of by American securocrats.

The Stellar Wind is Blowing.  The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together:  "We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state."

Big Brother Goes Live September 2013.  George Orwell was right.  He was just 30 years early.

Data-Mining for Terrorists Not 'Feasible,' DHS-Funded Study Finds.  The government should not be building predictive data-mining programs systems that attempt to figure out who among millions is a terrorist, a privacy and terrorism commission funded by Homeland Security reported Tuesday [10/7/2008].  The commission found that the technology would not work and the inevitable mistakes would be un-American.  The committee, created by the National Research Council in 2005, also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of technology designed to decide from afar whether a person had terrorist intents, saying false positives could quickly lead to privacy invasions.

NSA's Domestic Spying Grows As Agency Sweeps Up Data.  Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns.  Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear.  The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

FBI's Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records.  Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI's National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the "Total Information Awareness" system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.

Report: NSA's Warrantless Spying Resurrects Banned 'Total Information Awareness' Project.  Total Information Awareness — the all-seeing terrorist spotting algorithm-meets-the-mother-of-all-databases that was ostensibly de-funded by Congress in 2003, never actually died, and was largely rebuilt in secret by the NSA, according to the Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Gorman.

Homeland Security Officials Caught Hiding Online Spying Program from Congress.  Writers aren't the only group to be watched by the never-blinking eye of Homeland Security.  According to the report, "anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed" may also be spied on and have their "usernames and passwords" recorded for future reference.  How many people might be shoe-horned into one of those categories if the federal government decided it wanted to put them under online surveillance?

List reveals keywords feds monitor on Facebook, Twitter.  Have you ever wondered if the government — or more specifically, the Department of Homeland Security — is monitoring your Twitter or Facebook posts?  If the answer's "yes," give yourself a pat on the back because you're right and not simply paranoid.  There's even a list of keywords for which subcontractors hired by the DHS check social networks.


EPIC Obtains New Documents on DHS Media Monitoring, Urges Congress to Suspend Program.  EPIC has submitted a letter to Congress following a hearing on DHS monitoring of social networks and media organizations.  In the letter, EPIC highlights new documents obtained as a result of a FOIA lawsuit and points out to inconsistencies in DHS' testimony about the program.  Though DHS testified that it does not monitor for public reaction to government proposals, the documents obtained by EPIC indicate that the DHS analysts are specifically instructed to look for criticism of the agency and then to redirect reports that would otherwise be circulated to other agencies.

The Department of Homeland Security Is Searching Your Facebook and Twitter for These Words.  The Department of Homeland Security monitors your updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover "Items Of Interest" (IOI), according to an internal DHS document released by the EPIC.  That document happens to include a list of the baseline terms for which the DHS — or more specifically, a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks — use to generate real-time IOI reports.

FBI Pursues Social Media Surveillance to Gather Intelligence.  In a formal "request for information," the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked software companies for a digital tool that would systematically scan the entire social media realm to find potential terrorist-related threats and intelligence information.  While hundreds of intelligence analysts are already probing overseas Facebook and Twitter posts, U.S. law enforcement officials claim digital software could sift through more data than humans ever could.

Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan.  A plan to create a new Pentagon cybercommand is raising significant privacy and diplomatic concerns, as the Obama administration moves ahead on efforts to protect the nation from cyberattack and to prepare for possible offensive operations against adversaries' computer networks.  President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties.  But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama's assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice...

The NSA Is still Listening to You.  This summer, on a remote stretch of desert in central Utah, the National Security Agency will begin work on a massive, 1 million-square-foot data warehouse.  Costing more than $1.5 billion, the highly secret facility is designed to house upward of trillions of intercepted phone calls, e-mail messages, Internet searches and other communications intercepted by the agency as part of its expansive eavesdropping operations.  The NSA is also completing work on another data warehouse, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.

Massive FBI Data Mining Revealed, Set to Expand.  Recently declassified documents obtained by Wired magazine reveal a massive Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data mining operation.  It already possesses over 1.5 billion records from government and private-sector sources.  That figure is expected by the FBI to balloon to over 6 billion within a few years.  And it is not just terrorists they are after.

Report on the Investigative Data Warehouse.  The Investigative Data Warehouse is a massive data warehouse, which the Bureau describes as "the FBI's single largest repository of operational and intelligence information."  As described by FBI Section Chief Michael Morehart in 2005, the "IDW is a centralized, web-enabled, closed system repository for intelligence and investigative data."  Unidentified FBI agents have described it "one-stop shopping" for FBI agents and an "uber-Google."

Is the NSA's 'Perfect Citizen' the Ultimate Spying Tool?  Could the NSA's new "Perfect Citizen" actually be used for spying on every citizen in the U.S.? ... The NSA's new cyber-security program Perfect Citizen will monitor nuclear power plants, train stations, and the electric power grid to safeguard against cyber-assaults. ... According to [a] report, Raytheon was awarded a $100M contract to develop Perfect Citizen.  (Raytheon declined to comment to FoxNews.com, as did the NSA other than describing Perfect Citizen in an official statement as a "research and risk-assessment" project that does not use sensors.)

10 ways your voice and data can be spied on:
1. Wireless keyboard eavesdropping
2. Wired keyboard eavesdropping
3. Laptop eavesdropping via lasers
4. Commercial keyloggers
5. Cell phones as remotely activated bugs
6. Cell phone SIM card compromise
7. Law enforcement wiretapping based on voice print
8. Remote capture of computer data
9. Cable TV as an exploitable network
10. Cell phone monitoring

'Eavesdropper' satellite rides huge rocket from Florida.  The US National Reconnaissance Office has launched what is reputed to be the largest satellite ever sent into space.  The spacecraft was put into orbit on a Delta-4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force station on Sunday [11/21/2010].  The NRO gave no details about the payload but it is understood the satellite will be used to eavesdrop on enemy communications.

Air Force Launches Massive, Secret Spy Satellite.  A powerful Delta 4 rocket roared to life and climbed away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Sunday evening on a high-priority mission to boost a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite into orbit. ... Once on station, the satellite presumably will unfold a huge, lightweight antenna to tap into targeted military or civilian communications networks.

Monitoring America: How the U.S. Sees You.  Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.  The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

A hidden world, growing beyond control.  The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center.  Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency.  A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade.  Its purpose:  to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.  The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.

NSA Won't Disclose How Many Americans are Being Spied On.  As the sprawling surveillance site being constructed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in Utah grows larger and nearer completion every day, the domestic spy service remains tightlipped about just how much and what kind of personal electronic data they have already collected and collated.  Not only does the NSA refuse to provide such information, it insists that it cannot be forced to.

Is US government reading email without a warrant? It doesn't want to talk about it.  In March, the American Civil Liberties Union caused a nationwide stir when the advocacy group released the results of its year-long investigation into law enforcement use of cellphone tracking data.  After issuing hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests, the ACLU learned that many local police departments around the country routinely pay mobile phone network operators a small fee to get detailed records of historic cell phone location information.  The data tell cops not just where a suspect might have been at a given moment, but also create the possibility of retracing someone's whereabouts for months.

NSA chief defends agency against domestic spying charges.  The head of the National Security Agency on Monday denied reports that NSA's new data center in Utah would collect and store data about Americans, including their e-mails and web-browsing habits.  The $2 billion data center in Bluffdale, Utah, will house massive supercomputers capable of storing and analyzing vast quantities of data when it comes online next year, but U.S. Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander reiterated NSA's insistence it does not unlawfully conduct surveillance of Americans.

National Reconnaissance Office accused of illegally collecting personal data.  One of the nation's most secretive intelligence agencies is pressuring its polygraphers to obtain intimate details of the private lives of thousands of job applicants and employees, pushing the ethical and legal boundaries of a program that's designed instead to catch spies and terrorists.  The National Reconnaissance Office is so intent on extracting confessions of personal or illicit behavior that officials have admonished polygraphers who refused to go after them and rewarded those who did, sometimes with cash bonuses, a McClatchy investigation found.

The Most Powerful, Well Connected Company You've Never Heard Of.  Have you ever heard of a tech company called Neustar?  Probably not, and that's just the way the government wants to keep it.  Neustar is a relatively new company that is playing a large, albeit secret, role in the expansion of the surveillance state.  According to published reports, Neustar handles the law enforcement surveillance and user data requests for over 400 telecommunications companies.  To accommodate their clients' demands, Neustar maintains a database containing information on every cell phone in the United States — including yours.

Govt May Now Collect, Catalog, and Store All Private Information.  Imagine that the U.S. government had the power to scour the reams of public records and collect and collate every bit of personal information about every citizen of this country.  Now imagine that any of the various intelligence and security agencies within the government could combine that data with any other information about a person that has been posted to a social media website or compiled by one of the many data aggregating companies that keep tabs on all of us.  Finally, imagine that all this data could be passed among these agencies and that the ability of anyone inside or outside the government to challenge this surveillance was all but eliminated.

Did Bush's Broadband Deregulation Upend His Own NSA Wiretapping?  As Congress prepares to reauthorize the controversial FISA Amendments Act of 2008 — which effectively legalized the notorious warrantless wiretap program launched by President Bush — much about the law remains shrouded in secrecy:  The National Security Agency has refused to give legislators even a rough estimate of how many Americans' communications have been swept up in the digital dragnet.  Yet even four years after the FAA's passage, one of the biggest mysteries isn't how the law has been used, but why it was necessary in the first place.  One surprising — but surprisingly plausible — explanation points to the unexpected consequences of broadband deregulation.

Whistle-Blower's Evidence, Uncut.  Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program.  In a public statement Klein issued last month, he described the NSA's visit to an AT&T office.  In an older, less-public statement recently acquired by Wired News, Klein goes into additional details of his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T building in San Francisco.

FISA Fight.  The Obama administration is pushing for the reauthorization of a law allowing warrantless wiretaps and prolonging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests despite campaigning against such measures and promising to be the most transparent administration ever.  In a statement of administration policy released Monday [9/10/2012], the Obama administration announced it "strongly supports" reauthorizing the FISA Amendments Act, on which the House is expected to vote Wednesday.  The act "allows the Intelligence Community to collect vital foreign intelligence information about international terrorists and other important targets overseas, while providing protection for the civil liberties and privacy of Americans," according to the statement.

DOJ domestic phone, email, Internet surveillance of Americans skyrocketed under Obama.  A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union shows a dramatic increase in the U.S. Department of Justice's electronic surveillance of Americans under the Obama administration.  Documents obtained by the ACLU through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that under President Obama between 2009 and 2011, warrantless electronic surveillance requests by the Justice Department to spy on phone communications increased 60 percent from 23,535 to 37,616.  The number of people whose phone calls were subject to such surveillance during that same time period tripled.

There's quite a bit we don't know about FBI investigations.  If there is any upside to the scandal that brought down the CIA director, it is probably that Americans have an extremely memorable reason to be careful about what they put in an email.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation has exposed the techniques its cyber forensics unit uses to track down the sources of emails, and even, indirectly, has given the public a glimpse of the assumptions or thresholds they use to widen the scope of any particular investigation.  Some of the details are technical, but everyone should avail themselves of the opportunity to learn about them.

Government Spying Out of Control.  FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] gives the government unchecked authority to snoop on all Americans who communicate with any foreign person, in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment.  The right to privacy is a natural human right.  Its enshrinement in the Constitution has largely kept America from becoming East Germany.  Moreover, everyone in Congress has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which could not be more clear:  "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." shall not be violated, except via a warrant issued by a neutral judge upon the judge finding probable cause of crime.

Great news: Your permanent record is now available on demand.  Remember when government needed something called a warrant or even probable cause to look at your records?  Good times, good times.  I'm nostalgic for the halcyon days of, er, February of this year, before the Attorney General of the United States signed off on an order allowing the government to access pretty much everything it wanted in the name of counterterrorism.

U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens.  Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal.  Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens — even people suspected of no crime. [...] The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.  That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Attorney General Secretly Granted Gov. Ability to Develop and Store Dossiers on Innocent Americans.  In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.  Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.

The government already controls too much.  Last week, a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal detailed how the federal government's "little-known National Counterterrorism Center" can now, under new authority, examine "the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them."  It "can copy entire government databases — flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others," keeping "data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years ... to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior."

NYPD to probe internet to detect future shooters.  Senior officers from The New York City Police Department met late last week to discuss a plan to monitor internet sites in search of clues that might prevent future mass-casualty shootings.  The NYPD intends to create algorithms that scan the text of conversations in chat rooms, social media and emails for clues on potential 'apolitical or deranged killers', according to an article in the New York Times.

CALEA Is Watching YOU!  Eric Holder, his Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Obama administration want to expand existing CALEA laws to require all services that enable communications including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct "peer to peer" messaging like Skype to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.

Presumed Guilty in the Name of Fighting Terrorism.  [Scroll down]  The change in the standards by which the NCTC now is able to troll data means every action a person takes that is logged into a government database, is subject to scrutiny for criminal behavior.  Probable cause or reasonable suspicion — constitutional standards for invading a person's privacy by government snooping — are irrelevant in such a scenario.  We are all presumed guilty of engaging in potential terrorist acts.

Obama signs warrant-less surveillance bill.  U.S. President Obama Sunday [12/30/2012] signed a five-year extension of the law allowing warrant-less electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists, the White House said.

President Obama Quietly Renews Warrantless Wiretap Law for 5 Years.  As everyone's attention is focused on the slew of taxes set to increase in 2013, President Barack Obama has quietly signed into law a five-year extension to the warrantless intercept program that monitors the overseas activity of suspected spies and terrorists.

The NSA's warrantless domestic spying program has turned America into the most surveilled society.  in history, eclipsing conditions of East Germans under the Stasi.  Two high-profile NSA whistleblowers, Thomas Drake and William Binney, have revealed the extent of the collateral damage to our rights from the Big Brother surveillance dragnet.  In their own words, the government is illegally monitoring (in real time) activities not tethered to any suspicious or illegal conduct — for example, phone calls, purchases, email, text messages, Internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel, and student records — and creating dossiers on everyone (even senators, congressmen, and decorated generals).

Who (or What) Are They Looking For?  In response to the events of September 11, 2000 and after designating an axis of evil yet carefully navigating around the question of Islam and its fanatics, the federal government in Washington rushed to increase surveillance and security measures to guard against Al-Qaeda and the threat of terrorism.  We, the citizens who are not responsible for terrorism, are saddled 12 years later with the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Safety Administration and a surveillance technology that is everywhere, all the time.  Nine trillion dollars later are we more secure?

The Second Great Crypto War.  The first great conflict over cryptography and state power happened in the 1990s.  In one corner were cryptographers equipped with subtle math, digital technologies, and new ideas.  In the other were the Clinton administration and its National Security Agency (NSA), which sought to maintain and extend the federal government's control over cryptography.  They struggled over the concept that cryptography could be classified as munitions, over requirements to include NSA-friendly chips in communication hardware, and, in general, over the shape of post-Cold War security.  The geeks eventually defeated the feds, freeing up crypto for public use.

Electronic Privacy is the New 21st Century Battleground: Why We Must Fight Back.  With the advent of the Electronic Age mankind has seen increasing breakthroughs of communications and entertainment utterly unthinkable a century ago.  Along with these advances though comes the ability of government to increasingly track the emails, cell calls, and online activities of countless Americans with increasing ease.  In fact, we are being spied on routinely — a fact which is occasionally noted but hardly ever protested in our increasingly complacent, civil-rights illiterate and government-trusting populace.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."