USGOVT spying on citizens is now ubiquitous

The Government Is Spying On Us Through Our Computers, Phones, Cars, Buses, Streetlights, At Airports And On The Street, Via Mobile Scanners And Drones, Through Our Smart Meters, And In Many Other Ways

Even now – after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers – spying apologists say that the reports are “exaggerated” or “overblown”, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys.

In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications. For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail. The government is spying on you through your phone … and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off.

As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into Android’s operating system … bugging three-quarters of the world’s smartphones. Google – or the NSA – can remotely turn on your phone’s camera and recorder at any time.

Moreover, Google knows just about every WiFi password in the world … and so the NSA does as well, since it spies so widely on Google.

But it’s not just the Android.  In reality, the NSA can spy on just about everyone’s smart phone.

Cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: “That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker“). Remember, that might be happening even when your phone is turned off. Read more >>

NSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials’ and lawmakers’ statements that no willful violations occurred.

“Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the NSA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations -- responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities.”

The incidents, chronicled in a new report by the NSA’s inspector general, provide more evidence that U.S. agencies sometimes have violated legal and administrative restrictions on domestic spying, and may add to the pressure to bolster laws that govern intelligence activities. Read more >>

Russian intelligence found gold market info 'very valuable,' FBI says

Image via Wikipedia

goldseek.com

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Russian spies in the United States whose arrest was announced Monday (see http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100629/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_doj_russia_arre...) last year conveyed information about the gold market that the Russian security service considered "very valuable" and forwarded to the Russian finance ministry and ministry of economic development, according to the criminal complaint filed by the FBI with U.S. District Court in New York.

The gold angle in the story was highlighted in reporting Monday night by the Economic Policy Journal, based in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps most interesting for GATA's purposes, the FBI's criminal complaint suggests that the spies obtained the gold market information through "a prominent New York-based financier" who is a political fund raiser and a friend of a U.S. Cabinet member. Would a New York-based financier have valuable information about the gold market if the U.S. government wasn't using New York financial houses for gold market intervention purposes?

The criminal complaint says the Russian spies were under U.S. counterintelligence surveillance for years and suggests that they didn't do much besides pass money around to each other surreptitiously while trying to figure out how to meet important people. That the charges against them are not espionage but only failure to register as foreign agents suggests that they weren't very effective.

But failure to register as a foreign agent is still a federal felony, so maybe the defendants will want to call CPM Group executive Jeffrey M. Christian as an expert witness, as he may be willing to repeat his insistence that, the criminal complaint's reference to the Russian finance ministry notwithstanding, central banks care very little about gold. After all, as an expert witness at the March 25 hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Christian tried very hard to alleviate suspicions about the gold market. How could anything about that market be of international importance?

Economic Policy Journal's report of the charges against the supposed Russian spies can be found here:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/ten-russians-arrested-in-us...

The reference to the gold market and the New York-based financier can be found on Pages 34 and 35 of the second criminal complaint appended to Economic Policy Journal's report.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.