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 >>

NRA claims NSA starting 'gun registry'

The National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit on Wednesday to end the government's massive phone record collection program.

In a brief filed in federal court, the NRA argues that the National Security Agency's database of phone records amounts to a "national gun registry."

 "It would be absurd to think that the Congress would adopt and maintain a web of statutes intended to protect against the creation of a national gun registry, while simultaneously authorizing the FBI and the NSA to gather records that could effectively create just such a registry," the group writes.

After leaks by Edward Snowden, the NSA acknowledged that it collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls. The data include phone numbers, call times and call durations, but not the contents of the conversations. The NSA says it only "queries" the database a limited number of times for specific national security reasons.

The NSA argues that Congress authorized the phone data surveillance with Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows for the collection of business records "relevant" to terrorism. Read more >>

US spied on Brazil, Mexico presidents

The US National Security Agency spied on the communications of the Brazilian and Mexican presidents, accessing the Mexico leader's emails before he was elected, Brazil's Globo television reported.

Rio de Janeiro-based journalist Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper who obtained secret files from NSA leaker Edward Snowden, told Globo on Sunday that a document dated June 2012 shows that Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails were being accessed.

That was a month before his election. The NSA also intercepted some of Pena Nieto's voicemails. The communications included messages in which the future leader discussed the names of potential cabinet members. A Mexican foreign ministry spokesman told AFP he had seen the report but had no comment. A presidency spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

As for Brazil's Dilma Rousseff, the NSA said in the document that it was trying to better understand her methods of communication and interlocutors using a program to access all Internet content the president visited online.

Rousseff, who is due to make a state visit to Washington in October, held a working meeting to study the revelations in the Globo report, the channel said.

"If these facts prove to be true, it would be unacceptable and could be called an attack on our country's sovereignty," Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo said. 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 >>

NSA surveillance reach broader than acknowledged

The National Security Agency's surveillance network has the capacity to spy on 75 percent of all U.S. Internet traffic, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Citing current and former NSA officials for the 75 percent figure, the paper reported that the agency can observe more of Americans' online communications than officials have publicly acknowledged.

The NSA's system of programs that filter communications, achieved with the help of telecommunications companies, is designed to look for communications that either start or end abroad, or happen to pass through the U.S. between foreign countries. However, the officials told the Journal that the system's reach is so broad, that it is more likely that purely domestic communications will be intercepted as a byproduct of the hunt for foreign ones.

The system works by using algorithms that act as filters, designed to let high-value information through amid more benign chatter. However, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, a former to intelligence official told the Journal that the government changed its definition of "reasonable" intelligence collection, enabling the NSA to widen the holes in the "filtering" system. Read more >>

NSA Has Inserted Its Code Into Android OS, Or Three Quarters Of All Smartphones

Over a decade ago, it was discovered that the NSA embedded backdoor access into Windows 95, and likely into virtually all other subsequent internet connected, desktop-based operating systems. However, with the passage of time, more and more people went "mobile", and as a result the NSA had to adapt. And adapt they have: as Bloomberg reports, "The NSA is quietly writing code for Google’s Android OS."

Is it ironic that the same "don't be evil" Google which went to such great lengths in the aftermath of the Snowden scandal to wash its hands of snooping on its customers and even filed a request with the secretive FISA court asking permission to disclose more information about the government’s data requests, is embedding NSA code into its mobile operating system, which according to IDC runs on three-quarters of all smartphones shipped in the first quarter? Yes, yes it is.

Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirms that the company has already inserted some of the NSA’s programming in Android OS. "All Android code and contributors are publicly available for review at source.android.com." Scigliano says, declining to comment further. Read more >>

Meet The Man In Charge Of America's Secret Cyber Army

Keith Alexander, director of the NSA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With his revelations exposing the extent of potential, and actual, pervasive NSA surveillance over the American population, Edward Snowden has done a great service for the public by finally forcing it to answer the question: is having Big Brother peek at every private communication and electronic information, a fair exchange for the alleged benefit of the state's security. Alas, without further action form a population that appears largely numb and apathetic to disclosures that until recently would have sparked mass protests and toppled presidents, the best we can hope for within a political regime that has hijacked the democratic process, is some intense introspection as to what the concept of "America" truly means.

However, and more importantly, what Snowden's revelations have confirmed, is that behind the scenes, America is now actively engaged in a new kind of war: an unprecedented cyber war, where collecting, deciphering, intercepting, and abusing information is the only thing that matters and leads to unprecedented power, and where enemies both foreign and domestic may be targeted without due process based on a lowly analyst's "whim."

It has also put spotlight on the man, who until recently deep in the shadows, has been responsible for building America's secret, absolutely massive cyber army, and which according to a just released Wired profile is "capable of launching devastating cyberattacks. Now it's ready to unleash hell."

Meet General Keith Alexander, "a man few even in Washington would likely recognize", which is troubling because Alexander is now quite possibly the most powerful person in the world, that nobody talks about. Which is just the way he likes it. Read more >>

Skynet to Launch October, 2013

Jack Mullen
Activist Post

Business Insider published an article about the NSA data center being constructed in Bluffdale, Utah. The facility, being roughly 1 million square feet, will house a computing and data harvesting and long term data storage facility to be operational by October 2013. (Source)

The stated purpose of the facility is to "listen and decode all foreign communications of interest to the security of the United States." But in light of the recent revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the data center under construction in Utah is far more likely a tool of the United States Government (and its global masters) to collect unimaginable amounts of data on Americans and eventually every human on earth.

In fact, as far back as the mid nineteen eighties, the NSA and other intelligences agencies created and controlled a secret computer monitoring operation in New Zealand and elsewhere called project ECHELON.

Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world.[*]

With this so-called leak from Snowden, the public is now aware of something that has been going on for decades and, by now, would have already compiled billions of records about hundreds of millions of people in the America and the world.

In fact this ‘leak’ really doesn’t provide a lot of new information, since we already knew “The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones.

A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet.” Read more >>

U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms

Cray X-MP/24 (serial no. 115) used by NSA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents’ telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order.

Many of these same Internet and telecommunications companies voluntarily provide U.S. intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications, that don’t involve private communications of their customers, the four people said.

Makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies and many other companies also participate in the government programs. In some cases, the information gathered may be used not just to defend the nation but to help infiltrate computers of its adversaries. Read more >>

Germany most snooped EU country by US

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

The US National Security Agency (NSA) snoops on all EU member states and on Germany the most, new data reveals. A color-coded map of secret surveillance activities by the NSA ranks countries according to how much they are surveilled – green for the least and red for the most watched.

All EU member states have variant shades of green except for Germany, which is color-coded orange. The NSA tool, called Boundless Informant, is among the documents disclosed by 29-year-old Edward Snowden who has since sought refuge in Hong Kong. Snowden, who has worked at the NSA for the past four years on a number of outside contracts, said some NSA analysts have blanket power to spy on anyone for any reason.

“I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wire-tap anyone … even if you are not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded,” he told The Guardian newspaper.
Boundless Informant reveals that some 3 billion pieces of metadata intelligence was gathered over a 30-day period, says The Guardian. Metadata includes calls made, location of the phone, time of the call and duration.

The tool comes with an operational handbook and says it uses “big data technology to query SIGINT [signals intelligence] collection in the cloud to produce near real-time business intelligence describing the agency’s available SIGINT infrastructure and coverage.” Read more >>

PRISM Class-Action Lawsuit Filed: $20B, Injunction Sought Against 'Complicit' Companies and Officials

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman filed a federal class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the nine companies named in a top-secret National Security Agency document published June 6 as partners in the NSA's PRISM Internet surveillance program.

The lawsuit seeks $20 billion in damages and attorney fees and an injunction ending the highly controversial program that began in 2007.

In addition to the nine companies named in a leaked NSA slideshow as providing government investigators direct, real-time access to their servers – AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, PalTalk, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube – the lawsuit targets the CEOs of each company, the telecom companies AT&T and Sprint and their CEOs, President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA director Keith Alexander, the Department of Justice and the NSA.

Each of the nine companies has denied knowledge of, or participation in, the PRISM program.

There are three named plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday: Charles Strange, a Pennsylvania father whose son Michael, a Navy SEAL Team VI member, died in Afghanistan in 2011, and California private investigators Michael Ferrari and Matt Garrison.

"Defendants' willful acts constitute outrageous conduct insofar as they violated Plaintiffs' and Class members' basic democratic rights, constitutional rights, and exposed them to beyond an 'Orwellian regime of totalitarianism,'" the lawsuit says. "Plaintiffs' and Class members' rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence and other government agencies, as well as all of the Defendants." Read more >>

America's largest companies are collaborating with the biggest GOVT spying operation in history

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

The disclosures involving this (and the prior) administration's Big Brother surveillance state, which would make Nixon blush with envy are now coming fast and furious (one wonders - why now: even that bastion of liberalism the NY Times, has turned against Obama).

Although while the Guardian's overnight news that Verizon (and most certainly AT&T as well among others) was cooperating with the NSA on spying on US citizens, so far at least the internet seemed, if only to the great unwashed masses, immune.

That is no longer the case following news from the WaPo exposing PRISM, a highly classified program, which has not been disclosed publicly before. "Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy."

What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly "into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time." Read more >>

NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

Source
The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far beyond that does the feds’ reach really go, though?

The attacks September 11, 2001, were instrumental in enabling the US government to establish counterterrorism agencies to prevent future tragedies. Some officials say that they haven’t stopped there, though, and are spying on everyone in America — all in the name of national security.