Big Brother. ” Here’s a thought experiment: imagine that activists, concerned with official misconduct, install license-plate readers on private property to track the location of every car belonging to the police department or a politician and upload the locations to a public database.
The result: a map of where the police go, and where they don’t—along, perhaps, with politicians’ visits to motels or strip clubs. Given that police often respond with hostility to simply being videotaped, I expect that a venture like this would prompt an outcry, and probably some efforts to shut it down. But this is precisely what officialdom is doing to citizens. We now know that federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are using automated license-plate scanners, mounted on everything from telephone poles to police cars, to build a huge database of where people are driving. US Gov Surveillance / Big Brother. CBS "60 Minutes" reported on May 22 on former National Security Agency (NSA) official Thomas Drake's charges of high-level corruption and incompetence within the eavesdropping agency.
WMR is re-publishing our report on NSA, which includes a reference to "Thinthread," the first ever report in the media on this system. There is an Israeli espionage angle to the story about Drake, NSA mathematician Bill Binney, NSA analyst J. Kirk Wiebe, NSA computer scientist Ed Loomis, House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, Justice Department prosecutor Thomas Tamm and NSA espionage against U.S. citizens. Many questions, some answers, in SPD’s first West Seattle briefing on surveillance cameras.
February 25, 2013 at 9:35 am | In Seattle Police surveillance cameras, West Seattle news | 24 Comments (Map showing West Seattle camera locations, from SPD presentation slide deck)By Tracy Record West Seattle Blog editor One month after Seattle Police-managed, Homeland Security-funded surveillance cameras were installed, unannounced, along Alki, SPD reps came to West Seattle to talk with beach residents about the system’s intent and extent.
More Snowden revelations: NSA collected almost 200 million texts a day. Image: Dave Thompson/PA Wire THE US NATIONAL Security Agency has collected almost 200 million mobile phone text messages a day from around the world in the latest revelations from the Edward Snowden files.
The Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 News reported that the NSA used the messages to extract data on the location, contact networks and credit card details of mobile users. A little less privacy is worth a little more security, says internet founder. Operation Paperclip (NHD 2008) A deal for Snowden? The NSA officer in charge of assessing the damage done by the Edward Snowden leaks says that, under the right conditions, he would consider a deal with the fugitive in return for the documents he has not leaked yet.
But the Army general who heads the NSA says he would not consider any deal for Snowden, who's been charged with espionage for stealing maybe the most potentially damaging trove of national secrets in U.S. history. The NSA granted the rare interviews and allowed 60 Minutes cameras into the agency's secure Maryland complex to explain what it does and what it says it doesn't do -- spy on Americans, a misconception it says the leaks have created. During the course of the report, the agency also reveals it discovered a secret computer weapon and discusses it for the first time with John Miller for the report, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday, Dec. 15 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Snowden has been given asylum in Russia. Gen. . © 2013 CBS Interactive Inc.
John Miller, CBS News Senior Correspondent, Rumored To Be Up For NYPD Role. CBS News senior correspondent John Miller is rumored to be in line for a top post under incoming NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton.
Miller twice worked for Bratton, with whom he remains close. But the journalist-turned-law enforcement official-turned-journalist told HuffPost that he hasn't "had any formal offer for any particular position. " While it would be out of the ordinary for most TV correspondents to jump to the NYPD, Miller’s had a unique career trajectory between the worlds of law enforcement and media. After two decades in journalism, Miller left NBC in 1994 to become Bratton’s deputy commissioner for public information in the NYPD.
Miller next jumped to ABC News before going to work for Bratton again during his stint as LAPD commissioner, serving as chief of counterterrorism and criminal intelligence. Obama enters an Orwellian mire. Illustration: David Rowe Having once incurred the wrath of a certain Paul Keating - for writing that he had been ''brought to heel'' by the premiers, which prompted the then PM to bark down the phone: ''You're saying I'm a dog!
'' - I stress that any comparisons to animals in what follows are from the words and thoughts of others. But who'd have thunk, after the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, that Barack Obama might be pinged as the Orwellian character in the drama of modern American affairs.
Senate Intelligence Committee Rejects A Bunch Of Attempts To Amend Dianne Feinstein's Fake NSA Reform Bill. Less Than 20% Of Americans Believe That There's Adequate Oversight Of The NSA. One of the key responses from the NSA and its defenders to all of these Snowden leaks is that there is "rigorous oversight" of the NSA by the courts and Congress.
Of course, that talking point has been debunked thoroughly, but NSA defenders keep trotting it out. It appears that the public is not buying it. At all. KATY PERRY'S "PRISM" IS A GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY. Major New Anti-NSA Bill Dropping Next Week With Powerful Support. We already knew that Rep.
Jim Sensenbrenner was getting ready to release a major new anti-NSA spying bill called the USA Freedom Act, and Derek Khanna has just revealed many of the details of the bill, scheduled to be introduced in both houses of Congress this coming Tuesday. It will be backed by Sensenbrenner in the House and Pat Leahy in the Senate, and will have plenty of co-sponsors (already about 50 have signed up) including some who had initially voted against the Amash Amendment back in July.
In other words, this bill has a very high likelihood of actually passing, though I imagine that the intelligence community, and potentially the White House, will push back on it. For Congress, gathering up a veto-proof majority may be a more difficult task. NSA + DARPA + “Progressives” = DEEP FECES for Honest Americans! ALERT!
Claire Eagan, FISC: How surveillance court ruled the NSA's domestic snooping was legal. Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images The secret court that oversees NSA surveillance has declassified documents that reveal for the first time the legal justification for the spy agency’s daily collection of virtually all Americans’ phone records.
Ryan Gallagher is a journalist who reports on surveillance, security, and civil liberties. Follow On Tuesday, a previously top-secret opinion and order signed off by Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Claire Eagan was published. Journalist Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the 'Pathetic' American Media. Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist".
Public Concern Over NSA Spying Increasing Rapidly As Congress Discovers Their Constituents Care About This Issue. Rather Than Not Spying On Everyone, NSA Is Getting Rid Of 90% Of Its Sysadmins. The latest NSA plan to stop the next Ed Snowden is to get rid of 90% of their sysadmins and automating many of their jobs. I would imagine that more than a few sysadmins might have an opinion or two about the ability of the NSA to really automate away their jobs, but that's an interesting move nonetheless. Here's NSA boss Keith Alexander: Don't Insult Our Intelligence, Mr. President: This Debate Wouldn't Be Happening Without Ed Snowden. Obama Promises Reform of NSA Spying, But the Devil Will Be in the Details. Earlier today, President Obama held a press conference to address the growing public concern over the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices.
Edward Snowden's Not the Story. The Fate of the Internet Is. How Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages. NSA Paying UK Spy Agency to Surveil Americans. (Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters)The United States government is paying the UK government's spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (or GCHQ), to do much of their clandestine "dirty work," a new Guardian report revealed Thursday. Activists storm office of Congressman who voted for NSA spying. Is Microsoft The Biggest Big Brother Of Them All? Microsoft made headlines yesterday when its CEO, Steve Ballmer, announced a massive restructuring of the company. His vision is to have Microsoft provide everything for your life through a number of devices – including phones, TVs, computers and tablets.
It’s a marvelous idea, and one that has the potential to put Microsoft back on top. FBI Carnivore Email Monitoring Replaced with New System NarusInsight. Just as IBM powered the German holocaust, the NSA will power the coming American holocaust as millions are exterminated. By Mike Adams, Natural News: NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls. NSA Director Keith Alexander says his agency's analysts, which until recently included Edward Snowden among their ranks, take protecting "civil liberties and privacy and the security of this nation to their heart every day. " (Credit: Getty Images) 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 in the briefing said.
Rep. “Useful Enemies”: U.S. admitted not just Nazis after WWII, but their sadistic collaborators. Leaked: NSA's Talking Points Defending NSA Surveillance. Congress' Response To Leaks? Stop Contractors From Access To Classified Material Rather Than Stop NSA Spying.