NSA data mining

[zone]

Obama: Mass Surveillance Protects Civil Liberties

Mocks Critics Who 'Complain About Big Brother'

by Jason Ditz, June 07, 2013

With the PRISM program, which allows the NSA to directly, warrantlessly spy on virtually all communications on the Internet, and other NSA schemes surveilling literally every phone call made in the United States, America has struck the “right balance” between privacy and government power, according to President Barack Obama, adding that spying on the myriad details of Americans’ lives actually protects civil liberties.

Obama insisted it was impossible to have “100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy,” adding that it was up to the government to make the choice. It seems the answer was to put the sliding scale all the way to the authoritarian side, ushering in a privacy-free era of always-on surveillance.

As the one in charge of the surveillance, Obama is naturally quick comfortable with this situation, and mocked the people who “complain about Big Brother,” a reference to the (somewhat less ambitious) surveillance system in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

Obama went on to condemn media outlets for informing the public about the PRISM scheme, insisting it was unacceptable for news sources to reveal his misdeeds “willy-nilly” and that they were aiding terrorists by informing them (along with everyone else) about just how much surveillance is going on.

Obama: Mass Surveillance Protects Civil Liberties -- News from Antiwar.com < click

 

[zone]

FROM IXQUICK.COM

Giant US government Internet spying scandal revealed

The Washington Post and The Guardian have revealed a US government mass Internet surveillance program code-named "PRISM". They report that the NSA and the FBI have been tapping directly into the servers of nine US service providers, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype, and began this surveillance program at least seven years ago. (clarifying slides)

These revelations are shaking up an international debate.

Ixquick has always been very outspoken when it comes to protecting people's privacy and civil liberties. So it won't surprise you that we are a strong opponent of overreaching, unaccountable spy programs like PRISM. In the past, even government surveillance programs that were begun with good intentions have become tools for abuse, for example tracking civil rights and anti-war protesters.

Programs like PRISM undermine our Privacy, disrupt faith in governments, and are a danger to the free Internet.

Ixquick and its sister search engine StartPage have in their 14-year history never provided a single byte of user data to the US government, or any other government or agency. Not under PRISM, nor under any other program in the US, nor under any program anywhere in the world. We are not like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Apple, Skype, or the other US companies who got caught up in the web of PRISM surveillance.

Here's how we are different:

Ixquick does not store any user data. We make this perfectly clear to everyone, including any governmental agencies. We do not record the IP addresses of our users and we don't use tracking cookies, so there is literally no data about you on our servers to access. Since we don't even know who our customers are, we can't share anything with Big Brother. In fact, we've never gotten even a single request from a governmental authority to supply user data in the fourteen years we've been in business.
Ixquick uses encryption (HTTPS) by default. Encryption prevents snooping. Your searches are encrypted, so others can't "tap" the Internet connection to snoop what you're searching for. This combination of not storing data together with using strong encryption for the connections is key in protecting your Privacy.
Our company is based in The Netherlands, Europe. US jurisdiction does not apply to us, at least not directly. Any request or demand from ANY government (including the US) to deliver user data, will be thoroughly checked by our lawyers, and we will not comply unless the law which actually applies to us would undeniably require it from us. And even in that hypothetical situation, we refer to our first point; we don't even have any user data to give. We will never cooperate with voluntary spying programs like PRISM.
Ixquick cannot be forced to start spying. Given the strong protection of the Right to Privacy in Europe , European governments cannot just start forcing service providers like us to implement a blanket spying program on their users. And if that ever changed, we would fight this to the end.
Privacy.

It's not just our policy - it's our business.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are working hard to offer you an encrypted email service later this year called StartMail. We have to stand up and protect our freedoms from increasing overreach from data gatherers. You've made the right choice by using Ixquick.com. Now is the time to tell others!

Sincerely,

Robert E.G. Beens
CEO Ixquick.com and StartPage.com

~



i like my server
they find links the others have censored or banned, too.

 

[zone]

Is Edward Snowden's story unravelling? Why the Guardian's scoop is looking a bit dodgy

By Tim Stanley US politics Last updated: June 12th, 2013

Is Edward Snowden's story unravelling? Why the Guardian's scoop is looking a bit dodgy &#8211; Telegraph Blogs < click

 

[zone]

NSA scandal: Microsoft and Twitter join calls to disclose data requests

Technology companies join Google and Facebook in wanting government's permission to give public a more detailed list of demands for data from their servers

Charles Arthur in London and Dominic Rushe in New York
The Guardian, Wednesday 12 June 2013 19.50 BST

Microsoft and Twitter have joined calls by Google and Facebook to be able to publish more detail about how many secret requests they receive to hand over user data under the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).

"Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including Fisa orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues," Microsoft said in an emailed statement to the Reuters news agency.

At Twitter the chief lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, tweeted: "We'd like more NSL [national security letter] transparency and Twitter supports efforts to make that happen."

A national security letter is used by US government agencies such as the FBI and NSA to demand access to data from companies – who are forbidden from revealing that they have been served such a request.

NSA scandal: Microsoft and Twitter join calls to disclose data requests | World news | The Guardian < click

 

[zone]

Brief History: Wiretapping

By William Lee Adams Monday, Oct. 11, 2010

KEN FEIL
WASHINGTON POST / GETTY IMAGES

Police investigate the DNC headquarters at Watergate Hotel following the June 1972 burglary.

Every day, Hundreds of millions of people chat, exchange messages and send images via social-networking sites like Facebook and mobile devices like the BlackBerry. Unfortunately for security officials, those users include criminals and suspected terrorists. So it wasn't altogether surprising when, on Sept. 27, it emerged that the Obama Administration plans to submit a bill to Congress next year that could force communications firms--including giants like Facebook and Skype--to ensure that they have the technical know-how to intercept and unscramble messages if asked to do so by officials.

Wiretapping first became a tool of U.S. law enforcement in the 1890s, but the Supreme Court didn't establish its constitutionality until 1928, at the height of Prohibition. Roy Olmstead, a Seattle bootlegger, had been convicted on evidence gathered through a wiretap in his home. He argued that authorities had violated his rights--but the court upheld his conviction, saying eavesdropping was not a physical invasion of privacy. In 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the FBI to break into the home and office of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The agency planted bugs, assuming they would unearth King's rumored links to communists, but removed them in 1966. Richard Nixon approved the illegal wiretapping of four reporters and 13 government officials in 1969 in a bid to unmask those leaking information to the press. And in 1972 a grand jury indicted two Nixon aides for the burglary and illegal wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.....

Brief History: Wiretapping - TIME < click

 

[zone]

Intelligence Reform in the Mid-1970s

Timothy S. Hardy

http://cryptome.org/2013/06/hersh-massive-spy.pdf < click

more: pdf newspaper 1974

http://cryptome.org/2013/06/hersh-nyt-74-1222.pdf < click

 

[zone]

US Spy Chief Slams ‘Reprehensible’ Leak of NSA Surveillance Scheme

Obama: Spying on Everybody Protects Your Civil Liberties

by Jason Ditz, June 07, 2013

Two days of leaks have revealed that the secretive National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting data on not only every phone call made in the United States, but is surveilling a large portion of the Internet at all times, culling information on virtually everything from email to video watching preferences to Skype conversations.

What followed was a series of overt lies, vague denies, and finally simple anger. Google, one of the companies implicated in the Powerpoint presentation, claimed the whole thing was untrue and that Google had never given the NSA the backdoor that the presentation confirms is very real.

President Obama shrugged off the program, insisting that spying on pretty much everyone at all times “protects your civil liberties” and that the program wasn’t really “secret,” even though it was kept a secret for several years and is stamped “Top Secret” right at the top.

The most telling statements came from James Clapper, however, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Clapper confirmed the presentation’s authenticity, condemning the leak as “reprehensible,” and then insisting the program was important to “protect our nation.”

US Spy Chief Slams &#8216;Reprehensible&#8217; Leak of NSA Surveillance Scheme -- News from Antiwar.com < click

 

[zone]

Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations

Posted on June 11, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Big Banks and Other Corporate Bigwigs Benefit from Illegal Spying


The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2012 that fusion centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work unrelated to terrorism or real threats:

“The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

Under the FBI’s Infraguard program, businesses sometimes receive intel even before elected officials.

Law enforcement agencies spy on protesters and then share the info – at taxpayer expense – with the giant Wall Street banks

Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations | Washington's Blog < click

 

[zone]

Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations

Posted on June 11, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Big Banks and Other Corporate Bigwigs Benefit from Illegal Spying


The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2012 that fusion centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work unrelated to terrorism or real threats:

“The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

Under the FBI’s Infraguard program, businesses sometimes receive intel even before elected officials.

Law enforcement agencies spy on protesters and then share the info – at taxpayer expense – with the giant Wall Street banks

Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations | Washington's Blog < click

Fascist ideology consistently invoked the primacy of the state. Leaders such as Benito Mussolini in Italy and Adolf Hitler in Germany embodied the state and claimed indisputable power.

Fascism supports what is sometimes called a Third Position between capitalism and Marxist socialism.[12] Fascist movements emphasized a belligerent, virulent form of nationalism (chauvinism) and a fear of foreign people (xenophobia), which they frequently linked to an exaggerated ethnocentrism.

The typical fascist state also embraced militarism, a belief in the rigors and virtues of military life as an individual and national ideal, meaning much of public life was organized along military lines and an emphasis put on uniforms, parades, and monumental architecture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism < click

The term fascismo is derived from the Latin word fasces.[15] The fasces, which consisted of a bundle of rods that were tied around an axe,[16] was an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate.[17] They were carried by his lictors and could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command.[18][19] The word fascismo also relates to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates.

The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[20] Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements. For example the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke.[21]

 

[Dude653]

They're looking for terrorists and pedophiles. Neither of these apply to me, so I'm not worried in the least. The government is broke, they are not going to pay someone to listen in everytime i text my girlfriend or call a buddy to talk about Star Trek.

 

[jimmydiggs]

Obama has just continued what Bush has done

I'm surprised you actually say that. Most liberals couldn't utter those words.

 

[RickShafer]

Old news.
Section 215 of the 'patriot' act allows for this.
It took a whistle blower to bring it to the public's attention.
Now he is traitor #1 for doing so.

 

[iamsoandso]

In a split second, they could find out everyone who calls themselves Christian if they wanted to. Be prepared for them to target us because of our testimony of the truth. They don't like the thought of us knowing they have no real power over us,..

ok so were suppose to be afraid of someone that's not smart enough to understand that christ said "who denies me i will deny before my father,,,but who confesses me i will confess before my father",,,,,really?

i must be at the the top of the "block all incoming call's from this number list at the n.s.a.",,,that is they don't need to bug my phone to sneak up on me and catch me being a christian,,,,lol,,,,,now on the other hand they might be bugging my phone so they can dodge me when i come to preach,,,,,,,,

 

[Dude653]

There are 0ver 300 million people in this nation, What are the odds that they are spying on me. If they are, so what? I'm not doing anything wrong.

 

[jimmydiggs]

There are 0ver 300 million people in this nation, What are the odds that they are spying on me. If they are, so what? I'm not doing anything wrong.

I guess you're pretty comfortable with chains. I'm surprised you haven't caught on to the fact, that this will all be used specifically against Christians in the not so distant future. Watching the tetris blocks fall into place is part of why I am so strongly opposed to this. I know whats coming, and you apparently don't.

 

[SevenSeals]

We know the Antichrist will use human instruments, correct?

Imagine what would have happened if Hitler had had what the NSA has now.

Christians have to be crazy to think this is OK.

 

[zone]

.....And that’s what happened. NSA began making these agreements with AT&T and other companies, and that in order to get access to the actual cables, they had to build these secret rooms in these buildings.

So what would happen would be the communications on the cables would come into the building, and then the cable would go to this thing called a splitter box, which was a box that had something that was similar to a prism, a glass prism. And the prism was shaped like a prism, and the light signals would come in, and they’d be split by the prism. And one copy of the light signal would go off to where it was supposed to be going in the telecom system, and the other half, this new cloned copy of the cables, would actually go one floor below to NSA’s secret room. So you had one copy of everything coming in and going to NSA’s secret room. And in the secret room was equipment by a private company called Narus, the very small company hardly anybody has ever heard of that created the hardware and the software to analyze these cables and then pick out the targets NSA is looking for and then forward the targeted communications onto NSA headquarters.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have these companies, AT&T and Verizon, that are secretly working with the NSA and tapping Americans’ phone lines, and these companies actually outsource the actual tapping to some little-known foreign companies?

JAMES BAMFORD: Yeah. There’s two major — or not major, they’re small companies, but they service the two major telecom companies. This company, Narus, which was founded in Israel and has large Israel connections, does the — basically the tapping of the communications on AT&T. And Verizon chose another company, ironically also founded in Israel and largely controlled by and developed by people in Israel called Verint.

So these two companies specialize in what’s known as mass surveillance. Their literature — I read this literature from Verint, for example — is supposed to only go to intelligence agencies and so forth, and it says, “We specialize in mass surveillance,” and that’s what they do. They put these mass surveillance equipment in these facilities. So you have AT&T, for example, that, you know, considers it’s their job to get messages from one person to another, not tapping into messages, and you get the NSA that says, we want, you know, copies of all this. So that’s where these companies come in. These companies act as the intermediary basically between the telecom companies and the NSA.


http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/...ow_factory_the

James Bamford: "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America" | Democracy Now! < click

video w. transcript

.....

Yeah. There’s two major — or not major, they’re small companies, but they service the two major telecom companies. This company, Narus, which was founded in Israel and has large Israel connections, does the — basically the tapping of the communications on AT&T. And Verizon chose another company, ironically also founded in Israel and largely controlled by and developed by people in Israel called Verint.


????

 

[zone]

[video=youtube;JWpWc_suPWo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWc_suPWo[/video]

Israel spies on the USA part 1

In November, 2001, Fox News aired this four part series, which shows that Israeli intelligence has total control over the information networks in the USA. Also, they said 60 Israeli spies, with explosives training, were arrested in connection with the 9/11 attack.

 

[jerusalem]

the only real problem with getting this info out to most people is they don't want to believe it so they chose not to believe......it''s the same issue we have when witnessing about Christ......it doesn't change the facts.......the truth is the truth whether it is earthly issues or spiritual. refusing to accept something won't keep it from being so. to those of you who are willing to confront these issues head on and to get the information out there ii personally thank you and commend your courage

 

[zone]

NSA’s Canadian counterpart runs massive domestic spying program

By Keith Jones
15 June 2013

On the basis of secret government directives, Canada’s national security apparatus is conducting mass surveillance of Canadians parallel to, if not directly patterned after, the domestic spying operations of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the NSA’s Canadian counterpart and longstanding partner, has been scrutinizing the metadata of Canadians’ electronic communications since at least 2005.

NSA’s Canadian counterpart runs massive domestic spying program - World Socialist Web Site