NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep

[ TheGuardian.com - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep ]

• NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions
• 'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can'
• GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers
• Dishfire presentation on text message collection – key extracts

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.
-[Full Detail]

The NSA is Coming to Town

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pcWlyUu8U4

Published on Dec 12, 2013

Yes, NSA spying is real. 

Please take action to end it now: http://bit.ly/nsaiscomingtotown
 

The Lyrics:
You better watch out,
You better not Skype,
You better log out,
Yeah you better not type,
The NSA is coming to town.

You're making a list,
They're checking it twice;
They're watching almost every electronic device,
The NSA is coming to town.

They see you when you're sleeping
They hear while you're awake
They know who you call and who you write
So encrypt for goodness' sake!

With Congress in the dark and a cloak-and-dagger court
We're lookin' for answers, they're comin' up short
The NSA is coming to town.

They're making a list,
Checking it twice;
They're watching almost every electronic device,
NSA is coming to town
The NSA is coming to town,
The NSA is coming to town.

 

NSA isn’t foiling terrorist plots

[ Press TV - http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/10/11/328895/nsa-isnt-foiling-terrorist-plots/ ]

US officials claim that the government’s massive data collection has protected the country from terrorist attacks.

After The Guardian’s first revelations about the National Security Agency’s digital surveillance programs, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee, jumped to the NSA’s defense by pointing to two terrorist plots supposedly foiled by the organization’s digital surveillance programs. Lawyers and policemen involved in these cases disputed these claims, but this did not keep NSA chief Keith Alexander from taking it up a notch by raising the number of foiled attacks to more than 50, and later to 54.

These numbers are crucial for an informed debate about the digital surveillance programs. If the NSA’s digital surveillance indeed prevented 54 terrorist attacks, the public can decide whether these 54 attacks are worth their privacy. This number would suggest that the NSA’s programs are actually keeping the United States and Europe safe from terrorism.

It is far from certain, however, that the NSA is getting its numbers right.
-[Full Article]

NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Seems To Be Another False Hero Created By Intelligence And Media Circles

[ Blacklisted News - http://www.blacklistednews.com/NSA_Leaker_Edward_Snowden_Seems_To_Be_Another_False_Hero_Created_By_Intelligence_And_Media_Circles/29228/0/34/34/Y/M.html ]

It seems as if we are getting new information about the National Security Agency (NSA) and the extent of its spying and surveillance programs on a weekly to bi-weekly basis.  Ever since Edward Snowden the former NSA contractor leaked a myriad of secret documents exposing these programs, we hear more and more about just how wide spread the NSA’s activities have been.  But who exactly is Edward Snowden?  This is a question that not very many people have asked.  Much of what has been revealed by Snowden only confirms what many have been saying about the NSA for well over a decade.  The only difference is that prior to the Snowden leaks, people who talked about the extent of the NSA’s surveillance programs were dismissed as conspiracy theorists.  Now it is an accepted fact that the NSA spies on and collects data on almost anything you could possibly imagine.  Despite this, there is something very fishy about the Snowden narrative when you take into consideration his alleged background with the U.S. Army, the CIA and other government institutions.  Not to mention the comical events that transpired after he fled the country to Hong Kong and later Russia.  He just has the look and feel of a character invented by media hype and propaganda.  Although we’ll never know his true intentions, it is highly probable that these leaks were allowed on-purpose so the U.S. government could indirectly reveal to the world the full extent of the NSA’s capabilities.  This possibility is worth considering since a press conference announcing these activities would not be a workable course of action.  With dissent on the rise and independent voices in the alternative media doing severe damage to the credibility of the U.S. government, these leaks may have been sanctioned as a way to discourage free speech and growing dissent against American imperialism.
-[Full Article]

The NSA Is Ideologically and Deceptively Talmudic (Part II)

[Veterans Today - http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/17/the-nsa-is-ideologically-and-deceptively-talmudic-part-ii/ ]

One of the many essential doctrines of the Talmud is that Jews are allowed to cheat and deceive the goyim for the purpose of advancing Jewish interest. According to Baba Kamma 11a, “Jews may use lies to circumvent a Gentile.”

This is permitted because Gentiles, according to the Talmud, are “outside the protection of the law and God has ‘exposed their money to Israel.’”[1] Let me illustrate this point from experience.

In 2011, freelance Jewish writer Alan Caruba quoted the Mishnah saying that “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed the entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved the entire world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).[2]

This particular verse is also cited in one of the most popular Holocaust films of all time, Schindler’s List. However, the quotation was misleading and left a key aspect which actually changes the whole the issue altogether.

As Michael Hoffman quickly discovered, Caruba used that quotation “to circumvent a Gentile.” The actual quotation reads:
“Therefore man was created alone, to teach you that whoever destroys a single Israelite soul is deemed by Scripture as if he had destroyed a whole world. And whoever saves an Israelite soul is deemed by Scripture as if he had saved a whole world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).
Other versions used the words a little different, but the context is always clear: the verse is talking about the people of Israel, not the entire human race.
-[Full Article]

The Israeli Regime Largely Controls the NSA and America (Part I)

[ Veterans Today - http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/13/the-israeli-regime-largely-controls-the-nsa-and-america/ ]

 
The final nail is in the coffin. We now learn that the NSA “routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens…
“Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.”¹

Israel is allowed to keep “any files containing the identities of US persons” for up to one year.
This is just a tip of the iceberg. The Guardian continues to say that in 2009, “the New York Times reported on ‘the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip.’”²

Israel’s aggressive and wicked activities against the U.S. have been going on for years, and the National Intelligence Estimate itself “ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence against the U.S.”³ One official admitted, “One of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.”⁴

The Israeli regime has denied any of this. But the logic is pretty simple: the NSA virtually controls U.S. citizens through technologies such as Google, iPhone, Yahoo, etc., and the NSA reports to the Israelis. Since the NSA is acting illegally here, it “violated rules on surveillance of telephone records for almost three years and misled a secret court…”⁵

More recently, Google’s manager of information Heather Adkins has made it clear that “Passwords are dead.” If you think you were relying on passwords to secure some of your precious documents online, Adkins has news for you: the “game is over…our relationship with passwords are done.”⁶ We also learned that the NSA had access to Google documents as well.⁷

In a nutshell, the West is really outnumbered. In the previous article, I ended with the question, “Where are the men of the West?” A commentator responded,
“Off in their isolated world, asleep, on drugs, booze, wallowing in their own ignorance, hung up on TV watching, mainly professional sports, clinging to the delusions that so far given them a comfortable life. Watch them in the grocery checkout line. Well dressed, incommunicative, booze buyers. No sense of humour, a few items ‘the little woman’ told them to buy, aka mentally, detached whimps.”
-[Full Article]

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel

[ The Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents ]

• Secret deal places no legal limits on use of data by Israelis
• Only official US government communications protected
• Agency insists it complies with rules governing privacy
• Read the NSA and Israel's 'memorandum of understanding'

The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
-[Full Article]

Exposed: Obama & NSA Breaks Laws to Spy on Americans

[ Occupy Corporatism - http://www.occupycorporatism.com/exposed-obama-nsa-breaks-laws-to-spy-on-americans/ ]

An audit of once secret documents concerning the Obama administration’s abuse of surveillance agencies and invasion of American’s right to privacy is revealing that President Obama has lied to the American public.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has broken the law in order to obtain data on “suspects” since 2008.

In 2012, nearly 3,000 requests for information were illegally made and approved which led to more spying. And these victims were individuals with green cards.

Shockingly, the amount of grammatical errors in the documents is telling of the mind-set of those involved in the data-mining.

Obama swore that: “If you look at the reports … all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s emails,” Obama said. “What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now, part of the reason they’re not abused is because these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).”
-[Full Article]

Feds Visit Family Who Googled Backpacks & Pressure Cookers…But the NSA Isn’t Watching You

[ The Organic Prepper - http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/feds-visit-family-who-googled-backpacks-pressure-cookers-but-the-nsa-isnt-watching-you-08012013 ]

Be careful what you Google….you never know when it might get you a visit from the  federal anti-terrorism task force, despite the government’s claims that information about average Americans is not being analyzed.
What shows up in your search history?  I just checked mine.
In the past week I  have looked up…

• Pressure canning recipes
• Guard llamas
• Where to buy organic fertilizer
• Wildfires on the West Coast
• A new crochet stitch
• A newly discovered antibiotic that is effective against anthrax
• Healing time for concussions
• The favorite color of Louie from One Direction

If you put all these things together, does it put together a picture of a terrorist, bent on destruction, or just a newbie homesteader who is also interested in current events and has a tween daughter?

Well, with the algorithms the government is using, those searches might not look so innocent.

Michelle Catalano and her husband were the targets of a visit by federal officials based on nothing more than their Google history.  While the NSA is fervently denying that they are collecting information on average citizens, an early morning knock on the door of this family’s home says otherwise.
-[Full Article]

Snowden says Western states 'in bed with NSA'

[France 24 - http://www.france24.com/en/20130707-snowden-says-western-states-bed-with-nsa   ]

AFP - Fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said the US National Security Agency operates broad secret spying partnerships with other Western governments now complaining about its programmes, in an interview published Sunday.

Snowden said in comments made before his exposure of US espionage practices came to light last month and printed in German news weekly Der Spiegel that NSA spies are "in bed together with the Germans and most other Western states".

In remarks published in German, Snowden said an NSA department known as the Foreign Affairs Directorate coordinated work with foreign secret services.

The partnerships are organised so that authorities in other countries can "insulate their political leaders from the backlash" if it becomes public "how grievously they're violating global privacy," he said.-[Full Article]

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

[New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/us/in-secret-court-vastly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html?hp&_r=2&   ]


WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.-[Full Article]

Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA

[ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/ ]

...The climax, however, will be the opening next year of the NSA’s mammoth 1-million-square-foot, $2 billion Utah Data Center. The centerpiece in the agency’s decade-long building boom, it will be the “cloud” where the trillions of millions of intercepted phone calls, e-mails, and data trails will reside, to be scrutinized by distant analysts over highly encrypted fiber-optic links.

Despite the post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping of Americans, the NSA says that citizens should trust it not to abuse its growing power and that it takes the Constitution and the nation’s privacy laws seriously.
But one of the agency’s biggest secrets is just how careless it is with that ocean of very private and very personal communications, much of it to and from Americans. Increasingly, obscure and questionable contractors — not government employees — install the taps, run the agency’s eavesdropping infrastructure, and do the listening and analysis.

And with some of the key companies building the U.S.’s surveillance infrastructure for the digital age employing unstable employees, crooked executives, and having troubling ties to foreign intelligence services, it’s not clear that Americans should trust the secretive agency, even if its current agency chief claims he doesn’t approve of extrajudicial spying on Americans. His predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, made similar claims while secretly conducting the warrantless wiretapping program.-[Full Article]

The NSA: Made in Israel

[American Free Press]

[Originally posted at http://americanfreepress.net/?p=11302 ]

June 27, 2013 AFP

 • NSA expert exposes role of Unit 8200 in massive snooping op

By Victor Thorn

Despite denials by Google spokesmen that they willingly permitted any of their data to be mined, it appears they did allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to passively infiltrate their networks.

The missing link in this cyber-spying conundrum can be traced to two Israeli companies founded in the 1990s. According to a June 8 article by syndicated columnist and peace activist Richard Silverstein, “The NSA hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap the U.S. telecommunications network. Verint and Narus created programs which offered the NSA back-doors to all major U.S. technology companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and Google.”

On June 9, investigative reporter Jon Rappoport cited James Bamford, author of three books on the NSA, to confirm the role of Verint and Narus. “They played a key role in developing and selling the technology that allowed NSA to deploy its PRISM spying program.” Even more interesting, Silverstein explained how the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) maintained a top-secret department called Unit 8200 which served as their version of our NSA.

“[Unit 8200] developed Stuxnet and Flame along with its colleagues in the NSA. Unit 8200 veterans founded numerous start-ups that commercialized their military applications for security use by companies and intelligence agencies.”

One of these companies was Verint, which is conveniently owned by Comverse, an entity that, prior to 9-11, provided computers to the federal government which allowed them to install wiretapping equipment into practically every phone across the U.S. The ties go deeper. Former Comverse CEO Jacob “Kobi” Alexander also purchased the Odigo instant messaging service which alerted Jewish workers employed at the World Trade Center towers two hours before they were struck by airliners on September 11, 2001.

With these capabilities in mind, a June 7 Washington Post article contained this line: “98% of PRISM production is based on Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.”

Google, it should be noted, is referred to in some quarters as a distinct branch of the government, especially since its CEO, Eric Schmidt, has developed a special relationship with Obama. According to White House advisor David Plouffe, “On election night [2012] he was in our boiler room in Chicago.” 

Former Stasi Officer: The NSA Domestic Surveillance Program Would Have Been 'A Dream Come True' For East Germany

[Business Insider]

The National Security Agency's domestic surveillance capabilities would have been "a dream come true" for East Germany, a former lieutenant colonel in the defunct communist country's secret police told Matthew Schofield of McClatchy.

The Stasi was one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies in the world.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal called them "worse than the Gestapo," referring to the secret police of Nazi Germany.


“You know, for us, this would have been a dream come true,” Wolfgang Schmidt said. “So much information, on so many people.”

The comments echo those made by NSA whistleblower William Binney, who told documentarian Laura Poitras that the danger of the NSA's domestic dragnet is that "we fall into a totalitarian state. This is something the KGB, the Stasi or the Gestapo would have loved to have had."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/stasi-talks-about-nsa-surveillance-state-2013-6#ixzz2XZAeO4mx

Booz Allen Hamilton: What You Don't Know About Snowden's Former Employer

[The Daily Paul]


Let's take another trip down the rabbit hole, shall we?

Lost in the Edward Snowden debate is a critical look at his former employer, the company doing the spying on Americans in the first place: Booz Allen Hamilton.

Booz Allen Hamilton is a government contractor, with 99% of its revenue coming from the US government. Not only does it receive money from the NSA, but also the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, US Marine Corps, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and ... the IRS. In addition, Booz Allen is heavily connected to the CIA.-[Full Article]

NSA Whistleblower: NSA Spying On – and Blackmailing – Top Government Officials and Military Officers

Posted on June 20, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Whistleblower Says Spy Agency Targeting Top American Leaders

NSA whistleblower Russel Tice – a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping – told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frogs Post (the website of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds):

Tice: Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this...-[Full Article]


["Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the president of the United States now."]

21 Facts About NSA Snooping That Every American Should Know

[End of the American Dream]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what the NSA is actually doing.  Are they reading our emails?  Are they listening to our telephone calls?  Do they target American citizens or is it only foreigners that they are targeting?  Unfortunately, the truth is that we aren’t going to get straight answers from our leaders about this.  The folks running the NSA have already shown that they are willing to flat out lie to Congress, and Barack Obama doesn’t exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to telling the truth.  These are men that play word games and tell lies for a living.  So it would be unrealistic to expect them to come out and tell us the unvarnished truth about what is going on.  That is why it is so important that whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden have come forward.  Thanks to them and to the brave journalists that are willing to look into these things, we have been able to get some glimpses behind the curtain.  And what we have learned is not very pretty.  The following are 21 facts about NSA snooping that every American should know… (Read More.....)

PRISM Is Just Part Of A Much Larger, Scarier Government Surveillance Program

(Business Insider)

What makes Prism shine? National Security Agency's megadata collection from Internet pipeline

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.
Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world's largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.

Often there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate.

Inside Microsoft, some called it "Hoovering" — not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.

This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format.

The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.


But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/prism-is-just-the-start-of-nsa-spying-2013-6#ixzz2WOZ70lFS

US companies handing over personal data to NSA

(Bloomberg)

A new report has revealed that thousands of U.S. companies have been handing over personal information of American citizens to the National Security Agency.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that four people familiar with the process said “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.”

The shocking report came after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed that the agency is collecting millions of Americans’ phone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google and other Internet companies.

The new revelation shows that Internet and phone companies are not the only firms giving information to the government.

According to the Bloomberg report, “makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies and many other companies” are handing over personal data to federal agencies.-[Full Article]

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

c/net

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

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.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week 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."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee. -[Full Article]