kpete
kpete's JournalStudy: More than half of elderly women are economically at risk
http://www.epi.org/publication/economic-security-elderly-americans-risk/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/06/1214239/-Study-More-than-half-of-elderly-women-are-economically-at-risk
President Truman (1947): "We want no Gestapo or secret police"
President Truman (1947),
"We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail... J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him".
http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/apr2013/michaelc43-4.htm
This (pdf.) just in from the DNI.
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511
June 8, 2013
Facts on the Collection of Intelligence Pursuant to Section 702
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government
computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of
foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under
court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a). This authority was created by the Congress and has been widely
known and publicly discussed since its inception in 2008.
Under Section 702 of FISA, the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain
information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such
information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider
based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National
Intelligence. In short, Section 702 facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence
information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court
oversight. Service providers supply information to the Government when they are lawfully
required to do so.
The Government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702
collection unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the
acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear
proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.
We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.
In addition, Section 702 cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, or any other
U.S. person, or to intentionally target any person known to be in the United States. Likewise,
Section 702 cannot be used to target a person outside the United States if the purpose is to
acquire information from a person inside the United States.
Finally, the notion that Section 702 activities are not subject to internal and external oversight
is similarly incorrect. Collection of intelligence information under Section 702 is subject to
an extensive oversight regime, incorporating reviews by the Executive, Legislative and
Judicial branches.
PDF HERE:
http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collection%20of%20Intelligence%20Pursuant%20to%20Section%20702.pdf
UPDATE to add this:
Details of secret Internet data collection program declassified
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/304349-administration-declassifies-prism-information#ixzz2VfQucuIA
What If China Hacks the NSA's Massive Data Trove?
What If China Hacks the NSA's Massive Data Trove?The danger of creating data sets that would permit a foreign government or non-state actor to wreak havoc on Americans.
Bradley Manning proved that massive amounts of the government's most secret data was vulnerable to being dumped on the open Internet. A single individual achieved that unprecedented leak. According to the Washington Post, "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances." And this week, we learned that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unable to protect some of their most closely held secrets from Glenn Greenwald, Richard Engel,
What If China Hacks the NSA's Massive Data Trove?
......................................
In the wrong hands, it could enable blackmail on a massive scale, widespread manipulation of U.S. politics, industrial espionage against American businesses;,and other mischief I can't even imagine. [...]
Even assuming the U.S. government never abuses this data -- and there is no reason to assume that! -- why isn't the burgeoning trove more dangerous to keep than it is to foreswear? Can anyone persuasively argue that it's virtually impossible for a foreign power to ever gain access to it? Can anyone persuasively argue that if they did gain access to years of private phone records, email, private files, and other data on millions of Americans, it wouldn't be hugely damaging?
Think of all the things the ruling class never thought we'd find out about the War on Terrorism that we now know.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/what-if-china-hacks-the-nsas-massive-data-trove/276637/
FLASHBACK: Watch this 2006 PBS ‘NewsHour’ debate on the NSA’s phone call surveillance program
DAVID BROOKS: So far, it doesn't seem that way. I mean, the original poll, the poll that I saw, I guess in the Washington Post, somewhere said that 63 percent approved the program. 57 percent, I think it was, said even if it is my own phone on these records, they support the program.
I think basically people think this is a legitimate way, if the NSA professionals want to do this; they are prepared to defer to the NSA professionals who seem to be doing it by the book for the NSA, which is a pretty good agency.
And so they feel, you know, they don't want to be attacked. And if they can use these records, this compendium of records, they find a bad guy, they want to find out who that bad guy called, I think most people will accept it. I think on Capitol Hill, I think you see two things. You see, A, general support for the program I think instinctively among Republicans, especially, but also a little anger that they weren't told about the extent of it last December. I mean, we knew they were doing this data mining last December. We knew that there were millions of phone calls being made.
We didn't know from the White House that it was purely domestic, as well as the international calls, so there was a little bit of upset that the White House wasn't forthcoming but as for the substance, I don't think it will be a political problem.
TRANSCRIPT & VIDEO:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/08/flashback-watch-this-2006-pbs-newshour-debate-on-the-nsas-phone-call-surveillance-program/
Americans Are Outraged Because in Voting for Obama, They Thought They Were Rejecting Bush
In 2008, Americans voted for Obama for two primary reasons: 1) to embrace his health care and economic stances in the wake of the financial collapse, and 2) to reject President Bush's hawkish national security and foreign policies.Of those who voted for Obama, 87 percent strongly disapproved of the war in Iraq, 90 percent claimed McCain would continue Bush's policies, and only 13 percent found the War on Terror to be the election's most important issue (compared with an incredible 86 percent for those who voted for McCain).
Meaning: the greatest divide between voters was the issue of terrorism and how our country was addressing it, both domestically and abroad.
Meaning: many Americans who voted for Obama were reacting in various forms to the war in Iraq, The Patriot Act, and a myriad of perceived constitutional abuses in the name of fighting terror.
....................
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/08/1214650/-Americans-Are-Outraged-Because-in-Voting-for-Obama-They-Thought-They-Were-Rejecting-Bush
“Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
http://m.theweek.com/article.php?id=245360#disqus_thread
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Sep 17, 2004, 03:59 PMNumber of posts: 71,981
