What a real MN progressive has to say: "Massive spying on Americans is outrageous" by ret. FBI agent

[annm4peace]

[link:http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/11/opinion/rowley-nsa-surveillance/index.html|

As a MN person it made me sick when I heard Sen Franken say that spying was ok with him.

then I saw this on in my email from ret.FBI agent Coleen Rowley. She has been talking about the dangers of increased US spying, aka throwing more hay on the haystack to find the terrorist.. she would say they are making it impossible by gathering so much info.
And can you even imagine how much this is costing the tax payers.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/11/opinion/rowley-nsa-surveillance/index.html

"But if intelligence was a fire hose before 9/11, it quickly became Niagara Falls.
And now, with so much data (almost all of it irrelevant) that has been sucked into government databases and computers, one might liken the "intelligence flow" to a tsunami, with analysts asked to find just the right drop of water. Good luck.
In fact, The Washington Post's well-researched series in 2010 on "Top Secret America" reported that the NSA was collecting and storing around 1.7 billion pieces of information every 24 hours, even back then.
To switch metaphors, it does not make it easier to find a needle in a haystack if you continue to add hay. No one has ever explained why it was left to fellow passengers or alert street vendors, not the "intelligence" agencies, to stop the last four major terrorist attacks or attempted attacks on U.S. soil. "


MN: If fellow citizens don't care that our Government is spying on us, they should at least care of the billions of tax dollars spent on it and that it is private companies that are doing the spying for our government. I hope people are calling Franken's office and telling him he should support our Constitution instead of spying. and by the way Sen Franken, how much is all this "spying' costing the tax payers ????? Franken's # is 651-221-1016, or in DC 202-224-5641.

[octoberlib]

1. This has a lot more to do with

making money for security contractors than it does with making America safe. I'm sure they've been giving campaign donations to the right congressmen.

[annm4peace]

5. I agree

Maybe someone will write about the money Franken and other Dems have received from "defense contractors".

ugg.. it isn't like we haven't known about these companies spying getting paid with our tax dollars. it was in many articles, books, documentaries, especially in Farenheit 911..

but that Democrats speak in favor of it and that we should support it has really made me mad.

they dont' even care that they support corporate greed over human needs.

[TakeALeftTurn]

8. Exactly

.

[think]

2. Al is also one 1 of 8 Senators who introduced a bill to overhaul the FISA courts: TODAY

Please see here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014506051

Hope this make you feel a little better about Al. I know it made me feel better!

[AnotherMcIntosh]

3. Can Sen Franken give us a number as to how much this non-spying on all Americans is costing?

Can he give us a number while millions of Americans are homeless and going hungry?




How many are homeless and going hungry in Minnesota?


http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2010/05/29/homelessness-minnesota-greater-minnesotas-growing-homeless-population

Please tell me that he cares.

[annm4peace]

4. exactly!!!!

No , I don't think he or Klobuchar care. if they did they would talk about cutting budgets to the NSA and the military.

I'm sick of them and sick of people thinking that they are liberal or progressive.

I can't wait to see the dollar amounts.

[TakeALeftTurn]

6. I can give you a rough number

Since 2001 the departments that make up the DHS have spent an additional $454bn (to end of 2011), compared to what their budget was in 2000/2001.

That's an average of $45bn a year.

It has been ramping up every year.
It's more than $45bn higher in 2012 than it was in 2001. Probably a lot higher.

There are 4,000+ private contractors working for the NHS.
I don't believe there were any (or there were a tiny number) prior to 911.

You can also take a look at the "defense" / DHS contracts for software companies like CSC and Raytheon software.
New contracts are being signed all the time.

Work is currently on-going to de-encrypt more online financial transactions.
Bank transactions and purchases.

These contracts are mostly to enhance & develop software that use the NSA's huge database.
The database that contains records on every American old enough to own a phone or send an email.

It takes a lot of server power to de-encrypt the millions of financial transactions that happen each day (they are only collecting a percentage currently, banks being a priority at the moment) - hence the vast $2bn data center that has been built in Bluffdale, Utah.

It also takes a lot of processing power to run the data mining requests because of the size of the NSA's database.
The Utah datacenter is also presumably designed to enable many more such requests per day.

The Utah data center becomes fully operational this Fall, there was an "opening ceremony" last month.
It is estimated that this facility will use $40m worth of electricity per year, to run all the servers.
The Utah grid could not cope with this extra usage, so they have built their own electricity generating plant.

It has been reported that the NSA now sucks in data from 50 companies.
http://m.theweek.com/article.php?id=245311
More companies are getting added all the time.
Software work is required to extract their data & make it available to the NSA data mining systems.

Raytheon software was bought by Bain Capital fairly recently (I think in 2011 or early 2012).

This is a huge money making machine for private companies.

Taking the top 20 "defense" contractors for the US government, they are making an average of 10% on sales. (Latest data - either from 2011 or 2012.)
They all make about the same - 8 to 12%.

Name me another (legitimate) industry that can do that.

[annm4peace]

7. maybe they are trying to make us forget Bradley Manning's trial is going on

let us not forget Bradley Manning's Trial. Click on link and click "Like"..so the site gets lots of hits and the military and the powers that be know that we are watching the trial.


http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/trial-report-day-five

Today’s afternoon session revealed more substantive and consequential testimony, so it precedes the morning session here. The defense, via forensic expert David Shaver, established that there was no evidence of a connection between Manning and Jason Katz, and that there is no evidence Manning downloaded a video from the CENTCOM database.

By Nathan Fuller. June 11, 2013.

No connection between Jason Katz and Bradley Manning

The live witnesses – as opposed to read-aloud stipulations – in this afternoon’s session discussed the investigation of Jason Katz’s computer, where a Farah video was found that the government believed to be connected to Bradley Manning. The Farah incident was a horrifying massacre on May 4, 2009, in Afghanistan, in which a U.S. airstrike killed scores of innocent Afghan women and children. Katz was fired from the Department of Energy for having password-evading programs.

The video, a version distinct from the one found on Bradley’s computer but matching the one hosted on the U.S. Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, was encrypted, and investigators found decryption software on Katz’s computer. Adrian Lamo learned about Katz’s possession of the video and also turned him into the authorities.

The government wanted to connect Katz and Manning, but today forensic expert David Shaver confirmed that he found no connection whatsoever – no email, chats, or any other connection – between the two.

No proof that Manning downloaded Farah video from CENTCOM