NSA spying on you in new and novel ways

"The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets."

So everytime you use one the various instant messaging programs, your contact list is being collected.  And on many of those contact lists are not just the IM ID but the E-mail address of all of your contacts.

Why would they need my contact list?  Have I done something illegal?  Am I a threat?

What about you?  your spouse?  Your kids?  Have they done something illegal?  Are they threats?

Thanks to the NSA We may never be truly safe

"In 2011, General Michael Hayden, who had earlier been director of both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, described the idea of computer hardware with hidden “backdoors” planted by an enemy as “the problem from hell.” This month, news reports based on leaked documents said that the NSA itself has used that tactic, working with U.S. companies to insert secret backdoors into chips and other hardware to aid its surveillance efforts."

Backdoors can be exploited.  Not just by the NSA, but anyone who knows about them or detects them.

So the NSA, instead of making us safer, are actually making us more vulnerable.

All in this insane search for "terrorists" that in many cases are ordinary American Citizens who want to express their God given, Constitutionally guaranteed Rights.

If you use TOR the NSA can track you through Google Ads

"The NSA buys ads from ad display companies like Google and seeds them around Tor's access points.

"The NSA then cookies that ad, so that every time you go to a site, the cookie identifies you. Even though your IP address changed [because of Tor], the cookies gave you away," he said.

This is not some complicated or even an unusual trick, Grossman said. It's how tracking ads were intended to function.

"That's the Web by design, not a hack," he said." 

 Just something else to think about.

H/t JWR @ The Survival Blog

Peter has more about Big Brother Government

More on Big Brother's contempt for our privacy and other rights

Seriously, you need to read that.

On our Privacy and the NSA

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has given up more of its surveillance secrets, acknowledging that it was ordered to stop scooping up thousands of Internet communications from Americans with no connection to terrorism — a practice it says was an unintended consequence when it gathered bundles of Internet traffic connected to terror suspects. 

One of the documents that intelligence officials released Wednesday came because a court ordered the National Security Agency to do so. But it's also part of the administration's response to the leaks by analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, who revealed that the NSA's spying programs went further and gathered millions more communications than most Americans realized."

This is extremely troubling.  When a part of the .GOV takes on more authority than it is granted.  This is called "Overreach", coupled with the Militarization of Police agencies nationwide, the outlook looks grim.

We don't need the .GOV looking through our electronic communications, tracking our daily on-line lives in addition to tracking our cellphones, GPS's and vehicles.  And yet they are doing it.

Without Warrants, without Probable Cause and without any other reason than they have the ability to do so.

Privacy in the time of the NSA

"Phil Zimmermann: The surveillance landscape is far worse than it has ever been and I feel like everything we do is now observable. All of our transactions and communications are all fused together into total information awareness apparatus. I don’t think any of this can be fixed merely by the application of cryptography. It is going to require some push back in the policy space. We are going to have to have Congress react to this and we need to get the population to react, perhaps through the economic consequences we face of losing a lot of business for American internet companies. Maybe American internet companies can push back because of economic harm that comes with the rest of world turning its back on us."

Give that a read...


H/t WRSA

The end to your on line privacy

to join privacy on your cell phone and at home.

FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software

Bob writes about Feinstein's lies

Feinstein writes — lies

Click on that link.  He writes it much better than I ever could.

This is Disturbing

BOOM!… Author Brad Thor: My Contacts Tell Me Government Is Recording & Storing ALL Phone Calls (Video)

Under what piece of legislation do they claim authorizes this?

Down the Memory Hole

Obama’s Speech: Cynical Me and Cynical He


Why Obama staged his Impromptu Presser on Trayvon in three images


Obama and his Administration doesn't need people reading certain stories over the weekend.  Because those stories become Water-cooler talk on monday.  And Obama doesn't WANT people to talk about the scandals in his Administration.  Because they would show just how corrupt his Administration actually is.

Let's play the Kevin Bacon Game

 Or at least the NSA is trying to.

"This isn't a minor thing: A study by the University of Milan found that everyone on the internet is connected to everyone else by an average of 4.74 steps. It's not that Kevin Bacon can be linked to everyone else by 6 degrees of separation; it's that most everyone can be so linked."

 Tell me, how one suspected terrorists translates to 64,000 other suspects to be monitored and surveilled?

.GOV Licensing or leashing the media

Prof R has some insight.

"But even if the guidelines extend to everyone who draws a paycheck as a reporter or pundit -- hey, I guess that would include me -- that's still not enough. In this era of blogging, social media and independent journalism, there are an awful lot of people doing serious journalism who aren't drawing a paycheck from a media organization. They deserve protection, too. Journalism is an activity, not a profession."

AM I a journalist?   I write and report about things I think people who read my blog need to know.  I cover things on occasion that regular news media organizations don't.  I technically get paid for it.  (Google Adsense paid me $101.47 after 5 years of blogging.  That comes to .0556 cents a day they paid me for writing this blog on my corner of the innertubes.)  So am I a journalist?  The NRA seems to thinks so, they gave me media credentials for their Annual Meeting in Houston earlier this year.  Several Manufacturers representatives seem to think so, offering me T&E examples of their products.

Who decides who is or isn't a journalist?

Some obscure .GOV Office?  The MSM?  Or do I decide I am a journalist because I seek out informative information for the people who read my blog?

In the founding days of our Nation, anyone who owned or had access to a printing press was a journalist.  They could print whatever they wanted or could afford to print.

Does that mean that only the "Print" media is true journalism?

If so how do you account for ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, FOXNews and all of the others?

Who sets the demarcation line, deciding who individually or what organization falls under those guidelines set by the .GOV?

That is what we need the answer to.

Is it Eric Holder?  President Obama?  Valerie Jarret?

Who makes that decision?

Either it's We ALL, (Not the collective use of all) are journalists, or no one is.

We all have the same freedoms under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, therefore if I wish to obtain information from a .GOV entity for any reason, I AM the Press.  Because I wouldn't obtain the information unless I wished to publicize it.

Publicize, publish. 

"pub·li·cize  

/ˈpəbləˌsīz/

Verb Make (something) widely known. Give out publicity about (a product, person, or company) for advertising or promotional purposes.

Synonyms publish - advertise"

See. We ALL are the Press, in one form or another.

Bush vs Obama - NSA Spying

NSA Surveillance: Obama vs Bush

I think this nails it perfectly

Snowden the great Redaction has begun

Over at Ace's

I think we need to start screen shotting all of the stories and reposting the screen shots.

NSA Monitoring - Good Point

"The NSA mess, which after all does not involve any broken laws.

The NSA data capturing is legal under current law..... much as slavery was 'legal' in the United States in 1850."

And Mr. Snowden is gone.

On all the spying and privacy violoations

Peter again has some very cogent links and thoughts for you to read.

What Big Brother's latest overreach reveals

Jeff - Alphecca has a point on the claims

that PRISM resulted in stopping a terrorist attack.

Spy vs Spy

You really should check it out.  As it debunks the .GOV's claims quite nicely.

The more the .GOV declaims and denies

the more I think there is something there.  And I'm sure that others feel the same way.

"LONDON (Reuters) - Revelations of a huge, secret U.S. Internet spying program have raised awkward questions for allies, forced to explain whether they let Washington spy on their citizens or benefited from snooping that would be illegal at home"

We have been lied to time and again by the politicians of this country, and it has to S-T-O-P.  More and more Americans are trusting the .GOV less and less.

There are some people in this country who are going to take advantage of that, and spin their own lies on top of the .GOV's lies and pretty soon we will see unrest like this country has NEVER seen before.

Think of the Anti-Apartheid riots in south Africa in the 80's and early 90's.  Think of what is happening in Sweden now.

That could come to our country because of the lack of trust our citizens has for the .GOV.

When someone doesn't trust the .GOV they won't turn to it when they have been wronged.  They take care of it themselves.  And there are agitators out there who WILL take advantage of that.

To our detriment.

I'm going to try to get ahold of Tim at Operation Rooster and I'm going to ask him to see if he can put OR back online, I'll let him use my blog if he needs to, but people and the .GOV need to WAKE UP!

NSA PRISM Leaker

"THE LEAKER: A 29-year-old high school dropout who worked for consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton has claimed responsibility for disclosing the programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post."

From that article he sounds like he is an Obama Flavoraid drinker who was disillusioned by his chosen Messiah's actions or lack of action about the surveillance programs against American Citizens.  And he was also disillusioned about how the CIA tried to recruit intelligence assets overseas.

In a different news story he claims "Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told The Guardian. "I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

So he was working for the .GOV before "The One" came into office and considered disclosing the information then, but didn't since his Messiah won the election.  And when he saw that the problem became worse under his Messiah he decided to go public.

Is that what I'm reading in those two articles?   What do you get from them?

I told you so.

H/t Weerd