Yeah , the NSA isn't reading everything you do on the net - and other lies......
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-01/guest-post-pressure-cookers-backpacks-and-quinoa-oh-my
Guest Post: Pressure Cookers, Backpacks And Quinoa, Oh My!
Submitted by Michele Catalano via 'Writing Out Loud' blog,
It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning.Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history.
Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe in another time those two things together would have seemed innocuous, but we are in “these times” now. And in these times, when things like the Boston bombing happen, you spend a lot of time on the internet reading about it and, if you are my exceedingly curious news junkie of a twenty-ear-old son, you click a lot of links when you read the myriad of stories. You might just read a CNN piece about how bomb making instructions are readily available on the internet and you will in all probability, if you are that kid, click the link provided.
Which might not raise any red flags. Because who wasn’t reading those stories? Who wasn’t clicking those links? But my son’s reading habits combined with my search for a pressure cooker and my husband’s search for a backpack set off an alarm of sorts at the joint terrorism task force headquarters.
That’s how I imagine it played out, anyhow. Lots of bells and whistles and a crowd of task force workers huddled around a computer screen looking at our Google history.
This was weeks ago. I don’t know what took them so long to get here. Maybe they were waiting for some other devious Google search to show up but “what the hell do I do with quinoa” and “Is A-Rod suspended yet” didn’t fit into the equation so they just moved in based on those older searches.
I was at work when it happened. My husband called me as soon as it was over, almost laughing about it but I wasn’t joining in the laughter. His call left me shaken and anxious.
What happened was this: At about 9:00 am, my husband, who happened to be home yesterday, was sitting in the living room with our two dogs when he heard a couple of cars pull up outside. He looked out the window and saw three black SUVs in front of our house; two at the curb in front and one pulled up behind my husband’s Jeep in the driveway, as if to block him from leaving.
Six gentleman in casual clothes emerged from the vehicles and spread out as they walked toward the house, two toward the backyard on one side, two on the other side, two toward the front door.
A million things went through my husband’s head. None of which were right. He walked outside and the men greeted him by flashing badges. He could see they all had guns holstered in their waistbands.
“Are you [name redacted]?” one asked while glancing at a clipboard. He affirmed that was indeed him, and was asked if they could come in. Sure, he said.
They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.
Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.
They searched the backyard. They walked around the garage, as much as one could walk around a garage strewn with yard working equipment and various junk. They went back in the house and asked more questions.
Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.
By this point they had realized they were not dealing with terrorists. They asked my husband about his work, his visits to South Korea and China. The tone was conversational.
They never asked to see the computers on which the searches were done. They never opened a drawer or a cabinet. They left two rooms unsearched. I guess we didn’t fit the exact profile they were looking for so they were just going through the motions.
They mentioned that they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing. I don’t know what happens on the other 1% of visits and I’m not sure I want to know what my neighbors are up to.
45 minutes later, they shook my husband’s hand and left. That’s when he called me and relayed the story. That’s when I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? Were they judging me because my house was a mess (Oh my god, the joint terrorism task force was in my house and there were dirty dishes in my sink!). Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.
All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.
I’m scared. And not of the right things.
update on above..... dig the conflicting FBI , pollice department reports....
* * *
Late on Thursday, Suffolk County police confirmed its officers had gone to the house, but explained that it was as the result of a tipoff and was not due to monitoring of home internet searches.
In a statement, the office of the county's police commissioner said:
Suffolk County criminal intelligence detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore-based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. The former employee's computer searches took place on this employee's workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms 'pressure cooker bombs' and 'backpacks'.
After the visit the incident was "determined to be non-criminal in nature", the statement said.
Earlier on Thursday, the FBI told the Guardian that Catalano was visited by the Nassau County police department working in conjunction with Suffolk County police department. "From our understanding, both of those counties are involved," said FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser. She said Suffolk County initiated the action and that Nassau County became involved, but would not elaborate on what that meant.
The Nassau County police department said Catalano "was not visited by the Nassau police department" and denied involvement in the situation.
In a new post on her Tumblr on Thursday, Catalano said: "We found out through the Suffolk police department that the searches involved also things my husband looked up at his old job. We were not made aware of this at the time of questioning and were led to believe it was solely from searches from within our house."
* * *
NSA revelation of the day....
http://rt.com/news/nsa-pay-british-spy-agency-910/
NSA paid British spy agency $150 mln in secret funds – new leak
The NSA has made hush-hush payments of at least $150 million to Britain’s GCHQ spying agency over the past three years to influence British intelligence gathering operations. The payouts were revealed in new Snowden leaks published by The Guardian.
The documents illustrate that the NSA expects the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, to act in its interest, expecting a return on the investment, The Guardian said Thursday.
Redevelopments at GCHQ’s site at Bude in southwest England, which alone cost over $20 million, were paid for by the US National Security Agency. The facility intercepts information from transatlantic cables carrying Internet and communications information.
The revelations appear to contradict previous denials from British government ministers that GCHQ does the NSA’s “dirty work.” In addition, the latest Snowden dossier details how British surveillance operations could be a “selling point” for the US.
A document from 2010 cited by The Guardian reveals the nature of the relationship between the two organizations, stating that the US “raised a number of issues with regards to meeting NSA's minimum expectations” attesting that GCHQ “still remains short of the full NSA ask.”
The documents declare GCHQ’s intent and the extent to which it wants to harvest phone data and Internet traffic, aiming to “exploit any phone, anywhere, any time.”
The daily also reveals the sheer volume of data Britain has increasingly gained access to. Over the past five years, the quantity of available Internet and mobile traffic has increased by 7,000 percent. However 60 percent of UK refined intelligence is still provided by the NSA.
In the course of providing the documents, Snowden repeatedly told the paper that “It’s not just a US problem” and that GCHQ is “worse than the US.”
Apparently, the British spy agency blamed Russia and China for the overwhelming majority of cyberattacks against the UK and is set on developing new technologies alongside the NSA with the aim of increasing their cyberwarfare capability, according to the report.
Documents detail how the NSA provided GCHQ with $34.8 million in 2009 and $60 million in 2010, with the 2010 sum including $6 million in GCHQ support for NATO forces in Afghanistan. In 2011/12 the NSA paid a further $52.8 to GCHQ.
The leaks show that Britain fears that “US perceptions of the… partnership [could] diminish, leading to loss of access, and/or reduction in investment… to the UK.”
Snowden’s leaks informed the public in June that British spy agency GCHQ has tapped into the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories. He detailed how it shares the data with the NSA.
The documents showed that alongside managing 600m phone “events” a day, GCHQ had tapped into over 200 fiber-optic cables and had the capacity to analyze data from over 46 of them at a time. The operation, codenamed “Tempora,” had been going on for around 18 months at the time of the documents’ release.
The cables have the capacity to carry data at 10 gigabits per second, which in theory, means they could deliver up to 21petabytes of information per day. The program is continuing to develop on a daily basis.
Edward Snowden finally left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Thursday, having been granted temporary asylum in Russia after arriving –initially just in transit – in Moscow on June 23. Snowden’s departure took place some 30 minutes before his new refugee status was officially announced.
The documents showed that alongside managing 600m phone “events” a day, GCHQ had tapped into over 200 fiber-optic cables and had the capacity to analyze data from over 46 of them at a time. The operation, codenamed “Tempora,” had been going on for around 18 months at the time of the documents’ release.
The cables have the capacity to carry data at 10 gigabits per second, which in theory, means they could deliver up to 21petabytes of information per day. The program is continuing to develop on a daily basis.
Edward Snowden finally left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Thursday, having been granted temporary asylum in Russia after arriving –initially just in transit – in Moscow on June 23. Snowden’s departure took place some 30 minutes before his new refugee status was officially announced.
Snowden updates of the day....
http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2013/08/snowdens-father-calls-out-obama-on-nuremberg-crimes-2454254.html
Predictably, the corporate media, the official propaganda outlet for the establishment, has refused to post or publish an open letter sent to Obama by Lon Snowden, the father of Edward Snowden. This callous refusal should finally convince any who may have had any doubt that the United States is anything but a tyrannical national security state with a state-run media no different than the one in Cuba, China or Iran.
Edward Snowden’s unwarranted persecution and vilification by the globalist propaganda media is part of a larger campaign to snuff out investigative media.
Glenn Greenwald eluded to this during a conversation about the persecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning with CIA operative Anderson Cooper and CNN legal analyst and establishment insider Jeffrey Toobin. In response to Toobin’s defense of Manning’s unjust persecution and probable life sentence, Greenwald said the former Harvard Review editor was arguing “for the end of investigative journalism.”
As the indisputable assassination of investigative journalist Michael Hastings makes painfully obvious, the government is not merely attempting to persecute journalists who refuse to act as stenographers for the national security state, but is actively killing them. The United States is now on par with Mexico, Iran, Colombia, and Russia, countries that stand accused of murdering journalists.
The letter penned by constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein and sent by Lon Snowden to Obama follows. Below it is a video of the exchange between Greenwald and the apologist for a vindictive and murderous state, Jeffrey Toobin, who counts as his close friend Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan.
July 26, 2013
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution
Dear Mr. President:
You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”
Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.
July 26, 2013
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution
Dear Mr. President:
You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”
Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.
A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.
Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.
We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.
Read More Here
Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.
We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.
Read More Here
http://rt.com/news/snowden-russia-kucherena-mills-914/
‘No plans to leave Russia’: Snowden has job offer, awaits reunion with family, girlfriend
An “exhausted” Edward Snowden will have his own choice of accommodation, has no current plans to leave Russia, and still misses his girlfriend, according to his Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena.
“Snowden can live in a hotel or rent a flat in Russia,” said Kucherena, who has repeatedly spoken on behalf of Snowden, while his client was trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport for over a month. “But the personal safety issue is a very serious one for him."
Apologizing that he could only be “vague” about a “safe location” where Snowden has been taken, Kucherena, who is close to the Kremlin and officially campaigned for Vladimir Putin’s re-election last year, added that that the NSA whistleblower has acquired “new friends, including Americans, who will ensure his security for the time being”.
The US citizen has been issued a 12-month residence permit, which can be extended indefinitely. Snowden only has to register and then has the legal right to travel anywhere in Russia.
Kucherena said that Snowden, who had his luggage pre-packed before he was told he could leave the airport, was “exhausted” and will need “rehabilitation.”
According to Kucherena, an official invitation for the 30-year-old Snowden’s father, Lon, who has vocally supported his son in a series of high-profile TV interviews in the US, “is being finalized”.
There may also be a return for a figure that fascinated the media in the early days after Snowden’s revelations, self-described “pole-dancing superhero” girlfriend Lindsay Mills, who said she felt “betrayed”when her boyfriend disappeared following his initial video to the world.
“When I told him about the people who were calling him, including girls, such Russian girls, he told me ‘Anatoly, I still miss my girlfriend.’”
Snowden is legally allowed to work in Russia, and has already had one job offer. In what may or may not be a serious proposal, the founder of Russia’s Facebook equivalent Vkontakte, the flamboyant Pavel Durov, has offered the computer specialist a seat on his “all-star security team”.
The former NSA contractor has personally promised President Vladimir Putin that he will stop leaking“information that may harm the US”, as a condition of his asylum bid in Russia.
When questioned about how the vow fitted in with new revelations about XKeyscore, the massive information-collecting program exposed in the Guardian on Wednesday using Snowden’s data, Kucherena said that the documents about the surveillance software suite had been passed on to a journalist while Snowden was still in Hong Kong.
Kucherena said that Russia had no plans to prevent Snowden from leaving the country at any moment, saying the whistleblower may even choose to return to the US to face multiple criminal charges. But when asked if Snowden still plans to seek asylum in South America, as appeared to be his original plan, he insisted that Snowden has “no intention to travel abroad as of now”.
Edward Snowden will be entitled to Russian citizenship after spending five years in the country, though the procedure has been speeded up before for high-profile public figures, such as actor Gerard Depardieu.
White House 'extremely disappointed' with Snowden asylum
The White House is re-evaluating whether US President Barack Obama needs to participate in a summit this autumn summit with Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, after Moscow granted asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
"We are evaluating the utility of the summit in light of this," White House spokesperson, Jay Carney, said.
The US is “extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step” despite Washington’s official and private requests to expel him, he added.
Carney stressed that Snowden's asylum is an “unfortunate development” in US-Russia relations, undermining the record of law enforcement cooperation between the two states, which was on an upswing since the Boston bombings.
The White House spokesman stated that Washington would soon contact Russian authorities on the issue.
At the same time, Carney said that the US doesn’t want “Mr Snowden to become a problem” in US relations with Russia, which cover “important and broad” issues.
The spokesman stressed the US doesn’t view Edward Snowden as a whistleblower or dissident, reminding that the NSA former contractor is accused of leaking classified information in his home country.
Next week’s talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, were also “up in the air,” a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The US is “extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step” despite Washington’s official and private requests to expel him, he added.
Carney stressed that Snowden's asylum is an “unfortunate development” in US-Russia relations, undermining the record of law enforcement cooperation between the two states, which was on an upswing since the Boston bombings.
The White House spokesman stated that Washington would soon contact Russian authorities on the issue.
At the same time, Carney said that the US doesn’t want “Mr Snowden to become a problem” in US relations with Russia, which cover “important and broad” issues.
The spokesman stressed the US doesn’t view Edward Snowden as a whistleblower or dissident, reminding that the NSA former contractor is accused of leaking classified information in his home country.
Next week’s talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, were also “up in the air,” a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, US Senator John McCain expressed his outrage with Snowden’s Russian asylum and demanded Washington re-examine its relations with Moscow and “strip away the illusions that many Americans have had about Russia.”
“Russia’s action today is a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States,” he said. “It is a slap in the face of all Americans. Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin’s Russia. We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for.”
McCain’s proposed countermeasures include, expansion of the Magnitsky Act, completion of all phases of the US missile defense programs in Eastern Europe and support for Russian “dissidents” like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny.
On Thursday, Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia and was allowed to enter the country’s territory.
According to the issued documents, the former CIA employee who broke PRISM spying scandal to the world is free to stay in Russia until at least July 31, 2014. Then the asylum status may be extended.
With that in hand, Snowden cannot be handed over to the US authorities, even if Washington files an official request. He can now be transported to the United States only if he agrees to go voluntarily.
On receiving the asylum documents, the former NSA contractor left the airport for an unspecified destination; concerns over his security were cited.
“Russia’s action today is a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States,” he said. “It is a slap in the face of all Americans. Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin’s Russia. We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for.”
McCain’s proposed countermeasures include, expansion of the Magnitsky Act, completion of all phases of the US missile defense programs in Eastern Europe and support for Russian “dissidents” like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny.
On Thursday, Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia and was allowed to enter the country’s territory.
According to the issued documents, the former CIA employee who broke PRISM spying scandal to the world is free to stay in Russia until at least July 31, 2014. Then the asylum status may be extended.
With that in hand, Snowden cannot be handed over to the US authorities, even if Washington files an official request. He can now be transported to the United States only if he agrees to go voluntarily.
On receiving the asylum documents, the former NSA contractor left the airport for an unspecified destination; concerns over his security were cited.
Odds and ends .....
http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2013/07/berlin-type-wall-being-built-in-la-are-they-preparing-for-riots-civil-unrest-martial-law-2455254.html
This video, just released on July 30th by George Hemminger, shares of a strange new development popping up across Los Angeles; it appears that a ‘Berlin type wall’ is being built in various locations across the city. What would they need a ‘wall’ like this for? Travyon Martin protest riots leading to civil unrest? Economic collapse? Things are getting more and more strange in America as George shares of military on the streets and ‘the invasion of Los Angeles’…
Obama Defends NSA Domestic Surveillance
UPI
August 1, 2013
August 1, 2013
The Obama administration says it takes privacy criticisms over its surveillance programs seriously while defending them to Congress and the U.S. public.
Obama was to meet Thursday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers — both critics and supporters — to discuss surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Also, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was to be on Capitol Hill to answer House lawmakers’ questions in a classified briefing before the August recess, The Hill reported.
The administration’s efforts attempt to show officials take the privacy criticisms seriously as they defend the overall position by highlighting the protections in place. The efforts come as lawmakers are considering proposals to curb the NSA’s powers.
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