Senator Bernie Sanders Asks NSA If It Spies On Congress
The real life magic-mushroom, banana dictatorship envisioned by George Orwell just went full retard.
From VT Senator Bernie Sanders:
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today asked the National Security Agency director whether the agency has monitored the phone calls, emails and Internet traffic of members of Congress and other elected officials.“Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?” Sanders asked in a letter to Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director. “Spying” would include gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business?”Sanders said he was “deeply concerned” by revelations that American intelligence agencies harvested records of phone calls, emails and web activity by millions of innocent Americans without any reason to even suspect involvement in illegal activities. He also cited reports that the United States eavesdropped on the leaders of Germany, Mexico, Brazil and other allies.Sanders emphasized that the United States “must be vigilant and aggressive in protecting the American people from the very real danger of terrorist attacks,” but he cited U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon’s recent ruling that indiscriminate dragnets by the NSA were probably unconstitutional and “almost Orwellian.”Sanders has introduced legislation to put strict limits on sweeping powers used by the National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to secretly track telephone calls by millions of innocent Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing.The measure would put limits on records that may be searched. Authorities would be required to establish a reasonable suspicion, based on specific information, in order to secure court approval to monitor business records related to a specific terrorism suspect. Sanders’ bill also would put an end to open-ended court orders that have resulted in wholesale data mining by the NSA and FBI. Instead, the government would be required to provide reasonable suspicion to justify searches for each record or document that it wants to examine.
Uhm... yes?
FLASH: RAND PAUL TO SUE OBAMA OVER NSA SPYING
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is leading a class-action lawsuit with hundreds of thousands of Americans against President Barack Obama’s National Security Agency (NSA) over its spying on the American people, Breitbart News has learned.
Sen. Paul will be discussing the lawsuit in an exclusive appearance on Fox News with host Eric Bolling at 10 PM ET on Friday. Breitbart News has learned that Paul will file the class action lawsuit soon in the D.C. District Court and that he will be filing it as an individual, not as a U.S. Senator. For a U.S. Senator to file a such a class action lawsuit against the President of the United States would be extremely rare.
With regard to NSA spying, this is the first class action lawsuit against such activity. This allows the American people to join together in a grassroots manner against President Obama’s NSA for the first time in the legal system, as all other lawsuits have been individuals suing against the agency.
The focus of the lawsuit will be how the NSA's actions violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The lawsuit will target the NSA’s metadata program.
Via Paul’s campaign website, more than 300,000 Americans have already indicated they will sign up for the suit when it is officially filed in D.C. District court. Americans can join the lawsuit by visiting Paul’s website.
The class action suit from Sen. Paul against the president comes on the heels of two different conflicting court rulings in individual suits against the NSA, with one court ruling that the NSA was within its bounds to spy on Americans shortly after a different court ruled the NSA’s actions were unconstitutional. The conflicting decisions all but guarantee an eventual Supreme Court-level case on the matter.
NSA building a ‘quantum computer’ to break all forms of encryption
The National Security Agency is building a ‘quantum computer’ capable of breaking any encryption used to protect the most vital records around the world.
The US spy agency, shown to have deliberately weakened encryption standards, is seeking an advanced-speed, “cryptologically useful quantum computer” that can bypass encryption that currently shields global banking, business, medical and government records.
The quantum computer is part of a $79.7 million research project called “Penetrating Hard Targets,”according to documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reported by The Washington Post. Much of the program is hosted in a College Park, Maryland laboratory under classified contracts.
The NSA’s own technology capable of shattering all forms of public key encryption - including that which protects state secrets - is no closer to success than any other attempts in the scientific community, according to the leaked documents.
NSA stands for ‘No Such Amendment’: Intelligence agency violates US Constitution
Published time: January 01, 2014 09:20
For the first time in history, all three branches of American government are complicit in violating the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution by facilitating illegal surveillance, Ray McGovern, a former CIA officer, told RT.
The persecution-induced suicide of online activist Aaron Swartz, the sentencing of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and the Edward Snowden asylum saga have all made 2013 the year that saw a clampdown on whistleblowers. Yet the US government’s efforts to stifle this kind of activity will hardly stop the new tech-savvy generation from leaking sensitive data, McGovern believes, describing whistleblowing as “unstoppable.”
The former CIA officer says the NSA has been dubbed ‘No Such Amendment’ for its bulk surveillance, which is in violation of the US Constitution, particularly its Fourth Amendment prohibiting groundless and warrantless searches and seizures.
RT: Do you think in the future the work of whistleblowers will be discouraged from all that we’ve seen this year, the clampdown on whistleblowers throughout the globe?
Ray McGovern: Yes, their work will be discouraged but it will be inevitable. In other words the discouragement will appear more and more crass, more and more ineffectual because the cat is out of the bag. There’s this new generation, technical people, without whom people like NSA and General Hayden and General Alexander cannot exist. As Julian Assange said recently, he encourages this new generation to play the role that the industrial generation did in preparing the way for the 20th century. Seize the initiative, act courageously, realize what you have -- what Julian calls “extraordinary power” – they can’t make the systems work without you and when you talk about a system’s administrator, it is not just one system. It is the administrator that ties together a whole network of systems. The cat is out of the bag. Those who cannot bear, as Martin Luther King Jr. used to say, the natural medicines of air and light on what they are doing, are going to be very frantic, will try to stop this, but it is unstoppable and that’s good news for the world and not just the United States.
RT: Talking about Aaron Swartz, will there be a future for guys like him, computer whiz activists?
RM: Yes. You know General Hayden, who actually is the first one to let himself be suborned by Dick Cheney and George Bush into violating our Constitution. Now it may appear quaint to people on the outside of the US, but this Constitution of the US is a sacred document. It has a fourth amendment and that Fourth Amendment [spells out] the right of the people to be secure. OK, secure from “searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, except upon probable cause,” describing the things to be seized or the person to be seized, looked at. Now that constitution, that amendment has been violated to the point where wags friends of mine have called the NSA, “No Such Amendment”. It used to be “No Such Agency”, now it is “No Such Amendment” and Hayden himself before the national press club denied that probable cause is in the Fourth Amendment. It is right here, I can read it to you, if you wish.
RT: But ultimately, will Snowden’s revelations change anything? Is it going to change the NSA or the way the people approach trying to protect their privacy?
RM: That is a big question. For the first time in my professional life, we have a situation where not only the executive and the Congress, but huge parts of our judicial system, the three branches of our government, are all complicit in either winking at or endorsing or letting pass these gross violations of our Constitution. Now the cat is out of the bag. One judge has said this is almost Orwellian, and you know what Orwell stands for. It is almost Orwellian and it is crass violation of this Constitution. Well, another judge says, “Well, it may be not so bad.” So it is going to play out in the courts, but before that could happen, because it will take many years, it’s going to get done in Congress. And the person who is responsible for the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin, he is in high dudgeon. He is as angry as can be. He said, I never intended the Patriot Act to be interpreted in such a way, by secret interpretation, to allow bulk collection of everything we type, everything we listen to, everything we communicate. It’s has gotten out of hand and now we’ll see if the President of the US has enough courage to enforce the Constitution that he, like I and like millions of others Americans swore a solemn oath to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The former CIA officer says the NSA has been dubbed ‘No Such Amendment’ for its bulk surveillance, which is in violation of the US Constitution, particularly its Fourth Amendment prohibiting groundless and warrantless searches and seizures.
RT: Do you think in the future the work of whistleblowers will be discouraged from all that we’ve seen this year, the clampdown on whistleblowers throughout the globe?
Ray McGovern: Yes, their work will be discouraged but it will be inevitable. In other words the discouragement will appear more and more crass, more and more ineffectual because the cat is out of the bag. There’s this new generation, technical people, without whom people like NSA and General Hayden and General Alexander cannot exist. As Julian Assange said recently, he encourages this new generation to play the role that the industrial generation did in preparing the way for the 20th century. Seize the initiative, act courageously, realize what you have -- what Julian calls “extraordinary power” – they can’t make the systems work without you and when you talk about a system’s administrator, it is not just one system. It is the administrator that ties together a whole network of systems. The cat is out of the bag. Those who cannot bear, as Martin Luther King Jr. used to say, the natural medicines of air and light on what they are doing, are going to be very frantic, will try to stop this, but it is unstoppable and that’s good news for the world and not just the United States.
RT: Talking about Aaron Swartz, will there be a future for guys like him, computer whiz activists?
RM: Yes. You know General Hayden, who actually is the first one to let himself be suborned by Dick Cheney and George Bush into violating our Constitution. Now it may appear quaint to people on the outside of the US, but this Constitution of the US is a sacred document. It has a fourth amendment and that Fourth Amendment [spells out] the right of the people to be secure. OK, secure from “searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, except upon probable cause,” describing the things to be seized or the person to be seized, looked at. Now that constitution, that amendment has been violated to the point where wags friends of mine have called the NSA, “No Such Amendment”. It used to be “No Such Agency”, now it is “No Such Amendment” and Hayden himself before the national press club denied that probable cause is in the Fourth Amendment. It is right here, I can read it to you, if you wish.
RT: But ultimately, will Snowden’s revelations change anything? Is it going to change the NSA or the way the people approach trying to protect their privacy?
RM: That is a big question. For the first time in my professional life, we have a situation where not only the executive and the Congress, but huge parts of our judicial system, the three branches of our government, are all complicit in either winking at or endorsing or letting pass these gross violations of our Constitution. Now the cat is out of the bag. One judge has said this is almost Orwellian, and you know what Orwell stands for. It is almost Orwellian and it is crass violation of this Constitution. Well, another judge says, “Well, it may be not so bad.” So it is going to play out in the courts, but before that could happen, because it will take many years, it’s going to get done in Congress. And the person who is responsible for the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner from Wisconsin, he is in high dudgeon. He is as angry as can be. He said, I never intended the Patriot Act to be interpreted in such a way, by secret interpretation, to allow bulk collection of everything we type, everything we listen to, everything we communicate. It’s has gotten out of hand and now we’ll see if the President of the US has enough courage to enforce the Constitution that he, like I and like millions of others Americans swore a solemn oath to support and defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
From Courts to Congress, NSA Spying Will Not Be Stopped in Washington DC by Michael Boldin
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