“BYE BYE BUGGIE”

Jon Stewart mocked lawmakers and President Barack Obama for trying to scare Americans into supporting the Patriot Act.

He played clips of several senators blasting Sen. Rand Paul, who forced the expiration of some provisions of the legislation passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“I’ve run for president twice, but I would never stoop to something like this,” said Sen. John McCain, in one video clip.

Stewart showed a photo of Sarah Palin and wondered how McCain had not yet learned not to set himself up for jokes about his former running mate.

“I imagine McCain out jogging with an out-of-shape friend, and he’s like, you’re the most useless running mate I’ve ever had – what, why are you laughing?” Stewart said.

To celebrate the break in the collection of bulk metadata by phone companies, Stewart decided to call an old friend – John Oliver.

“Penis, penis, penis,” he shouted into the phone to a bewildered Oliver.

Stewart pointed out that the surveillance provisions had not prevented terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, and the anti-Islam comic show in Garland, Texas – even though the government was tracking each of those suspects.

“If the Patriot Act is acting so poorly, why do we have to keep it?” he said.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

CODE NAME "VERAX"

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ONCE THOUGHT HE WAS BEING "PATRIOTIC" 

VERAX - From the Latin dictionary: or -us| veracissimus -a -um ADJ speaking the truth| truthful (people); conveying the truth (things)

Yes Edward Snowden wants his country to believe that he had our best interests at heart when he defied an obligation to his country - and became rogue do-gooder-whistle -blower - gone awry. Prior to coming out, Snowden code named himself "Verax"

Often is the case of late, American's think bashing their government, bitching about its every move, wanting it disbanded, wanting to over take it - somehow they think this stance equates to or is called "Patriotism" or better yet "Patriots". Yet these same "patriots" are the first in line when this diabolical government owes them something!

This latest espionage story sounds all to familiar, the smell of treason, the all to familiar disgruntled employee doling out the dirt.

Those for and against this issue are all over the board, Democrats and American Taliban-ers agree and disagree with each other.

Fifty six percent of Americans agree with the NSA efforts to data mine phone records. Currently 4.9 million Americans are entitled a secret clearance, 1.4 hold a top secret clearance [the highest] by the U.S. Government. Currently BAH [Booz Allen Hamilton] does 5.8 billion dollars worth of services for the Government.

How does a low-level, high school drop out, GED educated traitor get access to such high level security?

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old defense contractor and former CIA employee, revealed himself on Sunday. He's already being compared to world-famous whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.

Here's what you need to know about him:

The man who blew the lid on the National Security Agency’s surveillance program has stepped out of the shadows.

“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” Snowden told the Guardian from a hotel in Hong Kong.

“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” he added.

Since revealing documents that show the NSA was obtaining millions of Americans’ phone records and another program that allowed the government to gather information about the online activities of foreigners abroad via nine leading Internet companies, a diverse list of critics–from liberal privacy advocates to conservative libertarians–have expressed outrage over the government’s aggressive snooping.

Obama has defended the government’s practices. He insisted the country must strike a balance between keeping Americans safe while also meeting privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, Snowden is already being compared to world-famous whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers and Bradley Manning who is on trial now. Here’s what he has revealed about himself so far:

He (briefly) served in the Army: Snowden was brought up in Elizabeth City, N.C., but his family later moved to Maryland, where he attended a community college. He said he was trying to get credits to obtain a high school diploma, which he lacked. He never finished the college program, but did eventually obtained his GED. In 2003, Snowden enlisted in the U.S. Army, wanting to join the Special Forces and fight in the Iraq war because he “felt like he had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” Snowden told the Guardian. He became disenchanted, however, saying his trainers “seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone.” Snowden was eventually discharged after breaking both legs.

He worked in the CIA: Following his brief stint in the Army, he got a job at an NSA facility, where he worked as a security guard. He eventually went to the CIA where he worked on IT security. In 2007, Snowden was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, and was responsible for maintaining computer security. This is, according to him, where he had access to a number of classified documents and learned about the U.S. surveillance program. Snowden left the CIA in 2009 to take a job working with the NSA as an employee of various contractors. Most recently, he was living in Hawaii with his girlfriend.

He claims he had big-time access: While working for the government, Snowden claimed: “I had full access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community, and undercover assets all around the world.” In a video posted on the Guardian‘s website, Snowden said that “any analyst at any time can target anyone,” adding, “I, sitting at my desk, certainly have the authorities to wiretap anyone–from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the president.”

He fled to Hong Kong: On May 20, Snowden told his superiors at Booz Allen Hamilton, a firm where he said he earned $200,000 a year working on a contract with the NSA, that he was seeking treatment for his epilepsy and would need some time off. He then flew to Hong Kong where he spoke to reporters. Snowden said he picked Hong Kong because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right political dissent.”

He’s hoping for asylum: Snowden said he’s left his hotel room about three times and is worried about being spied on. According to the Guardian, he lined the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent anyone from listening in and wears a hood over his head while on his laptop entering passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from seeing him. His plan? “The only thing I can do is sit here and hope the Hong Kong government does not deport me,” he said. “My predisposition it to seek asylum in a country with shared values. The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland.”

He’s disappointed in Obama: Snowden donated $500 in 2012 to Ron Paul and told the U.K. paper he voted for a third-party candidate in 2008. “I believed in Obama’s promises,” he said. “I was going to disclose it [but waited because of his election]. He continued with the policies of his predecessor.”

Some GOPers want Snowden extradited: The White House has remained mum since Snowden outed himself. But Republican Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House’s Homeland Security subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence has called for Snowden to be extradited.

“If Edward Snowden did in fact leak the NSA data as he claims, the United States government must prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law and begin extradition proceedings at the earliest date,” the New York lawmaker said in a statement. “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”

Rep. Mike Rogers, who heads the House Intelligence Committee said Snowden has “released enough information to literally be dangerous.”

Some are heralding Snowden as a hero: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, tells The Daily Beast that Snowden is a “hero.”

“People who respect or admire what I did, they may not realize it right now, but before this is over, they’ll recognize that he deserves great admiration,” Ellsberg added. “And people who hate what I did, can hate.”

An online petition, created Sunday, to pardon Snowden, has more than 10,000 signatures.

I would tell Mr. Snowden and his kind, that even Napoleon Bonaparte once thought he was a being a "patriot", and we all know how well that turned out for him!

Under current laws, what the NSA has done and is doing now is legal, the President has encouraged debate. Now is the time to, if we truly do have a problem with the PATRIOT ACT, to change it, but in some form or fashion, we have to know who is dealing with terrorists.

UPDATE: Edward Snowden is on the run [as he needs to be]. The Hong Kong hotel he was holed up in, he has since vacated and his whereabouts are unknown, but one could assume that he is probably public enemy number one for terra firma.

Related:

What You Should Know About The Intelligence Community’s Contractors.

Espionage Act

What you need to know about Booz Allen Hamilton

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

VERIZON SPYGATE, JUST THE FACTS

NSA'S DATA MINING PROGRAM

BREAKING UPDATE 6/7/13 12:56

The group called "Anonymous" leaks NSA Documents.

Maybe, just maybe. if House Republicans had voted to repeal the PATRIOT Act 37 times. Then the NSA looking at your phone records would not be an issue.

Hot off the heels of the revelation that Verizon has been supplying the National Security Agency (NSA) with phone records for all domestic calls, the Washington Post reveals the NSA and FBI are data mining the servers of nine technology companies, “extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”

Companies participating in the program are obliged to accept “a directive” from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit. In exchange, the companies receive immunity from lawsuits.

The broad, top secret program, code-named PRISM, was established in 2007 with Microsoft as its first partner but now counts Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple among its membership. Twitter is notably absent from the list.

PRISM appears to closely resemble the warrant-less surveillance orders issues by President Bush after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks rather than a dragnet data collection operation, but the NSA has the capability to search through the company’s servers for whatever it likes. To collect data, analysts in Fort Meade key in search terms designed to produce an “at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s ‘foreignness.’”

But even when meeting that relatively low threshold, by its very nature the system likely collects information about Americans who have had communications with the target, and analysts are trained to chain through two degrees of separation of contacts from the initial target. This chaining means that many Americans are likely the subject of “incidental” surveillance.

Analysts have access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities” while the Skype partnership allows for monitoring of any combination of “audio, video, chat, and file transfers”, and Google allows surveillance of “Gmail, voice and video chat, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms.” The career intelligence officer who leaked documents about the program to the Washington Post noted “they quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type.”

Apple and Facebook have both denied participation in the program, with Apple saying they've “never heard” of it, and Facebook flatly denying they provide “any government organization with direct access” to their servers. Google has been slightly less clear, but told Washington Post they lack a back door for the government to obtain access to private user data and care “deeply” about the privacy of users.

An internal presentation on the operation obtained by the Post claims PRISM is the most frequent contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, saying it was cited in 1,477 articles last year and accounts for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports within the NSA. A parallel initiative also revealed by the Post, codenamed BLARNEY, is an ongoing data collection program that gathers “metadata” such as address packets and device signatures as it streams past choke points in internet infrastructure.

Additionally, since the writing of this blog:

Amie Stepanovich, Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Domestic Surveillance Project noted that the 51 percent threshold reportedly used by NSA analysts not only “leaves a lot of room for error” initially, but combined with the chaining effect and how studies of private data brokers have shown that innate qualities like “foreignness” are often quite difficult to determine, the chance of an American citizens’ data being incidentally caught up in the program could actually be “incredibly high.”

The Washington Post has now backtracked on their claims that government had direct access to servers, editing their report to include more responses from companies and this statement: “it is possible that the conflict between the PRISM slides and the company spokesmen is the result of imprecision on the part of the NSA author. In another classified report obtained by The Post, the arrangement is described as allowing ‘collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,’ rather than directly to company servers.” This change only strengthens the argument that the NSA had access to copies of the data.

The National Security Agency and the FBI don't bear all the responsibility for the revelation that Verizon is turning phone records over to the government. That responsibility lies with the members of Congress who voted for the PATRIOT Act, as well as extensions of it and the provisions related to collecting those records. Over 100 people currently serving in the House and Senate voted for the original Act in 2001. Last year, over 300 voted to extend a key provision.

The problem with all this is again, this is a by-product of G.W. Bush regime. Where was the anger in 2001 [and 2011] when congress passed this and Bush signed into law? Who's to blame ?

At the end of the day, in this time of terror, this is a necessary evil. I personally do not feel violated that my phone numbers are monitored - what should be more irritating is that Facebook, Google and others monitor your activities much more than NSA, where is the outcry over this?

This is the sign of the times - of a post 9/11 country, while you may find it intrusive, I find it acceptable, for the failure not to monitor, is just another invitation to another horrible terrorist act on this great land.


NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West