U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

Originally posted by IAMTAT


Oh my God...This has just been released through the Washington Post. On the heels of the Guardian in UK breaking the story of the Obama administration's NSA forcing Verizon to secretly hand over the phone records of over 100 million American citizens...comes THIS, which looks to make the Verizon story look minuscule by comparison.

I have to agree with the New York Times...The Obama Administration HAS now lost all credibility!

www.washingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Wait a second, why is it only Barry that has no cred? These programs have been going on since the 70s.

Why is that Barrach W Bush, which is all we have in Barry - another 2 terms of GWB, is the one who has no cred?

The entire gov't has no credibility and only acts to preserve itself while usurping our liberty! Take of your blinders, man!

Derek

The people who use the "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about," excuse make me sick. This ISN'T about hiding anything, this is about the freedom of every human being on the planet. Most of the world's communications go through the US, meaning this affects the freedoms of everyone on the planet.

If the US is about bringing 'democracy' to the world, then why initiate their own dictatorship? This is by far the biggest threat to everyone. I knew the government BS'd to us from time to time about threats from North Korea and Iran, but I didn't know that the government itself was the main antagonist. This MUST stop or else George Orwell's nightmare will become a reality.

Originally posted by monkofmimir
wow...

This Cannot stand!

this is an unbearable situation, people have to start taking action now or accepting they no longer have rights.

edit on 6-6-2013 by monkofmimir because: (no reason given)

Yes, when will Americans finally say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and take a stand against the creation of a police state!

Forget the partisan bull# - Bush / Obama - they all have the same agenda. It is all well and good to sit in your computer chair and say all the right things, but that isn't enough. Americans have to go out and do what is right. Take your country back - WE THE PEOPLE has to mean something.

reply to post by marg6043
For the love of GOD stop blaming OBAMA. This has been going on since the 70's.

Doesn't surprise me. I already suspected of the NSA knowing everything about everyone all the time already. Spy satellites, cameras, hackers you name it the NSA has got it, they probably know more about you then you do yourself. So much information there running out of places to store it.

reply to post by errck


Yes you are right, I should put the blame where the blame belongs, you, me, our families, our fellow Americans, every tax payer that have voted to allow corruption into our political system

They are all crocks my friend, now I will gladly offer you a shoulder to cry now that you know the truth, is hard but it will get better i promise.

I voted for Obama, because I thought that he'd be less likely tolerate and authorize this type of stuff. Obviously during the Bush years the Patriot Act was passed...the foundation for a lot of this, although the American Government has always spied on it's citizens to some extent. I thought that Romney would be more likely to think this type of thing was okay. Now what? There are literally cameras everywhere, all of our phone and internet and email and messenger records are intercepted and stored. The NSA is building that billions of dollars center to store all of this data, homeland security is buying all the ammo....Alex Jones and David Icke just don't seem too far off now, do they? Shameful. I hate this.

The problem now, as always, is that this will be politicized. The right, like Hannity will blame Obama and the Democrats instead of attacking the issue and homeland security and the NSA head on. The left will blame Bush, rightly so to some degree, but again it will just be a back and forth right against left argument now that will end with nothing being accomplished. Pathetic.

Oh well. What else can be said? This has been said for over 5 years and now that it has come to light it's being paid attention to?


I am more upset that the high end users here on ATS are acting surprised..

Lets not forget who bugged the telecommunications grid in the first place...

Source

TextUntil now, the actual mechanics of how the agency constructed its highly secret U.S. eavesdropping net, code-named Stellar Wind, has never been revealed. But in the weeks following 9/11, as the agency and the White House agreed to secretly ignore U.S. privacy laws and bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, J. Kirk Wiebe noticed something odd. A senior analyst, he was serving as chief of staff for the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (SARC), a sort of skunkworks within the agency where bureaucratic rules were broken, red tape was cut, and innovation was expected.

I liken this to a celebrity or politician who knowingly has a cheating spouse and doesn't do anything about it until it is put in the news. Unfortunately we are Schwarzenegger's wife.

So for all of those that worried about the Xbox One's mandatory Kinect, that must always be connected... Yup, this is exactly why. I came to post this in the Video Games section as well, but ofcourse you people beat me to posting the arcticle. The best thing is, Microsoft's Xbox One is having people pay to be spied on. And the sad part is, they will gladly do it for the next Halo/CoD game.

reply to post by IAMTAT


A simple low tech solution would be to overwhelm them with information. For everything you do, do some additional stuff that is just BS. It would be like what would happen if you sent in a load of BS tax forms with your actual tax form and most other taxpayers followed suit, the IRS would be overwhelmed. I would imagine they are releasing this and making it public, because, they are ready to use the information against people, say, in court, and there was no keeping it hidden.

Mr. President and the NSA,

Going through our private phone records is a lot of work, and very expensive. And since we aren’t huge fans of paying you to invade our privacy, we thought we’d save you the time and save ourselves the money by answering your questions openly, publicly, and transparently:

Q: Are Libertarians associated with any organization with any anti-government goals of any kind?
A: Yes. Our goal is to dismantle most or all of government. Many of our members are associated with many other anti-government, pro-freedom groups as well.

Q: Do Libertarians intend to use violence?
A: No, we leave that to the experts: the Federal government. Our goal is to stop you from engaging in nonstop and unnecessary violence around the world. No terrorist we know of has caused as many needless civilian deaths and as much destruction to property as the U.S. Federal government.. We want to shut down military bases and bring our troops home. At home, we want to end the ludicrous swat team raids on peaceful civilians, and have the government stop using violence against peaceful citizens.

Q: Do you intend to distribute government secrets to enemies of freedom?
A: Right now, the Federal government IS the biggest enemy of American freedom. Distributing Federal government secrets to the Federal government would be as pointess as, well, most government programs.

Q: What other subversive goals do you have?
A: We plan to take back our fundamental rights to live our lives without unjustified interference. We will regain control over our education, our recreation, and the fruits of our labors. You can read a full list of our subversive goals here: www.lp.org/platform .

Originally posted by bgold1212
Can someone explain how a company such as Google can be tapped into by the NSA and willingly expose all the data? Take Gmail for instance, each account features a password with encrypted emails. Does this override the encryptions?

Actually you have it backwards. The NSA is tapped into Google. No your mail is not encrypted it's in plain text. Just because you are logged in under a GMAIL account that has a https doesn't mean your email is encrypted. You have to take extra steps to encrypt your e-mail so anyone getting it see's nothing but gibberish. Https only protects your web session while logged into Gmail not the e-mail being sent.

How it works is you have a digital signature that includes public key and private key. The person say a friend on the other end has same thing. You send a e-mail digitally signed that will also send your public key in the mail to your friend. He/She then retrieves that and imports your trusted public certificate into their certificate manger on their computer. Then your friend sends you a digitally signed e-mail and you do the same and import His/Her certificate. Now both of you can encrypt your communication between each other.

A public key is like handing a person a briefcase to store the data in and the public key is the padlock. The person that you are giving these to doesn't have your private key only you do. Your private key is yours and no one else has it. The same goes for your friend he/she has a private key to unlock the padlock they give you. That's how it works. It works seamlessly behind the scenes, your friend is in your email programs address book and it knows which certificate to use because the certificate is signed with their name and e-mail address. The encryption algorithm used is either AES or MD5 256bit it is safe and cannot be broken even by Big Brother.

All of this seems like it isn't going to go away anytime soon with Big Brother standing over everyone. The government exploits the fact that the majority of e-mails being sent out all across the world have ZERO security or middle man intercepting protection. Setting up a e-mail with a signature can be very easy and it can be hard, it depends on the e-mail client you're setting it up with. This is outside of the scope of this thread. The Computer Help section would be a more suitable place.

Government should be transparent.

Our government is transparent, they see, hear and know everything about us. Privacy does not exist.

This was put in place when Bill Clinton was in office.... Well. Earlier actually, but not to this extent.

reply to post by StockLoc


I completely agree with your first paragraph.

However, I would like to correct you on the second one. The scenario described by Orwell is underway since a long time ago. But that is not all. We are living in a state described by both Orwell and Aldoux Huxley. Besides a totalitarian government, people are being indoctrinated since birth as well. That is the reason why most people come up with the "nothing to hide" idea in the first place.

Welcome to the USSA.

The dismantling of AmeriKa is an ongoing project that has been in place for many years and has accelerated beyond belief over the last 5 years due to our illustrious leader O and TPTB that are running him. He is a plant.

We were warned years ago, over and over again writing on the wall etc.

Clinton administration - Nafta and repeal of the Glass Stegal Act were huge milestones but nobody even noticed and there is much more.

Bush Sr mentioned "New World Order" in a speech.
Its going to be new alright with everyday life regulated to the extreme with no real freedom like we Americans have now..

Originally posted by CaticusMaximus

Originally posted by IAMTAT

I have to agree with the New York Times...The Obama Administration HAS now lost all credibility!

Its sad though... even though hes lost all imaginary credibility he once had, youll still have the diehard worshipers who will never acknowledge that Bama ever did anything wrong, and that you are just either a republican or a racist or both if you think hes not the second coming of Christ. Even on this board, where people are supposed to deny ignorance or something.

Oh well. Momentum seems to be building against the rogue government regime in power ATM. Hopefully it gets enough momentum to actually get somewhere, like an impeachment of the entire administration and charges of treason brought to them.

I have to admit...that I voted for Obama the first time. I will also admit that being bi-racial myself made my vote "feel better" for me personally or so I thought, not to mention, I really did "believe in him" and considered his intentions for "OUR" country good. In all honesty though, I really thought that this guy was going to do "something to make the American life better", and I mean that with the utmost sincerity. I truly did

Less than halfway into his first term, I started having this dumb founded look on my face. I was like "no, what is this guy doing..why did he do that". Kind of like how one feels when you watch your favorite NBA player "not pass the ball when he should or pass the ball when he should not". Completely dumb founded with no answers Like he just threw the game!

I feel embarrassed that I ever voted for him and I could careless who knows. I feel betrayed and I'm mad as HELL! Unfortunately IMO, there's nothing that any of us can do about it now. I did not vote for him for a second term. As a matter of fact, I didn't vote for anyone for President. I didn't allow myself to waste away my time because I was too busy working my ass off to make sure my company (self employed) stayed alive. Thankfully, it did and not due to any incentives as promised by the government for a small business, but due to a hard working team that I appreciate and love dearly who have helped my family stay in business. Those are the ones I thank when times fell extremely hard at work...they were there for my family. Not the "criminal gang" who's in office now.

BUT! This monitoring crap, is simply put...outrageous and insane! You don't tell the American people that it's perfectly okay to give up a few rights while they, the government, go about hunting down whomever they feel and for whatever "unknown" reasons..

Sorry, for the rant, but I'm mad as hell

ETA
I just wanted to add that I'm not a person who falls for anything easily...meaning you have to gain my trust and that's a very tough job. But, this guy charmed his way right into my heart and then broke it into a million pieces I do not walk around with blinders on...but I fell for his crap...the only person in the history of myself that totally took me for a "wild ride". What a shame

I think many people are missing the bigger questions? Why are we seeing story after story all along the same lines?



Something is up fellow members of ATS and readers across the world. Something is very wrong with this picture. If I was to venture a guess I would say they know something even bigger and are testing the waters to see just how we will react.




Just take the last month and ask yourself if this is normal? My gut tells me something is not right.