Posted on 06/07/2013 8:21:46 AM PDT by Perdogg
The US has admitted using a secret system to mine the systems of the biggest technology companies to spy on millions of people's online activity, overshadowing attempts by Barack Obama to force China to abandon its cyber-espionage program.
As concern mounted over the sweeping nature of US surveillance, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, confirmed revelations by the Guardian that the National Security Agency uses companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple to obtain information that includes the content of emails and online files.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
“One name missing from all the hoopla about the electromatic spying? Bubba. Don’t over look that Bubba began the monitoring on his watch with the Echelon Program designed to capture all communications, overseas. It was the forerunner of what we have now, Echelon was an adolescent compared to what is going on today but nonetheless, it was the beginning. Of course then it was foreign collection.”
Actually, Echelon was started in 1947. We can be sure that Bubba used and abused it along with his stolen FBI files on members of Congress, the Mediots and leaders of business.
A short history of Echelon, the grandparent of Prism:
http://echelononline.free.fr/documents/dc/inside_echelon.htm
The world’s most secret electronic surveillance system has its main origin in the conflicts of the Second World War. In a deeper sense, it results from the invention of radio and the fundamental nature of telecommunications. The creation of radio permitted governments and other communicators to pass messages to receivers over transcontinental distances. But there was a penalty - anyone else could listen in. Previously, written messages were physically secure (unless the courier carrying them was ambushed, or a spy compromised communications). The invention of radio thus created a new importance for cryptography, the art and science of making secret codes. It also led to the business of signals intelligence, now an industrial scale activity.
Although the largest surveillance network is run by the US NSA, it is far from alone. Russia, China, France and other nations operate worldwide networks. Dozens of advanced nations use sigint as a key source of intelligence. Even smaller European nations such as Denmark, the Netherlands or Switzerland have recently constructed small, Echelon-like stations to obtain and process intelligence by eavesdropping on civil satellite communications.
During the 20th century, governments realised the importance of effective secret codes. But they were often far from successful. During the Second World War, huge allied codebreaking establishments in Britain and America analysed and read hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese signals. What they did and how they did it remained a cloely-guarded secret for decades afterwards. In the intervening period, the US and British sigint agencies, NSA and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) constructed their worldwide listening network.
The system was established under a secret 1947 “UKUSA Agreement,” which brought together the British and American systems, personnel and stations. To this was soon joined the networks of three British commonwealth countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Later, other countries including Norway, Denmark, Germany and Turkey signed secret sigint agreements with the United States and became “third parties” participants in the UKUSA network.
Besides integrating their stations, each country appoints senior officials to work as liaison staff at the others’ headquarters. The United States operates a Special US Liaison Office (SUSLO) in London and Cheltenham, while a SUKLO official from GCHQ has his own suite of offices inside NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, between Washington and Baltimore.
Under the UKUSA agreement, the five main English-speaking countries took responsibility for overseeing surveillance in different parts of the globe . Britain’s zone included Africa and Europe, east to the Ural Mountains of the former USSR; Canada covered northern latitudes and polar regions; Australia covered Oceania. The agreement prescribed common procedures, targets, equipment and methods that the sigint agencies would use.
Among them were international regulations for sigint security , which required that before anyone was admitted to knowledge of the arrangements for obtaining and handling sigint, they must first undertake a lifelong commitment to secrecy.
Every individual joining a UKUSA sigint organisation must be “indoctrinated” and, often “re-indoctrinated” each time they are admitted to knowledge of a specific project. They are told only what they “need to know”, and that the need for total secrecy about their work “never ceases”.
The government has developed the tools to turn this country into a police state overnight. Our freedom and liberty are dependent upon trusting government to exercise these capabilities responsibly and not violating our privacy and rights. When you have out of control agencies like the IRS, DOJ, EPA, etc., we should be very afraid.
Coupled with the acknowledgement that government had undertaken a seven-year program to monitor the telephone calls of potentially millions of people in the US
It seems people like Alex Jones and many others, in regards to government, were absolutely correct all along.
When I went to bed last night I thought I was living in the year 2013. But I woke up this morning, read Drudge, and realized we’re all really living in 1984.
Unfortunately, this government has more tools at its disposal than Orwell ever dreamed possible.
And tragically, about half the people see no problem with revealing all personal information to anyone that wants it.
If this country was still populated by the sort of people who won WWII, Facebook’s stock price, and perhaps that of Google, Yahoo, and their ilk, would drop to zero today, and not ever recover. (I picked Facebook, since Zuckerberg is the single most influential person in the world when it comes to convincing people to “share” all their personal information. What could go wrong?)
Remember when it was illegal to read someone else’s mail without their permission, or mess with their mailbox. I think (?) it still is. Maybe the Post Office is due for a rebound?
Meanwhile, as I type, Big Brother monitors.....
If the GOP can’t figure out how to make hay with this one, we need a third party, and soon.
All of you that supported the Patriot Act, thank you.
This idea...I am soo afraid I need big government to help me so don’t complain that welfare checks go out. You made the government bigger, too... when some of us were saying oppose it. The government is almost at a point of no return when the powers to be are now defending spying on us is all good to them. Sorry, I am so angry about them spying on us all. For what.. 7 years...It’s opposition gathering and they in turn, drive the news/agenda/politics with that research.
" Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.
In response, Clapper replied quickly: "No, sir." "
Clapper denied NSA surveillance before Senate panel
THE HILL ^ | 6/6/2013 | Carlo Muñoz
Huh?
It was the GOP insiders and Bush who concocted the Patriot Act and signed it into law...Many of us recoiled as Bush signed it...
Ya knew damn well it would be used against Americans.
Or did ya?
it was the GOP insiders and Bush who concocted the Patriot Act and signed it into law...Many of us recoiled as Bush signed it...
Not only that, GOP cam whores like Grahamnesty are already defending the kenyan on this before we even have all the facts. They are going to immunize Obama by saying this is bipartisan. Evidence will be destroyed and we will never know what really went down.
A “terrorist” is one who is prepared to use violence or its threat to strike terror in the hearts of its opponents to demoralize them and force its goals. I certainly am not in that group and I suspect that virtually everyone at Free Republic shares my sentiment.
The tools are there. When a building is knocked down, the hard work is the laying of the wires and explosives over a period of months. The easy part is pressing the button to activate them. This government has been laying its tools for years.
You bet cha
And ya tell some people the democrats and republicans are all riding in the same limo and they just can’t believe it as it rains clues...
But the Tsarnaevs got through anyhow.
Makes you wonder if somone deliberately put them on the fast track.
And these foreign Muslims were invited into the U.S. by government, and were as sophisticated and a group of 13 year olds...
By the way, the government didn't miss the Boston bomb terrorist, as it was the government providing them hundreds of thousands in tax dollars, gifts, and prizes.
All this while government was spying on you, me and Ma and Pa.
If that doesn't tell you he's a foreign agent...
Exactly
And ya tell some people the democrats and republicans are all riding in the same limo and they just can’t believe it as it rains clues...
More like a limo for the Dems and a short bus for the GOP. But the GOP is content with that deal as long as they get a supply of cute interns and money for booze/blow/hookers.
There are a few patriots on capitol hill but they are current overwhelmed by the selfish mafia running the GOP.
It's no biggy...Everyone lighten up...Government will fix this..
Like Hillary says:
What difference does it make?
You betcha!
Oh yeah!
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