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Air Force Bans Personnel From Reading News Stories Reporting NSA Scandal
Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace ^ | 10 Jun 2013, 9:47 AM PDT | Kerry Picket

Posted on 06/10/2013 1:09:04 PM PDT by drewh

The Air Force's 624th Operations Center has sent an e-mail with a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that prohibits them from accessing and reading news stories related to the current National Security Agency snooping controversy on the Air Force’s NIPRNET (Non-Secure Internet Protocol Router Network) systems. The 624th Operations Center, located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, is the operational arm for the 24th Air Force’s cyberspace operations capability.

The e-mail, first attained by Shane Vander Hart, President of 4:15 Communications, LLC, posted the memo on his site after receiving an e-mail from a mother whose son is stationed with the U.S. Air Force in the Middle East. The NOTAM warns airmen about the risks of simple web searches regarding the NSA and Verizon phone records scandals:

I wanted to make sure that all of you read this because just doing a simple search could jeopardize your future. In summary, anything to do with the recent news about the NSA and Verizon phone records are considered classified and searching news or records about these on our NIPRNET computers is unauthorized. Thanks!

The executive summary states that documents associated with the NSA story may potentially be classified, even though the information is publicly available on the internet:

Classified documents regarding Verizon phone record collection and court order have been identified as being hosted on publicly accessible Internet Web Sites, most notably "The Guardian" news site. Viewing and/or downloading these documents on Air Force NIPRNET computers could constitute a Classified Message Incident. Therefore, users are not to access these file (sic) for any reason (i.e. viewing, downloading, forwarding, etc.)

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; US: District of Columbia
KEYWORDS: usaf
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To: DuncanWaring

The Tsarnaevs brothers entered the USA
without a passport -— AND after warning.

There is only one possible hypothesis:

THE BOSTON ATROCITY WAS PLANNED BY OBAMA.


21 posted on 06/10/2013 1:33:36 PM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: expat2
Classified material (Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret) has to be clearly marked as such.

The slides on the Washington Post and the Guardian are clearly marked TOP SECRET. The memo on the Guardian website was clearly marked TOP SECRET.

22 posted on 06/10/2013 1:34:52 PM PDT by Strategerist
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To: drewh
Air Force Bans Personnel From Reading News Stories Reporting NSA Scandal

Wussie Generals trying to curry favor with 0bama. Next they'll be doing bombing runs on citizens to kiss his ass.

It's gotten do that I'm ashed to admit I was in the AF.

23 posted on 06/10/2013 1:37:32 PM PDT by The Sons of Liberty (Jesus, Please Save America!)
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To: Strategerist

Seems pbs.org was onto the NSA at least by 2007...

http://web.archive.org/web/20070528061314/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/preemption/nsa.html

Here’s an excerpt:

“What’s the historical relationship between the NSA and the telephone companies? Is it close?”

“Well, it’s very close. For almost 100 years NSA and its predecessors have had an extremely close relationship with the telecommunications companies, and during most of that time, there’s been illegal agreements between the telecommunications company and NSA, where the companies would actually pass information on to NSA very secretly and largely illegally.”

EVERYONE should read the full page at this link.

IT’S FROM 2007. IT’S FROM PBS.ORG.

Seems like everyone in DC knew this crap was going on all along. Seems like the liberal and conservative intelligentsia knew. Seems like the financial oligarchy simply told their news media to not report it all along.


24 posted on 06/10/2013 1:38:31 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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To: nascarnation

I doubt the Tsarnaevs evaded PRISM. I bet the analysts responsible took deep breaths and read their NOTAM about the strict personnel penalties for reporting generally-observed Muslim behavior as “terrorism.” They blanched slightly but decided reporting it wasn’t worth their $200k/yr jobs in Hawai’i. They collectively gave a sigh, and moved on.

HF


25 posted on 06/10/2013 1:40:58 PM PDT by holden (Alter or abolish it yet?)
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To: drewh
German soldiers swearing allegiance to Adolf Hitler, 1934

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb9vqJDVBzk

26 posted on 06/10/2013 1:43:05 PM PDT by Fiji Hill (Io Triumphe!)
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To: The Sons of Liberty
Wussie Generals trying to curry favor with 0bama

I got the exact same warning from IT at work. These are the exact same warnings that were sent out at military bases, DoD civilian facilities, and DoD contractors after the Manning Wikileaks incident (which were mostly documents embarassing to Bush, not Obama).

So what is the value of a forum where all people do is read the poorly-worded and misleading headlines from poorly-written and ill-informed articles, and then post a clueless rant based on the headline, and then completely ignore all the replies from people that actually have an understanding of the issue?

Under long-standing rules, if you look at a classified document on an unclassified DoD or DoD contractor computer, you have created a security incident involving much painful paperwork, your computer hard drive being wiped, and potentially consequences to your career. The warnings are simply to prevent people from doing that. The ACTUAL MARKED documents are hosted on the WP and Guardian websites.

And the leaking of documents doens't magically declassify them. They're still classified.

27 posted on 06/10/2013 1:44:52 PM PDT by Strategerist
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To: Strategerist
The Guardian and Washington Post are posting Top Secret material. You're not allowed to have Top Secret material on a government or military unclassified computer.

But if it's posted in the media, it isn't Top Secret anymore.

28 posted on 06/10/2013 1:45:48 PM PDT by Fiji Hill (Io Triumphe!)
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To: PATRIOT1876

Last time I remember something like this was when they told us at commander’s call not to discuss opinions of President Nixon with the media. That was Vandenberg AFB 1973.


29 posted on 06/10/2013 1:45:53 PM PDT by pfflier
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To: Strategerist
Ditto that. You are absolutely spot on...stupid yes, but it is the policy.
30 posted on 06/10/2013 1:51:53 PM PDT by rightwingextremist1776
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To: drewh

Barack Obama to U.S. military personnel: “Don’t read anything about my scandals.”

George Washington: “When we assumed the solider, we did not lay aside the citizen.”


31 posted on 06/10/2013 1:53:52 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (The new fedgov 'data center' in UT should be dubbed 'the White House Basement.')
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To: Strategerist; Fiji Hill

Yes, technically they are.

But as Fiji Hill and I point out, in recent years a lot of all of these programs has been made public prior to now.

I don’t know about prosecuting cases of someone revealing a document marked top secret when the information is already public. Technically it could be pursued, but I don’t know the outcome in court.

Then the deal is what all us crazies are talking about, the idea of unconstitutional, illegal and immoral acts being done. Revealing those programs is really a service to the nation. Although, technically, for a brief time, the government officials in charge of such programs might consider charging people for leaking documents that prove the wrongdoing which are marked top secret.


32 posted on 06/10/2013 1:54:47 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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To: Strategerist
From the pbs.org page from 2007...

published in 2007. NSA data mining was publicly known in 2007; it was just not widely covered in the mass news media for very long, the news cycle went on and it was basically ignored.

Bill Weaver

Associate professor of law, University of Texas, El Paso; senior adviser to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition [NSWBC]; former Army intelligence officer subcontracted to the NSA.

To what degree did data mining become increasingly the method of the NSA in the years of the Cold War and even after the Cold War ended?

It's a function of technology. When you have the computing power, then data mining will arise automatically, and the computing power is staggering at the National Security Agency. The average person doesn't have a concept of the massive capability that is available to the National Security Agency. It's by far ahead of anything that people can imagine. So once you have that kind of technical capacity where there really is no upper limit on data collection and subjecting that data collection to analysis, then you have to do that, almost as an intelligence instrument. It's so inviting it's almost impossible to ignore.

Is that the mind-set of people in the NSA?

It is a tool. They obviously do many other things -- cryptographic work, content analysis, busting certain signals, these sorts of things -- but yes, it is a mind-set, to collect everything.

Collect everything, sift it, sort it, make sense out of it.

Make sense out of it, yes. ...

Can you give us any idea of what the scale of the NSA's supercomputing operation is, what they're capable of handling?

The NSA doesn't measure computers in computing power; it measures them in acres. That's how they talk about their computers: how many acres of computers they have. ... We're talking about millions of processors that can work on a single problem simultaneously. The amount of computing power is phenomenal. It's just staggering. ...

The important point here is that what we're talking about, especially with data mining, is not a distributed computer network, where you have lots of different computers working on things. Data mining would require that there be a database that would be centralized ... [in which data would] probably be collected from lots of other databases. I call this database OBAD: One Big-Ass Database. ... The NSA is really the only facility that could subject that database to the kind of algorithmic massage that would be necessary to come to conclusions about the threat levels, for example, every American represented. ...

Shortly after 9/11, when the president says to [former NSA director] Gen. [Michael] Hayden, "What more could you do to help us prevent the second wave of attacks here in the United States?," what does that mean that NSA can do?

NSA historically has been prohibited from collecting information on U.S. citizens. There's something called United States Signal Intelligence Directive [USSID] 18 which prohibits the interception of U.S. citizens or targeting U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency. I think that's out the window. ... So number one is the field of NSA's targets expanded.

Number two is you have a shift, if you will, from targeting for intelligence purposes to law enforcement purposes, and that's an enormous shift. That's a shift in mentality, culture, the application of resources. That is a huge shift that has occurred. ...

... [If] NSA turns from its traditional function of intelligence gathering and analysis overseas and turns it on the United States, what kind of operation does it do?

First of all, forget about the idea of the guy with the earphones on, listening to something. That's not what happens. Calls are collected; communications are collected in an automated fashion by the millions. ... What it means is they're collecting everything about everybody. It is that simple.

What programs is the NSA doing under this warrantless wiretapping the president has authorized?

You have these two programs. One program is the one that's been acknowledged: They use point-to-point communications of known people, known targets. The second program is this data mining, data-analysis program, which is collecting information about everybody from everywhere and subjecting that information to very complex and sophisticated algorithms that only the NSA can do because of their computing power, and then coming to a conclusion, based on patterns, of whether or not people represent a threat to the United States.

Now, what represents a threat to the United States is something that they decide. An algorithm can be changed. For example, we have 760 or 800 federal district court judges in this country. Is it a threat to the national security that a federal district court judge is engaging in an extramarital affair? Well, it may be, because that may make that federal district court judge, in the eyes of the federal government, subject to blackmail. So all you have to do is tweak the algorithm, and then you look at the 760 or 800 federal district court judges, their buying patterns, what they do, and you find the pattern that says this person might be having an affair. What then? So they're subjecting everybody they can collect data on to these very sophisticated algorithms to develop a pattern of threat, a pattern of activity that would yield information and intelligence that they can use. ...

33 posted on 06/10/2013 2:00:17 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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To: Strategerist
Prohibiting individuals from even reading material contrary to the established party line is TYRANNY plain and simple. If you don't believe it, you better take a long look in the mirror and see if perhaps you've drunk the kool aid.

Actions contrary to established protocols are something else. Computer systems with classified information should be segregated from unclassified systems and operated on separate networks.

I stick with my contention that the Generals are kissing 0bama's ass.

34 posted on 06/10/2013 2:05:20 PM PDT by The Sons of Liberty (Jesus, Please Save America!)
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35 posted on 06/10/2013 2:06:24 PM PDT by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro can't pass E-verify)
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To: drewh

I remember how the brass hated THE OVERSEAS WEEKLY back in 1968.


36 posted on 06/10/2013 2:14:02 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (Sometimes you need 7+ more ammo. LOTS MORE.)
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To: PATRIOT1876
prohibits them from accessing and reading news stories related to the current National Security Agency snooping controversy on the Air Force’s NIPRNET.

FOUSAF. They have to be kidding.

37 posted on 06/10/2013 2:18:36 PM PDT by Rapscallion (Get a special prosecutor right now!!!)
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To: drewh

But they can read it in the Star & Stripes.

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/us-intelligence-chief-acknowledges-classified-internet-surveillance-program-1.225074

http://www.stripes.com/search-7.269?q=prism+&x=13&y=5


38 posted on 06/10/2013 2:35:15 PM PDT by Red Steel
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To: drewh
Dammit!
How hard is it to get a copy of the directive and document this?

Who wrote it?
Who signed it?

How high does it go?

Are we now cultivating an army of mushrooms?*

...kept in the dark and fed bullshit?

39 posted on 06/10/2013 3:02:30 PM PDT by publius911 (Look for the Union label, then buy something else.)
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To: jeffc
Soon, if Zero has his way, the military will only be a shell of its former self and answer not to the nation or the Constitution, but only to Zero himself.

Looking at the bright side...
How dangerous is an army of poofters?

40 posted on 06/10/2013 3:06:19 PM PDT by publius911 (Look for the Union label, then buy something else.)
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