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A former FBI counterterrorism agent has hinted at a vast and intrusive surveillance network used by the U.S. government to monitor its own citizens. Tim Clemente admitted as much when he appeared on CNN Wednesday night. Discussing the Boston Marathon attack and past telephone conversations of Katherine Russell and her now deceased husband, suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Clemente said that those conversations would be available to investigators. Clemente discussed the issue in this exchange with host Erin Burnett, as recorded by the CNN transcript...

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out. BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible. CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.” >Snip< “All of that...

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said on Tuesday that law enforcement may have known in advance about the Boston Marathon suspects’ bombing plans. Speaking to local Atlanta Channel 2 Action News, Chambliss said, “There now appears that may have been some evidence that was obtained by one of the law enforcement agencies that did not get shared in a way that it could have been. If that turns out to be the case, then we have to determine whether or not that would have made a difference.”

In the late 1970s, Central Intelligence Agency had information that China might have provided a fairly comprehensive package of proven nuclear weapons design information to Pakistan, a recently declassified document has revealed.  According to recently declassified CIA data, obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA had evidence suggesting close Pakistan-China nuclear cooperation, to the point of facilitating a nuclear weapons capability, although the intelligence community saw this as possibly a special case based on an alliance that had existed since 1963.  "This allegation has come up before, for example in a State Department...

The Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. Asked if the Data Center would hold the data of American citizens,  Alexander said, "No...we don't hold data on U.S. citizens," adding that the NSA staff "take protecting your civil liberties and privacy as the most important thing that they do, " Thomas Drake who worked at the NSA says Americans should be concerned about letting the government go too far in the name of security. The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state....

Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency (NSA) who was charged under the espionage act after he highlighted waste, fraud and illegal activity at the intelligence agency, spoke at a National Press Club Luncheon about the national intelligence community and its attitude towards whistle-blowing.

In an attempt to pursue terrorists across the globe, the Obama administration has proposed legislation that will give spy agencies access to citizens’ finances. Currently, the FBI is the only agency that has access to these databases, but the plan will give the CIA and NSA the same access. So does this proposition take the war on terror too far? Private investigator Kenneth Cummins explains the legality of the legislation.

Reuters excerpt

More than a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a set of extraordinary and secretive surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency has been institutionalized, and they have grown. These special programs are conducted under the code name Ragtime, and are divided into several subcomponents, according to the new book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady. (I purchased a copy this morning.) The authors, both journalists who cowrote a previous book about special operations in the military, have dug deep into the code names and operational nitty gritty of the NSA's secretive...

Obama’s Amazing AchievementsHis military intervention prompted some stunning reversals. By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America:(a) War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military “progress� in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive American intervention in an oil-producing Arab country, without prior congressional approval or majority public support — and at a time of soaring deficits — is well worth supporting, in a sort of “my president, right or wrong,� fashion. Apparently, liberal foreign policy is returning to the pre-Vietnam days of the hawkish “best...

The White House has published an internal memo to calm tension between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who is seeking increased control over covert operations, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The classified order asserts the Central Intelligence Agency's direct authority over secret missions abroad, but also reminds the agency to work closely with Blair, who heads the US intelligence establishment, a US intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to the LA Times, Blair was seeking more control over missions that include drone strikes and paramilitary operations in Pakistan. Blair...

On paper, it was a promotion. But Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta turned down a White House offer to become the next director of national intelligence anyway. President Barack Obama last week fired his intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, without an immediate successor teed up. People familiar with the matter said the White House had expected Mr. Blair would stick around until a replacement was found. Mr Blair declined. The struggle to find a successor has highlighted the challenges of filling an ill-defined job fraught with political tripwires. Mr. Panetta is one of a number of people who have turned...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM

The National Security Agency has shot down a Freedom of Information Act request for details about an elusive presidential order that may allow the government to deploy the military within the United States for the supposed sake of cybersecurity. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports on Tuesday that their recent FOIA request for information about a top-secret memo signed last month by US President Barack Obama has been rejected [PDF]. Now attorneys for EPIC say they plan to file an appeal to get to the bottom of Presidential Policy Directive 20. Although the executive order has been on the...

The White House is being asked by attorneys to explain a top-secret presidential policy directive signed last month that may allow for the domestic deployment of the US military for the sake of so-called cybersecurity. Lawyers with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the office of US President Barack Obama in hopes if hearing more about an elusive order signed in secrecy in mid-October but only made public in an article published this week in the Washington Post. According to persons close to the White House who have seen the...

  "German Islamists Target Youth on the Internet" By Christoph Sydow 11/01/2012 "Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan." PHOTO CAPTION: "A growing community of German-speaking Islamists has developed on the Internet. Aiming to find new recruits, they glorify jihad and call for attacks on Germany. A new study warns that such online propaganda might foster a new generation of terrorists." SNIPPET: "International terrorist groups like al-Qaida recognized the importance of the Internet for recruiting new supporters early on." SNIPPET: "Intelligence services can also take advantage of the anonymity of Internet forums to deliberately plant false information or obtain insider...

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency run its pervasive domestic spying apparatus... Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S. citizen without warrants under the code-name Stellar Wind.

< The Japanese major television network JNN (and others) reported on its national news today as well as website a hefty diplomatic faux pas by the Obama White House and national security team in advance of White House's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon's trip here to Tokyo.The gaffe is referred to in this short video clip (at link) of JNN Network News today.Go to link, hit white arrow in center of photo to stream; stream may be up one more day and may not work on all systems. Hilarious.

The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far beyond that does the feds' reach really go, though? The attacks of September 11, 2001 were instrumental in getting the US government to establish counterterrorism agencies to curb future tragedies. Some officials say that they haven't stopped there, though, and are spying on everyone in America. Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the government is going beyond what most of America thinks they do in order to keep...

The head of the National Security Agency on Monday denied reports that NSA’s new data center in Utah would collect and store data about Americans, including their e-mails and web-browsing habits. The $2 billion data center in Bluffdale, Utah, will house massive supercomputers capable of storing and analyzing vast quantities of data when it comes online next year, but U.S. ArmyGen. Keith B. Alexander reiterated NSA’s insistence it does not unlawfully conduct surveillance of Americans. (Snip) However, “I’m not going to come out and say what we are doing” at NSA, he added. “That would be ludicrous, too.”

Airborne troops from Russia and the Untied States would hold joint anti-terror drills in the U.S. state of Colorado between May 24 and 31, spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry Col. Alexander Kucherenko said on Thursday. According to the spokesman, it will be the first time that the Russian airborne forces have held exercises with the U.S. airborne forces on the U.S. territory. "According to the exercise scenario, soldiers of the two countries will hold a tactical airborne operation, including the reconnaissance of imaginary terrorists' camp and a raid," Kucherenko said. "After the operation, a helicopter will evacuate the soldiers,"...

According to reports, the U.S. and Russian military will be engaging in an anti-terrorism exercise that will involve Russian paratroopers using U.S. weapons to “take and hold” the main facilities of the CIA and Denver International Airport in Colorado and the National Security Agency in Utah. (Related: Learn about the hypothetical ‘war games’ the U.S. and China have been playing) The European Union Times has more on the report announcing this exercise from the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation: Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Alexander Kucherenko publically announced this 24-21 May “anti-terror drill” this Friday past noting that this...

Just a month ago we raised more than a proverbial eyebrow when we noted the creation of the NSA's Utah Data Center (codename Stellar Wind) and William Binney's formidable statement that "we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state". Democracy Now has the former National Security Agency technical director whistleblower's first TV interview in which he discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state." National...

Despite the years of cruel reality, Margaret Bentham still seemed incredulous as she told her story, a story she once thought she could never share. But with quiet dignity she summed up the ordeal she and her businessman husband Stuart, a former British Army officer, have endured at the hands of the CIA. ‘We were robbed of a business worth millions,’ she said. ‘We were plunged into financial ruin. But the worst thing was, not only were we deprived of justice, we couldn’t tell a soul.’ Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126696/Margaret-Stuart-Bentham-Robbed-British-court-orders-CIA.html#ixzz1rTq3o4X4

Freedom to pursue your own happiness was guaranteed in the US Constitution. It was a novel ground-breaking earth-shattering ideal that has left statists scrambling ever since. The way they take away your freedoms is one at a time. First they go after freedoms that most people deem unnecessary or repugnant, like using drugs or advertising tabacco. Then they go after the freedoms that matter to you, like speech, the right to defend yourself, buying light bulbs or so many others that are currently under attack. Marijuana prohibitions are supported by law enforcement lobbyists who cash in big time. Just follow...

Just reading "New Details on NSA‘s ’Spy Center‘ and Secrets From Domestic Eavesdropping Operation ’Stellar Wind’-- The Blaze/ March 16, 2012" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2860168/posts reminded me that I wanted to report to you all that the Secret Service spied on a post I set up to report on Obama using the athletic fields of our university here on the eastside of Seattle. On Feb. 17 Obama made one of his frequent fundraising visits, this time to Washington State to shake down a couple billionaires who live near by. He spoke at Boeing in the morning, then flew to Kirkland. The trip was...

Articles posted about the "Utah Data Center and NSA's operation "Stellar Wind" are disappearing off of FreeRepubilc, as though they were never there!

One of the most top-secret Pentagon departments —the same that spawned America’s drones, military robots, electromagnetic guns and other sci-fi weaponry —is about to lose its top officer to Google. Regina Dugan oversaw the development of some of the US military’s most marvelous high tech accomplishments as director of Darpa, but the head of the DoD’s research lab is parting ways with the Pentagon to take on a role with Google. Not even three years after she took on the role as the first female director of the America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, Regina Dugan is now...

A cybersecurity bill introduced by Republican Senator John McCain could dramatically expand the domestic reach of U.S. intelligence agencies and potentially give them massive troves of emails, civil liberties advocates said. "This is a privacy nightmare that will eventually result in the military substantially monitoring the domestic, civilian Internet," said Michelle Richardson of the American Civil Majority Leader Harry Reid, the McCain bill stresses voluntary information sharing instead of regulation of critical industries by the Department of Homeland Security. McCain's bill was introduced last week.

VIDEO - Reagan's National Security Advisor Endorses Newt Gingrich At a veterans townhall meeting in Wolfeboro, NH, Bud McFarlane, National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan, explains why Newt has the right experience and knowledge to be the Commander in Chief. "He also brings to the presidency a knowledge of how to move the U.S. Congress, how to have the courage to go against conventional wisdom, how to balance a budget, and at home and abroad show the kind of leadership that President Reagan did only 25 years ago. Nobody else in this race has those qualities of knowledge and...

We were thinking about going overseas, worrying about the usual stuff travelers from Washington fret about — a weak dollar, suntan lotion, visa requirements, shots and inadvertently disclosing secret information. Fortunately, we recalled some instructions we got a while back from the National Security Agency — the super-secret cryptography operation at Fort Meade that monitors international communications — explaining the do’s and don’ts of “defensive travel.” The agency reminds super-spooks that even “if you plan to travel . . . for vacation,” you’ve got to submit a “UFT” or Unofficial Foreign Travel request, which is Form K2579. Most of all,...

For Google, it's personal. The Internet search giant is no longer going to roll out the same search results to everyone. Starting Tuesday, Google will pluck only the results most relevant to you --and not just from billions of Web pages but from the personal stuff that you and your connections privately share. The idea, says Google Fellow Amit Singhal, is that Google now searches your world, not just the Web, and serves up results that combine both for your eyes only. "Your world was missing from search until now," he said. "We are bringing your world into search."

Two centuries ago the Founders feared a strong, centralized federal government would establish a standing army, an irresistible force capable of crushing those rights of individual liberty which had been so carefully and deliberately crafted into the Constitution. Today that fear has been realized, not with the American military, but in the increasingly disturbing form of paramilitary units and heavily equipped tactical assault teams which exist in even small town police departments and bureaucracies within the federal government. In Waco, 80 lives were taken by masked SWAT team members driving armored vehicles in what one writer properly called an “…ATF...

If anyone believed the autocratic arrogance responsible for the infamous MIAC Report was on the wane, rest assured that a believer in absolute authority like Barack Obama will never give up his totalitarian dreams of dominating the American public. He’ll just resort to a change of tack. For those who don’t remember the Regime’s initial assault on our Constitutional liberties, it was neatly housed in a report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement.” Crafted in 2009 by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), it presumed to provide the American public with warning signs to help identify the traits and proclivities of...

In a major blow to the Justice Department, one of its biggest leak prosecutions in years all but collapsed late Thursday when federal prosecutors withdrew all their felony charges against a former National Security Agency official accused of providing classified information to a journalist. Instead, under a plea deal reached with prosecutors, former NSA official Thomas Drake has agreed to plead guilty in federal court on Friday to a single misdemeanor count of "exceeding authorized use of a computer" -- a minor charge for which he will receive no jail time, a senior administration official told NBC. “This is close...

A new lawsuit raises the possibility of Tehran's complicity in al Qaeda's infamous attacks. Philip Shenon reports fresh details on who will testify—and the mysteries they could unlock. With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming, a federal lawsuit in Manhattan offers the possibility of resolving a central mystery about the attacks: Was Iran involved? Former investigators on the 9/11 Commission, which uncovered tantalizing but inconclusive evidence of Tehran's ties to the plot, tell The Daily Beast they welcome the lawsuit, because they believe the U.S. government has done little to follow up on the commission's evidence of Iranian...

decora writes "Crypto-mathematician Bill Binney worked in the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center at the NSA. There, he worked on NSA's ThinThread program; a way to monitor the flood of internet data from outside the US while protecting the privacy of US citizens. In a new interview with Jane Mayer, he says his program 'got twisted. ... I should apologize to the American people. It's violated everyone's rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world. ... my people were brought in, and they told me, "Can you believe they're doing this? They're getting billing records on US...

... Pakistan’s government, facing an anti-American backlash in the wake of the unilateral United States action, at first seemed unwilling to make the women available to the United States, despite the two countries’ partnership in fighting terror. But Islamabad later relented. Marine Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said that “we have had access to the widows.” But he declined to give details, such as where, when and under what circumstances the women were questioned. He also would not specify whether the United States officials who spoke to the women were members of the military or worked for the...

WASHINGTON –While visiting a mosque in the Washington area last week, a senior White House security official lavished praise on a Muslim cleric who happens to be a top leader of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in America, FBI investigators point out. "They are so ignorant," said one FBI veteran regarding the White House. "This is unbelievable bullsh--." White House sources explain that deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough was unaware of the cleric's radical ties, and added that the presidential assistant attended the outreach event as a show of support for the Muslim community ahead of Thursday's congressional hearings on...

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google's privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant's "cozy" relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama's administration. In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies. The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the "secretive" relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company's use of a U.S. National Aeronautics...

A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

According to the draft report, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm, China Telecom, "hijacked" massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident. It affected traffic to and from .gov and .mil websites in the United States, as well as websites for the Senate, all four military services, the office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and "many others," including websites for firms like Dell, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft. "Although the Commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number...

The second person, a former housing industry executive intimately familiar with of Fannie Mae's operations, agreed that Donilon was at the head of an unceasing anti-regulatory campaign that the company waged throughout his tenure. The former housing executive said that on political issues, especially regulatory oversight, Donilon was the right-hand man to Fannie Mae chairman and CEO Franklin Raines.

“We have a lot of transition at this point here,” said one senior Obama aide. “They decided the time was right to bring forward his departure and for Jones to step aside. We always knew it was going to be roughly in this window, at the end of this year. But we’re making a lot of changes now with Rahm leaving, and there was a sense of just, ‘Let’s get this done now.’” But there was more to the timing than the ripple effects of Rahm’s departure. Next month President Obama begins to travel again overseas, and in December he...

Nothing further yet. Just a one line headline from AP.

"By the very nature of the intelligence business, it is difficult to discuss much of the NSA mission." — National Security Agency Web site In this post-Sept. 11 world, plans by the National Security Agency to construct a colossal $1.9 billion information storage center at Camp Williams could be considered a power trip. But it's not the sort of power trip that keeps civil libertarians lying awake at night. No, this power grab is for the stuff of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla — the juice needed to keep acres of NSA supercomputers humming and a cyber eye peeled for...

The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed "Perfect Citizen" to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program.

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

Military prosecutors already have satellite pictures of the presidential Tupolev crash near Smolensk – told a reporter RMF FM Krzysztof principle. Military prosecutors who are investigating the crash, confined itself to stating that it was “very important evidence.” Investigators have received photos several days ago from U.S. National Security Agency, which, inter alia zawiaduje satellite system of the United States. The proposal in this regard by the Ministry of Defence. Materials are examined by our investigators, but does not give you any, even the general answers to questions about what the camera recorded the American satellites. The Polish authorities, which...