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The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records. Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration. Gen. Alexander...

Obama: No Allegations NSA Is Trying to 'Listen in On People's Email' Daniel Halper August 23, 2013 7:21 AM President Barack Obama defended the NSA surveillance program in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo this morning. On the NSA surveillance program, Cuomo asked, "Are you confident that you know everything that's going on within that agency and that you can say to the American people, 'It's all done the right way'?" "Yes, but what I've also said is that it can only work if the American people trust what's going on. And what's been clear since the disclosures that were...

Earlier this month, Reuters revealed that a special division within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been using intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a mass database of telephone records to secretly identify targets for drug enforcement actions.In the wake of these revelations, a former prosecutor tells IPS he believes he and his colleagues may have been unwitting pawns in the federal government's effort to deceive defendants and the court system, thereby violating citizens' constitutional rights. "None of us had any idea whatsoever there was a secret DEA programme that instructed DEA agents to conceal the source," Patrick Nightingale, a...

Every day it seems more like the "war on terror" is at home in the U.S. rather than abroad in a foreign country. Whether it's the NSA denying they scoop domestic communications while their chief tells hackers "we're looking for the terrorist among us," or it's the growing militarization and equipping of domestic police forces, it seems more and more crows keep coming home to roost. Well, one former Marine colonel has had about enough. In a rousing confrontation at a local council meeting in Concord, NH, he calls out his government for facilitating what he feels is a needless...

Full title: NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor It seems that every day brings a new revelation about the scope of the NSA’s heretofore secret warrantless mass surveillance programs. And as we learn more, the picture becomes increasingly alarming. Last week we discovered that the NSA shares information with a division of the Drug Enforcement Agency called the Special Operations Division (SOD). The DEA uses the information in drug investigations. But it also gives NSA data out to other agencies – in particular, the Internal Revenue...

National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander was met with both heckling and applause at the Black Hat information security conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday. Ever since the leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden thrust the agency’s domestic surveillance policies into the limelight and sparked widespread public debate, Alexander and other intelligence officials have been on the hot seat, in a persistent state of defense against seemingly unending press reports.

Until Wednesday morning, you'd probably never heard of something called "XKeyscore," a program that the National Security Agency itself describes as its "widest reaching" means of gathering data from across the Internet. According to reports shared by NSA leaker Edward Snowden with the Guardian, is that in addition to all of the other recent revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs, by using XKeyscore, "analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the Internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used." David Brown, who co-authored the recent book "Deep State: Inside the...

He works at one of the three-letter intelligence agencies and oversees construction of a $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets. Long Island native Harvey Davis, a top National Security Agency official, needs that commanding presence. His role is to supervise infrastructure construction worldwide for NSA, which is part of the Defense Department. That involves tending to logistics, military installations, as well as power, space and cooling for all NSA data centers. In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center...

Click for larger image A license-plate reader mounted on a San Leandro Police Department car can log thousands of plates in an eight-hour patrol shift. “It works 100 times better than driving around looking for license plates with our eyes,” says police Lt. Randall Brandt. Credit: Michael Katz-Lacabe When the city of San Leandro, Calif., purchased a license-plate reader for its police department in 2008, computer security consultant Michael Katz-Lacabe asked the city for a record of every time the scanners had photographed his car.The results shocked him.The paperback-size device, installed on the outside of police cars, can log thousands of...

The revelations by former National Security Agency operative Edward Snowden that the United States government has been spying on all Americans may be causing a permanent political shift by the American “Millennial” generation (youth born between 1980 and the year 2000) away from President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Contrary to the main-stream-media’s claims that “Millennials don’t worry about online privacy,” research demonstrates young people are extremely sensitive about who has access and can engage in mischief with their digital lives. As Snowden’s spying disclosures continue, the blow-back against Obama and the Democratic Party is alienating this future dominant...

From Barack Obama to Karl Rove, the ruling class is in unison: The NSA’s collection of data on virtually all Americans is essential to preventing you from “being blown to smithereens on your morning commute” – as the Wall Street Journal editorial put it. In the words of General Keith Alexander, director of NSA, this surveillance has “helped to prevent” “dozens of terrorist events.” Later, the tally rose to “over fifty.” Project Constant Informant, which tracks essentially all American phone calls, allows matching the account holder’s identity with each call’s precise location in time and place. Another, PRISM, gives access...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: According to latest CNN poll, Obama's job approval is down from 53% in May to 45% now. Approval of his handling of the economy is down 2% to 42%. On foreign affairs Obama's down five points to 44. On illegal immigration, Obama's disapproval is up to 56. And only 49% of respondents say Obama is honest or trustworthy. You know, this polling data, this is huge, folks. We haven't seen this before. We have not seen this kind of intense evidence of Obama losing approval, losing popularity, and losing support. And it's a CNN poll. Now, I...

Even as reports break about the size and scope of the National Security Agency’s vast data storage center in Utah, new details are emerging about a second massive NSA center in San Antonio, Texas. According to the Houston Chronicle, “Satellite and aerial imagery show that massive air conditioning units and backup generators have been added to the facility, which is now ringed by barbed-wire fencing. City permits and property tax records show that the complex has been dramatically expanded.” According to sources, the plant will supposedly translate intercepted communications from the NSA; the communications are then forwarded to Maryland for...

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I would describe this man as an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history. A person so familiar with the intelligence community, as you just heard from the excerpts that you just played. He's aware of the personal danger to himself. He knows of the likelihood of prosecution. But he also understands that the government listening to half the country is not what...

... Bill Hemmer asked the judge what he thinks we need to understand about what Snowden is telling us. Judge Napolitano explained that the government has granted itself this sweeping authority without a national debate about how much privacy Americans are willing to sacrifice... He said the government wants Americans to sacrifice liberty in return for the promise of security... ...

Scary. Unacceptable. This is not America. Those are some of the comments that I have heard about the revelations regarding government snooping on our cell phones. The statement that one man made that something is wrong with you if you don’t think something is askew here -- that would be about right. If you are not upset about this situation then you are clueless. There is a dangerous extension of government that no true American could possibly endorse or accept. Our government has no right to randomly rummage through our cell phone or email records. If you think that the...

I just got back from hunting buffalo in Zimbabwe for the last two weeks. It’s always a pleasure for me to go beyond the pavement, where the cell phones don’t work, and I can’t go online and there isn’t a television that functions within a sixty-mile radius. Yep, when I’m hunting out in the African bush, or in an Alaskan swamp, or I’m out of cell phone range crushing some mahi in the Atlantic, I truly enjoy the technological fast from my Mac book, my iPhone and my TV. That said, while I’m disconnected from the digital crap I cannot...

<p>There is no question that the big winners from last week were George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two men vilified for years by the left, the media, and Barack Obama as eager to use the War on Terror as an excuse to violate the Constitutional rights of everyday Americans. Obama ran for president as the anti-Bush in many respects, but especially on the issue of surveillance and snooping.</p>

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin Last February Maxine Waters in an interview stated “The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” She continued to reveal “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before”. This week Americans were surprised to learn that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone call information of American Verizon customers. Like all of the...

I. Introduction Social media platforms are changing the way organizations are communicating to the public Conversations are happening all the time and everywhere. There is need for the Communications Group to be timely and proactively aware of the reactions and opinions expressed by the general public as it relates to the Federal Reserve and its actions on a variety of subjects. II. Social Listening Platforms Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the...