U.S. intel. director: Earth is (still) a scary place

We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Aaaaaaaah!

Aw Lawdy, please save us CIA and NSA, save us!  

Let me quote Michael Cohen at length [emphasis mine] in his critique of the annual world threat assessment that the National Intelligence Director is obliged to give the Senate:

There is the habitually frightening adjective war front, "an assertive Russia, a competitive China; a dangerous, unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran." The sober-minded might look at these countries and conclude that a more accurate set of descriptors would be "an enfeebled and corrupt Russia, an economically slowing and environmentally challenged China, a contained and sort of predictable North Korea and an isolated and diplomatically-engaged Iran". But that would be a pretty lame threat assessment, wouldn't it?

Then there are the really scary sounding threats that aren't actually threats to Americans. Things like, "lingering ethnic divisions in the Balkans, perpetual conflict and extremism in Africa; violent political struggles in … the Ukraine, Burma, Thailand and Bangladesh." [...]  [B]ut the idea that any of these are serious "crises" or "threats" to America and its citizens is ludicrous.

This is what makes Clapper's argument – and indeed the entire process of writing a "worldwide threat assessment" so fundamentally unserious and distorting. America doesn't face a single truly serious security threat. We are a remarkably safe and secure nation, protected by two oceans, an enormous and highly effective military and dozens upon dozens of like-minded allies and friends around the world. Truly we have nothing to fear – except perhaps global climate change, which oddly merits a one-paragraph mention (pdf) in this year's threat assessment.

To listen to Clapper and others in the intelligence community one might never know that inter-state war has largely disappeared and that wars in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. 

And let's not forget that Clapper is the same guy who lied to Congress about not spying on U.S. citizens!:

The irony of all this is that Clapper has been under fire for months now because he allegedly lied to Congress over the extent to which the National Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail records of individual Americans.

Yet, the yarn he spun on Capitol Hill last week was far worse than that: deceiving Americans about the nature of the world today and the threats facing the country. But in a political environment in which threat mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather than the exception, Clapper not only gets a pass – hardly anyone even noticed.

I've had enough of these obvious lies from "serious" spies protecting their administrative turf and bloated billion-dollar budgets.  There is no way that the U.S. is in more danger now than during the Cold War.  We have no enemies who can attack us, save Russia with its ICBMs. Terrorism is a mosquito on the list of actual threats to American citizens.

The James Clappers of the U.S. military-intelligence community might bamboozle and intimidate our Congressmen and journalists with their doomsday speeches, but not me.  What about you?

James Clapper might as well be called director of US fearmongering

By Michael Cohen

February 6, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3mgk3

Engelhardt: U.S. National Security State is an insane religious order

Right on!  Tom Engelhardt is a lone voice of sanity. Our National Security State (NSS), as he dubs it, has indeed grown out of control. Its reason for being has become self-perpetuation and -aggrandizement.

As I posted back in March, the Department of Homeland Security, which didn't even exist prior to 9/11, has spent about $800 billion since then in order to prevent any more such attacks.  Never mind that that plot could have been thwarted if the FBI had simply listened to its field agents.  No, we had to go an make a "monstrosity" (in Ron Paul's words), a real "Department of Defense" to rival the Pentagon -- the "Department of Offense."  

This is not to forget the outrageous $700 billion Pentagon budget that is bigger than the next 13 biggest military budgets in the world combined; and let's ponder in awe and disgust that the Pentagon employs, directly and via contractors, about 3.3 million Americans, making it the single largest U.S. employer. Finally, let's remember Pentagon's network of hundreds of military bases worldwide. (For comparison, by one estimate, the Roman Empire had about 37 major bases at its height, while the British Empire had 36. So what does that make the United States, Rotary International?!)

And of course we have the NSA.  What can I say that hasn't already been said?  The NSA assures us that they have foiled some 54 "9/11"-type attacks (but only 13 in the U.S.... maybe we should start charging Europe a fee?) with their ceaseless spying on innocent Americans, but they can't tell us anything about these so-called plots because they're so secret.  But the NSA did tell a Presidential task force, which responded, essentially with, "Phooey." So that's more money and liberty down the drain.

Folks, this is all done in our name, ostensibly to protect us. We're not innocent bystanders in all this.  We're enablers.  We must stop enabling.  We must tell our Congressmen -- I'm talking to you, "fiscally responsible" Tea Partiers -- that the NSS has grown out of our control and must be chopped down. This monster now exists to feed itself and make babies, not to protect us. 

Read on!...

American Jihad 2014: The New Fundamentalists 

By Tom Engelhardt

January 5, 2014 | Tom Dispatch

URL: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175789/

NSA's phone spying began under Bush

Whether you agree or not with the NSA's massive, indiscriminate collection of telephone "metadata" on terrorist suspects and innocent Americans alike, this op-ed by the Bush Administration lawyer who got initial court approval to collect such data highlights that the NSA's domestic spying program was started under Dubya.

As a good Democratic soldier, I just wanted to point that out to all my outraged, I say outraged, Republican friends who suddenly rediscovered the 4th Amendment once a Democrat with a Muslim name became POTUS.

Enjoy.

Don’t limit the NSA’s effectiveness

By Steven G. Bradbury

January 3, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1av09yd

Attack on California's grid shows lack of 'homeland security'

I've been saying for years that terrorism in the U.S. is too easy, hence all these screenings at airports, cyber security, NSA spying and fighting the terrorists "over there" are big distractions.

You don't buy a fancy home security system and then leave your front door unlocked and the windows open.    

Partly, the lack of focus on physical security of our key infrastructure such as electrical grid, ports and bridges is that the problem is very big and yet not at all sexy; and partly because simply physical security like sheet metal screens doesn't lend itself to outsourcing to the big military-industrial contractors that charge $ billions for expensive technological solutions.  

'Military-Style' Raid on California Power Station Spooks U.S.

BY Shane Harris

December 27, 2013 | Foreign Policy 

URL: http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/24/power-station-military-assault#sthash.t4ESArKb.dpuf

The whistleblowers are winning

I'll say it again: I have yet to hear any American say, "I wish I didn't know about the NSA's spying on us."  And if more and more Americans are turning against the NSA's domestic spying, then that means the whistleblowers are winning:

Meanwhile, Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning. At the outset Snowden said his biggest fear was that people would see "the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society and that 'nothing will change'". But his disclosures have already created a new debate, and political change will follow. 

Two weeks ago there was a surprisingly close call in the US House of Representatives, with the majority of House Democrats and 94 of 234 Republicans defying their House (and Senate) leadership, the White House, and the national security establishment in a vote to end the NSA's mass collection of phone records. The amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 205 to 217, but it was clear that "this is only the beginning," as John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee announced. 

A week later Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Democratic Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called a hearing where he challenged the Obama administration's claims that the NSA dragnet had been effective in disrupting terrorist plots. According to Leahy, the classified list that he had been shown of "terrorist events" did not show that "dozens or even several terrorist plots" had been thwarted by the NSA's surveillance of domestic phone calls.

It is beginning to sink in that the main target of the NSA's massive spying programmes is not terrorism but the American people themselves (as well as other non-terrorist populations throughout the world). 

Weisbrot sums it up with a few provocative questions:

And as Washington threatens to worsen relations with Russia - which together with the United States has most of the nuclear weapons in the world - over Snowden's asylum there, it's hard not to wonder about this fanatical pursuit of someone Obama dismissed as a "29-year-old hacker". Is it because he out-smarted a multi-billion dollar "intelligence community" of people who think they are really very smart but are now looking rather incompetent? 

If Snowden really leaked information that harmed US national security, why haven't any of these "really very smart" people been fired? Are we to believe that punishing this whistleblower is important enough to damage relations with other countries and put at risk all kinds of foreign policy goals, but the breach of security isn't enough for anyone important to be fired? Or is this another indication, like thegenerals telling Obama what his options were in Afghanistan, of the increasing power of the military/national security apparatus over our elected officials?

It's another matter that whistleblowers and journalists themselves may suffer personally for their revelations.  For their suffering for the sake of our liberty we can only thank them.

UPDATE (08.11.2013): Julian Assange called Obama's decision to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act a victory for Edward Snowden, despite Obama's denials that it has anything to do with Snowden. Yeah, right.

Snowden, Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning

By Mark Weisbrot

August 7, 2013 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/201387957162873.html

Rush: 'Don't trust Obama!'...'It's too bad people distrust Obama'

Here's the end of a very long rant by Rush Limbaugh today about Obama's order to close 21 embassies in the Middle East and Africa:

But there's another aspect of this that's dangerous. 

The very fact that there are so many people who are cynical about this, the very fact that there are so many Americans who think they're being lied to about a terror threat, is a really dangerous thing.  It is an unhealthy thing for the country.  It is the surest sign of the wanton lack of respect for this country that has swept all across this country.  This threat may be real.  Everything we're being told could be real.  We could be facing something somewhere as bad or worse than 9/11 -- and I dare say, the majority of Americans think it's a lie. 

What does that tell you that what most Americans think of the people who are telling them about this threat? 

They're liars, too. 

Before I comment on that, here's part of a WaPo op-ed by conservative pundit and NSA-spying defender Marc Thiessen that says basically the same thing:

When President Obama dismisses the IRS’ political targeting of his conservative critics as a “phony scandal,” he is not only stretching credulity — he is undermining our nation’s security.

[...] That collapse is a direct result of the disintegration in public trust that has taken place on Obama’s watch. 

Why are Limbaugh and Thiessen both full of shit?

Because they, and the rest of the GOP and talk radio Axis of Evil, spend all day, every day, seeking to undermine the public's trust in Obama, asserting day after day that he hates America, he's a secret socialist, he persecutes Tea Partyers, and on and on.  Then these same scaremongers turn around and bemoan the public's (alleged) lack of trust in Obama when it comes to national security.

The nerve of these self-serving jerks!  ... The same jerks who urged us to rally 'round the flag in the Dubya years, no matter what we thought of him or his foreign policies -- they've never once rallied to Obama.  Hypocrites. We should have nothing but contempt for them.

UPDATE (08.07.2013):  Speaking of hypocrites, why no mention from the Right about how Tom Ridge admitted he was pressured to raise the terror threat level for Dubya just before the 2004 presidential election?  

NSA has trouble recruiting cyber militia

Back in January 2011, I suggested that the U.S. could follow tiny Estonia's lead and create a "cyber militia," instead of relying exclusively on expensive defense contractors to fight cyber warfare.

I guess I was kind of prescient, considering that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came from one of those contractors.  

Anyhow, now NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander is having a hard time convincing America's distrustful, trenchant hackers to help out Uncle Sam.  It didn't help his credibility this year that hackers now know, thanks to Snowden's leaks, that Gen. Alexander lied to them at the same Black Hat conference a year ago about the NSA's domestic spying.

NSA chief asks a skeptical crowd of hackers to help agency do its job

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

August 1, 2013 | Washington Post

URL:  http://wapo.st/18NwZvc

Robinson: Love or hate him, we should thank Snowden

Great point by Robinson:

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program.  We wouldn’t know it exists.

Aren't we all glad we know about this program, even if some of us happen to support it?  Personally, I don't understand how Snowden's revealing the program compromised U.S. intelligence.  No names were leaked, no agents put in danger.  

Moreover, the DOD-NSA's domestic spying program continues unchanged and unabated... which kind of undermines the argument that Snowden's whistle-blowing damaged the program. Usually, unsavory clandestine operations are cancelled or revamped once they are exposed, since they rely on secrecy.  These domestic spying programs don't rely on secrecy, just brute force collection of all our electronic communications.

In NSA leaks, Edward Snowden performed a service

By Eugene Robinson

July 30, 2013 | Washington Post

Edward Snowden’s renegade decision to reveal the jaw-dropping scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance is being vindicated — even as Snowden himself is being vilified.

Intelligence officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill paint the fugitive analyst as nothing but a traitor who wants to harm the United States. Many of those same officials grudgingly acknowledge, however, that public debate about the NSA’s domestic snooping is now unavoidable.

This would be impossible if Snowden — or someone like him — hadn’t spilled the beans. We wouldn’t know that the NSA is keeping a database of all our phone calls. We wouldn’t know that the government gets the authority to keep track of our private communications — even if we are not suspected of terrorist activity or associations — from secret judicial orders issued by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law.

Snowden, of course, is hardly receiving the thanks of a grateful nation. He has spent the last five weeks trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow. Russian officials, who won’t send him home for prosecution, wish he would move along. But Snowden fears that if he takes off for one of the South American countries that have offered asylum, he risks being intercepted en route and extradited. It’s a tough situation, and time is not on his side.

You can cheer Snowden’s predicament or you can bemoan it. But even some of the NSA’s fiercest defenders have admitted, if not in so many words, that Snowden performed a valuable public service.

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program. We wouldn’t know it exists.

The new position espoused by President Obama and those who kept the NSA’s domestic surveillance a deep, dark secret is that of course we should have a wide-ranging national debate about balancing the imperatives of privacy and security. But they don’t mean it.

I know this because when an actual debate erupted in Congress last week, the intelligence cognoscenti freaked out.

An attempt to cut off funding for the NSA’s collection of phone data, sponsored by an unlikely pair of allies in the House — Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, and John Conyers, a liberal Democrat, both from Michigan — suffered a surprisingly narrow defeat, 217 to 205. The measure was denounced by the White House and the congressional leadership of both parties, yet it received bipartisan support, from 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats.

The Amash-Conyers amendment was in no danger of becoming law — the Senate would have killed it and, if all else failed, President Obama would have vetoed it. But it put the intelligence establishment on notice: The spooks don’t decide how far is too far. We do.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that three out of four Americans believe the vacuum-cleaner collection of phone call data by the NSA intrudes on our privacy rights.  At the same time, nearly three-fifths of those surveyed said it was “more important right now” to investigate possible terrorist threats than to respect privacy. A contradiction, perhaps? Not necessarily.

It is possible to endorse sweeping and intrusive measures in the course of a specific investigation but to reject those same measures as part of a fishing expedition. At the heart of the Fourth Amendment is the concept that a search must be justified by suspicion. Yet how many of those whose phone call information is being logged are suspected of being terrorists? One in a million?

Equally antithetical to the idea of a free society, in my view, is the government’s position that we are not permitted to know even how the secret intelligence court interprets our laws and the Constitution. The order that Snowden leaked — compelling a Verizon unit to cough up data on the phone calls it handled — was one of only a few to come to light in the court’s three decades of existence. Now there are voices calling for all the court’s rulings to be released.

We’re talking about these issues. You can wish Edward Snowden well or wish him a lifetime in prison. Either way, you should thank him.

Was American Revolution worth it? Revisiting the 'American Dream'

This July 4th we can stop and ponder: was the American Revolution worth it? Here's what NPR had to say about the "American Dream," i.e. social and economic upward mobility:

So, in the 19th century in the U.S., there's unbelievable economic mobility. If your father, for example, was an unskilled laborer, sort of the lowest end of the working hierarchy, then you had an 80 percent chance of doing some more skilled, more highly paid job than your father. At the same time, in the U.K., you had about a 50 percent chance. Half the children of unskilled laborers were unskilled laborers themselves. But by just after World War II, the U.S. and U.K. are converging and the differences start to disappear. And by 1970, the U.K. has pulled ahead. So, by the 1970s, the children of unskilled laborers are more likely to do be doing something higher paying in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Why is that so?  Why is the "American Dream" more alive in Britain today than in America?  There are two basic theories, according to NPR:

• By the 20th century, the U.S. was a mature economy like Britain, without all the exceptional opportunities for growth that exist in a young, expanding nation.

• In early-mid 20th century, the welfare state and education in Britain grew at a faster pace.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive.  I would also point out the respective rates of unionization in the U.S. and UK: 11.1 percent vs. 25.8 percent.  The average in OECD countries for trade union density is 17 percent.  Nordic socialist paradises Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which top almost every global indicator of economic and social well-being, have well over 50 percent of their workers in trade unions.  In the U.S. we blame falling wages all on globalization, but then we should ask why wages aren't falling elsewhere in G-8 countries?  Unions have a lot to do with it.

And then there is the U.S. tax system, which for the past 30 years has discriminated against wages in favor of income earned through interest and financial securities, thereby inflating inequality and crushing the "American Dream."  Remember this chart?:

Paul Pirie for WaPo  gives us more socio-economic data to ponder:

Most Americans work longer hours and have fewer paid vacations and benefits — including health care — than their counterparts in most advanced countries. Consider also that in the CIA World Factbook, the United States ranks 51st in life expectancy at birth. Working oneself into an early grave does not do much for one’s happiness quotient. This year the United States tied for 14th in “life satisfaction” on an annual quality-of-life study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That puts the United States behind Canada (eighth) and Australia (12th). A report co-authored last year by the economist Jeffrey Sachs ranked the United States 10th in the world for happiness — again behind Canada and Australia. The Sachs study found that the United States has made “striking economic and technological progress over the past half century without gains in the self-reported happiness of the citizenry. Instead, uncertainties and anxieties are high, social and economic inequalities have widened considerably, social trust is in decline, and confidence in government is at an all-time low.”

But the difference is not just in economics or happiness, but also liberty.  Pirie points out that the British Empire (including Canada) abolished slavery in 1833, a full 32 years befoe the U.S. ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Today's slavery is the U.S. prison-industrial complex that incarcerates more adults, in both absolute and relative terms, than any other country by a wide margin, including Red China and Russia.  

And speaking of Americans' liberty, I have three words for you: N-S-A.  Do I really need to say more?  It doesn't matter, the spooks are archiving this post anyway.

Today, having mentioned some of these factoids to a Brit, I joked about our reneging the Declaration of Independence.  He said Britons are glad America is no longer their problem; they can't imagine trying to govern the U.S.  I joked back, "Yeah, we have enough trouble dealing with places like Texas!"  Can you imagine British PM David Cameron trying to talk sense to the folks in U.S. flyover country? You start to wonder who got the better end of the deal when the U.S. declared its independence....   

Happy 4th of July, everybody!  Have a hotdog and light off a roman candle for me.

UPDATE: If you think I'm unpatriotic, here's a guy who really can't stand the 4th of July: "Hatetriot's Day: July 4th Is America's Crappiest Holiday."

Taibbi: All journalists are 'advocacy journalists'

Yes, yes, yes!  Taibbi makes a great point about "objective" journalists, in the context of Glenn Greenwald's scoops on the NSA domestic spying story [emphasis mine]:

... because all reporters are advocates. If we're only talking about people like Glenn Greenwald, who are open about their advocacy, that's a crazy thing to say. People should be skeptical of everything they read. In fact, people should be more skeptical of reporters who claim not to be advocates, because those people are almost always lying, whether they know it or not.

[...] That's what makes this new debate about Greenwald and advocacy journalism so insidious. Journalists of all kinds have long enjoyed certain legal protections, and those protections are essential to a functioning free press. The easiest way around those protections is simply to declare some people "not journalists." Ten years ago, I would have thought the idea is crazy, but now any journalist would be nuts not to worry about it. Who are these people to decide who's a journalist and who isn't? Is there anything more obnoxious than a priesthood?

Journalists are supposed to be fair, not objective.  "Objectivity" is impossible, so let's not set the bar there.  I would much rather have a journalist be honest with me about his convictions (aka biases), then I can filter his reporting as I like, instead of looking for his "hidden" messages.  

This is similar, yet also unrelated, to my personal practice of prefacing any discussion of politics with strangers with, "I'm a big lefty liberal who voted for Obama twice."  Why do I do that?  Because why not?  It's the truth, and I have nothing to hide.  Surprisingly, things go much better after that.  At least my interlocutor knows where I'm coming from.  Then it's all about the merit or weight of my arguments.  Plus people just appreciate honesty.  People are funny that way.  

Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism

By Matt Taibbi

June 27, 2013 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-all-journalism-is-advocacy-journalism-20130627

How FISA law became unconstitutional

One terrorist act and one amendment at a time, that's how.  Argues law professor Laura Donahue:

To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.

The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.

This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists.

President Obama is taking a lot of heat right now for the NSA's spying on us and rightly so.  But let's not let Congress off the hook.  They passed these laws.  They could pass a law to outlaw PRISM tomorrow, if they wanted to.  

NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional

By Laura K. Donohue

June 21, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/14n90zT

Grayson: 'We don't defend our freedom by giving it away'

"We Don't Defend Our Freedom By Giving It Away"

posted by Alan Grayson

June 21, 2013 | Democratic Underground

This past week, controversy raged over the revelation that under the guise of "foreign surveillance," the Defense Department is obtaining information about every telephone call in America.  As if that weren't enough, DoD also is collecting information on e-mails, videos, stored data, log-ins, etc., from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype.  Congressman Alan Grayson took to the airwaves to condemn that invasion of our privacy, and that trampling on the Fourth Amendment, in this interview on national TV:

Thom Hartmann: In the best of the rest of the news, yesterday the House Committee on Rules blocked an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have drastically cut back the NSA's ability to collect data on American citizens. An amendment was proposed by Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. It would have prohibited the Defense Department from collecting information on U.S. citizens without probable cause of a terrorism or criminal offense. Congressman Grayson's amendment, of course, comes on the heels of reports that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the telephone records and internet information of U.S. citizens. So while the House Rules Committee may have rejected the Congressman's amendment, what else can be done now to stop the national security state from invading the privacy of U.S. citizens? Joining me now for more on that is Congressman Alan Grayson, representing Florida's 9th district. Congressman, welcome. 

Congressman Alan Grayson: Thank you. 

Thom: Or welcome back. First of all, I'm rather astounded by the Rules Committee knocking down your amendment, which seems like it echoes the Fourth Amendment. 

Alan: Well the Rules Committee consists of nine Republicans and four Democrats. But I think that there are Members of Congress even now who aren't aware of the severity of this problem. It's been a week since we learned that every single call that Verizon carries – Verizon being the largest cell phone carrier in the United States -- every single call has call details – who is calling whom, when they're talking, how long they're talking – and that's all given to the Department of Defense. Every single call. Not only that, but there's no reason to think that if Verizon's doing this, that AT&T is not doing it. So we have to assume that every call that we make in America – even local calls, even calls to your grandmother – all those calls are being handed over to the government, in terms of the call details. In addition to that, the PowerPoint presentation internal to the NSA that was also leaked, at the same time, indicates that the NSA, according to that information, can pull from AOL servers, from Microsoft servers, from Google servers, from virtually every single Internet provider in the country, information that hosts e-mails, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, which is basically the contents of telephone calls), and a whole host of other information that people regard as personal. Now, that's where we are right now. I think many Members of Congress are not aware of that. I think many members of your audience were not aware of the fact that the government's getting information on every single call they make. Now the question is, "What do we do about it?" The Rules Committee decided to do nothing. The Republicans outnumber the Democrats nine to four on the Rules Committee, so that doesn't surprise me. 

Thom: But the Fourth Amendment is pretty unambiguous. I mean basically we're supposed to be secure in our persons, papers, home, property, unless somebody goes before a judge and swears under oath that they have reason to believe – you know, probable cause to believe – that a crime is being committed.  Then the judge issues a very specific warrant defining the place and things to be seized, or persons to be – you know I'm badly paraphrasing the Fourth Amendment, but you know it. How is it that this is partisan? 

Alan: Well, what relying on is a decision from something like thirty or forty years ago that indicated that "pen register" information, the calling record of one person, could be released without any Fourth Amendment violation by the government, because said that pen register information was not something that the Fourth Amendment constrained. Now, what they've decided is that because they could do it to one person, they can do it to every person. The document that was leaked, the court order that was leaked, is in fact a court order to Verizon that claims to be based upon applicable law. It happens to be signed by a right-wing judge who also declared that Obamacare was unconstitutional. But leaving that aside, what the agency is doing is it's purporting to rely upon this ancient string of irrelevant legal applications, in order to spy on every one of us. 

Thom:  I just said, "How could this be partisan?" You were talking about the Republicans on the committee blocking this.  You're basically bringing the Fourth Amendment into this. And yet it's a democratic administration that's doing it. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense, which is part of the Obama Administration. Are you hearing anything from the Obama Administration that they might be having second thoughts about what they're doing? 

Alan:  Well, the NSA, DoD, and other figures are part of the Administration .  Not the President himself, though, yet. Other figures have launched a vigorous defense of this practice, saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Department of Defense getting telephone records about every single human being in America. Bear in mind that we've had a law going back to the 1870s, called the Posse Comitatus Act, that prevents DoD from having any operations in the United States. Now it turns out that DoD is getting all records of all of our telephone calls, and yet somehow that's defensible. You're right -- this shouldn't be a partisan issue at all, because we have Republicans who are getting their telephone records turned over, Democrats, everyone. And therefore everyone should be up in arms. We had over 10,000 people go to our website our bill . The website is MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Ten thousand people came to the website, and became citizen co-sponsors of my bill, in the first 24 hours. Eventually, sooner or later, we're going to see that bill heard. 

Thom: That's marvelous. MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com is the website. Congressman, we have just about a minute left. I'm curious, your thoughts on where we're going to go from here? What's next? 

Alan:  What's next is for people who respect privacy, people who respect liberty, people who respect freedom, to state, clearly, that we don't protect our freedom by giving it away. There has to be a constant, consistent effort. There certainly will be on my part.  I hope there'll be the same on the part of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others, to make sure that we put an end to this pernicious practice, and protect our cherished freedom. 

Thom: But how do you respond to people who say, "But oh, I'm so afraid of terrorists"? 

Alan: Oh look, you know. If somebody can explain to me how tapping your phone will prevent terrorism, Thom, then at that point I'll start to be convinced. 

Thom:  Ok, I got it, and totally agree with you. Once again, the website was – 

Alan: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. 

Thom: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Congressman Alan Grayson, great work. 

Alan: Thank you. 

Thom: Thank you so much for being with us today. 

'Falcon' spy: NSA whistleblower 'doomed'

Very interesting interview!  

Convicted U.S. spy Christopher Boyce: 'Snowden is doomed'

By Peter Shadbolt

June 14, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/14/world/asia/hong-kong-boyce-snowden/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Greenwald: Dems are hypocrites on NSA spying

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the Snowden-NSA story, is right: many Democrats and liberals are being hypocritical in defending Obama's vast program of spying on innocent Americans without probable cause, totally trashing the 4th Amendment and any semblance of privacy we had left.

For stark evidence of how a majority of Democrats have flip-flopped on whether they like the NSA spying on them, Greenwald offers us two Pew polls, one during Dubya's reign and one this month:

P.S. -- Respect to Yahoo, who, according to the New York Times, went to court to fight the PRISM program directive to turn over its users' info to the NSA.  Yahoo lost.

On PRISM, partisanship and propaganda

By Glenn Greenwald

June 14, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3gt5x

NSA's domestic spying is legal, that's what's scary

It's funny how America's Left and Right are shaking out over the whole NSA-FBI-Google-Verizon spying thing, and how some politicians and talking heads are completely changing their tune now that a black Democrat is overseeing the spying on us.

Yet many folks on the right like David Brooks or Lindsey Graham who distrust Big Government still trust our military and spy agencies to spy responsibly, because such people feel a "spirit of solidarity with the state," as Woodhouse puts it.  Granted, they feel solidarity with only parts of the state.

I would have lot more faith in the good intentions of those who feel solidarity with America's state security apparatus if they were able to demonstrate a more realistic perspective about the threats to American citizens. 

I mean, we have 11,000 gun deaths a year in America and yet our government, from the local to the national level, is OK with that.  Certainly conservatives are OK with that.  It's "the price of liberty," they say.

But when it comes to Islamic terrorism, all bets are off, no price in tax dollars or privacy is too high to prevent every single attack.  It's nuts.  Even if we flung open America's doors to terrorists, 99% of us would never be touched. 

I'll say it again: we need to suck it up and stop being so scared.  Yeah, sure, some attacks will get through.  So what?  That's the price of us flexing our military muscles all over the world.  That's the "price of liberty," or something.  

Personally, I'd rather take that 1 in 20,000,000 chance of being killed by a terrorist than accept a 100% chance that my own government is spying on me constantly for no good reason!

NSA Surveillance Is Legal, and That's the Worst Thing About It

By Leighton Woodhouse

June 12, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1bxIfeo

Vet/Republican/NSA whistleblower speaks out

This is the kind of stuff that should be driving conservatives and militia types nuts, not Obama's non-existent restrictions on gun owners.

But so far, according to the mainstream, anything done in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism is permissible.  

[The NSA's 'Stellar Wind' program, based in Utah] is being designed to store huge amounts of accessible web information – such as social media updates – but also information in the "deep web" behind passwords and other firewalls that keep it away from the public.

As an example of Stellar Wind's power, Binney believes it is hoovering up virtually every email sent by every American and perhaps a good deal of the people of the rest of the world, too.

US data whistleblower: 'It's a violation of everybody's constitutional rights'

Former National Security Agency official Bill Binney says US is illegally collecting huge amounts of data on his fellow citizens

By Paul Harris

September 15, 2012 | Guardian

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/15/data-whistleblower-constitutional-rights?commentpage=last#end-of-comments

Obama no better than Dubya when it comes to domestic spying

What a hypocrite Obama is. He's just continuing the deplorable Bush-Cheney legacy. The federal government is still "vacuuming up" absolutely everything we say on e-mail, faxes, mobile phones, or with our credit cards. There are no 4th-Amendment-specific warrants. The NSA is spying on us "24/7."

And you sorry saps are worried about socialist health care. May Allah have mercy on your sorry, deluded souls.

SLIGHT CORRECTION (11.11.2009): A Hillary-for-Prez supporter told me that Obama pledged during the Democratic primary to continue Dubya's illegal domestic spying program. This is not exactly true as far as I can tell, but he did support Bush's spying with his vote in the Senate. So, he is still a hypocrite, but his hypocrisy started back in 2008.

Spying on Americans: Obama Endorses Bush Era Warrantless Wiretapping

By Tom Burghardt

November 7, 2009 | Global Research

URL: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUR20091106&articleId=15941

FOX: DHS report on radical right 'offensive'

In any other country on Earth, people who stockpile guns and explosives, talk seriously about violent revolution, and profess a hatred of their government would be considered suspicious characters.  It would be stupid not to pay attention to them.  But in America, such kooks are called patriots. 

Mark my words, these kooks are going to do something violent and bad while Obama is our president.  (It's happened once already).  Their hatred and suspicion of him started before he was even elected, with right-wing nuts calling him an "America hater," an "Arab," a "communist," a "terrorist," or a "terrorist-sympathizer."  Meanwhile, FOX and talk radio continue to egg these nuts on....




Chorus of Protest Grows Over Report Warning of Right Wing Radicalization
April 15, 2009  | FOXNews

The government considers you a terrorist threat if you oppose abortion, own a gun or are a returning war veteran. 

[Nice fair & balanced lead sentence there, FOX.  I mean, why wait till the body of the article to scare and anger your readers?  Immediately go for the jugular.  We expect nothing less. - J]


That's what House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said Wednesday in response to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of the rise of right-wing extremist groups. 

[Who said what?...  Sorry, I'm still angry and scared after reading that lead sentence.  I'm worrying about how Obama is going to take my guns away, or start spying on our veterans.... - J]


Smith, who said the report on "right-wing extremism" amounts to "political profiling," said that DHS is "using people's political views to assess an individual's susceptibility to terror recruitment." He joins a growing chorus of protest from irate conservative groups that are protesting the report's findings.

The report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," released last week by DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said while there is no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of violence, it suggests acts of violence could come from unnamed "rightwing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms -- and it singles out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment.

A senior Republican Judiciary Committee aide tells FOX News that the Obama administration "should immediately retract the report and apologize," saying that according to the report, pro-lifers, anyone who lost their jobs or are one of the thousands of military veterans who have fought to prevent another 9/11 could be suspect.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report Wednesday, saying it is part of an ongoing series of assessments to provide information to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies on "violent radicalization" in the United States.

"Let me be clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States," Napolitano said in a statement. "We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence."

The report follows a similar report released in January by DHS that detailed left-wing threats, focusing on cyberattacks and radical "eco-terrorist" groups like Earth Liberation Front, accused of firebombing construction sites, logging companies, car dealerships and food science labs. The report notes that left-wing extremists prefer economic damage on businesses to get the message across.

"Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups, federalists and supporters of gun rights," said Smith. "That's like saying if you love puppies you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front. It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans."

U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-FL, told FOX News he was "offended" by the report's suggestion that returning troops could be potential targets for extremist groups.

"I am very offended and really disturbed that they would even say our military veterans, our returning war heroes would be capable of committing any terrorist acts," he said. "Where do they get off doing that? I demand an apology from [Napolitano] and even the President of the United States." 

[Gee, what a surprise, another American getting offended over nothing.  Obama should send him a box of pink Kleenex. - J]



Veterans' groups are also taking issue with the report, which says disgruntled vets are considered coveted recruits for groups looking for "combat skills and experience."

"Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists," the report reads. "[DHS] is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities."

Pete Hegseth, chairman of Vets for Freedom, said the report represents a "gross misunderstanding and oversimplification" of the country's service members.

"It's amazing they would single out veterans as a threat to this country," said Hegseth, an Army veteran who served in Iraq. "It underscores a pervasive belief that some are trying to spread that veterans are victims and we're coming home as damaged goods that need to be coddled instead of celebrated."

The report prompted a harsh and swift reaction for the American Legion on Tuesday. In a letter to Napolitano, American Legion National Commander David Rehbein blasted the report as incomplete and politically-biased.

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime," Rehbein wrote. "To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical 'disgruntled military veteran' is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam."

Napolitano said in her statement on Wednesday that she was aware of the letter, and plans to meet with Rehbein sometime next week.

"I will tell him face-to-face that we honor veterans at DHS and employ thousands across the department, up to and including the Deputy Secretary."

"We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not nor will we ever monitor ideology or political beliefs," read Napolitano's statement. "We take seriously our responsibility to protect civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources." 

[Unlike Bush, who did spy on groups through the FBI and even the Pentagon (!) based on their ideology and political beliefs, through so-called "threat assessments." - J]

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said DHS' latest report "clearly appears to censor right-wing opinion," while its earlier assessment of left-wing extremists does not.

"I must say it's chilling, it worries me a great deal," London said. "I never have encountered a time in American life when condemnation of a president is not permitted. This really did strike me as odd, indeed."

London called on President Obama to repudiate the right-wing report.

"What is the message here? That conservative organizations are not permitted to engage in any language that might be described as unfavorable to the president," London said. "Keep in mind this is entirely subjective to begin with."

[The DHS report never mentions censoring anybody.  Just like Bush never tried to censor anti-war groups like Raging Grannies, and Gold Star Families for Peace, even as he spied on them and collected dossiers on their members. - J]


FOXNews.com's Joshua Rhett Miller and FOX News Radio's Mike Majchrowitz contributed to this report.