The Obama Administration — with the clear support of Democratic and Republic leadership — has continued to eviscerate privacy in the United States despite recent controversies over NSA spying on Americans. The most recent report details how the National Security Agency is collecting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts, including those of Americans. The reported collection program is a new operation that intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services. It is the latest effort by the Obama Administration to turn this into a fishbowl society where citizens and their associations are entirely transparent to the government. Once again, the most amazing aspect of this story is the complete lack of response or outcry. President Obama has succeeded, it seems, in changing the expectations of privacy in our society — a change that is unlikely to be reversed to the great detriment of civil liberties in America. It is the latest example of why it is increasingly curious for Americans to refer to this country as “the land of the free” as we construct a massive internal security state and unchecked executive powers.
The report states that the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. In single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch has reportedly collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers. This includes a daily collection of an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the “in-box” displays of Web-based e-mail accounts. That would translate to a staggering collection rate of more than 250 million per year.
These programs are creating a government databank system that allows the government to observe and track virtually every contract and association of a person’s life. It is the total awareness system that we thought we had killed under Bush. Of course, it is now Barack Obama creating this security state so Democrats are not just silent but supportive of the effort. He will of course leave office at some point and leave this security system as his legacy. He will be able to claim (if he was willing to admit it) that he left this country less free than he found it. And Democrats will have secured a place of unrivaled hypocrisy if they try to later oppose the same powers in a Republican president.
Source: Washington Post
Reblogged this on This Got My Attention and commented:
Big Government wants to be your buddy and they’re not asking if it’s OK.
“Once again, the most amazing aspect of this story is the complete lack of response or outcry. ”
Yes indeed, to me that is the most amazing aspect of this. But reading this blog on other posts shows why, we engage in name calling far to often. How many time do we read “Tea Bagger”, “Obummer”, RandyJet says “I see that such a simple concept as that eludes you. ” in an accusation that had no basis in a previous post someone made.
So yes indeed, I am amazed that nearly everyone (me included on occasion) would rather name call than work together with others to protest this vile policy.
And here I thought ‘Person of Interest’ was not reality based.
In case you don’t know it begins…
“”You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day…”
Reblogged this on euzicasa.
randy,
that is one interesting view of what Due Process is. The secret kill list and this latest chapter of the spy on American’s club is part of the continuing war on terror. Unfortunately, no one told us that the we were the enemy in that war.
I am as clean and patriotic as I know I am. …….
…… OR..
I am as dirty and treasonous as the Government thinks I am.
Anyone know what the Government “thinks” …. today?…or Tomorrow?
Oh yes. I forget. Getting hit with a drone or popped by a sniper team because you’ve been rubber stamped on to some list for the Executive by the Executive based on who knows what evidence and without any judicial review is the equivalent of shooting at the cops.
False equivalence much, Randy?
Or only when being an apologist for a Pinochet-esque policy?
Gene the fact is that most of those on the wanted list are NOT shy at all about who they are, what they intend, and are US citizens. When an American goes abroad to fight in a war against the USA and our allies, they lose their civil rights. Just as when you hold up a bank, you lose your right to a trial if you resist being taken. The police do not have to get a grand jury to indict before they can chase a car that has suspects in it. That is not a false equivalence, unless you wish to say that the police can only arrest those who wish to come to court willingly.
My only concern would be if such a list were to be a secret one for US citizens and that they have no chance to answer the charges against them. So far, I have seen NO instance that the US is keeping that from those concerned. I have no problem having a secret list for foreigners since they are not US citizens and have no claim on US courts or rights.
I see that most of you have dropped the charge that Obama is just as bad or worse than his predecessors in this regards. In fact, I think Obama has done a great service in making this more open, while all of his predecessors have hidden their outright MURDERS of US citizens who had committed NO crime at all.
Once again, if the US resorts to killings in places where we do have other means of redress, THEN I will join you in protest. Not to mention that countries in western Europe would also be outraged at such killings on their territory. Also, I have to point out that those countries which are having US drones actively killing combatants have the means to stop them if they chose to do so. All they need is a Cessna 182 RG and a rifle to put a stop to that.
And this is, still, only the tip of the iceberg.
“The only thing I would object to is if the persons targeted are kept secret to them so that they have no chance to clear themselves.”
And what part of “without due process” escapes you, Randy?
Besides all of it.
Gene, You are only required to get due process when you are in court,NOT when you are shooting at the cops. I see that such a simple concept as that eludes you. Fortunately, most Americans have more sense.
They just keep pushing.
We need to remember that there is one important line in the Declaration of Independence: “Consent of the governed”.
Come on, duopolists, Can I hear a “Better than Bush?” Amen, brothers and sisters. That will get you through the night once again.
Greenwald to publish more revelations, claims threats from US and UK
Published time: October 15, 2013, 08:36
http://rt.com/news/greenwald-threatens-more-leaks-201/
DARPA has finally brought us to a constitutional Rubicon. Yet all that is required is for citizens to do nothing. DARPA will do the rest. -Jonathan Turley in 2002
http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/17/opinion/oe-turley17
George Bush’s Big Brother
Orwell would recognize the plan to monitor citizens using databases.
November 17, 2002
by Jonathan Turley
In George Orwell’s book “1984,” the government used “doublespeak” to change the meaning of words to make the horrific appear commonplace. Thus the war department was called the Ministry of Love, and citizens were instructed that “slavery is freedom.”
Long thought dead, it now appears that Orwell is busy at work in the darkest recesses of the Bush administration and its new Information Awareness Office.
It is a title that is truly a masterpiece of doublespeak. After all, who could be against greater awareness of information?
What was not known until last week was what information the administration is seeking and how it wants to acquire it. With no public notice or debate, the administration has been working on the creation of the world’s largest computer system and database, one with the ability to track every credit card purchase, travel reservation, medical treatment and common transaction by every citizen in the United States.
It has been the dream of every petty despot in history: the ability to track citizens in real time and to reconstruct their associations and interests.
Welcome to the latest product from the good people at DARPA.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been working on this project, and the pending homeland security bill would lay the foundation for the system.
In a little-discussed provision, the bill combines huge government databases into a single, massive system. It further weakens protections under the Privacy Act of 1974, opening the door for DARPA to develop a prototype system.
With a requested $200-million down payment, the “Total Information Awareness” system could allow the government to study the purchases and activities of citizens to isolate people for further investigation, feeding names into the new massive surveillance system constructed after Sept. 11.
This project is the brainchild of a man who hardly needs a new technological boost into infamy: retired Vice Adm. and former National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter.
Poindexter’s previous noteworthy public service was as the master architect behind the Iran-Contra scandal, the criminal conspiracy to sell arms to a terrorist nation, Iran, in order to surreptitiously fund an unlawful clandestine project in Nicaragua.
Along with various other Reagan administration officials, Poindexter was convicted of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying documents and obstructing Congress in its investigation. He was sentenced to jail but was saved on a technicality: a poorly crafted immunity grant by Congress that required some evidence to be suppressed.
One would think that a convicted felon who escaped by a technicality hardly would be welcome in the Bush administration. Yet when asked about Poindexter’s prior criminal conduct, President Bush released a statement that he believed “Adm. Poindexter has served our nation very well.”
In some ways, Poindexter is the perfect Orwellian figure for the perfect Orwellian project. As a man convicted of falsifying and destroying information, he will now be put in charge of gathering information on every citizen. To add insult to injury, the citizens will fund the very system that will reduce their lives to a transparent fishbowl.
What is most astonishing is the utter lack of public debate over this project.
Over the last year, the public has yielded large tracts of constitutional territory that had been jealously guarded for generations. Now we face the ultimate act of acquiescence in the face of government demands.
For more than 200 years, our liberties have been protected primarily by practical barriers rather than constitutional barriers to government abuse. Because of the sheer size of the nation and its population, the government could not practically abuse a great number of citizens at any given time. In the last decade, however, these practical barriers have fallen to technology.
This new, untapped power has been an irresistible temptation for many like Poindexter, who has reportedly been working on such ideas for years. Soon after Sept. 11, he appeared at the door of the administration like a J. Edgar Hoover vacuum salesman, promising a system that could digest huge amounts of information and produce neatly packaged leads on suspected citizens.
A government’s desire for “Total Information Awareness” of its citizens is nothing new. Our founders understood that the quality of government is determined not by the powers given but by those denied to it. A free society cannot be maintained under the continual surveillance of its government.
DARPA has finally brought us to a constitutional Rubicon. Yet all that is required is for citizens to do nothing. DARPA will do the rest.
Reblogged this on Brittius.com.
It may sound somewhat innocuous now, and for the most part ineffective in the great “war against terror”, which I suppose is the justification. My concern is that guilt-by-association will become the new state montra, where you are denied your rights simply because someone on your buddy list is under suspicion. Want to travel or buy a gun? Sorry.
Oh, and we can’t tell you why.
In 2016, A mONUMENT will be erected to ‘Resident’ Obummer…. after a collection of all the COW MANURE, in the Country is made, nation-wide…. and piled up on the ‘Black House’ lawn…………..
“He will of course leave office at some point and leave this security system as his legacy.”
Don’t forget claiming the Imperial power to assassinate American citizens without due process. That’ll be real important when people start “disappearing”.
“He will be able to claim (if he was willing to admit it) that he left this country less free than he found it.”
Claims aside, it is what it is.
“And Democrats will have secured a place of unrivaled hypocrisy if they try to later oppose the same powers in a Republican president.”
I’m pretty sure they’ve secured their place of unrivalled hypocrisy by allowing Obama to build what they forbade Bush (like that stopped him from laying the groundwork Obama built upon) and then going the extra mile by not impeaching him for the aforementioned ultra vires “kill list”.
For the first time ever, I’m glad my grandfather has passed on. This is not the country he fought for and his brother died to protect in WWII. If he’d lived to fully see the fruits of the Bush and Obama administrations, I’m certain it would have killed him.
You can die from a broken heart you know.
I don’t even recognize this country anymore.
Is that statement a double entendre?
The so called kill lists have been in effect in this country for centuries, and to think that this is something new is wrong. These lists apply to places and persons who are beyond the reach of any government and thus cannot be brought to court by any means other than this. The US used WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE posters even in the USA where we DID have jurisdiction.
If Churchill had drones available to use in WWII, I am sure he would have put Lord Haw Haw on the kill list. Likewise, I am sure that FDR would have been more than happy had Ezra Pound made it onto the 15th Air Corps bombing list as well. Other administrations have killed US citizens abroad who were NOT engaged in any illicit or violent activities which is criminal to do that. Reagan approved the murder of many Americans abroad in Chile, Nicaragua, and other places. THAT was illegal and impeachable in my view since they were not engaged in armed activities against US forces nor threatened terrorist activities. ALL of those on the current list ARE combatants and if they wish, they can return to the US to face charges and get OFF the list. That is something that the dead victims of previous administrations did NOT have.
So I WILL become concerned when the drones kill US Muslim students in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen who are enjoying the beaches on spring break in those countries. The reason that most Americans are not concerned about this is that it does not matter to us since the targets are legitimate ones under our and international laws. The only thing I would object to is if the persons targeted are kept secret to them so that they have no chance to clear themselves.
So what? They get such a mass of information that it is useless. Let them expand it even more, and they will still have nothing but a mass of garbage. I have so many contacts, spam etc..that it is virtually impossible to gauge anything about my politics, or buying choices.
yOU ARE MISSING THE POINT, Arthur Randolph….. In America, the Government is not supposed to spy on its citizens…. This is China and Russia’s ‘Mode of Operation’……….
Reblogged this on danmillerinpanama and commented:
Another good analysis by Jonathan Turley. Will anything be done to halt the nonsense? It’s probably here to stay.
Obummer, you’re invited to my house…… I’ll sAVE MY shit SO YOU’LL HAVE PLENTY TO EAT, mO-fO
There outta be a law.