We don’t have a domestic spying program.

What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a a phone number or an e-mail address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat, and that information is useful. But what I said before, I want to make sure I repeat, and that is we should be skeptical about the potential encroachments on privacy. None of the revelations show that government has actually abused these powers, but they’re pretty significant powers. And I’ve been talking to Congress and civil libertarians and others about are there additional ways that we can make sure that people know that nobody is listening to your phone calls? – President Barack Hussein Obama, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, August 6, 2014

Uh huh. 

The Guardian reported the following on Friday, August 9, 2013…

The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens’ email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.

The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans’ communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing “warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans”.

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA’s dragnet surveillance programs.

The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.

Let’s look at a couple of stories which hit the news, yesterday. Which, although, on the surface,are seemingly unrelated, are quite thought-provoking when reviewed together.

The first story revolves around the fact that “Big Brother” has been spying on our enemies through their computers. The New York Times reports that

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.

The N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.

Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”

The other story that caught my eye concerns the 44th President of these United States, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and an off-the-cuff remark he made, yesterday.

The CBS Affiliate in Washington, DC has the story…

Calling for “all hands on deck” to assist the economy, President Barack Obama is urging his Cabinet to identify ways to keep his administration relevant to people struggling in the up-and-down recovery.

With two weeks left before delivering an economy-focused State of the Union address to Congress, Obama is picking up the pace of his jobs message and demonstrating how he can advance his economic agenda administratively and through his ability to coax action from important interest groups.

“We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” Obama said Tuesday as he convened his first Cabinet meeting of the year.

Obama continued: ”And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.”

Okay. I can hear all the Liberal Trolls who read my Blog (slowly,. because of the big words) shrieking at the top of their lungs, “The president is talking about using Executive Powers to make make things better for normal folks and…and…to create jobs….and…and…to save families! He would not do anything to harm us! He loves us!”

Uh huh. Well, please ask Check Heath, Sr. how much POTUS loves him. Since 2008, he has received a Proctological Exam, courtesy of the Internal Revenue Service, no less than 6 times! His Crime? He’s Sarah Palin’s Dad.

Given Obama’s previous track record of using the IRS as his Palace Guard, I would say that the odds of Obama allowing the Computer-Invasive Technology to be used domestically are pretty good.

Everybody sing: 

Every step you take, every move you make, every vow you break, I’ll be watching you.

Until He Comes,

KJ