Tag: spying

Obama Spys on Israel (and Congress) While Iran Tests Rockets

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

untitled (4)This is Smart Power?

The Wall Street Journal reports that

President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned the reach of long-secret U.S. surveillance programs.

But behind the scenes, the White House decided to keep certain allies under close watch, current and former U.S. officials said. Topping the list was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill.

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.

Before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed much of the agency’s spying operations in 2013, there was little worry in the administration about the monitoring of friendly heads of state because it was such a closely held secret. After the revelations and a White House review, Mr. Obama announced in a January 2014 speech he would curb such eavesdropping.

In closed-door debate, the Obama administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former U.S. officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials.

Privately, Mr. Obama maintained the monitoring of Mr. Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Obama mentioned the exception in his speech but kept secret the leaders it would apply to.

Israeli, German and French government officials declined to comment on NSA activities. Turkish officials didn’t respond to requests Tuesday for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA declined to comment on communications provided to the White House.

This account, stretching over two terms of the Obama administration, is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former U.S. intelligence and administration officials and reveals for the first time the extent of American spying on the Israeli prime minister.

,,,The NSA has leeway to collect and disseminate intercepted communications involving U.S. lawmakers if, for example, foreign ambassadors send messages to their foreign ministries that recount their private meetings or phone calls with members of Congress, current and former officials said.

“Either way, we got the same information,” a former official said, citing detailed reports prepared by the Israelis after exchanges with lawmakers.

During Israel’s lobbying campaign in the months before the deal cleared Congress in September, the NSA removed the names of lawmakers from intelligence reports and weeded out personal information. The agency kept out “trash talk,” officials said, such as personal attacks on the executive branch.

Administration and intelligence officials said the White House didn’t ask the NSA to identify any lawmakers during this period.

“From what I can tell, we haven’t had a problem with how incidental collection has been handled concerning lawmakers,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He declined to comment on any specific communications between lawmakers and Israel.The NSA reports allowed administration officials to peer inside Israeli efforts to turn Congress against the deal. Mr. Dermer was described as coaching unnamed U.S. organizations—which officials could tell from the context were Jewish-American groups—on lines of argument to use with lawmakers, and Israeli officials were reported pressing lawmakers to oppose the deal.

“These allegations are total nonsense,” said a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in Washington.

A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: “How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take?”

NSA intelligence reports helped the White House figure out which Israeli government officials had leaked information from confidential U.S. briefings. When confronted by the U.S., Israel denied passing on the briefing materials.

The agency’s goal was “to give us an accurate illustrative picture of what [the Israelis] were doing,” a senior U.S. official said.

Just before Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in March, the NSA swept up Israeli messages that raised alarms at the White House: Mr. Netanyahu’s office wanted details from Israeli intelligence officials about the latest U.S. positions in the Iran talks, U.S. officials said.

A day before the speech, Secretary of State John Kerry made an unusual disclosure. Speaking to reporters in Switzerland, Mr. Kerry said he was concerned Mr. Netanyahu would divulge “selective details of the ongoing negotiations.”

The State Department said Mr. Kerry was responding to Israeli media reports that Mr. Netanyahu wanted to use his speech to make sure U.S. lawmakers knew the terms of the Iran deal.

Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress.

In the final months of the campaign, NSA intercepts yielded few surprises. Officials said the information reaffirmed what they heard directly from lawmakers and Israeli officials opposed to Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign —that the prime minister was focused on building opposition among Democratic lawmakers.The NSA intercepts, however, revealed one surprise. Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes.

While the President of the United States of America, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) and his Secretary of State John (I served in Vietnam) Kerry continue to celebrate their “wonderful, magnificent deal” with the Rogue Radical Islamic Nation of Iran, there a four American citizens, including a Forgotten American Man of Faith, being held in the squalor of Iranian Jails.

United States President Barack Hussein Obama has proven himself to be more concerned about America’s Enemies than our Allies…and, more concerned about reaching out to Muslim Radicals than demanding the release of Christian American Pastor Saeed Abedina, who has been held captive by Iran since the summer of 2012, and his fellow prisoners.

Obama, Kerry, and the rest of his Liberal Dhimmi Cabal has shown where their loyalties unequivocally lie, with their braggadocio over this Chamberlain-esque “deal” that is destined to not only blow up in their faces, but also “where alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears” and in the heart of the Holy Land, itself.

It is a “deal” which Iran has no intention of keeping.

NBC News reports that

The U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman came about 1,500 yards from an Iranian rocket in the Strait of Hormuz last week, two U.S. military officials told NBC News on Tuesday.As the Truman was transiting the strait, which connects the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, Iranian Revolutionary Guards conducted a live-fire exercise right near the U.S. carrier Saturday, officials said.

A U.S. military official said an Iranian navy fast and short attack craft began conducting a live-fire exercise at the same time the carrier was nearing the end of the strait, firing off several unguided rockets. A French frigate, the U.S. destroyer USS Buckley and other commercial traffic were also in the area.

Obama’s concern is not with our allies nor the safety of the citizens of the United States.

Obama, as he always has been, is concerned with himself and leaving a marvelous legacy as president.

Giving Iran the means to “kill the infidels” will definitely cement Obama’s Legacy…if there is anyone left to remember it.

Iran has always been, since the ouster of the Shah, a rogue nation. They are a threat to every nation who stands in the way of their crazed Political Ideology, disguised as a “religion”.

Either due to naiveté or simple over-estimation of their own intelligence, on the part of Obama and his Administration, as regards their “superior intellect”, to quote Fred Thompson, as Admiral Josh Painter, in the great movie “The Hunt for Red October”…

This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Obama has screwed both God’s Chosen People and the nation which he is sworn to protect…for the sake of his own ego’s contentment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Operation Prism: He Knows When You’ve Been Bad or Good…or Vote Democrat.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

ObamalyingThis week, Americans have found out that their President authorized unlimited surveillance on innocent citizens, gathering data from our cell phones, credit cards, and computers, both at home and at work.

And, according to someone who would know, we ain’t seen nothing, yet:

The National Security Agency’s collection of phone data from all of Verizon’s U.S. customers is just the “tip of the iceberg,” says a former NSA official who estimates the agency has data on as many as 20 trillion phone calls and emails by U.S. citizens.

William Binney, an award-winning mathematician and noted NSA whistleblower, says the collection dates back to when the super-secret agency began domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I believe they’ve been collecting data about all domestic calls since October 2001,” said Mr. Binney, who worked at NSA for more than 30 years. “That’s more than a billion calls a day.”

He called his figures “back of the envelope” estimates, adding that they include emails as well as telephone calls.

Marc Ambinder, writing for The Week, posted the following information in an article published June 6th:

Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said.

Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA’s domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that “domestic collection” does not mean that the target is based in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen; rather, it refers only to the origin of the data.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that U.S. credit card companies had also provided customer information. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies because, they said, doing so would provide U.S. enemies with a list of companies to avoid. They declined to confirm the list of participants in an internet monitoring program revealed by the Washington Post and the Guardian, but both confirmed that the program existed.

“The idea is to create a mosaic. We get a tip. We vet it. Then we mine the data for intelligence,” one of the officials said.

…It is not clear how the NSA interfaces with the companies. It cannot use standard law enforcement transmission channels to do, since most use data protocols that are not compatible with that hardware. Several of the companies mentioned in the Post report deny granting access to the NSA, although it is possible that they are lying, or that the NSA’s arrangements with the company are kept so tightly compartmentalized that very few people know about it. Those who do probably have security clearances and are bound by law not to reveal the arrangement.

This arrangement allows the U.S. companies to “stay out of the intelligence business,” one of the officials said. That is, the government bears the responsibility for determining what’s relevant, and the company can plausibly deny that it subjected any particular customer to unlawful government surveillance. Previously, Congressional authors of the FAA said that such a “get out of jail free” card was insisted by corporations after a wave of lawsuits revealed the extent of their cooperation with the government.

It is possible, but not likely, that the NSA clandestinely burrows into servers on American soil, without the knowledge of the company in question, although that would be illegal.

The 2008 FISA Amendments Act allow the NSA to analyze, with court orders, domestic communications of all types for counter-terrorism, counter-espionage, counter-narcotics and counter-proliferation purposes. If the agency believes that both ends of the communication, or the circle of those communicating, are wholly within the U.S., the FBI takes over. If one end of the conversation is outside the U.S., the NSA keeps control of the monitoring. An administration official said that such monitoring is subject to “extensive procedures,”but as the Washington Post reported, however, it is often very difficult to segregate U.S. citizens and residents from incidental contact.

Uh huh. And, if you believe that, you also believe that Obama learned about all these scandals which have broken in the last few weeks, when we did.

Back on February 6th, 2013, Breitbart.com featured this interesting quote from the absolutely corrupt Liberal House Member Maxine Waters:

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. “That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.” (h/t mark81150)

Bazinga.

According to The Godfather of Conservative Talk Shows, Rush Limbaugh, what we’re witnessing is a coup:

…Herb Meyer was the first to sound this notice some months ago. I also mentioned he wrote a piece that currently is in the American Thinker earlier this week, and it had the potential to be controversial because he used Adolf Hitler and Nazism in it, and it was his way of explaining, he made a point in the piece that nowhere, you know, people looking for a smoking gun to nail Obama on all these scandals, Herb says, “Ain’t gonna be one.”

He said whether you believe it or not, there is not one document linking Adolf Hitler to the holocaust. Adolf Hitler never put it on paper what he intended to do. There is no smoking gun. And yet what happened? We know that the Nazis engaged in the Holocaust. Herb Meyer’s point was that the people Hitler hired didn’t have to be told. They didn’t have to be given instructions. All they had to do was listen to what Hitler was saying. All they had to do was listen to what his objectives were. And he said the same thing’s happening here with this administration. He went to great pains to say: I’m not calling this administration a bunch of Nazis. I’m just using this as an illustration. I know people will get my point if I use something this notorious, the Nazi regime.

It’s a point that I’ve made here about the IRS. They say, “Well, you can’t link it in to Obama.” You don’t need to link Obama to it. He hired these people. Lois Lerner and everybody at the IRS who’s doing this is doing everything they can to please Obama. There’s not gonna be a smoking gun, but you don’t need a smoking gun to know where this administration’s doing what it’s doing.

Obama puts people in positions that mirror him. Eric Holder, you name it, they’re doing Obama’s bidding. Everybody. Susan Rice and Samantha Power, they are Obama, and there’s a context for what’s happening. Herbert Meyer, if I may quote him again, asserted that essentially what’s taking place in the United States right now is a coup, not a violent coup, and not a million artistic coup, but nevertheless a takeover of a government, and it’s being done by the Obama administration.

Let’s face it. Obama is nothing but a Community Organizer/Visiting Law lecturer,and Marxist/Alinsky-ite, groomed from an early age by Chicago Politicians and Democratic Powers Brokers to be “clean and articulate”. Financed by George Soros and others, he was built up, a la Nikolai Lenin, to be the savior of the masses, a figurehead, who would “cause the oceans to rise and fall”, “heal the sick, raise the dead, and make the little girls talk out of their heads” (Thank you, Johnny Rivers)…and faint at strategic moments in campaign rallies.

The problem is, the Democrats did not realize exactly how radical Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) was….nor how much of a megalomaniac.

According to insiders, he is a hands-off leader. He sits back and watches while others do the dirty work. After all, you didn’t expect Scooter to let work get in the way of improving his golf game and spending time with his former “body man”, Reggie Love, did you?

And, now, America finds itself governed by an Administration comprised of the same radicals who used to hold sit-ins in College Dean’s offices, utilizing the same Nazi-like methods of intimidation and suppression that they accused the Federal Government of in the 1960s.

That, boys and girls, is called “irony”.

On a final note: What remains curious to me, is with all of these scandals busting wide open, we still have not learned where America’s Commander in Chief was the night  of September 11, 2012, when those 4 Brave Americans were murdered by Muslim Terrorists at the Embassy Compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Perhaps, he was waiting to hear about it on the nightly news.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Operation PRISM: But…But…Booosh!!!

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

obamaburningconstitutionYesterday, as news of President Barack Hussein Obama and his Administration’s dissection of innocent Americans’ Fourth Amendment Rights spread like wildfire across our nation, Liberals could be heard shrieking from coast to coast:

It’s Bush’s fault!!

What they are hysterically referring to, is the fact that, President George W. Bush signed the Patriot Act into law on October 26, 2001. Here are some of his remarks, given at the time:

…As of today, we’re changing the laws governing information-sharing. And as importantly, we’re changing the culture of our various agencies that fight terrorism. Countering and investigating terrorist activity is the number one priority for both law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Surveillance of communications is another essential tool to pursue and stop terrorists. The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones.

As of today, we’ll be able to better meet the technological challenges posed by this proliferation of communications technology. Investigations are often slowed by limit on the reach of federal search warrants. Law enforcement agencies have to get a new warrant for each new district they investigate, even when they’re after the same suspect.

Under this new law, warrants are valid across all districts and across all states. And, finally, the new legislation greatly enhances the penalties that will fall on terrorists or anyone who helps them. Current statutes deal more severely with drug-traffickers than with terrorists. That changes today.

We are enacting new and harsh penalties for possession of biological weapons. We’re making it easier to seize the assets of groups and individuals involved in terrorism. The government will have wider latitude in deporting known terrorists and their supporters. The statute of limitations on terrorist acts will be lengthened, as will prison sentences for terrorists.

This bill was carefully drafted and considered. Led by the members of Congress on this stage, and those seated in the audience, it was crafted with skill and care, determination and a spirit of bipartisanship for which the entire nation is grateful. This bill met with an overwhelming — overwhelming agreement in Congress, because it upholds and respects the civil liberties guaranteed by our Constitution.

Bi-partisan…hmmmm…doesn’t that mean that both sides of the aisle signed off on the Patriot Act? Why, yes. It does.

Rush Limbaugh dissects the Liberals’ argument even further…

The Bush warrantless wiretaps involved foreign telephone calls. Remember when the left was getting so aggravated over the Bush warrantless wiretaps? They were involving domestic to foreign phone calls and foreign to domestic. The Bush administration was not monitoring domestic phone calls, contrary to what you were told or maybe led to believe. Obama is doing that exact thing. This is every phone call that Verizon handles. Now, they’re telling us, “Don’t worry, it’s just the metadata,” which is the phone numbers of every call, and the length of the call.

“It has nothing about the details of the call, nothing about the content. No, no, no, Mr. Limbaugh! What they’re looking for is spikes. They want to see if a bunch of numbers are called frequently, constantly in large numbers over long periods of time, and then they’ll zero in to find out who was making those calls.” So now what the media is saying along with Obama is, “Hey, this is all to protect you. Don’t sweat it! There nothing to see here. When these kinds of stories have come up about the NSA or phone records in the past under Bush…

This is not collection in the usual spy craft sense of eavesdropping. These phone logs are being used for what’s called “traffic analysis,” metadata. It involves looking for patterns in the data. But the huge number of records is almost certainly unprecedented here, as is the daily monitoring. But here’s the real question: Didn’t Obama tell us that the War on Terror is over? Didn’t he tell us that? (interruption) Yeah, I know we’re not supposed to remember he said that, but, see, I can’t help it; I do.

President Obama was in San Diego yesterday to give a Sales Pitch (disguised as a speech) about Obamacare. Instead, he attempted to answer why he is recording the communications of average American Citizens.

According to Obama,

Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.

They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.

…The programs that have been discussed over the last couple days in the press are secret in the sense that they’re classified, but they’re not secret in the sense that when it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program.

The relevant intelligence committees are fully briefed on these programs. These are programs that have been authorized by broad, bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006. And so I think at the outset, it’s important to understand that your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we’re doing.

One of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how [we’re]striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy, because there are some trade-offs involved. And I welcome this debate. And I think it’s healthy for our democracy. I think it’s a sign of maturity.

…It’s important to recognize that you can’t have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.

…There’s a reason why these programs are classified. There is a suggestion that somehow any classified program is a quote-unquote ‘secret’ program, which means it’s somehow suspicious. But the fact of the matter is, in our modern history there are a whole range of programs that have been classified.

If every step that we’re taking to try to prevent a terrorist act is on the front page of the newspapers or on television, then presumably the people who are trying to do us harm are going to be able to get around our preventive measures. That’s why these things are classified.

Uh huh. And, I suppose that explains your cover ops involving the DOJ, the AP, and Fox News. Or…your shenanigans involving your use of the IRS to sabotage, or, at least slow down Conservative Secular and Religious Organizations, in order to get re-elected.

Excuse Americans, if they don’t quite buy what you’re selling, Scooter. 

On May 23rd of this year, you announced that “The War on Terror is Over” and that

We must define our effort not as a boundless ‘Global War on Terror,’ but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.

Deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.  So that’s the current threat: Lethal yet less capable al-Qaida affiliates. Threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad. Homegrown extremists. This is the future of terrorism. We must take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them.

If the threat of Muslim Terrorism has been reduced to “lone wolves” and a “weakened al-Qaeda”, Mr. President, why do you need, as was reported yesterday, to be monitoring billions of phone calls and 15 Internet Servers?

The answer is simple. Just like all the other scandals that have exploded in the last month, your motives are purely political. You are a Chicago Politician and you have brought the shady activities of Chicago Backroom Politics to the Office of the Presidency.

As your sycophants at the New York Times wrote yesterday, 

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

Fortunately…

The best laid plans of mice and men oft times go awry.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Operation PRISM: We Are All Now “Enemies of the State”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

obamabigbroMy Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

President Barack Hussein Obama, “Transparency and Open Government”, 1/21/2009, whitehouse.gov

He lied.

Yesterday, Americans found out that their Federal Government, under the leadership of Barack Hussein Obama, utilizing the resources of the NSA, under the excuse of “National Security”, has been spying on literally all Americans, recording our cell phone conversations, along with keeping a record of our internet browsing, e-mails, and posts.

Regarding the monitoring of our phone calls, The New York Times reports…

The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, directs a Verizon Communications subsidiary, Verizon Business Network Services, to turn over “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency all call logs “between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

The order does not apply to the content of the communications.

Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and Internet providers for corporations. It is not clear whether similar orders have gone to other parts of Verizon, like its residential or cellphone services, or to other telecommunications carriers. The order prohibits its recipient from discussing its existence, and representatives of both Verizon and AT&T declined to comment Wednesday evening.

The Guardian,  a newspaper/website in the UK, reported on the phone call monitoring Wednesday night.

Yesterday, they reported that the NSA has been monitoring 15 of the biggest Internet Servers, including Apple, Google, and Facebook.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

One of Obama’s biggest sycophants in the Main Stream Media, The New York Times, now says that Obama’s record of accountability and transparency leaves a lot to be desired:

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The shear magnitude of what we learned yesterday is overwhelming. The Government of the United States of America, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, has turned into a  New Politboro, so adept at spying on the New Proletariat, which its lousy economic policies has created, that it puts the old Soviet Union to shame.

Just think about it. Every phone call between you and your spouse, your kids, your parents, and the rest of your family, friends, business associates, and SPAM callers, are digitally recorded and kept in U.S. Government Archives, where they can be listened to by Government Agents.

Then, there’s the matter of the Monitoring of Internet Usage. Every time you get on Facebook or Twitter, or, even go to The Drudge Report to see what’s going on in the world, the Feds are making a record of your cyber-travels.

And, Lord help all of us Bloggers.

Thinking about the sheer number of recorded communications is mind-blowing.

Positively Orwellian, isn’t it?

Where will this blatant dismantling of the 4th Amendment lead us?

Will we all be led to “FEMA Camps” where we will have to watch a copy of the DVD of “Obama’s Speeches” over and over again, like the one he gave to the Queen of England when she visited the White House?

Will the “Men in Black” show up on our door step to take us away for writing blogs critical of Obama and his fellow Marxist/Alinskyites?

Speaking of them, I thought that those guys with the black suits and sunglasses on, outside my home, were just Mormons on a mission.

Obama has “radically changed” America, alright. He’s systematically taking our freedoms away.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The ARM Chip: The Rise of the Machines

On By kingsjesterIn Entertainment, Politics3 Comments

Soon, when you sit down in your easy chair to watch TV, your TV could be watching you back.

The story’s found at dailymail.co.uk:

When people download a film from Netflix to a flatscreen, or turn on web radio, they could be alerting unwanted watchers to exactly what they are doing and where they are.

Spies will no longer have to plant bugs in your home – the rise of ‘connected’ gadgets controlled by apps will mean that people ‘bug’ their own homes, says CIA director David Petraeus.

The CIA claims it will be able to ‘read’ these devices via the internet – and perhaps even via radio waves from outside the home.

Everything from remote controls to clock radios can now be controlled via apps – and chip company ARM recently unveiled low-powered, cheaper chips which will be used in everything from fridges and ovens to doorbells.

The resultant chorus of ‘connected’ gadgets will be able to be read like a book – and even remote-controlled, according to CIA CIA Director David Petraeus, according to a recent report by Wired’s ‘Danger Room’ blog.

Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will ‘transform’ the art of spying – allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.

‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ said Petraeus.

‘Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.’

Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously ‘dumb’ home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.

This week, one of the world’s biggest chip companies, ARM, has unveiled a new processor built to work inside ‘connected’ white goods.

The ARM chips are smaller, lower-powered and far cheaper than previous processors – and designed to add the internet to almost every kind of electrical appliance.

It’s a concept described as the ‘internet of things’.

The original article, found on wired.com, adds the following:

…On Tuesday, the company unveiled its new ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, a low-power chip designed to connect non-PC electronics and smart sensors across the home and office.

Previous iterations of the Cortex family of chips had the same goal, but with the new chip, ARM claims much greater power savings. According to the company, the 32-bit chip consumes just nine microamps per megahertz, an impressively low amount even for an 8- or 16-bit chip. Gary Atkinson, ARM’s director of embedded applications, says the chip is 40 percent more efficient than its predecessor. This reduction, he says, will finally allow “fixed function” chips to integrate with everyday devices — and start telling them what to do.

“If you look at the edge of the internet today, [it’s] your mobile phone, your tablet, your PC. That’s what you interact with, and that’s what sends and receives data,” Atkinson tells Wired. “What we’re talking about with the ‘Internet of Things’ is extending that connectivity out, connecting every day devices to the internet.”

This is hardly a new idea. Tech companies and pundits have trumpeted this sort of thing for years, envisioning a world where smart sensors do everything from regulating your home’s air temperature to flipping the lights on and off. But Atkinson believes we’re finally on the verge of such a world, and he takes the vision a step further, imagining a world filled with things like “smart umbrellas.” Rather than checking the weather each morning for rain, you could buy an umbrella that beeps at you when it’s needed.

Today’s chips are small enough for this sort of thing. But, according to Atkinson, they consume too much power. With the Cortex-M0+ processor, he says, ARM has changed that, offering a chip that consumes virtually no power when it’s turned on but not actually doing work — i.e., when it’s in sleep mode. Geoff Lees, vice president of Freescale’s microcontroller division, who has partnered with ARM on the chip, says this power efficiency is crucial for devices that generate a lot of data, such as blood glucose monitors or underground flowmeters. Now you essentially “don’t need an on or off switch,” he says.

This gives “Big Brother” The ability to turn out household appliances against us.

Remember the movie, Maximum Overdrive, starring Emilio Estevez, and based on a Stephen King Novel?

For 8 days in 1986, the earth passed through the tail of a mysterious Rea-M rogue comet. During that time, machines on earth suddenly come to life and terrorize their human creators. A small group of people in a truck stop, surrounded by “alive” semi-trailers, set out to stop the machines before the machines stop them.

The problem was, it wasn’t just those trucks, it was soda machines, Cuisinarts,  electric knifes, and other machines that came to life and attacked humans.

And now, you tell me that my HD TV is going to be used to spy on me?

Perhaps that movie wasn’t so far-fetched after all.

I knew that Mickey Mouse clock was staring at me.