Tag: National Security Agency

Likely Assassination of UN Chief by US, British and South African Intelligence Happened 60 Years Ago Today

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18 September 2021 — Consortium News

New evidence over the past decade has led to a UN probe into the probable assassination of the second UN chief, but U.S., British and South African intelligence are rebuffing UN demands to declassify files to get at the truth.

Dag Hammarskjöld arrived in Katanga for talks with Katanga authorities and Belgian representatives about withdrawal of Belgian troops and the deployment of the UN Force. At Elisabethville airport prior to his return in Leopoldville. Aug. 14, 1960. (UN Photo)

Former President Harry Truman told reporters two days after Dag Hammarskjöld’s death on Sept. 18, 1961 that the U.N. secretary-general  “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’”

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What Do You Call Edward Snowden? By Peter Hart

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16 August 2013 — FAIR Blog

cbsen-snowdenOn CBS Evening News (8/13/13), anchor Scott Pelley gave viewers a brief–and very misleading–update on Edward Snowden: 

In an interview today, Edward Snowden appears to describe himself as a spy. Snowden is the National Security Agency computer specialist who spilled some of America’s top surveillance secrets. The New York Times asked Snowden about his collaboration with a reporter and Snowden replied, “As one might imagine, normally spies allergically avoid contact with reporters or media.” Snowden, wanted by the United States, is being harbored by Russia.

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US NSA Spied on Venezuela When President Chavez Died, Documents Reveal By TAMARA PEARSON

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9 July 2013 — Venezuela Analysis

Mérida, – Brazilian daily O Globo, reporting jointly with Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald informed today that according to the leaked National Security Agency (NSA) documents, the United States has also been spying on Venezuela’s petroleum industry. The information comes as governments confirm that whistleblower Edward Snowden has accepted asylum in Venezuela.

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Greenwald on ‘coming’ leak: NSA can obtain one billion cell phone calls a day, store them and listen

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30 June 2013 — RT

The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls a day to be redirected into its data hoards and stored, according to the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who said that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’

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Video: "On a Slippery Slope to a Totalitarian State": NSA Whistleblower Rejects Gov’t Defense of Spying

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10 June 2013 — Democracy Now!

As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warns the recent leaks could “render great damage to our intelligence capabilities,” we speak to William Binney, a former top official at the National Security Agency, and Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has broken the NSA spying stories. Binney spent almost 40 years at the agency but resigned after Sept. 11 over concerns about growing domestic surveillance. He spent time as director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group and was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network. “The government is not trying to protect [secrets about NSA surveillance] from the terrorists,” Binney says. “It’s trying to protect knowledge of that program from the citizens of the United States.” Continue reading →

So Just Exactly What Is NSA’s Prism, More Than Reprehensibly Evil? By Rick Falkvinge

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8 June 2013 — Falkvinge on Infopolicy

The US NSA’s PRISM program appears to be a set of specialized deep-packet inspection filters combined with pre-existing wiretapping points at high-level Internet carriers in the United States. Since the program’s revelation the day before yesterday, speculations have ranged far and wide about who does what to make this surveillance state nightmare possible. Adding it all together, it would appear that the social tech companies did not, repeat not, supply bulk data about their users at the US Government’s will – but that the situation for you as an end user remains just as if they had.

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Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History By Washington's Blog

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5 December 2012 —  Washington’s Blog

surveillance

TechDirt notes:
In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.

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Video: The Program – William Binney Interview

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22nd August 2012 —  NYT Op Docs

The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.

This video is part of a series by independent filmmakers who have received grants from the BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute. Continue reading →

Big Brother FBI: Data-Mining Programs Resurrect “Total Information Awareness” By Tom Burghardt

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8 October, 2009 — Global Research – Antifascist Calling

Like a vampire rising from it’s grave each night to feed on the privacy rights of Americans, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving forward with programs that drain the life blood from our constitutional liberties.

From the wholesale use of informants and provocateurs to stifle political dissent, to Wi-Fi hacking and viral computer spyware to follow our every move, the FBI has turned massive data-mining of personal information into a growth industry. In the process they are building the surveillance state long been dreamed of by American securocrats.

A chilling new report by investigative journalist Ryan Singel provides startling details of how the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is quietly morphing into the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system of convicted Iran-Contra felon, Admiral John M. Poindexter. According to documents obtained by Wired:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store. (Ryan Singel, “FBI’s Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records,” Wired, September 23, 2009)

Among the latest revelations of out-of-control secret state spookery, Wired disclosed that personal details on customers have been provided to the Bureau by the Wyndham Worldwide hotel chain “which includes Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson and Hawthorn Suites.” Additional records were obtained from the Avis rental car company and Sears department stores.

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Internet Threatened By Censorship, Secret Surveillance, And Cybersecurity Laws By Stephen Lendman

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22 May, 2009 – CounterCurrents

At a time of corporate dominated media, a free and open Internet is democracy’s last chance to preserve our First Amendment rights without which all others are threatened. Activists call it Net Neutrality. Media scholar Robert McChesney says without it ‘the Internet would start to look like cable TV (with a) handful of massive companies (controlling) content’ enough to have veto power over what’s allowed and what it costs. Progressive web sites and writers would be marginalized or suppressed, and content systematically filtered or banned.

Media reform activists have drawn a line in the sand. Net Neutrality must be defended at all costs. Preserving a viable, independent, free and open Internet (and the media overall) is essential to a functioning democracy, but the forces aligned against it are formidable, daunting, relentless, and reprehensible. Some past challenges suggest future ones ahead.

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The Pentagon’s Cyber Command: Formidable Infrastructure arrayed against the American People By Tom Burghardt

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26 April, 2009 – Global Research – Antifascist Calling…

The Wall Street Journal revealed April 24 that current National Security Agency (NSA) director Lt. General Keith Alexander will “head the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command.”

Friday’s report follows an April 22 piece published by the Journal announcing the proposed reorganization. The Obama administration’s cybersecurity initiative will, according to reports, “reshape the military’s efforts to protect its networks from attacks by hackers, especially those from countries such as China and Russia.”

When he was a presidential candidate, Obama had pledged to elevate cybersecurity as a national security issue, “equating it in significance with nuclear and biological weapons,” the Journal reported.

The new Pentagon command, according to The Washington Post, “would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. ‘freedom of action’ in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency.”

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Obama Administration Endorses Continued Spying on Americans By Tom Burghardt

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13 April, 2009 Global Research, Antifascist Calling

Justice Department Moves to Squash NSA Spying Suits

Since fatuously declaring his to be a “change” administration, President Barack Obama has quickly donned the blood-spattered mantle of state secrecy and executive privilege worn by the Bush regime.

On Friday April 3, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss one of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) landmark lawsuits against illegal spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).

That suit, Jewell v. NSA, was filed last September against the NSA, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence. But with the departure of the Bush gang, the defendants now include President Barack Obama, NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence.

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Inside the AT&T – NSA ‘Secret’ Relationship

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In its submission to a San Francisco district court, the Obama Justice Department states that any disclosures concerning the relationship between AT&T and the National Security Agency would “cause exceptional harm to national security.” Here’s an AT&T engineer explaining just what NSA wants to keep from American citizens: that the NSA is engaged in the warrantless surveillance of all communications (whether telephone conversations, emails, IMs or in other forms) involving AT&T customers.

http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.2347848

AT&T and NSA entered into this agreement in flagrant violation of U.S. criminal law, with the assumption that the Bush Administration would not enforce the criminal law against itself or those who entered into criminal conspiracies with it. There is without a doubt an “exceptional harm to national security” here, and it emanates directly from NSA and the Department of Justice. The Jewel litigation should proceed so that the full extent of criminal wrongdoing can be charted–the first step towards stopping it and providing accountability for the instigators.

– By Scott Horton

Posted with vodpod