Spying and Surveillance
“Americans motivated by anti-government views and racist ideologies” will be the focus of a new Department of Justice position.
Increasingly, the world around us resembles Dick’s dystopian police state in which the police combine widespread surveillance to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.
Edward Snowden’s efforts have been credited by renowned whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Drake for helping change American surveillance law.
Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier serving a 35-year military prison sentence for leaking official secrets, has been threatened with indefinite solitary confinement for having an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell and being found in possession of the Caitlyn Jenner Vanity Fair issue, according to her lawyers and supporters.
“There is massive propaganda for everyone to consume. Consumption is good for profits and consumption is good for the political establishment.” Noam Chomsky
The Associated Press recently reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has been flying at least 100 planes across the country that are equipped with video and audio surveillance equipment. This includes the controversial StingRay cellphone surveillance technology. Even more interesting is the fact that these planes are operated by fake front companies used by the government and are rarely given judicial approval.
Nearly two years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden first revealed the U.S. government was secretly operating mass surveillance programs against the American public, including bulk collection of telephone data, privacy advocates and civil libertarians are celebrating—at least temporarily—after the U.S. Senate on Sunday failed to extend authorities for key portions of those programs before a midnight deadline.
Julian Assange: Despite Congressional Standoff, NSA Has Secret Authority to Continue Spying Unabated
The Obama administration’s authority to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk will likely expire next week after senators from both parties rejected attempts to extend it… From his place of refuge inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange weighs in on the NSA standoff.
Though the overwhelming and bipartisan passage of the USA Freedom Act in the House of Representatives on Wednesday portends the end of the NSA’s mass collection of Americans’ private telephone records, civil liberties groups found little else to celebrate as the ultimate passage of the bill, which now heads to the Senate, would re-authorize a number of worrisome programs by extending the life of the controversial Patriot Act.
A federal appeals court has ruled the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records is illegal. The program was exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; the ACLU filed its lawsuit based largely on Snowden’s revelations. In a unanimous decision Thursday, a three judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York called the bulk phone records collection “unprecedented and unwarranted.” The ruling comes as Congress faces a June 1st deadline to renew the part of the Patriot Act that authorizes the NSA’s bulk data surveillance. Another measure, the USA Freedom Act, would lead to limited reforms of some of the NSA’s programs.
One of the globe’s biggest publishers of textbooks and other educational materials has taken to monitoring the social media accounts of students to see if they discuss their exams.
A former member of President Obama’s National Security Agency review committee said there is no significant value in mass surveillance programs… A January 2014 analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found that the bulk collection of phone records by the NSA “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.” The study by the New America Foundation found that traditional law enforcement and investigative methods were used in most of the cases and the monitoring did little to help.
More than 50 technology companies, privacy and human rights advocates on Wednesday sent a letter (pdf) to U.S. President Barack Obama, members of Congress, and other executive and intelligence officials demanding immediate curbs to government surveillance and an end to the bulk collection of citizens’ communications under the U.S. Patriot Act.
[Dennis Kucinich to Congress:] Why would Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, be so ready to give up its constitutional power to this president with an Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which represents a wholesale appropriation of war power? This could be one of the most important votes you will ever cast, so I want to share with you, collegially, information that I hope will be of use in your deliberations. I present some thoughts for your consideration as you enter into a momentous, new debate over the authorization of military force, this time against the Islamic State.
Many Americans are renouncing their citizenship and moving overseas. Could this be due to an increasingly oppressive government?
