Tag: nsa

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

In October 2011, when the Occupy movement arrived in Houston, protesters were subject to local and federal surveillance, infiltration by police provocateurs, and police assault. Months later, Dave Lindorff reported for WhoWhatWhy, a document obtained in December 2012 from the Houston FBI office shows that the agency was aware of a plot to assassinate Occupy movement leaders—and did nothing about it.

In a very creative and off-beat campaign, one organization is trying to bring home how violative, of our privacy and peace of mind, is the unbridled and more and more “legal” right of our government to spy on us. 14 years of the Patriot Act has not made us safer as it was shown last year that it has not given us actionable information, yet it is still around. It is slated to expire in June of this year. The CISA Bill threatens to put another piece of legislation, worse than the Patriot Act in place.

Russell Brand goes off on Apple and the spying tactics of America’s NSA and Brittain. Admittedly, he’s a tad harsh on the company (that undoubtedly does have some employees that do care about the users of the iwatch) but he does make a lot of good points (and cites some good sources) about our right to privacy and the uncomfortably cozy relationships between big information and tech Corporations (like Apple, Google, and Facebook) and various world governments.

UFOs and extraterrestrial life is one of the most popular questions of our time. In the United States alone, at least half of all Americans say that we’re not alone in the universe. Fifty percent of Americans already believe that there is some form of life on other planets, while only seventeen percent think that there isn’t. A quarter of Americans believe that intelligent extraterrestrial visitors have already come to Earth and have been doing so for a long time.