Bush-Era Whistleblower Russ Tice Claims the NSA Spied on Obama--and a Lot of Other Powerful People Although The Guardian made the shocking revelation earlier this month that the NSA has been collecting meta data on millions of Americans, it may come as an even bigger surprise who was among those millions. Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst, alleged in an interview with Sibel Edmonds' Boiling Frogs podcast (launched by former FBI staffer and National Security Whistleblowers Coalition founder Sibel Edmond) that the agency has been spying on some of the most powerful people in the U.S. government. Approximately 48 minutes into the interview, Tice claimed that among the people his office surveilled was Barack Obama: "Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois... Tice was employed at various times by the Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Tice praised Edward Snowden's exposure of PRISM.
Edward Snowden asylum: Iceland businessman says plane ready - Associated Press LONDON (AP) — An Icelandic business executive says a private plane is on standby to transport NSA secrets leaker Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland. Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson said Friday that while he has not spoken directly with Edward Snowden, he has been in touch with a third party representing him. The businessman has connections to the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization. Continue Reading Sigurvinsson says he has access to planes in Hong Kong and mainland China. (PHOTOS: 10 famous/infamous whistleblowers) But Iceland's government says it has not received an asylum request from Snowden, who has revealed his role in providing secret U.S. Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Tomasson says Snowden hasn't approached the ministry and an asylum request could only begin if Snowden is in Iceland. U.S. officials have expressed an interest in prosecuting Snowden.
Europe warns US: you must respect the privacy of our citizens | World news European Union officials have demanded "swift and concrete answers" to their requests for assurances from the US that its mass data surveillance programmes do not breach the fundamental privacy rights of European citizens. The European commission's vice-president, Viviane Reding, has sent a letter with seven detailed questions to the US attorney general, Eric Holder Jr, demanding explanations about Prism and other American data snooping programmes. Reding warns him that "given the gravity of the situation and the serious concerns expressed in public opinion on this side of the Atlantic" she expects detailed answers before they meet at an EU-US justice ministers' meeting in Dublin on Friday. In the letter, released to the Guardian, Reding details her serious concerns that the Americans are "accessing and processing, on a large scale, the data of EU citizens using major US online service providers". Reding laid out the seven questions she said needed to be answered:
Why The NSA's Secret Online Surveillance Should Scare You The reaction to the National Security Agency (NSA)’s secret online spying program, PRISM, has been polarized between seething outrage and some variant on “what did you expect?” Some have gone so far as to say this program helps open the door to fascism, while others have downplayed it as in line with the way that we already let corporations get ahold of our personal data. That second reaction illustrates precisely why this program is so troubling. The more we accept perpetual government and corporate surveillance as the norm, the more we change our actions and behavior to fit that expectation — subtly but inexorably corrupting the liberal ideal that each person should be free to live life as they choose without fear of anyone else interfering with it. Put differently, George Orwell isn’t who you should be reading to understand the dangers inherent to the NSA’s dragnet. You’d be better off turning to famous French social theorist Michel Foucault.
Icelandic WikiLeaks Collaborators Targeted by Obama Administration RT | June 21 2013 The Obama administration has admitted to spying on two Icelandic citizens with ties to WikiLeaks in the latest revelation pertaining to both the US government’s widespread surveillance practices and its war against the whistleblower website. Documents surfaced on Friday showing that the United States Department of Justice demanded that Internet giant Google provide federal investigators with the personal emails sent and received by two Icelanders once involved in WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website under investigation for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified US documents. Herbert Snorrason and Smári McCarthy, both known publically as one-time associates of the website, released Justice Department-issued search warrants and court orders for their Gmail accounts on Friday that had up until recently been kept under seal. “All this is pretty much par for the course; I had assumed that I was caught in the dragnet cast around Julian Assange,” Snorrason wrote. Pfc.
ACLU Sues NSA Over Mass Phone Spying | Threat Level National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland. Photo: Wikipedia A second lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s dragnet phone surveillance program was lodged today in a New York federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the spying “one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government.” The suit (.pdf) comes days after Larry Klayman, the former chairman of Judicial Watch, lodged what was believed to be the first suit alleging the government has illegally spied on their Verizon accounts. The Guardian last week posted a leaked copy of a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion requiring Verizon Business to provide the NSA the phone numbers of both parties involved in all calls, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number for mobile callers, calling card numbers used in the call, and the time and duration of the calls, and where the calls were made.
NSA surveillance challenged in court as criticism grows over US data program | World news Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' The first constitutional challenge to the widespread surveillance of US citizens disclosed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden was laid down on Tuesday, as international pressure on the Obama administration over the scale of the dragnet intensified. In a lawsuit filed in New York, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the US government of a process that was "akin to snatching every American's address book". On Capitol Hill, a group of US senators introduced a bill aimed at forcing the US federal government to disclose the opinions of a secretive surveillance court that determines the scope of the eavesdropping on Americans' phone records and internet communications. As the fallout from the revelations by Edward Snowden continued, the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, said he ordered a wide-ranging review of the Defense Department's reliance on private contractors.
The Price of the Panopticon We privacy watchers and civil libertarians think this complacent response misses a deeply worrying political shift of vast consequence. While President Obama has conveniently described the costs of what appears to be pervasive surveillance of Americans’ telecommunications connections as “modest encroachments on privacy,” what we are actually witnessing is a sea change in the kinds of things that the government can monitor in the lives of ordinary citizens. The N.S.A. dragnet of “connection data” — who communicates with whom, where, how often and for how long — aims at finding patterns between calls or messages, and between parties with given characteristics, which correlate with increased odds of terrorist activity. These patterns can in turn cue authorities to focus attention on possible terrorists. The success rate in these operations is a matter of intense speculation, given the authorities’ closemouthed stance on the matter. The question, though, is what comes next?