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.
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.
The Anti-Empire Report #118 Source: William Blum Edward Snowden In the course of his professional life in the world of national security Edward Snowden must have gone through numerous probing interviews, lie-detector examinations, and exceedingly detailed background checks, as well as filling out endless forms carefully designed to catch any kind of falsehood or inconsistency. Yes, there was a sign they missed -- Edward Snowden had something inside him shaped like a conscience, just waiting for a cause. It was the same with me. My conscience had found its cause, and nothing that I could have been asked in a pre-employment interview would have alerted my interrogators of the possible danger I posed because I didn't know of the danger myself. So what is a poor National Security State to do? Eavesdropping on the planet The above is the title of an essay that I wrote in 2000 that appeared as a chapter in my book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower.
Skype with care – Microsoft is reading everything you write Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write. The H 's associates in Germany at heise Security have now discovered that the Microsoft subsidiary does in fact make use of this privilege in practice. Shortly after sending HTTPS URLs over the instant messaging service, those URLs receive an unannounced visit from Microsoft HQ in Redmond. A reader informed heise Security that he had observed some unusual network traffic following a Skype instant messaging conversation. 65.52.100.214 - - [30/Apr/2013:19:28:32 +0200] "HEAD /... The access is coming from systems which clearly belong to Microsoft. In response to an enquiry from heise Security, Skype referred them to a passage from its data protection policy : "Skype may use automated scanning within Instant Messages and SMS to (a) identify suspected spam and/or (b) identify URLs that have been previously flagged as spam, fraud, or phishing links." ( djwm )
Siegelman Frame-Up Led To New Book Exposing Obama, CIA, Romney Secrets (Article changed on July 7, 2013 at 15:53) Presidential Puppetry by Andrew Kreig Four years ago, my research documenting the Bush administration frame-up of Alabama's former governor Don Siegelman led me to find nationwide patterns of similar horrors. Providing inspiration for me along this journey has been OEN Founder Rob Kall and the vibrant community of reader-commenters, columnists, and editors convened on this site. So, this is the natural place to announce publication of the findings in my new book, Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters: Hidden elites control our presidents. That conclusion will not surprise this site's sophisticated readers. The historical context includes the Rove-inspired theft of the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial election from Siegelman. The corrupt system relies on Democrats, the mainstream media, and other political players to remain co-opted or intimidated. Such patterns are readily visible also in the Obama family history.
The Pentagon was behind Egypt’s Military Coup Press TV has conducted an interview with Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal about the coup d’état by the Egyptian military that has deposed the elected Morsi government after large anti-government protests arose. “We must understand that from 1991 to the present – over a 20-year period, the Egyptian economy has been destabilized, the Nile Value bread basket has been destroyed. 3,000 years of self-sufficient agriculture; food prices have risen; unemployment has gone sky high; the industrial fabric of a relatively self-reliant economy has been destroyed; and this is the basis of the protest movement. People are protesting because their living standards have collapsed and they saw in this new government an avenue of change. But bear in mind: the United States is supporting both sides and their objective and their strategy is to destabilize this country as a nation-state.” Complete transcript of interview below Morsi was not a people’s government.
Why "Nothing to Hide" misrepresents online privacy A legal research professor explains to Michael P. Kassner why we should think long and hard before subscribing to the "Nothing to Hide" defense of surveillance and data-gathering. A colleague stopped me in the hallway at work last week, "Hey, I read your article; and I'm not worried. I have nothing to hide from the NSA." As the week progressed, readers began chiming in, a majority belonging to the "Nothing to Hide" crowd as well. Towards the end of the week, I received a call from my friend, a security analyst who I emailed earlier in the week about the responses I was getting. After the usual guy-geek gossip, my friend told me about Daniel J. The essay turned out to be exactly what I needed: The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. That alone reassured me that my concerns were not mine alone. Government PoV Next in the essay, the professor sheds light on how governments view "Nothing to Hide": Privacy pundits PoV Professor Solove further explains: Final thoughts
New studies: ‘Conspiracy theorists’ sane; government dupes crazy, hostile Recent studies by psychologists and social scientists in the US and UK suggest that contrary to mainstream media stereotypes, those labeled “conspiracy theorists” appear to be saner than those who accept the official versions of contested events. The most recent study was published on July 8th by psychologists Michael J. Wood and Karen M. The authors were surprised to discover that it is now more conventional to leave so-called conspiracist comments than conventionalist ones: “Of the 2174 comments collected, 1459 were coded as conspiracist and 715 as conventionalist.” Perhaps because their supposedly mainstream views no longer represent the majority, the anti-conspiracy commenters often displayed anger and hostility: “The research… showed that people who favoured the official account of 9/11 were generally more hostile when trying to persuade their rivals.” DeHaven-Smith also explains why those who doubt official explanations of high crimes are eager to discuss historical context.