Artificial Intelligence Has Arrived and is Recording You

[Luke_Wilbur]

Very soon Internet Search will be replaced with a new artificial intelligence that predicts your every need. The only catch is you lose your privacy. Is that so bad?

 

Don't believe me? A company with 900 million users is now creating the artificial intelligence ecosystem that gives incentives to developers to work for them. Your location will now be known through new communication sensors. This "Fused location provider" data will be seamlessly incorporated into a new geo fencing apllication that lets organizations know when you are entering or exiting buildings and border areas. The final feature is an activity recognition application to automatically detect whether you walking, cycling, driving etc.

 

 

It is a multi-screen, multi-camera world that database grows with shared recorded experiences.

 

My friend loves talking to his Android Assistant. He no longer types anything. He lets Android choose the best result for him. Most people no longer spend the time searching the web unless they are doing research. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) marketing most likely will become obsolete. Unless you have something unique or innovative to say that is not filtered, you will have a difficult time reaching marketable popularity creating a profitable business model.

 

Remember all data is now archived for police, intelligence, and market review.

[Luke_Wilbur]

First there was Watson

 

 

Then there was Siri

 

http://youtu.be/GFj61IbTJjE

 

And lets not forget Google. Their mantra in Search will be not complete until their XLabs creates complete Artificial Intelligence in their Panda and Penguin network. All data from throughout the web will be used to create their own content. The world of publishing as we know it will be dead.

 

If you do not follow Google's data structure you will vanish.

 

http://intelligence....CFZOk4AodpScALA

 

I. J. Good’s intelligence explosion theory predicts that advanced artificial intelligence will undergo a process of repeated self-improvement; in the wake of such an event, how well our values are fulfilled would depend upon the goals of these agents

Watson, Android, and Siri were at a simulation bar...

 

Android asks Watson and Siri what their IQ is...

[Luke_Wilbur]

It is confirmed that the IRS, NSA, and FBI are monitoring all your communications (telephone metadata) and have the ability to know your location and financial transactions. Please help protect your family privacy and sign the petition to Update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=form&id=80

the Internal Revenue Service relied on an outdated law to claim that it didn't need a search warrant to read your private online communications. I was outraged when I learned that. I led the charge against this wrongheaded policy and, with your support, I successfully got the IRS to back down. Only weeks later, I again fought attempts by the Department of Justice and the FBI, to pursue this same constitutionally unsound course.

http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=blog&id=3439

Imagine your at a dinner party and say something off the cuff not realizing that someone with Google Glass has been recording you. That remark has now been recorded and could be used against you.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt dismissed concerns about the brave new world of wearable computers during a talk at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in April.

"Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it," he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that there are certain places where Glass will not be appropriate but that he believed new rules of social etiquette will coalesce over time. Firstenberg said it will take time for all sides to get comfortable with the new technology.

"I don't think we should go into the conversation assuming that Glass is bad," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/18/google-glass-idUSL2N0DY29L20130518

Verizon has not been caught helping NSA track private USA Citizens telephone communications.

Using the Patriot Act, the U.S. government has been secretly tracking the calls of every Verizon Business Network Services customer—to whom they spoke, from where, and for how long—for the past 41 days.

Verizon Business Network Services is one of the nation’s largest telecommunications and internet providers for corporations, so this could apply to the calls of millions of Americans.

What we don't know yet is how many other telecommunications companies have been issued similar orders by the government or what the scope of the government's program is.

https://www.aclu.org/secure/stop-massive-spying-program?Ms=web_acluaction_govtspying_130606_ac&a#a

This is not just Verizon. It is all the Internet Service Providers.

A top-secret surveillance program gives the National Security Agency surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to a pair of new reports.

The program, code-named PRISM, reportedly allows NSA analysts to peruse exabytes of confidential user data held by Silicon Valley firms by typing in search terms. PRISM reports have been used in 1,477 items in President Obama's daily briefing last year, according to an internal presentation to the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588143-38/nsa-has-backdoor-access-to-internet-companies-databases/

Now comes something even more serious. What happens if your information gets into the wrong hands.

"What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on," Aucsmith says. "So if you think about this, this is brilliant counter-intelligence. You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that's difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That's essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case."

http://www.cio.com/article/732122/_Aurora_Cyber_Attackers_Were_Really_Running_Counter_Intelligence

[Guest CREDO Action]

There is something fundamentally un-American and deeply undemocratic about this kind of government surveillance.‬ ‪

 

‪But since 9/11, we have seen first George W. Bush and now Barack Obama engage in shockingly broad executive power grabs that undermine our constitutionally protected civil liberties, all in the name of “national security.” ‬ ‪

 

‬President Obama is a constitutional scholar who ran on the platform of transparency in government. We don’t believe he has the constitutional right to collect and examine the telephone records of virtually all Americans. But if he thinks that he has the authority to spy on Americans, he should acknowledge these programs and provide his legal rationale for them.‬

 

‪First it was revealed that the NSA, an arm of the U.S. military that is chartered to deal with foreign threats, was collecting information about the phone calls made or received by millions of Verizon customers in the U.S. And recent news reports now indicate that the program isn't limited to Verizon. ‬ ‪

 

‪Next we learned that, according to new reports, tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Apple have given the NSA direct access to their computer servers so the NSA can access, for example, the contents of e-mail inboxes without any kind of court order. ‬ ‪

 

‪If the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure is to mean anything, not to mention our First Amendment right to free speech, we must take action and demand answers in the face of these recent revelations about government spying.‬ ‪

 

‬ ‪For far too long, “national security” has been both a way for the government to override civil liberties objections and a way to squelch debate. We had hoped that the worst abuses of the Patriot Act would be over at the end of the Bush era, but President Obama has continued and perhaps even doubled-down on President Bush’s policies. ‪

 

‬ ‪We recently saw the debate about the president’s targeted assassination program become much more robust once the president stopping hiding behind the veil of national security, acknowledged the existence of the program and provided his rationale for it.‬

 

‪ While we vehemently reject the legality of these extrajudicial assassinations, and struggle to imagine how the indiscriminate surveillance of countless Americans could possibly be legal or constitutional, the fact of the matter is that these issues hit at the heart of what rights we have as American citizens. ‬ ‪

 

‪We cannot have a real debate about the ostensible merits of these programs and the trade-offs the president’s administration may be making between our civil liberties and the legitimate national security needs -- or, for that matter, hold our elected officials accountable for their complicity in trampling the Constitution -- if all we know about government spying comes from leaked documents and anonymous sources. ‬

 

‪If President Obama believes that he has the authority to indiscriminately spy on Americans, he owes it to us to explain his legal justification for doing so.‬ ‪

We don't know what else might be revealed in the coming days. But we do know that the American people deserve an explanation for this massive Obama administration surveillance program to spy on our citizens -- the extent of which we don’t even know yet.

[Guest LAW]

DNI Statement on Activities Authorized Under Section 702 of FISA

 

The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They contain numerous inaccuracies.

Section 702 is a provision of FISA that is designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.

Activities authorized by Section 702 are subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch, and Congress. They involve extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition, retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about U.S. persons.

Section 702 was recently reauthorized by Congress after extensive hearings and debate.

Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.

The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.


James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

[Luke_Wilbur]

Booz Allen Hamilton infrastructure analyst subcontractor for NSA, Edward Snowden, leaked the National Security Agency PRISM surveillance data collection and storage program is now in Hong Kong under the protection of the Chinese government.

 

http://youtu.be/kaRvzQ887HM

 

Leaker, Whistle-blower, Traitor, Hero

 

Edward Snowden went on the record to let public decide whether they should be watched and recorded. In the wrong hands PRISM can be used to derive suspicion by accessing your prior statements and paint you in the context of a wrong doer.

 

Edward Snowden states that he had the ability to disclose full rosters of the entire United States intelligence community and undercover assets and every station, but that was not his intention. Rather he feels that it was patriotic duty to fight tyranny.

 

The fact that he picked Hong Kong says alot.

 

Here is what Google had to state about this issue:

 

What the ...?

 

Posted: Friday, June 07, 2013

 

Dear Google users—

 

You may be aware of press reports alleging that Internet companies have joined a secret U.S. government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to our servers. As Google’s CEO and Chief Legal Officer, we wanted you to have the facts.

 

First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

 

Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period. Until this week’s reports, we had never heard of the broad type of order that Verizon received—an order that appears to have required them to hand over millions of users’ call records. We were very surprised to learn that such broad orders exist. Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

 

Finally, this episode confirms what we have long believed—there needs to be a more transparent approach. Google has worked hard, within the confines of the current laws, to be open about the data requests we receive. We post this information on our Transparency Report whenever possible. We were the first company to do this. And, of course, we understand that the U.S. and other governments need to take action to protect their citizens’ safety—including sometimes by using surveillance. But the level of secrecy around the current legal procedures undermines the freedoms we all cherish.

 

Posted by Larry Page, CEO and David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/what.html

 

I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM:

 

Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.

 

When governments ask Facebook for data, we review each request carefully to make sure they always follow the correct processes and all applicable laws, and then only provide the information if is required by law. We will continue fighting aggressively to keep your information safe and secure.

 

We strongly encourage all governments to be much more transparent about all programs aimed at keeping the public safe. It's the only way to protect everyone's civil liberties and create the safe and free society we all want over the long term.

 

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100828955847631

[Guest LAW]

For Immediate Release

June 08, 2013

Press Briefing By National Security Advisor Tom Donilon

 

And then turning to the FISA question, now that the DNI declassified some information about PRISM, maybe you can speak a little bit more freely about it. Can you help people understand, now that the administration says only non-U.S. persons are targeted, The Guardian reports that 3 billion digital items were collected off U.S. servers just in March. How can you explain that and assure Americans that surveillance was limited to non-Americans?

MR. RHODES: Yes. Jessica, first of all, I'd point you to the DNI facts on PRISM, which I think put out a lot of information, including the fact that the U.S. government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is a foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition of that information.

So in other words, even for foreign persons there has to be an additional step to identify a nexus to foreign intelligence collection to pursue additional information. For U.S. citizens and U.S. persons and people in the United States, they cannot be intentionally targeted by this program, so they are not a part of what the goal of this collection is. Furthermore, if any U.S. citizen were to become engaged in -- was engaged in activities that were of interest to the government, we would have to -- just as with the phone situation, we would have to go back and obtain a warrant to pursue further collection on the content of any U.S. individual's communications.

So there would have to be an additional layer beyond PRISM for the U.S. government to pursue, review information associated with a U.S. persons potential connection to, for instance, terrorism.

Q Can you comment on that volume of data, and, if possible, how that volume of data relates to non-U.S. persons?

MR. RHODES: I can't comment -- I mean, the NSA and the intelligence community are probably the people that could comment on the volume of this data. To be clear here, it's not as if there are people sitting there reading every piece of information that may be in the universe of collection that the U.S. government has. As we discussed with the phone program, there is a type of data that we call metadata that is more extensive but more anonymous type of collection.

I think the point that’s very important for Americans to understand is that for the U.S. government to decide to pursue an investigation of an American citizen or a U.S. person, there would have to be an additional step beyond these programs that have been described to get a warrant and to essentially pursue a lead if there's a suspected nexus to terrorism.

So just as the President said, we're not listening to anybody's phone calls. We're also not going out and seeking to read people's electronic communications. If we were able to detect a potential nexus to terrorism, we'd have to go back to a judge and pursue a warrant to try to investigate that lead, just as we would in any other intelligence or criminal procedure.

So as the fact sheet makes clear, these are broad programs that do not, again, target U.S. persons or people in the United States. And to go a step deeper, we'd have to go back and go through all the procedures of getting an additional warrant.

I think that the fact sheet also lays out, as we said with the information related to telephone data, that this is rigorously overseen by all three branches of government. So this is a FISA provision, so the court is involved in all of this activity. This is also overseen by Congress in their semi-annual reports, for instance, provided to Congress on these activities. And they're obviously part of the Patriot Act that has been reauthorized by Congress in 2009, 2011. And of course, the executive branch has built-in procedures for reviewing these programs through inspector generals and other mechanisms to make sure that there's not abuse and to make sure they were putting in place appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.

MR. RHODES: Okay, we'll take a couple more. I'll go to The Guardian here.

Q Thanks for taking the question. I had a broad national security policy question which I’d like to address to the National Security Advisor if possible because it’s not specifically about FISA. Yesterday, the President said that the American people shouldn’t be alarmed at what they’ve learned this week about surveillance because there was sufficient oversight from both Congress and the judiciary. What would you say to those who say that you have been invoking special privilege on numerous occasions to stop appeals reaching court? And in the case of congressional oversight, very recently Congress was told that you didn’t count how many times U.S. data was accessed, whereas today, through the informant data mining tool that we’ve written about today, we find out you count every last IP number -- IP address. So how can you reassure the American people that that congressional and judicial oversight is working in the way the President says it is?

MR. DONILON: Well, that’s a specific question you asked and I’ll turn that over to Ben. But I think I can say this, though, is that these programs are very important to the United States and its ability to protect itself, number one. Number two, as the President said yesterday, these programs are subject to oversight not just in the executive branch, which has very careful procedures and processes to ensure particularly that the privacy and civil liberties of Americans are protected, but also subject to very careful oversight by a court, an independent branch of government of the United States, and through careful and persistent briefing and oversight by the Congress. And that’s I think a very important aspect of this entire discussion, as the President laid out yesterday.

MR. RHODES: On the specifics, you had a couple of questions there. First of all, I think as NSA provided in a statement to The Guardian, they do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication that they’re collecting. So it’s not as if they have an ability to answer specifically the question of what are the identities and numbers of the individuals associated with collection.

What they do do is apply a range of tools, both automated and manual, to review and characterize communications and to ensure the protections of the American people. So essentially what that means is there are safeguards built into the way in which they collect and review data to ensure that privacy rights are respected. And as I said, any additional investigation associated with anybody would require additional authorities being granted by a judge.

With respect to the Congress, on the Section 702 program that was declassified today, this was reauthorized by Congress in December 2012, and it has a reporting requirement to Congress. So the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General have to provide semiannual reports that assess compliance with the targeting procedures as well as the minimization procedures associated with targeting. And there are additional briefings that are made to both the Intelligence and the Judiciary Committees in Congress associated with this particular program.

I would also note for people, and we’ve made this available, that with respect to the other provisions associated with telephone data under FISA, we I think made available to people that there had been numerous -- I think 13 -- briefings that we identified that have been given over the recent -- in the recent past on that provision of FISA -- and also the relevant intelligence oversight committee is the Intelligence Committee. And I think you’ve seen a letter from Senators Feinstein and Chambliss from last February -- or February of 2011 that offered to provide briefings to other members of Congress who had additional questions about this particular program authorized by FISA.

So the point is people have asked about what is the President’s view generally. And I’ve been with the President since early 2007, and he expressed concerns about some of the lack of oversight and safeguards associated with programs in the past -- for instance, when you had warrantless wiretapping that did not have that full oversight of a judge. What he’s done as President is say which programs are necessary, which capabilities are necessary to protect the American people, and which aren’t.

So for instance, the enhanced interrogation technique program that we felt amounted to torture we did not feel was appropriate with our values or necessary for our national security, so we ended that program. With respect to some of these other programs that have been in the news recently, the principle that he brings to bear is how do we ensure that there are appropriate checks and balances and oversight built into everything that we do. So, for instance, how do we make sure that all three branches of government have eyes on these programs?

They are necessarily secret. We have an intelligence community for a reason. We have a threat from terrorism that we have to combat. We have an enemy that deliberately tries to work around our methods of intelligence collection. So we can’t simply broadcast to our terrorist enemy, here’s how we collect intelligence on you. That’s why, given the fact that it’s secret, you need to bring in the courts and you need to bring in Congress.

So everything that has been done and reported on in the last several days involves programs that have congressional oversight -- and regularized congressional oversight -- from the relevant committees. Also, through the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, in other briefings -- there’s opportunities for other members to be briefed on these programs. So the elected representatives of the American people do have eyes on these programs.

With respect to the courts, it’s a FISA program. So by definition there is a judge who must sign off on these activities. And as I said, there must be additional signoff if there is going to be efforts to pursue an investigation. And we build in checks within the executive branch. So we’ve established, under our administration, very regularized inspector general reports of everything that we’re doing.

So within the context of necessarily secret programs, we make sure that there are layers of oversight from all three branches of government. And that’s something that the President believes is necessary to ensure that their privacy and civil liberties concerns are taken into account, to ensure that we’re reviewing whether these programs are effective and necessary given the nature of the threat that we’re facing. And that’s the principle that he’ll continue to bring to bear.

And the debate that’s been sparked by these revelations, as he said, while we do not think that the revelation of secret programs is in the national security interest of the United States, the broader debate about privacy and civil liberties, he lifted up himself in his speech at NDU the other day, when he went out of his way to identify this as one of the tradeoffs that we have to wrestle with, given the fact that if we did everything necessary for our security, we would sacrifice too much privacy and civil liberties, but if we did everything necessary to have 100 percent privacy and civil liberties protections, we wouldn’t be taking common-sense steps to protect the American people.

So we’ll have that debate. We welcome congressional interest in these issues. We welcome the interest of the Americans people and of course the media in these issues. But we feel confident that we have done what we need to do to strike this balance between privacy and security by building in these rigorous oversight mechanisms.

[Guest ProjBreadcrumbs]

http://youtu.be/g9CknpRgNpc

 

Personal Intimacy is being stolen from humanity. Rabbits attacking wolves. Cyber-bullying with Google spy glasses.

 

http://breadcrumbssolutions.com/

 

 

Apparently each one of us has an almost unique typing pattern which is almost as unique as our handwriting and our signature. This dynamic pattern, also referred to as Keystrokes Dynamics, consists of such features as: our unique typing speed, latency between consecutive keystrokes, typing errors, and much more.

 

Keystrokes Dynamics research has rapidly evolved in recent years, and commercial companies already supply typing dynamics identification systems that provide good user identification results.

 

When it comes to the Web, Keystroke Dynamics may become a real privacy threat as it can be used to individually identify and track users even when and where they do not want to be identified or tracked.

 

Many Websites immediately transmit any keystrokes we enter directly to the Website or Webserver. For example, Google Instant transmits every keystroke to Google’s servers which in turn transmit back the search suggestions according to what we have typed. No one knows if Google records and analyzes our typing dynamics while we do so.

 

Alternatively, Websites can use JavaScript to record and analyze our Keystroke Dynamics on Webpages we visit and send the results to the Webserver.

[Guest LAW]

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) criticized a secret domestic surveillance program that swept up millions of telephone records on calls by Americans who were not suspected of any wrongdoing.

A court order demanding the records be turned over was obtained under a controversial interpretation of a provision in the so-called Patriot Act, which Sanders voted against when it was first enacted in 2001 and when it was reauthorized in 2006 and 2011.

 

“As one of the few members of Congress who consistently voted against the Patriot Act, I expressed concern at the time of passage that it gave the government far too much power to spy on innocent United State citizens and provided for very little oversight or disclosure. Unfortunately, what I said turned out to be exactly true.

 

“The United States should not be accumulating phone records on tens of millions of innocent Americans. That is not what democracy is about. That is not what freedom is about. Congress must address this issue and protect the constitutional rights of the American people,” Sanders added.

 

“While we must aggressively pursue international terrorists and all of those who would do us harm, we must do it in a way that protects the Constitution and the civil liberties which make us proud to be Americans,” Sanders said.

 

The Obama administration did not dispute a report, first published yesterday by the Guardian, that a classified court order required Verizon to turn over massive phone records to the National Security Agency.

[Luke_Wilbur]

Contacted The Breadcrumb Project about their privacy software. It is no longer available.

 

This is the response I got from their Facebook page:

 

 

Breadcrumbs Privacy Project Hi Luke, a new version is under development. We hope to release it soon

 

Either Edward Snowden is a tragic hero that was willing to take the sword for freedom. Or Edward Snowden is a traitor pawn in allegiance with China.

 

‘‘This case will hurt the US bargaining power and dishonor its own credibility in charging China for cyberattacks. This is truth-telling,’’ Zhu said. ‘‘China will likely tell the US, ‘don’t be too high profile, and don’t take the moral high ground.'’’

 

[Guest Enron Ex]

BAH loses millions in investor confidence. But, does the right thing and apologizes for for a rogue employee it could not control. How many more are out there?

 

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-booz-allen-leak-snowden-20130610,0,3970182.story

 

Shares of consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton were down on midday trading Monday after an employee, Edward Snowden, admitted that he leaked classified information about secret domestic surveillance by the government.

 

The Tysons Corner, Va.-based company has found itself embroiled in the uproar over a series of leaks to journalists about National Security Agency programs that monitored telephone logs and online messages by foreigners.

 

Snowden, a former computer technician for the Central Intelligence Agency and current Booz Allen employee, came forward Sunday as the source of the information.

 

So far, the leaks have revealed that the NSA looks at personal data of targeted foreigners and Americans connected to them with at least some consent from technology giants like Facebook and Google. The agency also gathers records on phone calls placed within the country and processes a huge amount of domestic and international data each month.

 

Booz Allen Hamilton, a large government contractor, has already felt blowback from the reveal. Its shares dropped 51 cents, or 2.8%, to $17.49 with about an hour selft in the trading day. The company jumped into damage control mode Sunday.

 

http://www.boozallen.com/media-center/press-releases/48399320/statement-reports-leaked-information-060913

 

Booz Allen Statement on Reports of Leaked Information

June 9, 2013

 

Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii. News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm. We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.

[Guest ALWAYSRED]

Edward Snowden will surface.

 

As Americans demand answers about the government's wholesale electronic snooping on its citizens, the primary snooper -- the National Security Agency (NSA) -- is building a monstrous digital datacenter in a remote corner of Utah capable of sorting through and storing every e-mail, voicemail, and social media communication it can get its hands on.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/11/inside-nsas-secret-utah-data-center/

He will be recorded and traced.

 

Some reports have suggested the data center could hold as much as 5 zetabytes, an astronomical sum equivalent to 62 billion stacked iPhone 5s. King called that number "difficult, if not impossible to conceive.

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/11/inside-nsas-secret-utah-data-cente/

Thousands of analysts will track him down.

 

According to the NSA, the Utah facility will cost $1.2B and is the Department of Defenses largest ongoing construction project in the continental U.S. The exterior of the building was completed on May 30. There will be about 150-200 employees.

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/11/inside-nsas-secret-utah-data-center/

He was not forced to take that oath of secrecy, but he did.

[Luke_Wilbur]

There is a petition posted on the White House web site to Pardon Edward Snowden. I am sure it will be difficult for many Americans to decide whether he is a hero or traitor.

 

 

we petition the obama administration to: Pardon Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.

Created: Jun 09, 2013

Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Government Reform, Human Rights

 

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

 

 

 

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. - Ron Paul

 

Ron Paul's son, Senator Rand Paul, thinks the Government should not be peering into our lives and destroying our civil liberties.

 

 

I agree with Charlie Rose that Edward Snowden has to surrender himself. Liberty is only a dream if not pursued. Liberty was in the flesh of patriots of change like Dr. King, George Washington, Nelson Mendela, and many others. I once thought Barack Obama was an advocate for civil liberty. But, now I am not so sure.

 

 

Take what is useful, reject what is useless and be like water - Bruce Lee

 

Political surveillance is a transgression of Our Right to privacy. There needs to be some public accountability and oversight on who accesses these files and for what purpose.

 

 

Listen to what Rep. Maxine Waters says about Organization for America's database.

[Guest stopwatching.us]

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

 

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

 

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

 

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.

 

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

 

https://www.stopwatching.us

[Guest Fed Up]

Ron Fournier's article puts the Snowden leak in proper perspective.

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-i-don-t-care-about-edward-snowden-20130612

 

Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? I don't care. You read right: I don't give a whit about the man who exposed two sweeping U.S. online surveillance programs, nor do I worry much about his verdict in the court of public opinion.

 

Why? Because it is the wrong question. The Snowden narrative matters mostly to White House officials trying to deflect attention from government overreach and deception, and to media executives in search of an easy storyline to serve a celebrity-obsessed audience.

For the rest of us, the questions seem to be:

• Are the two programs revealed by Snowden legal and constitutional?

• What else is the government doing to invade our privacy? Until a few days ago, paranoids were people who claimed Washington had cast a vast electronic net over our communications. Who isn't a bit paranoid now?

• Why did the U.S. government for years debunk what they called a myth about the National Security Agency seizing electronic data from millions of Americans?

• Why did the leader of the U.S. intelligence community mislead Congress in March by answering a question about the program in the "least untruthful manner" -- a phrase that would make George Orwell cringe.

• Why do Democratic lawmakers who criticized President Bush for exploiting the post-9/11 Patriot Act now defend President Obama for curbing civil liberties?

• Why do Republicans who defended Bush now chastise Obama for ruthlessly fighting terrorists?

• Rather than fierce oversight, why did the White House and congressional leaders restrict full knowledge of the programs to a few elites, and stage, for the rest of Congress, Potemkin briefings?

• Why does a secret federal court almost always side with the government's requests to seize information?

• Why didn't the president find a way before the leaks to tell the public in general terms what he was doing and why? Obama ran on a pledge of government transparency, opposed Bush-era surveillance tactics, and denounced the "false choice" between security and liberty.

No sane American would deny the president and the national security community the best tools to fight a fast-evolving and shadowy enemy. It would be foolish to demand full disclosure of programs that require secrecy. And most Americans, according to polls, are open to trading some privacy for security.

 

But before perpetuating and immortalizing the Surveillance State, we need to remember that the precedents set today apply to the next president -- and the ones that follow, perhaps men and women who aren't as dedicated to democratic institutions as both Bush and Obama are.

It would help if the Obama administration would stop misleading the public, eroding trust in government that is already at record lows. Four stories today suggest how badly the truth has been victimized.

 

Scott Shane and Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times documented how intelligence officials for years have denied the existence of programs revealed by Snowden: "Disclosures on N.S.A. Surveillance Put Awkward Light on Previous Denials."

 

"Awkward light" is a polite way of describing a lie.

 

Glenn Kessler slapped three Pinocchios on James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence who spoke a least-untruthful way: "Debates Over NSA Should be Free of Semantic Muddling."

 

Semantic muddling is a polite way of describing – well, you get it.

 

Jack Shafer of Reuters wrote an insightful piece that puts Snowden's actions into context with the government's self-serving leaks. "… He's done in the macro what the national security establishment does in the micro every day of the week to manage, manipulate and influence ongoing policy debates," Shafer wrote.

 

Finally, syndicated liberal columnist David Sirota challenged the views of "Permanent Washington" in an analysis arguing that NSA's actions are illegal and unconstitutional.

He called the Snowden case "a commentary on how political self-interest and partisanship now trumps everything else – even the law of the land."

 

Love him or hate him, we all owe Snowden our thanks for forcing upon the nation an important debate. But the debate shouldn't be about him. It should be about the gnawing questions his actions raised from the shadows.

 

In the end, fear and politics likely will prevail, as it has in America's past. Washington elites will close ranks to protect the Surveillance State, to trample out transparency and to mislead the public. Maybe we can talk first?

[Luke_Wilbur]

Artificial intelligence can do the analysis of whether people are friends and enemies. Then technically no government official is actually tracking an American citizen. Programs sift through databases all the time extracting meta information.

 

Computers are becoming more like humans. And they will be wearable.

 

http://youtu.be/i97PvEQ2wTU

[Guest LAW]

It is confirmed that the IRS, NSA, and FBI are monitoring all your communications (telephone metadata) and have the ability to know your location and financial transactions. Please help protect your family privacy and sign the petition to Update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

 

http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=form&id=80

 

Imagine your at a dinner party and say something off the cuff not realizing that someone with Google Glass has been recording you. That remark has now been recorded and could be used against you.

 

 

Verizon has not been caught helping NSA track private USA Citizens telephone communications.

 

This is not just Verizon. It is all the Internet Service Providers.

 

 

Now comes something even more serious. What happens if your information gets into the wrong hands.

 

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) released the following statement after reviewing Google’s response to a letter sent to the company by members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus expressing concerns about the new product Google Glass:

 

“I am disappointed in the responses we received from Google. There were questions that were not adequately answered and some not answered at all. Google Glass has the potential to change the way people communicate and interact. When new technology like this is introduced that could change societal norms, I believe it is important that people’s rights be protected and vital that privacy is built into the device. I look forward to continuing a working relationship with Google as Google Glass develops.”

 

Text of Google’s response can be found HERE.

 

Text of the Caucus letter to Google can be found HERE.

 

Rep. Barton is co-founder of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus and is a leader in Congress on providing privacy protections for personal consumer information. He and other members of the caucus have investigated the data privacy and security practices of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, College Board, Groupon, the four major wireless carriers, and the Social Security Administration, among other entities.

[Guest Fedup]

 

Be careful on not getting red flagged for search terms you query. It is now public that Big Brother has a backdoor access to Google, Bing, Twitter, and Facebook that scans everything you do.

[Guest Luke]

Open means anyone is allowed to read it. I think there is some merit on looking at the sentiments of others. I have a problem only with opening locked doors and invading my privacy. Here is a snippet from Recorded Future.

 

One of the most exciting elements of web intelligence is the opportunity it creates for collaboration among international military and law enforcement organizations. By its nature, web data is free from many of the classification constraints that can at times inhibit information-sharing among international allies and coalition partners. A joint reliance on web intelligence can enable allies to more rapidly develop a common understanding of new threats, challenges, and opportunities as they emerge.

 

https://www.recordedfuture.com/pat-ryan-web-intelligence/

[Guest OgreDaddy]

Today my network monitor, firewall app showed me the names of 37 different Google Information Tracking URL alll going to the same IP address.

So everywhere you go, on of the Google URL connects in the backgound and tracks what you watch, where you shop, who you communicate with, what media you watch, everything.
And these servers also try to connect when you view your email folder if they contain any google or youtube links.