"I can't allow the US Government to destroy privacy and basic liberties"
And yet he goes it work for the National Security Agency
- who do literally nothing else...
On the same day that Qusayr fell, the British and French governments hysterically demanded that Obama undertake a total bombing campaign against Syria, whatever the consequences in regard to Russia and other powers. To his credit, Obama is continuing to say no to this lunatic Anglo-French neocolonial adventure.
On that same June 5, the London-based daily The Guardian, in an article by the expatriate American Glenn Greenwald, hyped a court order from the secret FISA panel of federal judges showing that the US National Security Agency was routinely monitoring the telephone records (including time, locations, call duration, and unique identifiers, but not the contents of the conversations) of possibly unlimited millions of Verizon phone subscribers. Back in the US, reactionary talk show hosts began screaming
“Obama taps your phones!”
On June 6, again in advance of every other newspaper in the world, The Guardian published another article by Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill revealing that the National Security Agency, under a program called Prism, had obtained direct access to the servers of Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, Youtube, Skype, AOL, and Microsoft, and was busily monitoring the content of e-mails, file transfers, and live conversations. Back in the US, reactionary talk show hosts began screaming,
“Obama reads your e-mail!”
Forget the B.S. stories about Snowden, there is only ONE that applies and you will not hear about it in the press, which has protected the NSA with a great big white wash. Snowden worked out at Kunia. He had an extensive training program he had to go through before being allowed in. He HAD TO have been 99th percentile, the story about high school drop out is B.S, and so is the rest of the washing of his background. After hearing his conscience out at Kunia, he left Hawaii, defected, and told the truth.
There is also a rumor that Snowden worked for a contractor for $122,000 a year. I doubt that seriously because the NSA is so secretive it is extremely wary of contractors, and during my time with the NSA, I saw only 2 people EVER that were contractors, and they were never out on the operations floor. So yeah, I buy $122,000 a year, but NOT with a contractor. People who get to see enough to reveal what Snowden did have million dollar background checks, involving interviews with practically everyone in their past, and the interviewers do not identify themselves, they just talk as friends over a beer or whatever. So no one knows when they are being asked questions about someone the NSA intends to hire. These background checks take a year or so to complete and contractors can't afford to do that, the FED does. What Snowden revealed proves through emperical evidence that he was not employed by a contractor, he was just straight up NSA. The entire High School drop out story is pure B.S., because if during one of these checks any of the secret questioners comes up with even a little whiff of something wrong with your past, YOU ARE OUT.
Unlike the CIA, which has over a million spooks, the NSA is so secretive that very few people break the barrier to entry, which limits the size of the NSA to below 50,000 people total, a majority of which are highly talented super geeks. The expense of the background investigations alone seriously limits the number of people the NSA can hire.
Don't expect anything that is now claimed to be said by Snowden as actually coming from him. They are whitewashing this as fast as possible, while making false posts and statements to the web and media that claim to be from him. By now he has been replaced with the public image of someone else. For starters, it is ERIC SNOWDEN, not EDWARD as we are now told and this subtle name change will be used to deflect meaningful search into his past.
My own experience in the NSA is enough to prove what little I have said about Snowden to be true. There is ONE OPTION - Snowden was BRILLIANT, had extensive back ground searches done on him, went through a very difficult school, got assigned to Kunia where he lived in the same location as many other NSA people who have families do, drove to Kunia daily, and finally could not take what he was seeing there anymore and ratted them out. THAT IS THE ONLY STORY. Snowden did not have a girlfriend. He had a wife, and any reference to him "leaving his girlfriend behind" is another lie. You cannot live where Snowden did and have a "girlfriend", the NSA will not put you in the premium government family housing in Waipahu for only a "girlfriend".
Furthermore, stories about the house being sold now are B.S., because Snowden was in government housing the same as all lower level NSA people are given. Unless you are an outside contractor (and those are very few in number), The NSA does not leave it's people to run with the general public, they all get assigned a living area where like minded people are. And from these few mistakes the press made, we can assume that the entire background they are presenting on Snowden is a lie. The house he was in was never owned by him and DID NOT get sold.
To see a long list of B.S. my own experience proves to be lies, just google "where snowden lived"
Furthermore, the "leaked documents from anonymous" are PURE B.S. and are all readily available public documents. I see this as an attempt to muddy the waters with regard to Snowden's legitimate leak.
Watch for story creep in the mainstream and portions of the alternative press regarding what I have said here, since I am former NSA telling it like it is I have noticed that the story keeps getting regular tweaks to counteract what I say here, the latest being "it was his girlfriend's house". Don't buy into the tweaks, what is above is a truthfully rational assessment of HOW IT HAD TO BE, from someone who simply knows how things are. Granted, when I was with the NSA they were not spying on Americans, but their procedures and methods were anchored in stone and for what I have said above to not weigh out now would mean something massive regarding hiring policy, housing policy, contractor policy and other things changed there, which I doubt, especially if this is the first big leak and Kunia is still misrepresented on Google maps, with the real entry obscured by a cloud.
Where Snowden worked (see my comments following this article) and in case you are new here, I am former NSA and have toured this facility. To pull this up on Google maps, type Kunia Oahu into Google.
If there is one thing we have learned from this, it is that if they can do it they will do it, so this report is going to show you what the capabilities have GOT TO be right now and what to expect from the NSA in the future.
1. Recording of all conversations occurring in cars manufactured after 2004 and sold in the United States via an always on cell connection which is built into the engine control computer. Engine control computers are always placed in the passenger compartment where they can hear everything, though in the past they did not have ears. The fact that they do now was mandated by the Federal government and became a legally required component of all cars from year 2005 on. This started in the late 90's with GM's Onstar. You may have seen an onstar commercial where the Onstar representitive is talking to the driver through the radio speakers. ALL new cars have at least one side of this capability - the outgoing microphone -installed in them NOW.
2. Recording of all conversations happening in the vicinity of a computer equipped with an Intel CoreVPro or Sandy Bridge processor, even if it is not "online" and even while "turned off". Intel evidently thought it was a good security choice to have full time cell connectivity built into the heart of every CPU they produce, and I bet you don't know that new Intel laptop you just bought is ALWAYS online, even when turned off. YOU don't get to use that connection though, which leaves the question, WHO DOES?
3. All cell phones have been and will continue to be (this started in 2005) in speech to text mode, where the phone listens to nearby conversations, converts them to text, and loads the text to an NSA server during cell phone tower updates which happen frequently during the day as part of normal cell operation. In the past, whenever they put full time monitoring on cell phones, the batteries would die in a couple of hours and the phone would always be hot. People noticed this, so to circumvent that all cell phones were equipped with speech to text software and though it is not perfect, it still gives pretty good "intelligence" about the user without draining the battery at all. Once again, as it is with the new Intel processors and their always on cell connection, you don't even know that software exists
4. Recording of all conversations in the vicinity of computers that are turned on and have an internet connection even if they have no CoreVPro or Sandy Bridge CPU, but that's old news.
5. Video and sound recording of household activities within view of a Samsung SmartTV, any of the new video gaming consoles, or any smart meter compliant appliance which can communicate with an electrical smart meter. All electrical smart meters have wifi, 3g, and sometimes 4g connectivity for the sole purpose of "receiving daily energy related instructions". Yeah right.
6. Possible now - ALL cell phones which have cameras most likely are, right now, constantly taking a sequence of photos while out in public, and uploading them during cell tower updates to hide battery usage and the cell phone's owner never realizes this.
People need to recognize the importance of what Edward Snowden did. He gave us a fixed reference point for what the NSA was capable of in 2005, and from there we can calculate what they can do NOW
Moore's law, and what it means for the NSA
Most everyone knows about Moore's law which states that computers will double in power once every 18 months as technology advances. Moore was partially right, because in reality computers ended up doubling in power more frequently - once every 13 months. But let's just use 18 months as a reference standard anyone could agree on. If in 2005 the NSA was able to record and permanently store every phone conversation, video chat, internet record for everyone, every text, every e-mail, and store it forever BACK THEN, let's see how many times that capability just went into that NSA data center in Utah.
2013-2005=8 x 12 = 96 / 18 = 5.3 doublings of processing power since 2005. First doubling will be 1 plus 1, then after that x2. So we have 1+1x2x2x2x2, which equals 32 times the processing power available in 2005. If we take 100 percent and divide it by 32, we can see how strong in percent what they had in 2005 will compare to that new data center in Utah. 100/32 = 3.125% Now, I would like to ask you to appeal to your logic - If they were already permanently recording every phone call, financial transaction, video chat, e-mail, text message, and whatever else with a system that was only a little over 3 percent as powerful as what they just put into Utah, WHAT NEW CAPABILITIES DID THEY JUST GET?
How about:
Every vacation picture you take with any Wifi equipped digital camera instantly uploading to an NSA server for permanent storage as possible future evidence? How about every music project you ever worked on with a PC? How about every family video you ever shot, every place your car ever went and everything you said while driving? How about your smart microwave, via your smart meter, sending out all the audio in your house, to corroborate what your cell phone is sending out, to corroborate what your smartTV is sending out, to corroborate what your PC sent out, to corroborate what your land line sent out, to corroborate what your game console sent out and having ALL of those recordings of what went on in your house being permanently stored on the NSA server, just in case the microwave did not hear it clearly? THAT is what 32 times the capability of what they had in 2005 means, and if we learned anything from Edward, it is that If they can do it, they will do it, which is an affirmation of what I have said all along
I got called a wacko by a few when I said ALL phone conversations were being permanently recorded and stored on an NSA server, as well as all texts and e-mails, regardless of who made them and ended up being right, even if I was behind in saying this by 6 or 7 years. Now I am taking that a step farther, and I would like to ask you, do you think I am wrong this time?
The bottom line is that the surveillance state has gotten so powerful that even a creative mind could never dream up what it is really capable of. There is no doubt a lot I missed
UPDATE: ABOUT THE NSA CENTER IN KUNIA, WHERE SNOWDEN WORKED
Kunia is geographically isolated yet ideally located for electronic warfare operations in the Pacific theatre. It was the largest NSA center on American soil prior to Utah, (there are bigger ones elsewhere) and employs approximately 7,000 people. Now here is the kicker
Because Kunia was geographically isolated, the fact that they could record all phone conversations from there means that the NSA center in Utah, which is on what could be argued as the strongest part of the internet back bone in the world, - that added bandwidth potential with no bottlenecks, means that the data center in Utah will dwarf the abilities of Kunia by at least 200:1.
This also has other damning ramifications - that the NSA really did shift missions after 9/11 because if you wanted to spy on the American mainland, your pride and joy system that recorded everything should not be located in Hawaii. Yet it is confirmed - Edward Snowden worked at Kunia, which as young as he was would have been his only facility. This means that the system of compartmentalized clearances would have prevented him from knowing about PRISM if it was NOT LOCATED AT KUNIA.
And on that note, I have this to say to the NSA:
You traitorous bastards, HOW DARE YOU convert a legitimate defense facility for THAT TYPE OF USE. If you don't like me ratting out Kunia, you can * OFF.
Additionally About the NSA - an important note
The NSA has NO GOONS, NO AGENTS, NO ONE working outside of their secret facilities. IF ANYONE CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN VISITED BY THE NSA, THEY ARE FRAUDS, THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN. The NSA has nothing but geeks at data terminals, that do ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY - WATCH AND LISTEN. If you have read online about someone who has been visited by the NSA, they are full of B.S., that is the job of the CIA, FBI, or whatever other agencies have active agents working out in public. The NSA is behind closed doors only.
If you have read anything online about someone getting visited by the NSA, throw it straight in the trash. It's an outright lie.
This article was first published on Jimstonefreelance.com.
Under George Bush, warrantless wiretaps and similar illegal programs were revealed by various media organs. These revelations had minimal impact on Bush, whose base was indifferent to civil liberties.
Obama’s base, by contrast, cares very much, and has been visibly upset by these new reports.
While strongly condemning these totalitarian programs, we must also not lose sight of who is putting these reports into circulation, and why.
Phone taps are bad, but a general war in the Middle East leading to a possible Third World War is far worse.
The British and French defense and intelligence establishment (they have virtually merged) want Obama and the American people to take the lead and shoulder the risk in a perilous attack on Syria, in time to preserve the death squads so they can fight another day in another country.
London and Paris, of course, see themselves as the principal beneficiaries of the breakup of Syria.
Since Obama is currently blocking their plans, they are bringing up their big guns of scandal, with the center-left Guardian evidently chosen to take the point, doubtless to obtain more attention among Obama’s leftist supporters.
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