America’s Surveillance State, Part 5: Insider Threats

Dandelion Salad

Replaced video June 15, 2020

True Story Documentary Channel on Sep 7, 2019

Image by mike via Flickr

We live in the United States of Surveillance — with cameras increasingly positioned on street corners and with much more invisible spying online and on the phone. Anyone who is paying attention knows that privacy could be out the window. All of this is not happening by accident – well funded powerful agencies and companies are engaged in the business of keeping tabs on what we do, what we say, and what we think.

To many in the world, today, the face of America also has A BIG NOSE for sniffing and sifting mountains of data—phone calls, emails and texts. And with many mouths silenced by paranoia to keep what they decide is secret, secret. America has become a Surveillance-Industrial State where everyone’s business has become its business, and where one huge US intelligence Agency has been given the sanction and unlimited amounts of money to spy on the whole world.

Mass Surveillance is the focus of this new 6 part investigative documentary series examining who is watching whom and why.

Edward Snowden Leaves the Moscow Airport + XKeyscore: #NSA Program Tracking Real-Time Internet Use Exposed

Dandelion Salad

Image by sam_churchill via Flickr

As Edward Snowden Wins 1-Year Asylum in Russia, NSA Program Tracking Real-Time Internet Use Exposed

democracynow on Aug 1, 2013

www.democracynow.org – National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has been given one year temporary political asylum in Russia. Snowden has reportedly already left the Moscow airport where he has been holed up for over a month. On Wednesday, The Guardian newspaper revealed details about another secret NSA program based on leaked documents provided by Snowden. The program, XKeyscore, allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals giving NSA analysts real-time access to “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet.” To discuss these latest developments, we’re joined by Spencer Ackerman, national security editor at The Guardian.

James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center + Thomas Drake Prevails in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown (repost)

Dandelion Salad

Repost from March 21, 2012

democracynow on Mar 21, 2012

Image by Bebopsmile via Flickr

democracynow.org – A new exposé in Wired Magazine reveals details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” We speak with investigative reporter James Bamford who says the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital “pocket litter.” “The NSA has constantly denied that they’re doing things and then it turns out they are doing things,” Bamford says in response to NSA Director General Keith Alexander’s denial yesterday that the U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails are being intercepted. “A few years ago, President Bush said before a camera that the United States is not eavesdropping on anybody without a warrant. And then it turns out that we had this exposure to all of the warrantless eavesdropping in the New York Times article. You have this constant denial in terms and parsing of words.”

James Bamford: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center + Thomas Drake Prevails in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown

Dandelion Salad

democracynow on Mar 21, 2012

Image by Bebopsmile via Flickr

democracynow.org – A new exposé in Wired Magazine reveals details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” We speak with investigative reporter James Bamford who says the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital “pocket litter.” “The NSA has constantly denied that they’re doing things and then it turns out they are doing things,” Bamford says in response to NSA Director General Keith Alexander’s denial yesterday that the U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails are being intercepted. “A few years ago, President Bush said before a camera that the United States is not eavesdropping on anybody without a warrant. And then it turns out that we had this exposure to all of the warrantless eavesdropping in the New York Times article. You have this constant denial in terms and parsing of words.”

James Bamford: The Secrecy of the Obama Administration, interviewed by Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds + Thomas Drake sentenced for info leak

Updated: July 17, 2011; added video

by Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
July 17, 2011

Image by Bebopsmile via Flickr

James Bamford joins us to discuss the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the government’s overreach in bringing espionage charges against him, and the Obama Administration’s unprecedented level of retaliation against government whistleblowers. He discusses the Obama Administration’s shift from military wars to covert-secret wars, the increased use of the CIA as a war branch, and Obama’s violation of the Presidential War Powers Act.

Intelligence and Law Enforcement Experts on Ever-Changing Bin Laden Death Script by Sibel Edmonds

by Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
May 9, 2011

Not All Sources and Experts Are Equal- Here Are some Real Ones!

There are ‘experts’ views,’ and then there are experts’ views. There are ‘government sources,’ and then there are government sources. Not all experts are equal. And, not all sources are reliable. Am I talking in riddles? Of course not; give me a chance and I’ll explain.

We have members of the popular media (mainstream and quasi alternatives alike) ever anxious to market and disseminate government conspiracy and propaganda. They, members of the popular media, have their own rolodex of ‘experts’ and analysts, some on their payroll, to help them propagate the delivery and execution of government-given propaganda-conspiracy.

Propagandists First, Journalists Second – How the NYT Won 2004 for Bush

Dandelion Salad

By Ted Rall
05/21/08 “ICH”

Should the news media be patriotic? When a journalist uncovers a government secret, which comes first–national security or the public’s right to know?

In the United States, reporters consider themselves Americans first, journalists second. That means consulting the government before going public with a state secret. “When I was at ABC,” James Bamford told Time in 2006, “we always checked with the Administration in power when we thought we had something of concern, and there was usually some way to work it out.”