NSA whistleblowers: Government spying on every single American (RT NEWS)

RT NEWS
July 25, 2012

image credit: Reuters/Jason Reed

The TSA, DHS and countless other security agencies have been established to keep America safe from terrorist attacks in post-9/11 America. How far beyond that does the feds’ reach really go, though?

The attacks September 11, 2001, were instrumental in enabling the US government to establish counterterrorism agencies to prevent future tragedies. Some officials say that they haven’t stopped there, though, and are spying on everyone in America — all in the name of national security.

Testimonies delivered in recent weeks by former employees of the National Security Agency suggest that the US government is granting itself surveillance powers far beyond what most Americans consider the proper role of the federal government.

In an interview broadcast on Current TV’s “Viewpoint” program on Monday, former NSA Technical Director William Binney commented on the government’s policy of blanket surveillance, alongside colleagues Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the agency's respective former Senior Official and Senior Analyst.

The interview comes on the heels of a series of speeches given by Binney, who has quickly become better known for his whistleblowing than his work with the NSA. In their latest appearance this week, though, the three former staffers suggested that America’s spy program is much more dangerous than it seems.

In an interview with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer, Drake said there was a “key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance.”

These powers have previously defended by claims of national security necessity, but Drake says that it doesn’t stop there. He warns that the government is giving itself the power to gather intel on every American that could be used in future prosecutions unrelated to terrorism.
“When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else what they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security,” Drake said.

Although Drake’s accusations seem astounding, they corroborate allegations made by Binney only a week earlier. Speaking at the Hackers On Planet Earth conference in New York City earlier this month, Binney addressed a room of thousands about the NSA’s domestic spying efforts. But in a candid interview with journalist Geoff Shively during HOPE, the ex-NSA official candidly revealed the full extent of the surveillance program.

“Domestically, they're pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you're doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it's a very dangerous process,” Binney said.

Drake and Binney’s statements follow the revelation that law enforcement officers collected cell phone records on 1.3 million Americans in 2011. More news articles are emerging every day suggesting that the surveillance of Americans — off-the-radar and under wraps — is growing at an exponential rate.

New Microchip Knows Your Location To Within Centimeters (Infowars)

Forget a chip in your forehead – the ‘mark of the beast’ is the cell phone

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The development of a new microchip for cell phones that knows the user’s location to within a few centimeters confirms the fact that contrary to biblical fears about mandatory implantable microchips, people have willingly exchanged their privacy for convenience and that the cell phone itself is the de facto “mark of the beast”.

“Broadcom has just rolled out a chip for smart phones that promises to indicate location ultra-precisely, possibly within a few centimeters, vertically and horizontally, indoors and out,” reports MIT Technology Review.

“In theory, the new chip can even determine what floor of a building you’re on, thanks to its ability to integrate information from the atmospheric pressure sensor on many models of Android phones. The company calls abilities like this “ubiquitous navigation,” and the idea is that it will enable a new kind of e-commerce predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product, and can offer you coupons at that instant.”

Over 82% of Americans own cell phones, with around half of these being smart phones. In the near future, the majority of Americans will own smart phones that will have the ability to track their location down to a few centimeters.

(click here to read the full article)

CIA chief wants 'smart' gadgets to spy on Americans...well its been happening for a while now, nothing new

CIA Head: We Will Spy On Americans Through Electrical Appliances
Global information surveillance grid being constructed; willing Americans embrace gadgets used to spy on them

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
March 16, 2012

CIA Chief David Petraeus

CIA director David Petraeus has said that the rise of new “smart” gadgets means that Americans are effectively bugging their own homes, saving US spy agencies a job when it identifies any “persons of interest”.

Speaking at a summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology investment operation, Petraeus made the comments when discussing new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously ‘dumb’ home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.
Wired reports the details via its Danger Room Blog: 

“‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,” Petraeus enthused, “particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said.

“the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.” the CIA head added.

Petraeus also stated that such devices within the home “change our notions of secrecy”.

Petraeus’ comments come in the same week that one of the biggest microchip companies in the world, ARM, unveiled new processors that are designed to give practically every household appliance an internet connection, in order that they can be remote controlled and operate in tandem with applications.

ARM describes the concept as an “internet of things”.

Where will all the information from such devices be sent and analyzed? It can be no coincidence that the NSA is currently building a monolithic heavily fortified $2 billion facility deep in the Utah desert and surrounded by mountains. The facility is set to go fully live in September 2013.

“The Utah data center is the centerpiece of the Global Information Grid, a military project that will handle yottabytes of data, an amount so huge that there is no other data unit after it.” reports Gizmodo.

Photo: Name Withheld; Digital Manipulation: Jesse Lenz 

“This center—with every listening post, spy satellite and NSA datacenter connected to it, will make the NSA the most powerful spy agency in the world.”

Wired reports that the incoming data is being mined by plugging into telecommunications companies’ switches, essentially the same method the NSA infamously uses for warrantless wiretapping of domestic communications, as exposed six years ago.

Former intelligence analyst turned best selling author James Bamford, has penned a lengthy piece on the NSA facility and warns “It is, in some measure, the realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.”

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.

NSA building huge Utah Data Center aka the country`s biggest spy center

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

Wired - Threat Level
By James Bamford
March 15, 2012 | 7:24 pm



...Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including 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.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target....”

(click here to read the full article)

X-37B: Secret U.S. Air Force space plane in orbit more than a year - and no one knows what it`s doing

X-37B: Secret space plane 1 year on mystery mission
RT News
Published: 09 March, 2012, 16:27

The X-37B spacecraft (AFP Photo/US Air Force) RT

The US Air Force’s highly secret robotic space plane continues to circle our planet a year after being launched, with no authoritative version of the shadowy mission purpose presented to public.

Since the original test mission of the first X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle One (OTV-1) that was performed in April 2010 and lasted the promised 270 days, the US Air Force has been insisting the X-37 program is a purely scientific undertaking and a testing platform of new technology.

Very little has been revealed about the spacecraft. The only information available on the successive OTV-2 mission launched on March 5, 2011, with an Atlas 5 booster rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is that the space plane is an 8.8-meter- long and 4.5-meter-wide solar-powered vehicle.


An artist's rendition of the X-37B as it might look like orbiting Earth (AFP Photo / NASA) Video: Launch of Atlas-V 501 with X-37B OTV-2 from simmisuper YouTube channel

The experimental spacecraft was supposed to return to an airstrip in California nine months later in December – but that never happened.

In the meantime, a third X-37B space plane mission is being prepared with a launch possibly going to be performed before the end of this year.

From the very beginning space enthusiasts have been proposing different versions of what the spacecraft is supposed to do while circling the planet at declared orbits varying from 200 to 750 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.In the meantime, a third X-37B space plane mission is being prepared with a launch possibly going to be performed before the end of this year.
From the very beginning space enthusiasts have been proposing different versions of what the spacecraft is supposed to do while circling the planet at declared orbits varying from 200 to 750 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

The initial idea has been that the spacecraft is a new type of a surveillance satellite that can change orbits to fly above the desired territory on Earth. This version has had a go because the craft did fly over Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Pakistan and changed orbits not once.
...

(click here to read the full article and view more images)


Infographic depicts the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle is an unmanned space test vehicle for the USAF (CREDIT: Karl Tate, SPACE.com)

Russia upgrades its 'eyes & ears' in Middle East

Russia upgrades Syria-based electronic station to warn Iran of US/Israeli attack
DEBKAfile Special Report 
February 27, 2012, 11:09 AM (GMT+02:00)

Russian electronic station on Jabal al Harrah, image credit: Debkafile

The Russians have upgraded their Jabal Al Harrah electronic and surveillance station south of Damascus opposite Israel’s Sea of Galilee, adding resources especially tailored to give Tehran early warning of an oncoming US or Israeli attack, DEBKAfile’s US military sources report.

Before it was boosted by extra advanced technology and manpower, the station covered civilian and military movements in northern Israel up to Tel Aviv, northern Jordan and western Iraq. Today, its range extends to all parts of Israel and Jordan, the Gulf of Aqaba and northern Saudi Arabia.

Part two of Moscow’s project for extending the range of its Middle East ears and eyes consisted of upgrading the Russian-equipped Syrian radar stationed on Lebanon’s Mount Sannine and connecting it to the Jabal Al Harrah facility in Syria. Russian technicians have completed this project too. Russia is now able to additionally track US and Israeli naval and aerial movements in the Eastern Mediterranean up to and including Cyprus and Greece.

According to our sources, the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kutznetsov’s stay at the Syrian port of Tartus through most of January and up to mid-February had the special mission of keeping an eye out for any Israeli preparations for attacking Iran, Syria or Hizballah. It filled the gap left by the Russian station south of Damascus which was fully occupied with feeding data on Syrian opposition movements to Bashar Assad and watching out for signs of foreign intervention, military or covert, against his regime.

The Russian vessel meanwhile followed increased traffic of US drone over Syria keeping track of the Syrian arsenal of missiles with chemical, biological and nerve gas warheads.
Washington disclosed on Feb. 25 that the US State Department had sent out warnings to six countries, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, to beware of these deadly weapons. It was not clear whether the warning referred to a possible Assad regime’s decision to use WMD against those nations or the danger of their transfer to terrorists embedded within those countries.

Moscow decided to boost its radar tracking and surveillance reach for Iran’s benefit in response to a complaint from Tehran that it could not longer count on Russia for a real-time alert on an incoming US or Israeli military strike, because those resources were stretched to the limit in support of the Assad regime.

After expanding and upgrading their range to meet Iranian needs by interconnecting the two stations and adding extra Russian manpower, Moscow ordered the Admiral Kutznetsov to depart Tartus on Feb. 13 and sail to home port at Severomorsk on the Kola Peninsula. The Russian stations in Syria and Lebanon were by then ready for their expanded missions.