Obama Ramps Up Domestic Surveillance

[JakeStyle]

Obama Defends Spying On Millions Of Americans…

Remember the days when Senator Obama railed against Bush and the Patriot Act?

    (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack.

    The admission comes after the Guardian newspaper published a secret court order related to the records of millions of Verizon Communications customers on its website on Wednesday.

    A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers’ identities or the content of the telephone calls.

    Such information is “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States,” the official said, speaking on the condition of not being named.

    â€œIt allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” the official added.

    The revelation raises fresh concerns about President Barack Obama’s handling of privacy and free speech issues. His administration is already under fire for searching Associated Press journalists’ calling records and the emails of a Fox television reporter as part of its inquiries into leaked government information.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

[JohnnyReb]

It's OK....Obama is doing it. He would never misuse his power to...........whatever.

[Ptarmigan]

NSA's Verizon Spying Order Specifically Targeted Americans, Not Foreigners
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/05/nsas-verizon-spying-order-specifically-targeted-americans-not-foreigners/

The National Security Agency has long justified its spying powers by arguing that its charter allows surveillance on those outside of the United States, while avoiding intrusions into the private communications of American citizens. But the latest revelation of the extent of the NSA’s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitly excluded those outside the United States.

In a top secret order obtained by the Guardian newspaper and published Wednesday evening, the FBI on the NSA’s behalf demanded that Verizon turn over all metadata for phone records originating in the United States for the three months beginning in late April and ending on the 19th of July. That metadata includes all so-called “non-content” data for millions of American customers’ phone calls, such as the subscriber data, recipients, locations, times and durations of every call made during that period.

It targeted Americans.

[NHSparky]

Big Brother is already here.  Yet funny how I have to hear about this from the BRIT press (again!)

Nary a peep from the NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, alphabet networks, etc...

[txradioguy]

Big Brother is already here.  Yet funny how I have to hear about this from the BRIT press (again!)

Nary a peep from the NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, alphabet networks, etc...

MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAIL TO BREAK EVEN ONE OF FOUR OBAMA SCANDALS

Fact: Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media is not responsible for breaking even a single one.

Verizon? Nope, not our guys. That was the Brits over at The Guardian. 

IRS? Nope, not our guys. The IRS broke their own scandal with a planted question.

The Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records? Nope, not our guys. Believe it or not, the Associated Press didn’t even break that story. Like the IRS, we only found out because the Justice Department outted itself in a letter notifying the AP of what it had done.

Benghazi? Are you kidding. With a couple of rare exceptions (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Attkisson) the media has spent the last 8 months attacking those seeking the truth (Congress, Fox News) not seeking the truth. It was the GOP congress that demanded the email exchanges around the shaping of the talking points, not the media.

Left up to the media, we wouldn't know anything about Libya. All of the media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/06/Mainstream-Media-Did-Not-break-Even-One-of-Four-Obama-Scandals

[Dori]

Big Brother is already here.  Yet funny how I have to hear about this from the BRIT press (again!)

Nary a peep from the NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, alphabet networks, etc...

I suspect this information is deliberately being given to the British press from someone inside our government here.  I know awhile back that Obama was asking for trouble when he threw the FBI/CIA? under the bus.  I remember thinking that it was going to come back to bite him, and it has in spades. 

[BlueStateSaint]

Big Brother is already here.

Hence, Frank's note yesterday in the Shout Box about DHS on one of his threads in the DUmpster.

[JakeStyle]

It gets worse http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

[thundley4]

So much data and some of that could be leaked to Obama cronies regarding business.  Talk about corporate espionage on a government scale.

[Billiam Pitts]

boilerplate response from a DUmp Monkey:

[Dori]

So much data and some of that could be leaked to Obama cronies regarding business.  Talk about corporate espionage on a government scale.

So if you look at everything this government is doing collectively, what does it lead to believe?

[Ptarmigan]

Big Brother is already here.  Yet funny how I have to hear about this from the BRIT press (again!)

Nary a peep from the NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, alphabet networks, etc...

MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAIL TO BREAK EVEN ONE OF FOUR OBAMA SCANDALS

Fact: Over the past few weeks, four major scandals have broken over the Obama administration, and it is a very sad (and frightening) truth that our pathetic, American, lapdog mainstream media is not responsible for breaking even a single one.

Verizon? Nope, not our guys. That was the Brits over at The Guardian. 

IRS? Nope, not our guys. The IRS broke their own scandal with a planted question.

The Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records? Nope, not our guys. Believe it or not, the Associated Press didn’t even break that story. Like the IRS, we only found out because the Justice Department outted itself in a letter notifying the AP of what it had done.

Benghazi? Are you kidding. With a couple of rare exceptions (Jake Tapper, Sharyl Attkisson) the media has spent the last 8 months attacking those seeking the truth (Congress, Fox News) not seeking the truth. It was the GOP congress that demanded the email exchanges around the shaping of the talking points, not the media.

Left up to the media, we wouldn't know anything about Libya. All of the media's energy was collectively poured into ensuring the truth was never discovered.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/06/Mainstream-Media-Did-Not-break-Even-One-of-Four-Obama-Scandals

Yeah, I know. I find non-American sources more reliable, save FOX News.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

Somewhere out there, someone is thinking Republican thoughts.

FIND HIM!

[Articulate Ape]

Somewhere out there, someone is thinking Republican thoughts.

FIND HIM!

If thoughts are what their they are using for detection, then no wonder they're going for Republicans rather than Liberals.  Trying to go after a Liberal thought would be like trying to find a glass BB in the Pacific Ocean.

[FlaGator]

I was thinking about all the Obama privacy scandals and it dawned on me that this sounds a lot like stalking. I mean if I have an ex who:

I'm keeping  track of all the people she calls, when she calls and where she is when she makes calls
Monitor all her internet activity
Read her emails
Read her text messages
Keep copies the pictures she posts on Facebook
Maintain the ability to find her whereabouts and time I want
Sic government agencies on her for harassment purposes

wouldn't the cops arrest me and throw me in jail. Wouldn't a judge give me some jail time to consider my actions?

So how come Obama thinks that he can treat the American people the way some psycho treats his or her ex?

[CG6468]

I was thinking about all the Obama privacy scandals and it dawned on me that this sounds a lot like stalking. I mean if I have an ex who:

I'm keeping  track of all the people she calls, when she calls and where she is when she makes calls
Monitor all her internet activity
Read her emails
Read her text messages
Keep copies the pictures she posts on Facebook
Maintain the ability to find her whereabouts and time I want
Sic government agencies on her for harassment purposes

wouldn't the cops arrest me and throw me in jail. Wouldn't a judge give me some jail time to consider my actions?

So how come Obama thinks that he can treat the American people the way some psycho treats his or her ex?

Because he's considered to be so special.

[Articulate Ape]

I, for one, wish I was Obama's ex right now.