Critical Observer

MAKE NO MISTAKE, US SPY SATELLITES SEE EVERYTHING

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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be linked to Russia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the case of the latest tragic mid-air break-up of Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which killed all 224 people aboard on a flight from Egypt back to Russia a few days ago, CNN is reporting US that intelligence sources say US spy satellite showed a “heat signature” that could indicate an explosion aboard the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here’s the CNN report:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A U.S. military satellite detected a midair heat flash from the Russian airliner before the plane crashed Saturday, a U.S. official told CNN.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Intelligence analysis has ruled out that the Russian commercial airplane was struck by a missile, but the new information suggests that there was a catastrophic in-flight event — including possibly a bomb, though experts are considering other explanations, according to U.S. officials.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Analysts say heat flashes could be tied to a range of possibilities, including a bomb blast, a malfunctioning engine exploding or a structural problem causing a fire on the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now note that this information about a spy satellite image comes just days after the crash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, it’s been over a year and a half since the 2014 crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine — an incident that also saw a civilian airliner destroyed in midair. In this case, the US insists the crash was caused by a Russian-built BUK anti-aircraft missile provided to, and launched by pro-Russian separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The US has made this claim ad nauseum, but has never provided a shred of evidence to support its charge. Meanwhile, as a number of critics have pointed out, with Ukraine in a hot civil war in which one side — the post-coup Ukrainian government forces — were getting NATO backing, and the other, the two breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, were receiving Russian backing, it is a certainty that the US had moved not one but multiple spy satellites into position to monitor the region around the clock by the time of the Flight 17 shoot-down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So where are the satellite images to support a claim that a BUK missile fired from rebel-held territory and by rebel forces downed that plane, killing all 298 people aboard?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As critics like award-winning journalist Robert Parry and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern have pointed out, if the US had satellite imagery showing a BUK missile contrail — and this large, fast-moving rocket leaves a dramatic contrail all the way from its launch site to its high-altitude target (see below), making assessing of blame quite easy — it would long since have been released or leaked to a US corporate media that have been quick to rub with anti-Russian assertions and propaganda put out by the US government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This leaves us with two possibilities to ponder:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Either there simply are no satellite photos showing a BUK launched by ethnic Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine at Flight 17, or those photos that exist show something quite different, like a BUK being launched by Ukrainian government forces, or else, perhaps the current claim that satellite images show a heat signature around the Russian plane in Egypt are false (no image has been provided to back up the assertion of a heat signature).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Of course, there may eventually be evidence pointing to a bomb – the Russians are now looking for signs of explosive residue on the wreckage. But until such evidence is found, why, one might ask, would the US jump to make a false claim of a bomb being responsible for the Russian plane crash over the Sinai Desert, when it could as easily have been a fuel tank or engine explosion that wrecked the plane?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Well, consider that at the moment, Russian president Vladimir Putin has been trumping the US in a number of conflict regions, stymying US plans to bring Ukraine into NATO, blocking a US plan to establish a no-fly zone over Syria by openly sending fighter-bombers and cruise-missile-equipped ships to Syria to attack President Bashar al-Assad’s Islamic State and Al Nusra enemies at Assad’s invitation, and backing Iran in its support of both Assad and the embattled Iraqi government. All the while, Putin’s popularity at home has been soaring into the high 80-90percent range <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/22/europe/russia-putin-poll/" style="color: #333333; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">according to polls</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Perhaps the thinking at the White House is that by suggesting it was a bomb, and not a structural defect that brought down a Russian civilian aircraft, killing hundreds of Russian citizens, the Russian people might logically link that purported bombing to Putin’s actions in Syria and his antagonism of IS and Al Nusra, and might then turn against him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On one NPR program last week, the reporter was fishing for exactly that idea in an interview with a Washington analyst, saying, “Isn’t it likely that if it turns out to have been a bomb by ISIS that took down the plane Russians would get upset about Putin’s backing of Assad in Syria?” A listener couldn’t miss the unseemly enthusiasm the interviewer had for this gruesome notion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whatever the investigation of Flight 9268’s flight recorders and wreckage concludes, one thing is clear: If the US has satellites monitoring the Sinai, where there is no war going on, it most certainly had satellites monitoring Ukraine at the time of the downing of Flight 17, and if it’s willing to announce that its satellite caught the moment of the explosion of Flight 9268 and is willing to talk about that, it should also be willing to show what its satellites saw when Flight 17 was downed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The American people, and the people of the world, should demand this of the US government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1e1e1e; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.872px;"><b>Article by: </b></span><span class="post_author" style="color: #1e1e1e; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 25.872px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; word-wrap: break-word;"><b>DAVE LINDORFF</b> of counterpunch.org</span></span></div>
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MAKE NO MISTAKE, US SPY SATELLITES SEE EVERYTHING

There is something fishy going on in the way the US is talking about civilian plane crashes that are in some way linked, or said to be ...

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THE “WAR ON TERROR” IS A HOAX TO JUSTIFY POLICE STATE

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<span style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #21200b; font-weight: normal; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>The “War On Terror” Is The Hoax Foundation Of The Police/Spy State</i></span></span></h2>
The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda. The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media.<br />
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The consequences of the deceit, gullibility, and betrayal are horrendous for Americans, for millions of peoples in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine, and for Washington’s European vassals.<br />
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The consequences for Americans are an aborted Constitution, a police/spy state and rising resentment and hatred of America around the world.<br />
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The consequences for peoples in Somolia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Ukraine have been massive deaths and dislocations, infrastructure destruction, internal conflicts, birth defects, invasions, bombings, drones. Millions of peoples have been murdered by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony, and millions have been turned into refugees.<br />
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The consequences for Washington’s European vassals is that the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are now overruning Europe, causing social and political discord and threatening the European political parties that enabled, and participated in, Washington’s massive war crimes in eight countries.<br />
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The populations of the eight countries and Washington’s vassals are stuck with the consequences of Washington’s evil, vicious, and illegal actions. And Americans are stuck with the police/spy state and militarized police who murder three Americans each day and brutalize countless others.<br />
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The countries we have destroyed have no recourse to restitution.<br />
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Our European vassals will have to provide from their own pockets for the refugees that Washington’s wars are sending to them.<br />
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As for Americans, they seem to have settled into acquiescence to the brutal police/spy state that has crowded out freedom and democracy.<br />
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But Americans could do something about it.<br />
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It is a proven fact that the police/spy state rests on a foundation of lies and deceptions, and these lies and deceptions are now known. Even George W. Bush has admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of independent experts consisting of physicists, nanochemists, structural engineers, highrise architects, fire fighters and first responders, and military and civilian pilots have provided the detailed explanations of September 11, 2001, that Washington failed to provide. Today not even an idiot believes the official explanation. The corrupt neoconservative Bush regime created a false reality and sold it to a trusting population that was anxious to prove its patriotism.<br />
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The American electorate knew that the Bush/Cheney regime had deceived them about many things, and the people, believing Obama’s promises of change, put him in office to rectify the situation. Instead, Obama protected the criminal Bush/Cheney regime and continued with the neoconservatives agenda.<br />
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We don’t have to stand for this. We can turn off Fox “News,” CNN, NPR and all the rest of the presstitutes who lie for a living. We can cease purchasing the useless newspapers. We can demand that the police/spy state that was created entirely on the basis of lies and deceptions be rolled back.<br />
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Who can possibly believe that the massive PATRIOT Act was written so quickly in the aftermath of 9/11? It is not possible that every member of Congress and the staff does not know that such a massive document was sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity.<br />
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Who can possibly believe that a handful of Saudi Arabians acting without the support of any state and any intelligence service could outwit the entire apparatus of the American National Security State and inflict a humiliating defeat on the world’s only superpower?<br />
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9/11 is the worst national security failure in world history. Who can possibly believe that not a single one of the national security officials who so totally failed in their responsibilities was held accountable for their failures that brought total humiliation to the proud United States?<br />
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Who can possibly believe that the Bush regime’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a response to 9/11 when Bush’s Treasury Secretary publicly stated that the invasion of Iraq was the topic of the Bush regime’s first cabinet meeting long prior to 9/11?<br />
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Are the American people really such washed-up sheeple, such cowards, that they acquiesce to a police/spy state, the foundation of which consists of nothing but lies told by criminals and repeated endlessly by whores pretending to be journalists?<br />
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If so, the American people are not a people who any longer matter, and they will continue to be treated by Washington and by their local police as people who do not matter.<br />
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by Dr.Paul Craig Roberts

THE “WAR ON TERROR” IS A HOAX TO JUSTIFY POLICE STATE

The “War On Terror” Is The Hoax Foundation Of The Police/Spy State The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymake...

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US SENATE PASSES CISA TO EXPAND MASS SURVEILLANCE

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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The US Senate passed the so-called Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act – or CISA – Tuesday evening by a wide 74-21 margin.</span></span></h2>
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The overwhelming Senate support for the bill gave little indication that concerns from tech companies, information security experts and civil liberties advocates were seriously considered. Shannon Young reports.</div>
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The landslide Senate vote in favor of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, came after multiple attempts spanning five years to pass similar legislation under different names. Called CISPA in a former incarnation, the bill also drew on the highly controversial “cyber” legislation before it: SOPA and PIPA.</div>
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Some of the tech companies that have raised concerns about CISA include Google, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle. CISA sponsor Senator Richard Burr addressed those companies specifically ahead of Tuesday’s vote, saying “Do not try to stop this legislation and put us in a situation in that we ignore the fact that cyber attacks are going to happen with greater frequency for more individuals, and that the sooner we learn how to defend our systems, the better off personal data is in the United States of America.”</div>
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The stated purpose of CISA is to allow companies to share information in real time about perceived hacking threats, but critics of the bill warn it’s a legal framework for mass surveillance in cybersecurity clothing.</div>
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 <a class="ext-link" data-wpel-target="_blank" href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33460-us-senate-passes-cisa-a-cybersecurity-bill-critics-say-will-expand-mass-surveillance" rel="external nofollow" style="border: 0px none; color: #d10000; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;" title="">Read more</a></div>
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US SENATE PASSES CISA TO EXPAND MASS SURVEILLANCE

The US Senate passed the so-called Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act – or CISA – Tuesday evening by a wide 74-21 margin. The overw...

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NATIONWIDE ‘SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY’ FILES ON AMERICANS

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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 15.05px; line-height: 21.8225px;">In April 2013, an intrusion at the PG&E power substation in Silicon Valley knocked out local 911 services and cell phone service in the area. A team of gunmen who opened fire at the plant late at night and damaged 17 transformers was to blame.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But an intelligence community program manager warns a hack attack possibly could have had the same effect. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now, a counterterrorism surveillance program that logs reports of suspicious behavior from spots across the country is also documenting reports of suspicious activity across the Internet. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The Director of National Intelligence in 2008 stood up the "suspicious activity reporting," or SAR, program as a post-Sept. 11 national security initiative. Authorities were trained to monitor for certain behaviors at airports, train stations and large events that might indicate a security threat. Local authorities currently send reports of sketchy behavior to Homeland Security Department-funded, regional fusion centers, where analysts make sense of the narratives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Today, as physical systems become connected to the Internet of Things, and federal watchdogs warn of plane-hacking, authorities also are filing suspicious online activity reports.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"Just south of San Jose, a high power transformer was shot at by somebody with a rifle, and it caused a power failure," said Kshemendra Paul, program manager of the DNI Information Sharing Environment, in an interview with <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Nextgov</em>. "That same equipment can potentially be SCADA-controlled over the Internet, or vulnerable to cyber outages, so they need to have an integrated view" of threats, he said, referring to supervisory control and data acquisition systems that control industrial operations. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At fusion centers in New Jersey and Missouri, among other locales, physical security experts are comparing notes with cybersecurity engineers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"They have crime analysts, cyber analysts, terrorism analysts. They are all working together," Paul said. "Think about it. You have a threat to critical infrastructure: Is it a traditional physical threat? Is it a cyber threat? You want to have an integrated view of the threats and be effectively able to collaborate." </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The suspicious cyber activity reporting system is operational, he said. Partners include the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and the nonprofit Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"We're talking about dozens to hundreds of analysts that have gone through training” across the networks, at the Secret Service or the FBI," he said. "DHS is sharing lots of products."</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the Senate as early as this week could debate the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill that would make it easier for businesses to exchange, with the government, details about hacks. The data divulged could include customer IP addresses, email headers, timestamps and other metadata that amount to "indicators" of a particular threat -- but also amount to too much personal information in the eyes of privacy advocates. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Civil rights groups generally oppose the cyber information-sharing legislation for this reason. And they have consistently depicted suspicious activity reporting as a tactic that nets more innocents than terrorist leads. In 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government, arguing the program places people on watchlists for merely taking photos of tourist sites and other harmless behavior. </span></span></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A 'Flood of Useless Information?'</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">According to a September 2015 DNI Information Sharing Environment report to Congress, there is a greater need to use tools for sharing cyber information across institutions as malicious digital activity increases. "One such tool is the Cyber Integration for Fusion Centers," a guidebook released in May for state intelligence facilities on how to characterize cyber threats while still protecting privacy. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At fusion centers, cyber information consists of indicators, IP addresses, domains, aliases, and file hashes, according to the guidelines. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Whether a particular cyber suspicious activity report “is linked to terrorism and subject to being shared," depends on how analysts apply their training, the strategy states. Factors that need to be considered in making that call include the targeted IT infrastructure, likely consequences and historical background.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Decisionmaking also takes into account civil liberties.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"The same privacy policies that govern information sharing against terrorism -- work for cybersecurity-related information sharing," Paul said. "That's a big win for transparency" because the rules have been in place for years, and "analysts, operators, and investigators are trained on them. There’re compliance audits and performance metrics." </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But ACLU officials seem unconvinced that suspicious cyber reporting will preserve constitutional rights.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“The low threshold for reporting SARs that let loose a flood of useless information on innocent or First Amendment-protected conduct will also result in the reporting of cyber activity that is either innocuous or protected,” said Hugh Handeyside, staff attorney for the ACLU National Security Project. “The targets of those SARs will likely be subject to intrusive surveillance and monitoring, even if the government lacks reasonable suspicion that they are involved in any criminal activity.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The new tool offers a three-page instruction sheet on how to label the severity of cyberspace incidents. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Some of the directions:</span></span></div>
<ul style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: 15.05px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 21.8225px; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0px 30px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A "significant incident" would be a situation likely to impact public safety, national security, economic security, foreign relations, privacy or public confidence. An "emergency incident" would pose an "imminent threat" to large-scale critical infrastructure, the stability of the U.S. government, or people's lives. </span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If the target of the threat is a small business, that episode would rank as a low-security level situation, whereas a hack aimed at a United Nations special event would be a high-security level episode.</span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The defacing of a website or knocking a website offline with a denial of service attack would be of lower consequence than a hack that inflicts damage on the real word or steals data.</span></span></li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Foreign policy issues factor into the description of the attacker. If it is an ally who is compromising U.S. information, that intruder would be called a low-threat actor. A dramatic change in a foreign country's intentions would be considered a high-threat adversary. </span></span></li>
</ul>

NATIONWIDE ‘SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY’ FILES ON AMERICANS

In April 2013, an intrusion at the PG&E power substation in Silicon Valley knocked out local 911 services and cell phone service in t...

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US SURVEILLANCE BILL MAY KILL INTERNET PRIVACY

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The US Congress, faced with a possible government shutdown, is allegedly considering the re-introduction of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) this week.</h5>
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Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is reportedly believed to be considering resurrecting the controversial bill, claims The Politico, a DC area political newspaper.</div>
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Opinions are divided on the issue, as one source claimed that a “likeness” of the bill will return to the table while another doubted its reintroduction, saying it was “all very uncertain” and “technically possible, but nothing definitive.”</div>
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If lawmakers approve the CISA, which many Americans see as a double-edged sword, it will grant legal immunity to companies that wish to monitor their customers and share private information with the US government if they are believed to constitute a ‘cybersecurity threat’.</div>
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The law would empower the federal government to legally spy on US citizens, according to privacy activists, who are calling the proposed legislation a “surveillance bill in disguise.”</div>
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“I hope they remember how contentious this bill is. I hope they remember they’ve got 21 amendments in order. I hope they choose something else,” said Access senior legislative manager Nathan White, who said on Sunday that the likelihood of a renewed CISA push has gone from rumor to “likely.”</div>
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The debates have intensified as The Business Software Alliance (BSA) issued a letter to Congress this September asking for the implementation of five legislative efforts that they claim will boost the digital economy of the US.</div>
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The letter, signed by Apple, Microsoft, Siemens, Oracle, IBM and others, argues in favor of the information-sharing bill, claiming that it is one of the five measures the US federal government could take to “protect sensitive information by enabling private actors in possession of information about vulnerability and intrusions to more easily share that information voluntarily with others under threat.”</div>
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Meanwhile, the advocacy group Fight for the Future has excoriated the CISA; calling it “a surveillance bill in disguise.”</div>
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It has gone as far as creating a website, YouBetrayedUs.org, to condemn the large companies. The group accuses the organizations of hypocrisy, as they regularly claim to advocate customers’ rights but now intend to endanger “their users’ security and civil rights in exchange for government handouts and protection.”</div>
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There was only one company, SalesForce, which refused to support the CISA.</div>
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Facing significant number of accusations from privacy advocates, the BSA updated its information on cyber threats, stating on its site that it “does not support any of the three current bills pending before Congress,” which include the CISA.</div>
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“BSA has consistently advocated for strong privacy protections in all information sharing bills currently pending before the Congress,” the group’s website added.</div>
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The bill has been designed to address the cybersecurity threat, which the Obama administration is addressing alongside such complex issues as ISIL, al-Qaeda, climate change and North Korea.</div>
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In April, the US government acknowledged that a massive cyberattack on OPM networks compromised the personal information of more than 21 million former and current federal employees. Moreover, the fingerprint data of some 5.6 million people has also been stolen.</div>
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The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment last year prompted the US government to combine public and private sector action to achieve common goals and eliminate cyber-threats.</div>
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Supporters claim that the bill will allow authorities to prevent potential digital threats as they would be able to obtain easy access to potentially hazardous resources.</div>
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Pundits have challenged the previous opinion, saying that a government that lacks the ability to safeguard its own information can’t be trusted to manage the data of its people.</div>
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The CISA poses a risk to individuals who are concern about their internet privacy and the secrecy of the personal data they store, according to Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon.</div>
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“The government can’t keep its own data safe,” he said, referring to the OPM hack. “Giving more of your information to the government creates a huge new target for hackers,” Wyden stressed.</div>
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From Sputnik News</div>

US SURVEILLANCE BILL MAY KILL INTERNET PRIVACY

The US Congress, faced with a possible government shutdown, is allegedly considering the re-introduction of the Cybersecurity Information...

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STINGRAY & COVERT ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE

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Law enforcement officials across the United States have become enamored of the StingRay, an electronic surveillance device that can covertly track criminal suspects and is being used with little public disclosure and often under uncertain legal authority. Now, though, some states are pushing back, and are requiring the police to get a court order and local consent before turning to the high-tech tool.<br />
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Washington, Utah and Virginia recently approved laws requiring court orders for the use of such cell-site simulators by state and local police officers. California lawmakers this month approved such legislation by a wide margin. The California law would also require police agencies to get City Council approval before employing the devices, and to disclose on an agency website that they use the technology. Similar bills have been introduced in Texas and in Congress.<br />
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In Maryland, defense lawyers are re-examining thousands of cases to determine if the police have been deploying the technology legally.<br />
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“The public has finally become aware of what sorts of technologies are being used, and they are asking themselves, ‘Do we want to pay for this?’ and second, ‘What are the costs of this to our civil liberties?’ ” said Neil Richards, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies privacy issues. “People do care about privacy. And it is reassuring that the system is working the way it’s supposed to — instead of law enforcement just saying, ‘The rules have changed when it comes to digital.’ ”<br />
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StingRays, one of several brands of such devices, are about the size of a suitcase. They mimic cellphone towers by forcing mobile phones in their vicinity to connect to the device, which allows the police to find the person with the phone.<br />
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement officials say the devices are critical in locating dangerous criminal suspects. But the devices, which cost as much as $500,000, also collect data from all other cellphones in the area, whether those phones are on or off, without notifying phone users.<br />
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The F.B.I., which helps manage the distribution of the devices to police departments, requires agencies to sign nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from discussing their use of the technology. In recent trials in Missouri and Maryland, prosecutors abruptly dropped cases after police officers declined to testify about the role the devices played in the arrests, according to lawyers and privacy advocates.<br />
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But after repeated criticism from members of Congress about the secret use of the technology, the Justice Department this month announced new guidelines that in most circumstances require F.B.I. and other federal agents to obtain search warrants before they use StingRays and prohibit agents from using the devices to collect emails, texts and other data from cellphones. Data obtained from the bystanders’ phones must be discarded at the end of each day.<br />
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The surveillance devices “are a really critical tool for us that we use in a variety of contexts,” said Sally Q. Yates, the deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, at a news conference this month announcing the new guidelines. “There’s a real legitimate interest in not letting out the details of exactly how this works so sophisticated criminals and organizations can’t then figure out how to defeat it.”<br />
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“Would it be better for law enforcement if we didn’t give up any of this information?” she continued. “Yeah, it probably would. But there’s also an interest in transparency and in public confidence as well. We’re trying to find the balance.”<br />
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The directive does not cover local police departments, where agencies in at least 21 states use StingRays or similar devices, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.<br />
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In a 2008 case in Florida, the Tallahassee police used a StingRay or a similar device to find James L. Thomas in a housing complex. The police suspected him of raping a woman and stealing her purse, which contained the woman’s cellphone.<br />
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“Using portable equipment, we were able to actually basically stand at every door and every window in that complex and determine, with relative certainty you know, the particular area of the apartment that that handset was emanating from,” a police officer testified, according to court records.<br />
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But when Mr. Thomas’s girlfriend opened the door and asked whether the officers had a search warrant, they forced their way inside, according to court documents. The police department later said it had not obtained a search warrant because officers did not want to reveal their use of the technology; they had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the F.B.I., according to the court records.<br />
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Mr. Thomas was convicted of sexual battery and theft. A judge later ruled that the search had been illegal and ordered a new trial.<br />
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In Baltimore, the public defender’s office said it was examining hundreds, potentially thousands, of cases in which the police used StingRays without telling defense lawyers. In all, the Baltimore police have acknowledged using StingRays 4,300 times since 2007.<br />
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Natalie Finegar, the deputy district public defender in Baltimore, said that when defense lawyers pressed for details about how the police located certain suspects, prosecutions had suddenly been withdrawn to avoid answering questions about StingRays.<br />
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“There are cases where it was never spelled out for the judge, and certainly not for us,” Ms. Finegar said. “Sometimes they dropped cases and other times they would say, ‘We’re not going to use that evidence.’ We didn’t think it was used very often at all. We had no idea.”<br />
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The United States Supreme Court has not yet taken a case challenging whether the use of StingRays by the police without search warrants violates the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches.<br />
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But in recent years, the court has ruled that the police must obtain a search warrant to either place a GPS device on a vehicle or to sift through the contents of a suspect’s cellphone.<br />
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The person who has perhaps been the most successful in pressing for public disclosure about StingRays is a 35-year-old Arizona man who was arrested after federal agents located him using similar technology.<br />
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The man, Daniel Rigmaiden, pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 2014; the authorities said he used the names of dead people and others to file $5.2 million in fraudulent tax claims. In an interview this month, he said that after his arrest in 2008, he told a lawyer, “I think they tracked me down by sending rays into my living room.”<br />
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“In retrospect, I can see how it might sound like something a crazy person might have come up with,” Mr. Rigmaiden added.<br />
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In his case, it turned it out to be true. At the time, the existence of StingRays was still a closely held government secret.<br />
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Soon after, his lawyer — at least his fourth one — withdrew from the case; eventually Mr. Rigmaiden represented himself and spent nearly six years in prison. Before he pleaded guilty, he began researching StingRays, setting up shop in the prison library and collecting more than 40,000 pages of documents before finding a reference in a government report to the device.<br />
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His research helped convince the A.C.L.U. that federal agents had and were using the technology. Since then, the group has led efforts to investigate and change government use of the device. Mr. Rigmaiden volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as part of his community service requirement after his release from prison.<br />
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This year, Mr. Rigmaiden, who has become a privacy advocate, helped Washington State write its StingRay law, and he has also taught criminal defense lawyers how to challenge the use of the technology, the A.C.L.U. said.<br />
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In Utah, Ryan Wilcox, a former Republican state legislator who sponsored that state’s StingRay law, said in an interview that he had been able to convince his colleagues of the potential danger of the warrantless use of StingRays in a new way: He used equipment he had bought at a local store to project the contents of his cellphone onto a conference room wall.<br />
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“Are you comfortable having all your information — your contacts, your appointments, your photos — this easy to access?” he asked them.<br />
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The legislation passed overwhelmingly.<br />
<br />
Article By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS of The New York Times

STINGRAY & COVERT ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE

Law enforcement officials across the United States have become enamored of the StingRay, an electronic surveillance device that can cover...

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INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KEEP A FILE ON EVERYONE - SNOWDEN

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Former NSA employee Edward Snowden has claimed recently that the British Government Communications Headquarters had launched a secret Karma Police program in 2009 to collect and analyze data on the internet users.<br />
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According to him, the program analyzes people's network likings, including the websites and radio stations they get in, as well as their social network activity and search history. All the data is checked to make a so-called dossier and reveal further suspect activity of the user.<br />
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Snowden noted, that the program had been launched without any preliminary talks and the Parliament's approval. Such a mass data collections favours anyone but the society.<br />
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As he said, the government does not launch these programs without a reason. They collect data under the competitive nature of relationship between the states. The process is carried out secretly without any serious surveillance and open trials.<br />
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The programs, which were used jointly by the NSA and the CIA in such countries like Yemen, are currently applied by the US Marshals Service towards common criminals, who do not pose a real threat to public safety, that could justify violation of rights of millions US and other countries' citizens.<br />
<br />
From Pravda.Ru

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KEEP A FILE ON EVERYONE - SNOWDEN

Former NSA employee Edward Snowden has claimed recently that the British Government Communications Headquarters had launched a secret Kar...

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WIKIPEDIA FIGHTS NSA'S TAPPING OF INTERNET BACKBONE

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A lawsuit against the National Security Agency’s dragnet interception of Internet communications had its first day in federal court Friday, with a diverse coalition of organizations asking a judge to rule against the Obama administration’s request that their case be dismissed.<br />
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U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis didn’t rule from the bench or betray a clear leaning during arguments.<br />
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The case was filed in March by the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Amnesty International USA, PEN American Center, Human Rights Watch, The Nation magazine and other human rights and advocacy groups.<br />
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The groups are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and say the NSA’s "upstream" collection of Internet communications from the cables, routers and switches that make up the Internet’s backbone is unconstitutional.<br />
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The upstream collection is – along with the PRISM program that collects communications directly from companies like Google and Facebook – a major source of Internet records the government says it's authorized to acquire through Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.<br />
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Ellis, seeming to enjoy vacillating between sternness and folksy charm, told ACLU attorney Patrick Toomey, “This isn’t politics, you’re not on the stump!” He warned Justice Department attorney Rodney Patton that “when I start [talking] you need to stop.”<br />
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The hearing focused largely on distinguishing the case from Clapper v. Amnesty International USA, which was brought by some of the same plaintiffs. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2013 – about three months before whistleblower Edward Snowden’s first leaks – that those plaintiffs could not prove their records were taken and therefore had no right to sue.<br />
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Toomey said there are several significant differences between the cases, including that the contested surveillance is different and more expansive, that more is known now about the surveillance from official sources and that plaintiffs have greater footing with the addition of global Wikimedia and defense attorneys.<br />
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Patton, however, said the cases are quite similar. The government has not confirmed details about the scope or operational details of upstream collection, he said, and the lawsuit’s claims are speculative and based on assumptions. Details about the collection have not and cannot be disclosed, he said, because the information is classified.<br />
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“There are very few pieces of information” that are public about upstream collection, he said, describing a 2014 Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report on the collection – as well as a notice of records-collection issued under Section 702 to a defense attorney – as less descriptive than Toomey suggested.<br />
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Ellis inquired about whether the plaintiffs would be better able to make their case if Snowden supplied the ACLU legal team with more documents on the collection, and seemed to express skepticism about the rigor of constitutional review from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.<br />
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“The only thing missing from that equation is anyone arguing it’s unconstitutional,” he observed about the intelligence court, which critics contend is often a rubber stamp for expansive government requests they liken to general warrants.<br />
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Patton said the only way he could see someone having a right to challenge upstream collection would be if the government admitted they had been affected in the course of criminal proceedings.<br />
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Until now, most public attention on lawsuits against NSA mass surveillance have focused on the easier-to-understand dragnet collection of domestic call records. Congress voted earlier this year to end that program, though cases against it are still ongoing, with attorneys pushing to update Supreme Court precedent on privacy rights regarding information customers provide to businesses.<br />
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Another case against upstream collection – Jewel v. NSA, brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation – is on appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit after a decade of legal wrangling. Cases against the PRISM Internet program include a long-stalled lawsuit from activist attorney Larry Klayman that seeks enormous damages for alleged constitutional violations.

WIKIPEDIA FIGHTS NSA'S TAPPING OF INTERNET BACKBONE

A lawsuit against the National Security Agency’s dragnet interception of Internet communications had its first day in federal court Frida...

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FTC & SEC WANT WARRANTLESS ACCESS TO AMERICANS EMAILS

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A bipartisan bid to reform an electronic-privacy law has the support of the tech community and the White House, but federal law enforcement officials tell Congress the changes would hamper civil prosecution.<br />
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Civil law enforcement agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission would not be able to obtain critical information if the law were changed to require criminal warrants for access to data stored on cloud services, according to witnesses from those agencies testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday.<br />
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The law enforcement officials were reacting to bills from Sens. Mike Lee and Patrick Leahy, and Reps. Kevin Yoder and Jared Polis, that aim to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or ECPA.<br />
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In its current form, ECPA protects emails from government snooping for 180 days. When the law was initially drawn up in 1986, email providers routinely removed emails from their servers a month or two after they were delivered; users would generally download the messages they intended to keep. Whatever remains on an email server after 180 days is fair game for government to access, with just a subpoena—not a warrant.<br />
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Today, ubiquitous cloud-based email systems like Gmail, which offer gigabytes of storage for free, allow the average user to keep his or her messages—and calendars, contacts, notes, and even location data—on a provider’s servers indefinitely.<br />
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The ECPA Amendments Act would require law enforcement to get a warrant to access server-hosted information, no matter how old, and would require the government to notify an individual that his or her information was accessed within 10 days, with certain exceptions.<br />
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But law enforcement officials expressed opposition to some of the bill’s proposed changes, arguing that its requirement for criminal warrants could leave civil litigators without access to important electronic information.<br />
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“The bill in its current form poses significant risk to the American public by impeding the ability of the SEC and other civil law enforcement agencies to investigate and uncover financial fraud and other unlawful conduct,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission.<br />
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Ceresney and Daniel Salsburg—chief counsel for technology, research, and investigation in the FTC’s consumer protection branch—said the SEC and FTC are not looking for the authority to obtain data with just a subpoena, and instead proposed a system where they could obtain a court order for access to the data. Such a process would notify the individual being investigated and give him or her the chance to make a case in front of the judge before an order is granted or denied.<br />
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But despite their opposition to the proposed change to ECPA, neither the SEC nor the FTC has obtained emails through an administrative subpoena in the past five years, Ceresney and Salsburg said Wednesday.<br />
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Ceresney said the decision to avoid subpoenas was made “in deference” to ongoing conversations about ECPA reform. A 2010 federal court order also bound the government’s hands by declaring ECPA unconstitutional—a decision the ECPA Amendments Act intends to codify into law—but Ceresney said the SEC does not interpret the court’s decision as an impediment to using subpoenas to obtain data.<br />
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The civil law enforcement officials’ comments about ECPA reform were met with immediate backlash from the tech community, which has come out in strong support of the changes.<br />
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“The FTC claims to be a champion of consumer privacy, yet the agency wants access to Americans’ data without a warrant,” said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a technology think tank. “The Commission’s testimony today confirms long-standing rumors that it will only support ECPA reform if it gets a carve-out from the bill’s warrant requirement.<br />
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“This is the issue that has stalled ECPA reform for over five years, despite overwhelming bipartisan support,” Szoka added. “The FTC’s testimony is carefully crafted to sound reasonable, but the agency is simply helping to obstruct the major privacy reform of our generation.”<br />
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Julie Brill, an FTC commissioner, released a statement Wednesday indicating she disagreed with Salsburg’s testimony. “I am concerned that a judicial mechanism for civil law enforcement agencies to obtain content from ECPA providers could entrench authority that has the potential to lead to invasions of individuals’ privacy and, under some circumstances, may be unconstitutional in practice,” Brill said.<br />
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Google and BSA-The Software Alliance, a prominent tech association, appeared in a separate witness panel before the committee, calling for swift change in order to improve customers’ privacy and alleviate business pressures.<br />
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“By creating inconsistent privacy protection for users of cloud services and inefficient and confusing compliance hurdles for service providers, ECPA has created an unnecessary disincentive to move to a more efficient, more productive method of computing,” said Richard Salgado, the director of Google’s law enforcement and information security branch.<br />
<br />
 by Kaveh Waddell of The National Journal

FTC & SEC WANT WARRANTLESS ACCESS TO AMERICANS EMAILS

A bipartisan bid to reform an electronic-privacy law has the support of the tech community and the White House, but federal la...

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BANK SECRECY ACT MAKES BANKS SPY ON YOU

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<h5 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px;">
<span style="line-height: 1.1;">Do you distrust the banking system? Prefer to do business in cash? Complain about the encroachment of Big Brother into every facet of your life?</span></h5>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’d better watch out. You’re a “person of interest” – and a growing number of businesses must report your “suspicious activities” to the feds. If they don’t, they can be fined and the responsible parties even imprisoned.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
These requirements originated in a law called the “Bank Secrecy Act” (BSA). Of course, this Orwellian law has nothing at all to do with protecting bank secrecy. Indeed, the BSA has all but eliminated confidentiality.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Regulations issued under the BSA require financial institutions to notify the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a Treasury Department bureau, of any unusual transactions in which their customers engage. Reporting is mandatory for transactions that exceed $10,000 and are not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage. For money transmitter businesses, a $2,000 threshold applies.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="line-height: 18.2px;">The businesses covered by these requirements must file “suspicious activities reports” (SARs) secretly, without your knowledge or consent. FinCEN makes the reports available electronically to every US Attorney’s office and to dozens of law enforcement agencies. No court order, warrant, subpoena, or even written request is needed to access a report.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
What exactly is suspicious? According to official Treasury guidance, suspicious behavior includes:</div>
<ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Paying off a loan;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Objecting to completing Currency Transaction Reports (required for transactions over $10,000);</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Changing currency from small to large denominations;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Buying cashier’s checks, money orders, or travelers’ checks for less than the reporting limit $10,000 for a cash transaction);</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Making deposits in cash, then having the money wired somewhere else; and</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Withdrawing cash without counting the cash first.</li>
</ul>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Now, FinCEN has issued preliminary regulations that could extend these rules to investment managers. All SEC-registered investment advisers would be required to design and implement an anti-money-laundering program. They would also need to file SARs with FinCEN.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Once these rules come into effect, investment advisors would no longer be accountable to you, their client. Their highest duty, reinforced by civil and criminal sanctions, would be to act as unpaid undercover agents for the US Treasury.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
But FinCEN’s suspicious transaction reporting rules are just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, official guidance from the FBI and other government agencies indicate that all of the following actions make you a terror suspect:</div>
<ul style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Making an inter-library loan request for “The Little Red Book” by former Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Owning a suspicious cat;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wearing a politically provocative shirt;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Searching online for apressure cooker and backpack;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Putting a “<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; box-sizing: border-box;">Do not disturb</span>” sign on the door to your hotel room;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Making politically inflammatory remarks when getting a<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; box-sizing: border-box;">tattoo</span>;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Attempting to<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; box-sizing: border-box;">shield your computer screen</span>from the viewing of others;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Expressing frustration with<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; box-sizing: border-box;">“mainstream ideologies”</span>; and</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Storing more than<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; box-sizing: border-box;">seven days of food</span>in your home.</li>
</ul>
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Then there’s the “drug courier profile” developed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The following profiles are all court-approved reasons to search you and your property:</div>
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<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Having a pale or dark complexion;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Having a Hispanic appearance;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Being between the ages of 25 and 35;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Acting too nervous or too calm;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Carrying $100, $50, $20, $10, or $5 bills;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wearing casual clothing;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Wearing perfume;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Having window coverings on your personal residence;</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Buying a one-way or round-trip airline ticket; and</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Being among the first, last, or middle group of passengers off of an airplane.</li>
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As Richard Miller expressed in his landmark book, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Drug Warriors and Their Prey</em>,</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box;">Being a citizen is sufficient cause to suspect a person of criminal conduct, thereby constricting civil liberties protections for that person. That situation is hard to distinguish from the legal status of citizens of Nazi Germany.</b></em></div>
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In a world that views virtually everything you do as suspicious, there aren’t a lot of options to protect yourself. Indeed, simply by expressing your interest in privacy, asset protection, precious metals, or any of the other topics I cover routinely, you’re likely on one government watch list or another already.</div>
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However, you can take steps to avoid having a bank or other financial institution – including an investment manager – file an SAR on you. If you’re considering doing anything out of the ordinary in your account, talk to an officer at the bank, brokerage, or other financial institution first. For instance, you might want to let someone know before you pay off a loan or make or receive a large transfer.</div>
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If you have a reasonable explanation for the transaction, it’s much less likely to set off an alarm. And in a country in which all citizens are considered criminal suspects, that’s definitely something you want to avoid.</div>

BANK SECRECY ACT MAKES BANKS SPY ON YOU

Do you distrust the banking system? Prefer to do business in cash? Complain about the encroachment of Big Brother into every facet of you...

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NSA DATA COLLECTION AIDED BY AT&T, VERIZON AND SPRINT

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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYR0FkWGzjvbjZt9EFDx8NwvlIvAwV5sMIjk92EVUUkUxzVS3EZouMGMkOYiXiNQB8CTEB2fznW4YLmB62TT_oRvuYp3r8T2w5vKOzDQpDWskJwqocfTKQ6LulJdZNkcUjOgZ9XhXXGO4/s1600/00000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYR0FkWGzjvbjZt9EFDx8NwvlIvAwV5sMIjk92EVUUkUxzVS3EZouMGMkOYiXiNQB8CTEB2fznW4YLmB62TT_oRvuYp3r8T2w5vKOzDQpDWskJwqocfTKQ6LulJdZNkcUjOgZ9XhXXGO4/s640/00000.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The EFF provided evidence in two of its cases that it was not just AT&T that helped the NSA collect phone records for millions of Americans, but also Verizon Wireless and Sprint. This information was not previously given by the government, which claimed that it was a state secret.<br />
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Despite all the revelations in the media from Snowden’s documents and other sources that the U.S. government is collecting citizens’ information, the administration is still claiming that either individuals or organizations such as the EFF have “no standing” to sue because they can’t prove that they were spied upon.<br />
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Of course, this kind of argument quickly turns into circular logic, because such evidence is often secret and can’t be easily given away via FOIA requests either (the released documents are often heavily redacted to the point of being useless). Therefore, you can’t prove you were spied upon because that information is typically classified.<br />
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Still, this time the EFF managed to get some evidence that AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint were involved in helping NSA with the mass collection of phone records, from filings made to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that were recently made public.<br />
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The EFF also got a letter sent from the DoJ to the FISC that was released in a FOIA lawsuit started by the New York Times, where the names “AT&T,” “Verizon,” “Verizon Wireless,” and “Sprint” are mentioned in regards to phone records collection. From a previously-released document by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the EFF learned that the letter is indeed about the mass collection of phone records.<br />
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The U.S. government’s tactics to either convince the judges to reject mass spying cases or at least delay them have worked rather well so far, but the EFF hopes this new evidence will put the focus back on the government’s violations of the First Amendment’s right of association and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against both unreasonable searches and seizures.<br />
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The EFF is now using this evidence in two of its cases: Smith vs. Obama, where both the EFF and ACLU are providing the legal aid to Anna Smith, who is suing the U.S. government over its bulk collection of telephone records, and First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA where 22 organizations are suing the NSA for their First Amendment right of association.<br />
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by LUCIAN ARMASU | TOM'S HARDWARE

NSA DATA COLLECTION AIDED BY AT&T, VERIZON AND SPRINT

The EFF provided evidence in two of its cases that it was not just AT&T that helped the NSA collect phone records for millions of Ame...

Read Article »