Big Brother is Watching You

[O Really]

... it's no surprise that patriots like Reality Winner and Edward Snowden choose a more direct path.

Yes, that turned out well for them.

[Vrede too]

Yes, that turned out well for them.

Occasionally whistleblowers alleging financial fraud, often to an enlightened 3rd party like CMS where there are cash rewards, do alright with little grief, but very few other whistleblowers have things turn out well for them. Winner and Snowden might argue that their sacrifice for us was worth it, regardless. I'm sure glad they did it.

[Vrede too]

Predictable:

The Government is Using its Foreign Intelligence Spying Powers for Routine Domestic Investigations
Congress gave the government exceptional surveillance powers to pursue foreign spies. It is abusing those powers to go after Americans in ordinary criminal investigations.

[neoplacebo]

Predictable:

The Government is Using its Foreign Intelligence Spying Powers for Routine Domestic Investigations
Congress gave the government exceptional surveillance powers to pursue foreign spies. It is abusing those powers to go after Americans in ordinary criminal investigations.

Ironic that the trump whipped faction of the GOP, which pretty much includes all of them, have been quacking and squawking for months about the FISA warrant for Carter Page, a wingnut and trump darling. Carter Page had business interests (mostly him trying to get in on the corruption prevalent in the Russian oil and gas industry) a few years before he ever got involved with the trump campaign. He was even the object of a recruitment effort by Russian intelligence agents, which the US knew about at the time it happened. So once he did become involved with the trump campaign, it raised eyebrows and he was investigated. Just the fact of his previous efforts in Russia and his being the subject of a recruitment effort by Russians is in itself reason enough to check him out. But, no, the GOP wants to forget all about all of it due to some administrative error or some other mistake in the warrant paperwork. I guess Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bushes would be shaking their heads over this.

[Vrede too]

ADD YOUR NAME: We're calling for significant reforms to be made to how (counterterrorism) fusion centers operate!

[Vrede too]

Protect Vulnerable Government Whistleblowers
Sign the Petition Today!

[Vrede too]

Mitch McConnell is pushing the Senate to pass a measure that would let the FBI collect Americans' web-browsing history without a warrant



Too many people have been searching "Mitch McConnell in drag".
viewtopic.php?p=119330#p119330

[bannination]

Mitch McConnell is pushing the Senate to pass a measure that would let the FBI collect Americans' web-browsing history without a warrant



Too many people have been searching "Mitch McConnell in drag".
viewtopic.php?p=119330#p119330

At the same time they're complaining about Trump being spied on. Transparent hypocrites.

[Vrede too]

At the same time they're complaining about Trump being spied on. Transparent hypocrites.

At the same time PINO is still hiding his tax returns!

The US Senate voted to let Trump spy on your search history. But all is not lost

n a shameful vote this week as part of an extension of the dreaded and controversial Patriot Act, the Senate handed William Barr and the Trump administration the ability to spy on Americans’ web browsing and internet search histories without a warrant.

The vote on a bipartisan amendment to protect this information from government surveillance sparked immediate outrage online – and deservedly so. Our web browsing and search histories contain the most intimate personal information. Any administration – let alone the draconian Trump justice department – should be required to comply with the fourth amendment before trawling through it.

Depressingly, the amendment failed to pass the 60-vote threshold by exactly one vote, 59-37 ...

... 10 Democrats – including Dianne Feinstein, Sheldon Whitehouse and Mark Warner – sided with Mitch McConnell and the Trump administration and voted against the provision. Time and again, when it comes to privacy and civil liberties issues some Democrats have consistently sided with the Trump administration, despite portraying the president as lawless and unaccountable on a variety of subjects. It never ceases to be infuriating.

But lost in the mix of this damaging loss for privacy, and perhaps even because of it, was some very good news. A second privacy-focused amendment to the Patriot Act – one that garnered far less coverage but is potentially even more substantive – did pass overwhelmingly on Wednesday night. Because the substance of the amendment was much harder to fit into a headline, it received a fraction of the attention....

After the Snowden disclosures, Congress was forced to create an amicus curiae – or “friend of the court” – position, which at very limited times and at the court’s discretion, would be allowed to resist the government’s arguments. Even though the position was extremely restricted, over the past several years, it has been shown to work on the few occasions it’s been used.

The Leahy-Lee amendment significantly strengthens the amicus position, giving the court’s civil liberties representative much more latitude to access classified information and broadens their ability to weigh in on virtually all cases that may infringe upon the civil liberties of Americans.

And here’s where it gets interesting. The House passed a different version of a Patriot Act extension back in March, so now the Senate’s version has to go back to the House, so the bills can match up. It gives privacy advocates another opportunity to get through even more robust changes, like the Wyden amendment protecting our Google search data.

This issue is not the same partisan fight that we have become so accustomed to in Washington. Instead of a Republican-Democrat split, like so many issues in recent years, the fight over privacy and the Patriot Act has pitted a bipartisan left-right coalition against the moderate, pro-national security state establishment of both parties. Many Republicans crossed the line to vote with the majority of Democrats, while 10 Democrats sided with Barr and the Trump administration to hand them this power.

While it’s incredibly depressing Congress has failed to protect online privacy as it has become this generation’s seminal issue, the fight is not over. Especially if representatives hear loud and clear how much this issue means to Americans.

Vote tally

FOR browser privacy: 34 Dem, 24 GOP, 1 Ind.
AGAINST browser privacy: 10 Dem, 27 GOP (including both NC Sens)
Not voting: 1 Dem, 2 GOP, 1 Ind.

[Vrede too]

Pentagon intelligence employees raise concerns about supporting domestic surveillance amid protests

The national security state being used to repress domestic dissent - who would have ever guessed?

[Vrede too]

'We can mute that line': State Department cuts off reporter trying to ask about Bolton's book during censorship briefing

During a briefing on Chinese propaganda and press censorship, the State Department's chief spokeswoman muted the line of a reporter who tried to ask a question about John Bolton's explosive new book and attacked a second reporter who followed up.

Morgan Ortagus quickly cut off a Reuters' reporter who started to ask if any U.S. allies had reached out to the State Department's East Asian and Pacific Affairs chief, David Stilwell, in the wake of Bolton's book. In the book, Bolton writes that President Donald Trump offered various concessions to Xi Jinping in exchange for China's help winning his 2020 re-election.

"That's not what this call is about," Ortagus said. "AT&T, we can mute that line." ...

"We really believe in freedom of the press and freedom of speech," Stilwell said in explaining the decision to label the four outlets as arms of the Chinese Communist Party....

A Bloomberg reporter, Nicholas Wadhams, asked what message it sends for the State Department to refuse to answer questions about Bolton's book during a call on ensuring freedom of the press in the United States....

This would be funny if it weren't so sad and dangerous.

[Vrede too]

Oregon governor denounces 'blatant abuse of power' by federal police sweeping protesters off Portland streets

[Vrede too]

The Battle of Portland: Trump's escalating tactics against protesters are backfiring in Oregon

The author assumes that peace in Portland is the goal. IMO, the idea is to provoke ongoing protest and frighten cons while making PINO look tough. The entire article is interesting to me. Some tidbits:

... The noisy show of force I witnessed Tuesday night left hundreds of people, including me, choking on tear gas. But federal officers have essentially been deployed for a photo op: less than 15 minutes after the skirmish began, it was over. The federal officers retreated inside the courthouse, surrendering the ground they had just taken back to jeering activists....

But the protests are numerically dominated by young BLM activists and contingents like the Wall of Moms, which began last Saturday night with about 100 mothers forming a human barrier between BLM protesters and police. By Tuesday night the “Mom Wall” had grown to almost a thousand women dressed in yellow and clutching sunflowers beneath their helmets and goggles.

A group of middle-aged men (known as the DadTifa) has also appeared, using leaf blowers to whisk tear gas back toward the police who fired it. (“There’s a lot of Hong Kong tactics,” one participant told me.) And some of the response seems purely Portland. In a city where strip clubs outnumber churches, a few young women have been labeled “Athenas” for daring to confront the heavily armed troops stark naked....



... The sudden street-clearance operation I witnessed Tuesday night — in which I was teargassed worse than in any previous experience in Bolivia or Beirut — appears to have been triggered when activists set a trash fire against the stone walls of the federal courthouse. The small fire was no threat to Portland, and when DHS produced a timeline of “rampant long-lasting violence” to justify its deployment, the list was mostly acts of graffiti....

It’s worth comparing the treatment of protesters in Portland with those in other cities. In Lansing, Mich., anti-lockdown protesters carried rifles into the state Capitol and menaced legislators in session, without any police response at all. Militia groups, freelance gunmen and Bikers for Trump have threatened BLM protesters everywhere from Bethel, Ohio, to Spokane, Wash. Police departments rarely do anything unless shots are fired, a deference not extended to the Mom Wall, where I saw federal agents beat unarmed women in bicycle helmets just for refusing to move.

O Really:

But the live-streaming of this moment in our history is having an effect, drawing global attention to a conflict conducted over just a few blocks of physical space. The last time I had been at a protest here, it featured countless American flags and a cowboy on a beautiful bay horse, all to support Ammon Bundy, the right-wing rancher on trial here in 2017 for his role in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation.

But even Bundy has now condemned the use of federal law enforcement in local protests, and the Three Percent Militia, arguably the most powerful in America, criticized Donald Trump for suggesting that looters be shot. Trump’s overreach is causing schisms inside these ultra-right movements; at an Idaho militia rally I attended in June, hundreds of armed men and women applauded as a speaker from Black Lives Matter condemned the police murder of George Floyd. If Trump can’t hold the Coeur d’Alene fairgrounds, he won’t take downtown Portland....

Patrick Symmes is the author of the forthcoming book “Death Squad Democracy: How Foreign Tyrants Brought Violence to American Politics.”

[Vrede too]

The author assumes that peace in Portland is the goal. IMO, the idea is to provoke ongoing protest and frighten cons while making PINO look tough.

American carnage: how conservative media amplify Trump's theme of chaos

... Political analysts see Trump’s efforts to create the impression of widespread social unrest which only he can solve as part of a long-shot re-election strategy. Trump trails rival Joe Biden by double digits in polling averages including in key swing states....

Mayors from 15 of the largest American cities addressed a letter to the attorney general, Bill Barr, and the acting homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, on Monday.

“The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked a national uprising and reckoning,” the letter said. “The majority of the protests have been peaceful and aimed at improving our communities.

“Where this is not the case, it still does not justify the use of federal forces. Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values.”

[Vrede too]

Trump says he will look 'very strongly' at granting pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden

... “There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that,” Trump said.

The Post reported that Trump polled members of his staff about whether to let Snowden return to the U.S. from Russia without going to prison.

Trump also told the Post about Snowden: “Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don’t know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.”

... Snowden himself welcomed Trump's consideration, tweeting Friday:

"The last time we heard a White House considering a pardon was 2016, when the very same Attorney General who once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA's unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been 'a public service.'" ...

That I can recall PINO has followed through on every one of his pardon teasers.

I’m not sure what he’s thinking. It will really piss some people off, but I don’t think it will make any anti-PINOs choose to vote for him.

[neoplacebo]

Trump says he will look 'very strongly' at granting pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden

... “There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that,” Trump said.

The Post reported that Trump polled members of his staff about whether to let Snowden return to the U.S. from Russia without going to prison.

Trump also told the Post about Snowden: “Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don’t know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.”

... Snowden himself welcomed Trump's consideration, tweeting Friday:

"The last time we heard a White House considering a pardon was 2016, when the very same Attorney General who once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA's unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been 'a public service.'" ...

That I can recall PINO has followed through on every one of his pardon teasers.

I’m not sure what he’s thinking. It will really piss some people off, but I don’t think it will make any anti-PINOs choose to vote for him.

My take is that Putin TOLD trump to do this because Vlad is getting tired of paying for this guy. Besides, he pretty much outlived his usefulness after his initial revelations and his recent book.

[Vrede too]

My take is that Putin TOLD trump to do this because Vlad is getting tired of paying for this guy. Besides, he pretty much outlived his usefulness after his initial revelations and his recent book.

I believe that Snowden pays his own way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sn ... _in_Russia

However, you could be correct that there are non-monetary costs to Putin and that 45SHOLE is doing Putin's bidding, again.

[neoplacebo]

My take is that Putin TOLD trump to do this because Vlad is getting tired of paying for this guy. Besides, he pretty much outlived his usefulness after his initial revelations and his recent book.

I believe that Snowden pays his own way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Sn ... _in_Russia

However, you could be correct that there are non-monetary costs to Putin and that 45SHOLE is doing Putin's bidding, again.

Snowden may not be a freeloader, but his revelations certainly buoy trump and right wing nutjobs' pushing of the "deep state" nonsense. And of course Putin I'm sure is all for this deep state crack pipe since it serves to further stoke division among Americans. It truly is amazing that a lot of the GOP has either embraced deep state qanon bullshit or silently let the stupidity roll on. Because of this, Putin has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. trump and his disciples provide considerable assist in this effort either in ignorance or in genuine belief.

[Vrede too]

Snowden may not be a freeloader, but his revelations certainly buoy trump and right wing nutjobs' pushing of the "deep state" nonsense. And of course Putin I'm sure is all for this deep state crack pipe since it serves to further stoke division among Americans. It truly is amazing that a lot of the GOP has either embraced deep state qanon bullshit or silently let the stupidity roll on. Because of this, Putin has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. trump and his disciples provide considerable assist in this effort either in ignorance or in genuine belief.

Right-wingnuts will seize on anything to justify their perpetual victim stupidity, but there are still times when we should fear and restrict the govt.

NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden ruled unlawful

A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program has been ruled unlawful, seven years after it was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The surveillance of millions of Americans' telephone records first came to light in 2013.

Now, the US Court of Appeals (for the Ninth Circuit) has ruled intelligence leaders who publicly defended the program lied....

...

[neoplacebo]

Snowden may not be a freeloader, but his revelations certainly buoy trump and right wing nutjobs' pushing of the "deep state" nonsense. And of course Putin I'm sure is all for this deep state crack pipe since it serves to further stoke division among Americans. It truly is amazing that a lot of the GOP has either embraced deep state qanon bullshit or silently let the stupidity roll on. Because of this, Putin has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. trump and his disciples provide considerable assist in this effort either in ignorance or in genuine belief.

Right-wingnuts will seize on anything to justify their perpetual victim stupidity, but there are still times when we should fear and restrict the govt.

NSA surveillance exposed by Snowden ruled unlawful

A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program has been ruled unlawful, seven years after it was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The surveillance of millions of Americans' telephone records first came to light in 2013.

Now, the US Court of Appeals (for the Ninth Circuit) has ruled intelligence leaders who publicly defended the program lied....

...

Yeah, the sort of massive universal surveillance that the NSA was/is engaged in I always thought was of questionable utility as well as legality. On a side note, I recently read a book about whistleblowers who worked for the US government, and one was about this guy who was a longtime NSA employee who, on his own, developed the system that eventually became the system Snowden exposed. Anyway, this guy who worked at NSA invented a computer program called Thin Thread that was capable of searching billions of conversations and flagging or recording ones that certain words appear in; the program could do this for foreign languages as well. When Hayden took over at NSA he awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a defense contractor to "develop" a program that this old NSA guy had already invented. The NSA guy got pissed, was near retirement age and had medical issues, so he quit and blew the whistle on what eventually became the NSA Stellarwind surveillance program which they spent nearly a billion dollars on something they already had.....according to the whistleblower.