 |
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
NSA quietly expands domestic spying program, even as Congress balks
- Text size
Raw Story
March 10, 2008
"The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed," The Wall Street Journal reports on Monday page ones. "But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks."
Excerpts follow:
—
According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.
The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.
The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.
…
Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.
The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.
…
|
|
|
|
|
Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.
…
NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI’s Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn’t know the number. "As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified," said FBI spokesman John Miller.
The budget for the NSA’s data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. "Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does," says a budget justification document, noting an "expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs."
Full registration-restricted story here.
| WATCH ALEX JONES’ ENDGAME ONLINE NOW in its entirety. View more High quality trailers at www.endgamethemovie.com |
-
- Social bookmarks
- Email this article
-
- Print this page
- Share on Twitter
March 10th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Real-time status and event monitoring system for foster children
US Patent and Trademark Office –
Application number: 11/803,743
Filing date: May 15, 2007
Inventor: David Springett
Abstract
A system used for the record keeping and tracking of data related to foster youth. The system includes an encrypted portable smart card containing critical foster youth data, a means for accessing and updated the foster youth data in real time either through the smart card or over the Internet. The data tracked and monitored can include data from various agencies and organizations, and includes data such as among other immunization history, emergency medical, basic medical history, allergies, educational records, individual, educational plans, dental history, insurance information, services available and/or provided, demographic detail, care provider, and a current photo of the individual. Data is stored in a tangible, portable and secure format, the records travel with the youth from service provider to service provider—continuously being updated. Information can be shared electronically from one database to another—while protecting the integrity of each system, and accessed…
March 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
The new FISA bill has already passed the Senate and is in the House now. It will give retroactive immunity to all telecoms that illegally gave customer information to the BFI/NSA. I have contacted my House rep. several times over the last 2 weeks and recommend that you do the same. This is a most important bill and if it passes you can kiss your 4th ammendment rights goodbye. Go to http://www.house.gov/, enter your zip code at the top and locate your rep. Make sure that he is going to vote against this horrific violation of our rights.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
fi ouy epyt drawkcab eht asn koops t’nac daer ti
dnes lla liame ni edoc
ees uoy tnac daer siht nac ouy?
igpa atlina
yeht era gnitchaw
March 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
lufituaeb
March 10th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
. The internet: the lifeline that we 9/11 truthers, constitutionalists, Believers, and Natzarim Yisralites, use to disseminate and obtain accurate info will eventually be turned into the noose around our necks (if it isn’t already). The government is having huge computer arrays scour the internet to watch and catalog who goes where. A lot can be learned about a person from where they go on the internet. Everytime we go to infowars they are watching us and tallying up how many times we go here. Everytime one of the more outspoken 2nd ammendment zealots speaks violently, do you think they aren’t tallying that up? It makes a lot more sense to not say anything on the internet about the resistance that will rise up against tyranny. The tyrants are tracking down who we are by our IP addresses. When we are rounded up for the fema camps, it will be our internet logs that will be used to accuse us. When AlGore claimed to have invented the internet, I can’t help but wonder if there was something to that. If when he said “internet” he was really thinking of the NSA browser tracking computers– the “dragnet” draginternet that will be used to snare us.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
‘LIES’ http://www.remoconscious.com
March 11th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.