Keep in mind, Senator Wyden knows that metadata on every single one of us is being kept at the Utah Data Center.
Every itty bitty bit of everything we do say or may even be thinking is kept. Stored in a facility that is large enough to store everyone’s information for one hundred years. Wyden is very upset about it. He knowingly wants to nail Clapper down. Clapper knows he knows.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper claimed Tuesday that he “made a mistake,” but that he didn’t lie when he told Sen. Ron Wyden in 2013 that the National Security Agency doesn’t collect data on Americans.
Clapper was defending himself on “The View” after President Donald Trump called him a “lying machine.”
A report from The Guardian later that year showed that Clapper’s statement was false, that the NSA does collect phone metadata on millions of Americans.
Ron Wyden’s exchange with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. 2013
Then Clapper on “The View” – move it along to about 3:00 if your short on time:
I will add the chilling clip of the Utah Data Center being built. It is now up and running. He states on The View that he was in “a bad place” to reveal he was spying essentially on every single one of us, since the program was Classified.
UPDATE: For an even better explaining, see an old post 2013. Clapper offers his “metaphor” explanation as to why he lied.
Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.
No less than William H. Binney, the master-mind behind all of that nasty stuff that the NSA does to Americans including storing every keystroke out in the Utah storage center, is on board with this story. Anyone who has been around my blog knows I am a big fan of his. An inside job. Now what does Mueller do with this information? How about Debbie dearest and her BFF the Awans? What are their part?
Four members of VIPS are currently concentrating on the task at hand. They are: (1) William Binney, the NSA’s former technical leader who also designed many of the programs now in use by the agency; (2) Kirk Wiebe, a former senior analyst with the NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center; (3) Edward Loomis, the former technical director at the NSA’s Office of Signal Processing; and (4) Ray McGovern, former chief of the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch.
But let’s get to it. In a LONG windy post put out by uber liberal THE NATION, we learn this:
…Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess “high confidence” in their “assessment” as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year—this standing as their authoritative judgment. Few have noticed since these evasive terms first appeared that an assessment is an opinion, nothing more, and to express high confidence is an upside-down way of admitting the absence of certain knowledge. This is how officials avoid putting their names on the assertions we are so strongly urged to accept—as the record shows many of them have done…….
“The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed.”
What is the top possible speed? Somewhere around 16 megabytes per second. According to Skip Folden, a former IBM program manager and independent analyst, 22.7 megabytes per second is beyond unlikely under the circumstances–unless you’re downloading the files directly using a storage device like a USB drive. He said:
“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer. Transfer rates of 23 MB/s are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance. Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).”
As to the report’s second contention–that the Guccifer 2.0 documents were tainted to cast curious eyes toward Russia–Folden notes that a simple peeling away of the documents’ top layer of metadata shows the sloppy and intentional misattribution. More at The Nation Abbreviated opinion at Law Newz
For anyone who hasn’t seen the Binney interview, I will include it.
We had another dump yesterday by WikLeaks. It is getting to be ho hum with barely a mention. But what it reveals is that those of us who were accused of wearing tin foil and sporting a degree of paranoia of our government to boot was well justified. So here is a post for the irredeemables. All of this information to be stored at the Utah Data Center.
WikiLeaks published a hacking tool known as “Archimedes” in another installment of their CIA Vault 7 leak series today.
This is just one of a number of viruses supposedly used by the CIA and revealed by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks claimed in March that just one percent of their Vault 7 series had been released so far, with many more leaks to come.
The wildest dreams of the Gestapo. KGB and East German Stasi comes into full being to “protect you”
WikiLeaks claims the hacking tool is used to infiltrate and attack computers that are linked via a local area network (LAN). The program essentially uses one computer to share viruses across the network, rerouting computer traffic to an exploitation server that allows the CIA to monitor network traffic on the computer.
“The document illustrates a type of attack within a ‘protected environment’ as the the tool is deployed into an existing local network abusing existing machines to bring targeted computers under control and allowing further exploitation and abuse,” WikiLeaks explains.
The wolf is snapping at our heels thanks this time to John McCain of “build the dang fence” fame that meant nothing. “Warrantless access.” That’s what the government has in mind. Due Process means nothing as well. The Senate fell two votes short, but buddy McConnell promises to bring this up once more after a few more arms are broken over the summer. Votes are at the bottom of the post. All of this information stored no doubt in the Utah Data Center. Here tis:
Agents would be able to access the information using national security letters — a kind of administrative subpoena that does not require a court order and would likely bar an Internet provider from telling its customers that their communication was searched. Currently, the FBI must get a warrant to obtain the data.
An amendment designed to allow the government warrantless access to internet browsing histories has been narrowly defeated in the Senate.
“Due process ought to apply as it relates to guns, but due process wouldn’t apply as it relates to the internet activity of millions of Americans,” said Wyden.
The amendment fell two votes short of the required 60 votes to advance.
But the effort is far from dead. Majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who switched his vote at the last minute, submitted a motion to reconsider the vote following the defeat.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) introduced the amendment as an add-on to the commerce, justice, and science appropriations bill earlier this week. McCain said in a statement on Monday that the amendment would “track lone wolves” in the wake of the Orlando massacre, in which Omar Mateen, who authorities say radicalized himself online, killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in the Florida city.
In other words, the FBI will be able to tell where and when a user logged in and out of a website, including social media sites.
What the tin foil hat crowd has been jumping up and down about for years now makes the Washington Post and the light of day. Yes, Virginia, the NSA is spying on you. That great Utah spy center that stores all of our data is real. Now we are all under the eye of Hal. Hal….Hal… let me in……. Read the full Post story. It will chill the marrow of you bones. Here we go:
A while back, we noted a report showing that the “sneak-and-peek” provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important:
What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don’t need to have any “national security” related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other “selector” into the NSA’s gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called “national security” will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes. And we don’t have to guess who’s going to suffer this unconstitutional indignity the most brutally. It’ll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra “special” attention.
(Snip)……..
And it certainly isn’t the only time national security apparatus has let law enforcement agencies benefit from policies that are supposed to be reserved for terrorism investigations in order to get around the Fourth Amendment, then instructed those law enforcement agencies to misdirect, fudge and outright lie about how they obtained incriminating information — see the Stingray debacle. This isn’t just a few rogue agents. The lying has been a matter of policy. We’re now learning that the feds had these agreements with police agencies all over thecountry, affecting thousands of cases.
On the one hand, I guess it’s better that this new data-sharing policy is acknowledged in the open instead of carried out surreptitiously. On the other hand, there’s something even more ominous about the fact that they no longer feel as though they need to hide it. More at the Washington Post.
Here the filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.
So Mooch is collecting data on our kids. Why should we be surprised? A little loss of our privacy here, a little less freedom there, and pretty soon we have lost it all. Question, will all of this data of our kids be stored in the great new data center in Utah? Here we go:
NEW ALBANY, Ind. – The grumbling in New Albany cafeterias isn’t coming from students’ stomachs. It’s from parents.
The southern Indiana school district is one of the latest to deploy technology which “biometric identification to match a finger scan with a personal identification number,” WAVEreports.
According to a notification issued by the New Albany Floyd County school system, the technology is used to “eliminate pin numbers, eliminate misused pin numbers, maintain the privacy of students on subsidized food programs and speed up the amount of time in the lunch line.”
“I don’t need the school to store my children’s fingerprints. I don’t like that,” Mt. Tabor Elementary parent Mary Ann Halstead says.
A Pennsylvania school district is scanning students’ thumbprints, tracking all of their lunch purchases, and turning the data over to the federal government.
The Hazleton Area School District recently announced it would be providing free meals to all students, regardless of need.
The move comes after the federal government began incentivizing school districts to provide more meals to more students.
While it would seem that providing all children with lunch would cost districts more, the pilot federal initiative turns that assumption on its ear. The initiative encourages school districts to move toward full participation by providing districts with reimbursements that will in fact absorb the cost of providing lunch to students of all income levels, whether they walk to school — or if a chauffeur drives them.
Since when was it legal to destroy evidence in a court case? Wander over to Tech Dirt if you want to hear the convoluted nonsensical reasoning.
The case? The ongoing destruction of key evidence in the Jewel v. NSA case.
Let me not waste your time and get to the chase. It’s A-OK for the DOJ to continue to destroy evidence.
About an hour before the hearing, the DOJ presented its opposition to the temporary restraining order, arguing, basically, that it would be too damn complicated to stop destroying evidence in the case. Part of this is because the data collected under the Section 702 program apparently isn’t just one big database, but is quickly fed into all sorts of other systems.
Unlike the Section 215 telephony metadata program, which resides on a discrete computer systems architecture, communications acquired pursuant to Section 702 reside within multiple databases contained on multiple systems. Those databases and systems are designed to effectuate FISC-approved minimization procedures that require (with certain limitations) the destruction (purge) upon recognition of certain communications and the age-off of certain raw data within either two years or five years from the expiration of the certification authorizing its acquisition. Halting these purges and age-offs to preserve all Section 702 material, as we understand the Court to have ordered, would require significant technical changes to these databases and systems and would have the effect of forcing NSA into non-compliance with FISC-approved minimization procedures, thus placing the entire program in legal jeopardy
In short: because we’re ordered to delete some data by the law to avoid spying on Americans, to now ask us not to delete any data would violate the law that says we have to delete some data. And, to figure out how to do this would be crazy confusing, because the NSA is a giant bureaucratic machine of spying, and you can’t just throw a rock into it like that.
Here is a feel good story for the day. For anyone out there who has not heard of the megalith construction of a building being built to house everything and anything about each and every one of us, the story and an update of the so-called “data center.” Looks like a delay for a year. One can only wonder if the center has not been infiltrated by those who do not want to see it up and running. Included is an interview with William Binney, the original whistle-blower who talked about the spying years ago. If you haven’t caught it, it is well worth taking a look.
A $1.2 billion data center being built in Utah for the National Security Agency to house U.S. intelligence secrets has been plagued by electrical failures, according to an agency official.
The NSA’s spying programs include storing the phone records of millions of Americans as well as the e-mail and Internet activity of suspected foreign terrorists who may communicate with U.S. citizens, according to documents exposed in June by former government contractor Edward Snowden. Ed: Everyone, not just terrorists.
“In an era when our nation and its allies are increasingly dependent on the integrity of information and systems supported, transmitted, or stored in cyberspace, it is essential that space is as resilient and secure as possible,” John Inglis, NSA deputy director, said in the January 2011 statement on the need for the facility.
10 Meltdowns
The causes of the center’s problems, which include 10 electrical meltdowns in the past 13 months, have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the its opening by a year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Meltdowns Hobble NSA Data Center
Investigators Stumped by What’s Causing Power Surges That Destroy Equipment
The filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.
BUNKERVILLE | God, Guns and Guts Comrades! 