Vote Tally Count Senate NSA Data Spying restrictions voted down

Now isn’t this an upside down world? Left is Right, and Right is Left. Did I think I would be on the side of Progressives? Vote tally at end of post. Earlier post: Former NSA analyst tells Germany that ‘NSA has totalitarian mentality’ Any questions?  Two posts today. Here we go

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls in bulk.

Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure failed to secure the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation. The vote was 58 to 42 for consideration.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who drafted the bill, blamed what he said was fear-mongering by the bill’s opponents for its defeat. “Fomenting fear stifles serious debate and constructive solutions,” he said. “This nation deserves more than that.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, worked hard to defeat the bill, which had the support of the Obama administration and a coalition of technology companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

The new Congress will also be working against a hard deadline because the legal authority for the data collection will expire next year.

Under the bill, which grew out of the disclosures in June 2013 by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, the N.S.A. would have gotten out of the business of collecting Americans’ phone records.

More over at the NY Times

Here are the individual votes:

For individual votes, click on “Blue Vote Icons” below.

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 113^th Congress – 2^nd Session

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary

Question: On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S. 2685 )
Vote Number:	282	Vote Date:	November 18, 2014, 07:26 PM
Required For Majority:	3/5	Vote Result:	Cloture Motion Rejected
Measure Number:	S. 2685 (USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 )
Measure Title:	A bill to reform the authorities of the Federal Government to require the production of certain business records, conduct electronic surveillance, use pen registers and trap and trace devices, and use other forms of information gathering for foreign intelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal purposes, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	58
	NAYs	42

Vote Summary

By Senator Name

By Vote Position

By Home State

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.

Former NSA analyst tells Germany that ‘NSA has totalitarian mentality’

While everyone has had their knickers in a knot over Snowden and his revelations, William Binney, a former NSA analyst told us what has been going down years ago. That is why I never bought the story of Snowden as being the operative. I covered this in the post Edward Snowden – the great spy hoax of the century? .

In 2007 Binney’s home was raided by the FBI during a leaks investigation. This week Binney testified before a special committee of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, that is looking into the NSA’s spying activities in the country and Germany’s own intelligence services’ complicity in those activities.

Testifying, Binney accused the NSA of having a “totalitarian mentality” and wanting “total information control” over citizens in breach of the US constitution. It was an approach that until now the public had only seen among dictators, he added.

Deutsche Welle reports:. (Worth the full read.)

Mass collection was “senseless” and did not help in counterterrorism, and actually hindered the agency’s capabilities, Binney said.

The NSA represented the “greatest threat” to American society since the US Civil War of the 19th century, Binney added.

German media also report that the NSA targeted Internet users who encrypted data or tried to remain anonymous on the Internet.

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. 

NSA spy center troubled with ‘unknown’ meltdowns

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

H/T:Bloomberg

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.

Government also collecting credit-card transactions

Hot Air: Here’s another question.  Exactly how many terrorists use credit cards to buy the kinds of products that would create those patterns?

Here is the whistle blower who tells us how this whole thing is planned out. Nothing accidental about this:

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. Two posts today.

As if the surveillance state didn’t have enough to do, what with tracking every call in America and scanning every Internet transaction. The Wall Street Journal reported late last night that the NSA has been cataloguing credit card transactions as well, rendering utterly void any concept of transactional privacy:

The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.

The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.’s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA’s operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers.  …

NSA also obtains access to data from Internet service providers on Internet use such as data about email or website visits, several former officials said. NSA has established similar relationships with credit-card companies, three former officials said.

It couldn’t be determined if any of the Internet or credit-card arrangements are ongoing, as are the phone company efforts, or one-shot collection efforts. The credit-card firms, phone companies and NSA declined to comment for this article. More at Hot Air

On March 12 Ron Wyden who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked DNI James Clapper if the NSA collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper answer that no the NSA does not at least not wittingly collect info on American. In light of the report about the NSA collecting phone records from Verizon

Google’s Schmidt considered for Cabinet post – Egypt’s best friend

The fact that latest reports are that Eric Schmidt will decline any cabinet position offer in the administration should not bring us any relief of concern.  I have done numerous posts on the direct involvement of Google and a number of his Executives in the various Arab Springs. Know for sure, Google is more than willing to help Obama with any spying desired. Now that the NSA case is back in the news, let’s take a look as well as his particpation in the Middle East debacle.

NSA spying on Citizens  Chilling video and story later in post: “The Program”. (By the way Schmidt and Google are working with the NSA).

Eric Schmidt and what he is about. What part does he play with the NSA

Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman and former CEO, is reportedly on the White House’s list of candidates to either replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary or head up a new position to be coined something along the lines of “Secretary of Business,” according to The Washington Examiner. “Nobody’s better positioned for a Cabinet job, if he wants one,” a Democratic strategist told The Examiner. Newsmax.com Money News

ERIC SCHMIDT, FORMER GOOGLE CEO: “My view of Mr. Soros is that he is one of the most important people in the world today in terms of the impact he has had”.

“What we shared is a belief in changing the world from the bottom up, not from the top down,” Obama told Google employees during a 2007 visit to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Money CNN Didn’t Van Jones say something like that?

Three reasons to be wary of Google

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO, he is on the White House council for science and technology, co-chaired by John Holdren.

Second point — they are working with hard-core leftists. Eric Schmidt is on the board of an organization called the Politics of Trust Network. You might recognize a couple of other names on that board like Van Jones, oh, and Drummond Pike, the former CEO and founder of the Tides Foundation.

In 2010 the Google, Inc. charitable giving fund of the Tides Foundation gave over $145 million directly to nonprofits and academic institutions. Google has made donations in the seven figure range to Moveon.org. George Soros is doing that, too, one of farther left political action groups in America.

They also gave money to the Trickle Up Program, a big recipient of cash from the Tides Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. And speaking of George Soros, here is Eric Schmidt saying this about George Soros. “My view of Mr. Soros is that he is one of the most important people in the world today in terms of the impact he has had”.Full story here at Fox News

Obama and a Search Engine gets you an Egyptian Revolution:

Wikileaks published a secret cable that detailed the U.S. government’s involvement with  Egyptian dissidents.

UPDATE: WSJ 2/7/11: Google Executive emerges as a key figure in the Revolt:Read Here

More than a week after his mysterious disappearance in Egypt, Google executive and political activist Wael Ghonim will be released from government detention on Monday, according to his family and a prominent businessman.

When I heard that the Google Exec had gone missing in Egypt, I was just waiting for him to bubble back up, and that he did. An earlier story:State Dept was holding meetings with Egyptian Dissidents

I have posted several stories about the April 6 group or “Alliance for Youth Movements”. Hillary Clinton set up these meetings. The  Hilliary Video includes the work with Face Book and the Google Executives in order to teach youth around the world how to agitate.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton records a video message for participants of the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City, Mexico October 16, 2009

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The world’s governments are getting sick of google and its shenanigans.

Russia is getting tired of google as well:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.

“Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.  Reuters

We should be as well. First they are working closely with the government.They have a close relationship with the NSA. They work closely with law enforcement. Last year they signed a $27 million deal with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. I don’t even know what that is.

But they have been accused of receiving preferential treatment and a $6.5 million contract with the General Services Administration. They are working hard to bring net neutrality, the kind that like Free Press are advocating for.

NY Times Domestic Spying program  story: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. September 2, 2o12

 

NSA spying on Citizens

https://bunkerville.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/nsa-spying-on-citizens-court-says-illegal/