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Posts Tagged ‘NSA’

File this one under: Corruption (Calling Captain Obvious)

by Guest Post ( 79 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Communism, Fascism, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Tranzis at August 13th, 2013 - 3:00 pm

Guest Blogger: Doriangrey


The actions of Barack Insane Obama grow daily more and more like those of a third world despotic dictator. When publicly confronted with the numerous and varied illegal actions of his administrations subordinates his first response is to lie, then to obfuscate, to mock and ridicule those confronting him, and finally to appoint individuals with highly vested interests in disproving those allegations as the very individuals to investigate them.

Take James Clapper, now tasked with investigating the illegal actions of NSA. Yes, that’s right, the very same James Clapper who was forced to admit that he lied to congress regarding the very scope of the NSA illegal surveillance of the American people.

Obama taps Clapper to investigate NSA practices

posted at 9:21 am on August 13, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Barack Obama wants to assure the American people that he wants an national debate about domestic surveillance, and an honest accounting about and reform of the NSA’s activities. In order to get all of this accomplished, Obama has appointed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — the man who misled Congress during direct testimony on all of the above — to lead an investigation into the NSA and its surveillance activities. How’s that for a confidence builder?

Whatever the accuracy of the claims of former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Snowden and Greenwald, the columnist through whom he’s carried out most of his leaks over the past few months, the storm of outrage over allegations that NSA intelligence collection frequently targets the phone calls and emails of US citizens has gotten the attention of President Barack Obama.

Today, Obama ordered Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to name an outside panel to review the United State’s global collection of signals intelligence – meaning its efforts to target phone calls, internet messages, and various forms of electronic communication.

While the letter appears to focus on the risk of leaks and counter-intelligence by enemies, more than on concerns that the Constitution is being violated by NSA dragnets, it’s clear that Obama is worried about the backlash.

Not worried enough, though. The appointment of Clapper comes on the heels of the revelations that he lied to Congress at least once and possibly more often about the nature of the NSA’s surveillance programs, and that he wasn’t the only administration official to do so. This follows the nothing-to-see-here-move-along strategy of “investigations” in the Obama administration, in which the fox investigates the henhouse and finds no crime has been committed. The DoJ is currently employing that strategy with its subsidiary DEA on the same issue of warrantless surveillance on Americans, so why not Clapper with the NSA, too?

Count Adam Serwer a skeptic from the Left, too:

Having Clapper lead the Review Group may seem like assigning the alpha fox to check IDs at the door to the hen house. During a Senate hearing in March, Clapper told Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect Americans’ communications data at all. After former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a court order to the press requesting data for millions of Verizon customers, Clapper admitted to having been “cute” with his response to Wyden.

Clapper’s announcement also places the Review Group’s priorities in a curious order. When Obama described the concept for the review group during a press conference last Friday, he said a group of “outside experts” would “consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy, particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public.”

With Obama, public trust was the first priority of the Review Group. Clapper’s announcement placed it last.

I shall not be as polite or dainty in my wording. Having James Clapper investigate the NSA is the same as having Al Capone investigate bootlegging in Chicago, or Pablo Escabar investigating cocaine smuggling. In either case the conclusion is a forgone matter long before any so called investigation even begins.

This is the level of corruption that infests both the Obamanation Administration and Mordor on the Potomac these days. Where an independent prosecutor should be appointed, Obama instead appoints someone whose hands are covered with the very filth they are tasked with investigating. On the occasions when Obama did appoint independent prosecutors, he also illegally fired them because they threatened to actually do their jobs, which would have both put Obama in a very bad light, and genuinely offended him.

This is the very reason that no one has been held accountable for either Operation Fast and Furious or Benghazi (or any of the dozens of other Obamanation Administration scandals being locked away in the dark by the Treasonous Fifth Column Media). Genuine honest and arduous investigations of either incidents would not only lead right straight back to Barack Insane Obama, but force a full Impeachment hearing against him, most likely even criminal prosecution of Barack Insane Obama. But like Idi Amin or Hugo Chavas, Obama has no intention of upholding either the law, or his oath of office, and he damn sure has no intention of defending the Constitution of the United States of America.

(Cross Posted @ The Wildreness of Mirrors)

Even the left-wing propaganda rag, The New York Slimes, can’t stomach Obama’s lies.

by Phantom Ace ( 129 Comments › )
Filed under Blogmocracy, Democratic Party, Guest Post, Marxism, Progressives at August 8th, 2013 - 3:00 pm

Guest Blogger: Doriangrey


Nobody was surprised yesterday when conservatives called out Obama on his blatant lie regard the US Federal Government spying on the American people, that was a given. Today’s delicious schadenfreude is brought to you at the expense of millions of brain-dead liberal Marxist Democrats all across America who today are frantically recalibrating their cognitive dissonance to keep their heads from exploding.

NYT: No spying on Americans? Au contraire

posted at 9:21 am on August 8, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

On Tuesday, Barack Obama insisted that the US government isn’t spying on Americans by surveilling the contents of their communications. Less than two days later, the New York Times makes hash of that claim. The NSA, reports Charlie Savage, sifts through the content of “vast amounts” of electronic communications between Americans and people abroad in their search for links to terrorism, and not just the metadata:

The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.

The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.

While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations.

Well, it’s not like anyone actually bought that nonsense from Obama on the Tonight Show. Even one of Obama’s former key aides, Van Jones, openly scoffed at the claim that the NSA wasn’t spying on Americans:

“Everybody knows I love this president, but this is ridiculous,” said Jones. “We do have a spying program, and we need to figure out how to balance these out.”

Jones also criticized the Obama administration’s treatment of whistleblowers.

“You are prosecuting more whistleblowers than every American president combined,” said Jones. “You can’t yuck it up and say, well, whistleblowers come on out and we’ll treat you right.”

How does the NSA choose its targets? Generously, at least in regard to cross-border collection:

To conduct the surveillance, the N.S.A. is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other text-based communications that cross the border. The senior intelligence official, who, like other former and current government officials, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the N.S.A. makes a “clone of selected communication links” to gather the communications, but declined to specify details, like the volume of the data that passes through them.

I have absolutely no sympathy or compassion for those who have made “The end justifies the means” their only moral or ethical standard. I opposed and found “The Patriot Act” repugnant when enacted by the Bush Administration. Spying isn’t wrong because it’s being done on the authorization of Barack Insane Obama. It’s wrong because it is a violation of the United States Constitution. It’s wrong because it is what tyrants and despots do, not what free people do to their CITIZENS.

Sadly, that vast majority of the liberal left are those for whom the ideology that “The end justifies the means” is their only moral or ethical standard. They will give their full and unrestricted approval to anything that their party does, yet would vehemently decry the exact same practices or policies if done by the opposition. They have absolutely no moral or ethical stands beyond what they perceive as winning.

The only reason that the New York Slime’s or Van Jones are making any effort to correct Barack Insane Obama, is that they know that anything they give blanket approval over that Obama does, when the Republicans reclaim the Whitehouse, will be fair game for the Republicans to employ by their own moral and ethical standards.

Neither the New York Slime’s nor Van Jones are suggesting that their is anything wrong with the federal government spying on American’s, they are just carefully hedging their bet’s so that when a Republican Administration is voted in, they will not be trapped into claiming that spying isn’t as Whoopie Goldberg would say, spying spying.

(Cross Posted @ The Wilderness of Mirrors)

Political Posters: Who is this guy, anyway?

by 1389AD ( 204 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Humor, Open thread at July 14th, 2013 - 6:09 pm

(h/t: Gramfan)

He seems to confuse himself with someone else:

GWB: 'You inherited it?' (Statistics here) 'Sure, Barry, it's all my fault...Ya feel better now?'

George W. Bush: 'Listen, I'm only going to say this one more time: I'M NO LONGER THE PRES-I-DENT!'

Americans are kept in the dark:

We knew more about Edward Snowden in 5 hours than we've known about Obama in 5 years

IRS seized medical records of 11 million Americans, but Americans cannot see the medical records of Barack Hussein Obama. Why?

Hey NSA: Night of Benghazi, Obama phone records, please

Why is it that the man who thinks that he knows everything suddenly knows nothing?

Scandalpalooza: This is what you get, America, when you swoon over a Presidential candidate and don't bother to vet him properly. Had enough yet?

Foreigners seem to have a clue:

Obama Berlin speeches, 2008 vs. 2013: 200,000 attendees in 2008, 6000 in 2013 - That awkward moment you realize you're no longer relevant nor admired

Putin to Obama: Barack, you do realize the whole world is laughing at you

Ya THINK?

NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls, reading email and texts without warrants; where are our Senators?

by 1389AD ( 135 Comments › )
Filed under government, Technology at June 18th, 2013 - 3:30 pm

Words fail me.

CNET has the story:

National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Read it all.

The Hill: Senators skip classified briefing on NSA snooping to catch flights home

A recent briefing by senior intelligence officials on surveillance programs failed to attract even half of the Senate, showing the lack of enthusiasm in Congress for learning about classified security programs. [WATCH VIDEO]

Many senators elected to leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials.

The Senate held its last vote of the week a little after noon on Thursday, and many lawmakers were eager to take advantage of the short day and head back to their home states for Father’s Day weekend.

Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide.

The Hill was not provided the names of who did, and who didn’t, attend the briefing.
[…]
Many senators claimed they were never briefed on the NSA’s surveillance programs when the British newspaper The Guardian caused a media firestorm by reporting their existence earlier this month.

“I’m pretty good about attending meetings; I don’t remember being briefed,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) told reporters on June 6, when the public learned the extent of the NSA’s collection of telephone metadata.

He voted for the Patriot Act, but said he did not intend to grant blanket authority to collect millions of phone records.

Isakson attended the Thursday afternoon briefing and declined to comment to reporters afterward.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the chief critics of the surveillance programs, was spotted leaving the briefing.
[…]
Read the rest.