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Edward Snowden Asks Ron Paul If Intelligence Reports Ever Swayed His Vote
Edward Snowden Asks Ron Paul If Intelligence Reports Ever Swayed His Vote
During an appearance on the Liberty Report last week, Dr. Ron Paul interviewed former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the rise of the Deep State and how intelligence agencies are threatening Americans’ freedom. But in the closing moments of that interview, Snowden surprised Paul with an unexpected request:
“I was thinking I could ask you a question Dr. Paul, again about the intelligence stuff…I think it’d be interesting to people and I don’t think we’ve ever heard it from your perspective…”
As a former intelligence analyst and operative, Snowden wondered how well the intelligence community had performed in its mission to keep US policymakers informed on important world events, given that Paul had for more than two decades been a “consumer” of the intelligence community’s products.
“In the intelligence community at the working level, not the policy level, everyone is taught that the work that they do is to inform policy makers…to understand what the facts are so they can make the best decisions.”
“You were in Congress for an extraordinary time…and one question I’ve always wondered is during all your time in Congress, how many times did the intelligence community provide some reports that they briefed to you…and the material was so impactful…so valuable that they’d been breaking all these laws to get it…how many times did it impact your vote?”
Paul’s response? Not once.
Paul says he was almost never provided with unadulterated intelligence reports, and on the one occasion when he attended a briefing with the intelligence agencies, the information more closely resembled propaganda than credible intelligence.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech
Prosecution of Assange is Persecution of Free Speech
US authorities are reported to have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This overreach of US government toward a publisher, whose principle is aligned with the U.S. Constitution, is another sign of a crumbling façade of democracy. The Justice Department in the Obama administration could not prosecute WikiLeaks for publishing documents pertaining to the US government, because they struggled to determine whether the First Amendment protection applied in this case. Now, the torch of Obama’s war on whistleblowers seems to have been passed on to Trump, who had shown disdain toward free speech and even calledthe U.S. media as “enemies of the people”.
Earlier this month, CIA Director Mike Pompeo vowed to end WikiLeaks, accusing the whistleblowing site as being a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. He also once called Edward Snowden a traitor and claimed that he should be executed. This declaration of war against WikiLeaks may bring a reminiscence of George W. Bush’s speech in the aftermath of 9-11, where he said, ‘either you are with us or against us’, and urged the nation to side with the government in his call to fight global ‘war on terror’.
In a recent interview on DemocracyNow!, journalist at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald put this persecution of WikiLeaks in the context of a government assault on basic freedom. He spelled out their tactics, noting how the government first chooses a target group that is hated and lacks popular support, for they know attacking an idea or a group that is popular would meet resistance. He explained:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Emphasis on Offensive Capabilities is Dangerous, Idiotic and Authoritarian
The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Emphasis on Offensive Capabilities is Dangerous, Idiotic and Authoritarian
Earlier today, Edward Snowden posted the following tweet calling attention to a very important article published at Reuters.
Huge: USG confirms cyber offense funded at 9x rate of defense. Wonder why we can’t stop foreign hacks? This is why. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-defense-idUSKBN17013U …
Reuters reports:
When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at Cisco Systems swung into action.
That a major U.S. company had to rely on WikiLeaks to learn about security problems well-known to U.S. intelligence agencies underscores concerns expressed by dozens of current and former U.S. intelligence and security officials about the government’s approach to cybersecurity.
That policy overwhelmingly emphasizes offensive cyber-security capabilities over defensive measures, these people told Reuters, even as an increasing number of U.S. organizations have been hit by hacks attributed to foreign governments.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NGA: The Massive Spy Agency You Haven’t Heard Of
NGA: The Massive Spy Agency You Haven’t Heard Of
(ANTIMEDIA) If you’re one of the countless Americans who was distraught to learn of the revelations made by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, the mere idea that there might be yet another agency out there — perhaps just as powerful and much more intrusive — should give you goosebumps.
Foreign Policy reports that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or NGA, is an obscure spy agency former President Barack Obama had a hard time wrapping his mind around back in 2009. But as the president grew fond of drone warfare, finding a way to launch wars without having to go through Congress for the proper authorization, the NGA also became more relevant. Now, President Donald Trump is expected to further explore the multibillion-dollar surveillance network.
Like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), the NGA is an intelligence agency, but it also serves as a combat support institution that functions under the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
With headquarters bigger than the CIA’s, the building cost $1.4 billion to be completed in 2011. In 2016, the NGA bought an extra 99 acres in St. Louis, building additional structures that cost taxpayers an extra $1.75 billion.
Enjoying the extra budget Obama threw at them, the NGA became one of the most obscure intelligence agencies precisely because it relies on the work of drones.
As a body of government that has only one task — to analyze images and videos captured by drones in the Middle East — the NGA is mighty powerful. So why haven’t we heard of it before?
The Shadow Agency That Sees It All
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russian Government Considers Offering Snowden As “Gift” To President Trump, NBC Reports
Russian Government Considers Offering Snowden As “Gift” To President Trump, NBC Reports
Echoing a now eerily prophetic comment by Edward Snowden in December that “there could be some kind of deal – give this guy to me as a present,” NBC News reports, citing US intelligence official sources, that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a “gift” to President Donald Trump – who has called the NSA leaker a “spy” and a “traitor” who deserves to be executed.
Message to Edward Snowden, you’re banned from @MissUniverse. Unless you want me to take you back home to face justice!
Assange Agrees To Extradition If Obama Grants Chelsea Manning Clemency
Assange Agrees To Extradition If Obama Grants Chelsea Manning Clemency
Just hours after NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden urged President Obama to “save [Chelsea Manning’s] life by granting her clemency,” Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange says he will agree to be extradited to the United States if the president grants clemency to the former US soldier Chelsea Manning, who is currently serving a 35-year sentence for leaking documents.
The US Constitution allows a president to pardon “offenses against the United States” and commute — either shorten or end — federal sentences. Obama has so far granted 148 pardons since taking office in 2009 — fewer than his predecessors, who also served two terms, George W. Bush (189) and Bill Clinton (396). But he has surpassed any other president in the number of commutations, 1,176.
We noted previously that there was a number of high profile cases in front of President Obama as he prepares to leave The White House including Edward Snowden who tweeted yesterday…
Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency as you exit the White House, please: free Chelsea Manning. You alone can save her life.
8:43 AM – 11 Jan 2017
And now, as AFP reports, Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange has offered himself up if President Obama releases Manning…
If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/765626997057921025 …
How Globalists Predict Your Behavior
How Globalists Predict Your Behavior
The globalists seem to have an overarching obsession with data collection. As we have seen with revelations from multiple government whistle-blowers, the establishment spends most of its time, energy and manpower collecting information not just on known threats to their supremacy, but information on EVERYONE through FISA-based surveillance protocols. This is because the establishment sees every individual as a potential threat.
Thus, the system, without warrant, is programmed to collate data from everywhere, not necessarily to be analyzed on the spot, but to be analyzed later in the event that a specific person rises to a level that poses legitimate harm to the globalist power structure.
There was a time not long ago when this notion was considered “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream, but with multiple exposures from Wikileaks to Edward Snowden it is now common knowledge that the government (and the globalists) spy on us en masse. However, I do not think that many people understand the greater implications or uses for this full spectrum surveillance. This is why you sometimes hear the argument that “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about…”
The truth is, mass surveillance is not done merely for the sake of surveillance, and it is certainly not undertaken for the sake of public safety. There is a greater purpose, and it is something the elites crave dearly — the purpose of total and PREDICTIVE information awareness.
The establishment is not just hoping to observe our present behavior in detail. No, they hope to use today’s data to predict our behavior tomorrow, and at this very moment, they are extremely close to achieving their goal.
Lets examine some of the methods they use in the pursuit of this goal…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: “It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact”
The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: “It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact”
One of the things Donald Trump has really done correctly is to assess his future arena in the areas of intelligence-gathering and operational security. Trump wants to return to a “courier” method of transmitting sensitive information and classified documents for the purpose of reducing the amount of material that can be hacked or stolen. There is a subtlety about this for a caveat, in case the compliment has bloomed flowers in your thoughts: the NSA $50 billion facility for collection and storage of data in Utah won’t be shutting down anytime soon.
As Snowden’s exposes clearly pointed out, the government has clearly followed Petraeus’ glowing “internet of things” yellow brick road to form an integrated, interconnected surveillance state. All CCTV (closed circuit television) systems, all merchants with cameras, all law enforcement cameras…all of the camera surveillance systems everywhere are either tied into data collection immediately or can be accessed for use at a later time.
The latest “Jason Bourne” movie clearly illustrates how the government can utilize devices such as cellular telephones (especially the ones with cameras) to track movements, record conversations, and be a “piggyback” to relay information to a nearby computer or a camera. This isn’t the future: this is now.
There is an older piece written by Michael Snyder in June of 2013 entitled 27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send a Chill Up Your Spine. The information in this article is directly from Edward Snowden that revealed exactly what the government has been doing regarding their total surveillance program. The surveillance did not occur overnight, and in the manner of the “frog in the cold-water kettle” by stretching out the time for putting it all into place, the stultified public’s focus was either diverted or bypassed entirely.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Superhero Snowden Trashed In Absurd WSJ Op-Ed
Superhero Snowden Trashed In Absurd WSJ Op-Ed
Edward Jay Epstein has an op-ed in the Wall Street journal promoting his new book “How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft”.
Epstein discusses the Fable of Edward Snowden
At the forefront of Epstein’s claims is the fact that Snowden lied. “As he seeks a pardon, the NSA thief has told multiple lies about what he stole and his dealings with Russian intelligence,” says Epstein.
Of all the lies that Edward Snowden has told since his massive theft of secrets from the National Security Agency and his journey to Russia via Hong Kong in 2013, none is more provocative than the claim that he never intended to engage in espionage, and was only a “whistleblower” seeking to expose the overreach of NSA’s information gathering. With the clock ticking on Mr. Snowden’s chance of a pardon, now is a good time to review what we have learned about his real mission.
Mr. Snowden’s theft of America’s most closely guarded communication secrets occurred in May 2013, according to the criminal complaint filed against him by federal prosecutors the following month. At the time Mr. Snowden was a 29-year-old technologist working as an analyst-in-training for the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton at the regional base of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Oahu, Hawaii. On May 20, only some six weeks after his job there began, he failed to show up for work, emailing his supervisor that he was at the hospital being tested for epilepsy.
This excuse was untrue. Mr. Snowden was not even in Hawaii. He was in Hong Kong. He had flown there with a cache of secret data that he had stolen from the NSA.
Well la-de-friggin da. The idiocy of those opening paragraphs is obvious to the world.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
This is How the U.S. Government Destroys the Lives of Patriotic Whistleblowers
This is How the U.S. Government Destroys the Lives of Patriotic Whistleblowers
We live in a time and within a culture where the best amongst us are thrown in jail, demonized or destroyed, while the worst are celebrated, promoted and enriched. Nothing more clearly crystalizes this sad state of affairs than the U.S. government’s ruthless war on whistleblowers who expose severe constitutional violations by those in power. This war knows no political affiliation, and has been waged with equal vigor by the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama.
Earlier this morning, I read one of the most enlightening articles on the subject to-date. It was published back in May, and should be read by every single American citizen. We need to admit to ourselves what we have become before we can make changes.
What follows are excerpts from the Guardian piece, How the Pentagon Punished NSA Whistleblowers, but you should really take the time to read the entire thing.
If you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you have to know the stories of two other men.
The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed.
Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance program were largely ignored.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
New Film Tells the Story of Edward Snowden; Here Are the Surveillance Programs He Helped Expose
OLIVER STONE’S LATEST film, “Snowden,” bills itself as a dramatized version of the life of Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who revealed the global extent of U.S. surveillance capabilities.
Stone’s rendering of Snowden’s life combines facts with Hollywood invention, covering Snowden being discharged from the military after an injury in basic training, meeting his girlfriend, and training in the CIA with fictitious mentors (including Nicolas Cage’s character, most likely a composite of whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney). Snowden then goes undercover, only to see an op turn ugly; becomes a contractor for the CIA and NSA; and finally chooses to leave the intelligence community and disclose its vast surveillance apparatus, some of which he helped develop.
The movie hits key points in Snowden’s story, including his growing interest in constitutional law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, some of the U.S. surveillance programs he eventually unmasked, and parts of his furtive meetings in Hong Kong with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras (co-founders of The Intercept), as well as The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill.
There are doses of artistic license — for example, a Rubik’s Cube hiding the drive where he stored the documents, and Snowden’s CIA mentor spying on his girlfriend through her webcam. In hazier focus are the global questions his revelations raised, including the legal and moral implications of the U.S. government collecting data on foreigners and Americans with relative impunity, and the very real stories born of Snowden’s massive disclosures.
So here’s a retrospective of sorts for moviegoers and others interested in the journalism Edward Snowden made possible through his decision to become a whistleblower: In all, over 150 articles from 23 news organizations worldwide have incorporated documents provided by Snowden, and The Intercept and other outlets continue to mine the archive for stories of social and political significance.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US Veterans Join Petition for Snowden
US Veterans Join Petition for Snowden
Lisa Lynn, a retired Air Force Sergeant and former U.S. Drone Program Operative, has joined a petition campaign to get the Norwegian government to shield National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden from extradition so he can receive Norwegian PEN’s Ossietzky Prize for outstanding achievements and courage.
A petition started by Roots Action was launched on Snowden’s behalf, requesting that the Norwegian government commit to providing Snowden guaranteed protection from extradition to the United States where he faces criminal charges for disclosing classified secrets relating to the NSA’s collecting of data on Americans.
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. (Photo credit: The Guardian)
Lynn spoke with Flashpoints radio host Dennis J. Bernstein from Oslo, Norway, explaining why she is such a strong supporter of Snowden and her thoughts about the U.S. drone program, which has killed hundreds of victims, including innocent women and children.
Lynn is featured in the soon-to-be-released documentary film, National Bird, which documents, “the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs.”
The Roots Action petition notes, “We do not want Snowden’s chair to be empty in the University Hall in Oslo due to lack of approval to travel to Oslo, as Ossietzky himself was prevented by Hitler from coming to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.” Signers of the petition include: Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, Thomas Drake, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, William Binney, William Nygaard and John Kiriakou.
Dennis Bernstein: Why don’t you begin with some background on your own military career and why you are in Oslo, speaking out on behalf of NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Government Is Building A Database To Predict Who Will Be The Next Edward Snowden
CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PATRICK SEMANSKY
Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, is escorted to a security vehicle outside a courthouse in Fort Meade, Md., in 2013. Manning was convicted in military court and sentenced to 35 years for violating the Espionage Act when she leaked classified documents to WikiLeaks.
While police departments flock to use technology that predicts crime, the U.S. military is building a database that goes a step further — predicting who is most likely to reveal state secrets.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is developing a data system that collects information on government employees and contractors with security clearances in hopes of being able to pinpoint those with the potential to become whistleblowers, Defense One reported.
The “DOD Component Insider Threat Records System” is part of the military’s response to classified documents leaked by former PFC Chelsea Manning in 2010, which revealed U.S. military practices including civilian deaths and physical abuse of detainees during the Iraq War.
As a junior Army intelligence analyst with a top-secret security clearance, Manning had access to a classified computer system and downloaded more than 700,000 documents in what has been considered the largest breach in military history.
Following Manning’s 2013 conviction and the shooting attacks at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., the Defense Department took steps to prevent the next leak by creating a “centralized hub” for detecting potential internal threats, Defense One reported. DOD assembled experts in psychology, cybersecurity, and intelligence to lead an “insider threat” task force and oversee the security clearance database.
The database is continually updated with information on security-clearance holders’ criminal and mental health history, financial information, drug and alcohol use, citizenship status, fingerprints, and other available biometric data.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
