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NGA: The Massive Spy Agency You Haven’t Heard Of

April 1, 2017

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…

UN Slams Mass Surveillance: “Trying To Appear Tough On Security By Legitimising Largely Useless … Measures”

March 20, 2017

UN Slams Mass Surveillance: “Trying To Appear Tough On Security By Legitimising Largely Useless … Measures”

A White House panel has previously slammed the NSA, and said that mass spying is unnecessary.

Now, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy notes in a new report (with our comments)

Deeply concerning … the status of the right to privacy in the surveillance area of activity has not improved since the last [UN surveillance] report. [Indeed, it’s getting worse … and will only expand unless we fight for privacy.]

***

Increasingly, personal data ends up in the same “bucket” of data which can be used and re-used for all kinds of known and unknown purposes. [Numerous high-level NSA whistleblowers say that NSA spying is about crushing dissent and blackmailing opponents … notstoppingterrorism.] This poses critical questions in areas such as requirements for gathering data, storing data, analysing data and ultimately erasing data. As a concrete example a recent study carried out by the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology in the United States has found that “one in two American adults is in a law enforcement face recognition network.” As the authors of the study put it: “We know very little about these systems. We don’t know how they impact privacy and civil liberties. [We have a pretty good idea.] We don’t know how they address accuracy problems.

***

While often “traditional” methods, such as the interception of phone calls and communications in general, are subject to judicial authorisation before the measure can be employed, other techniques such as the collection and analysis of metadata referring to protocols of internet browsing history or data originating from the use of smartphones (location, phone calls, usage of applications, etc.) are subject to much weaker safeguards. This is not justified since the latter categories of data are at least as revealing of a person’s individual activity as the actual content of a conversation.  [Correct.] Hence, appropriate safeguards must also be in place for these measures.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

16 Year Congressman: CIA Leak Shows We’re “Sliding Down the Slippery Slope Toward Totalitarianism, Where Private Lives Do Not Exist”

March 9, 2017

16 Year Congressman: CIA Leak Shows We’re “Sliding Down the Slippery Slope Toward Totalitarianism, Where Private Lives Do Not Exist”

16-year congressman Dennis Kucinich writes:

That the CIA has reached into the lives of all Americans through its wholesale gathering of the nation’s “haystack” of information has already been reported.

It is bad enough that the government spies on its own people. It is equally bad that the CIA, through its incompetence, has opened the cyberdoor to anyone with the technological skills and connections to spy on anyone else.

The constant erosion of privacy at the hands of the government and corporations has annihilated the concept of a “right to privacy,” which is embedded in the rationale of the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

It is becoming increasingly clear that we are sliding down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism, where private lives do not exist.

We have entered a condition of constitutional crisis that requires a full-throated response from the American people.

Before you label Kucinich as being overly-dramatic, you may want to note that  Bill Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, the 36-year NSA veteran widely who was the senior technical director within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees – told Washington’s Blog that America has already become a police state.

And Thomas Drake – one of the top NSA executives, and Senior Change Leader within the NSA – told us the same thing.

And Kirk Wiebe – a 32-year NSA veteran who received the Director CIA’s Meritorious Unit Award and the NSA’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award – agrees (tweet via Jesselyn Radack, attorney for many national security whistleblowers, herself a Department of Justice whistleblower):

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Assange Agrees To Extradition If Obama Grants Chelsea Manning Clemency

January 12, 2017

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…

Edward Snowden 

✔@Snowden

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…

WikiLeaks 

✔@wikileaks

If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to US extradition despite clear unconstitutionality of DoJ case https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/765626997057921025 …

2:40 PM – 12 Jan 2017

Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations.

The Australian former computer hacker said he fears Stockholm will in turn extradite him to the US, where he angered Washington over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents leaked by former US soldier Manning.

Manning is currently serving a 35-year sentence in solitary confinement for handing over the 700,000 sensitive documents from the US State Department.

…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”

January 8, 2017

The Surveillance State Did Not Disappear With The Trump Victory: “It Is Still Lurking And Completely Intact”

america-surveillance-state

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

January 2, 2017

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.

snowden

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…

Creator of NSA’s Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report

December 31, 2016

Creator of NSA’s Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report

We’ve previously documented that the hacking evidence against Russia is extremely weak, and the new report on Russian hacking doesn’t say much.

Indeed – if Russia hacked the Democratic party emails (from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta) – the NSA would have all of the records showing exactly who did it.

We asked Bill Binney what he thought of the new report.

Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Binney is the real McCoy. As we noted in 2013, Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.

Binney tells Washington’s Blog:

I expected to see the IP’s or other signatures of APT’s 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?

Further, once we see the data being transferred to them, when and how did they transfer that data to Wikileaks? This would be evidence of trying to influence our election by getting the truth of our corrupt system out.

…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

December 24, 2016

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

September 17, 2016

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

June 23, 2016

US Veterans Join Petition for Snowden

U.S. military veterans, including lethal drone participants, are joining efforts to inform the American public about the secrets of the endless “war on terror” and are supporting Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, reports Dennis J Bernstein.

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)

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…

Edward Snowden Demonstrates How To “Go Black”

May 29, 2016

Edward Snowden Demonstrates How To “Go Black”

When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden first exposed the world tojust how easily the government could compromise their technology and spy on them, many immediately sought ways to secure their data and protect their gadgets.

But, as Wired.com reports, Snowden is here to help. “‘Going Black’ is a pretty big ask,” he tells VICE’s Shane Smith, but not impossible, as Snowden shows how to “make sure your phone works for you… instead of working for someone else.”

US Hacking, Spyware Targets Include Mass Media, Phone, and Energy Companies

May 19, 2016

US Hacking, Spyware Targets Include Mass Media, Phone, and Energy Companies

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Robert Barsocchini

US corporate government wants to control and drain as much of the world as possible.  Reuters, The Register, and others summarize some of its methods:

“The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives …. giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives.

That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations.

Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran [a US corporate target since 1953], followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said.”

These hacking and spyware operations date back “at least 14 years and possibly up to two decades”.

Other outlets note:

NSA Hackers Infected Hard Drives with Impossible-to-Remove Spyware

Spyware Linked To NSA Discovered In Hard Drives Across The World

The Only Way You Can Delete This NSA Malware Is to Smash Your Hard Drive to Bits

There’s no way of knowing if the NSA’s spyware is on your hard drive

The Intercept is Broadening Access to the Snowden Archive. Here’s Why.

May 18, 2016

FROM THE TIME we began reporting on the archive provided to us in Hong Kong by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we sought to fulfill his two principal requests for how the materials should be handled: that they be released in conjunction with careful reporting that puts the documents in context and makes them digestible to the public, and that the welfare and reputations of innocent people be safeguarded. As time has gone on, The Intercept has sought out new ways to get documents from the archive into the hands of the public, consistent with the public interest as originally conceived.

Today, The Intercept is announcing two innovations in how we report on and publish these materials. Both measures are designed to ensure that reporting on the archive continues in as expeditious and informative a manner as possible, in accordance with the agreements we entered into with our source about how these materials would be disclosed, a framework that he, and we, have publicly described on numerous occasions.

The first measure involves the publication of large batches of documents. We are, beginning today, publishing in installments the NSA’s internal SIDtoday newsletters, which span more than a decade beginning after 9/11. We are starting with the oldest SIDtoday articles, from 2003, and working our way through the most recent in our archive, from 2012. Our first release today contains 166 documents, all from 2003, and we will periodically release batches until we have made public the entire set. The documents are available on a special section of The Intercept.

The SIDtoday documents run a wide gamut: from serious, detailed reports on top secret NSA surveillance programs to breezy, trivial meanderings of analysts’trips and vacations, with much in between. Many are self-serving and boastful, designed to justify budgets or impress supervisors. Others contain obvious errors or mindless parroting of public source material.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NSA Whistleblower Karen Stewart Speaks Candidly About Illegal and Criminal NSA & FBI Programs of Organized Stalking and Electronic Harassment in the USA & Abroad

April 14, 2016

NSA Whistleblower Karen Stewart Speaks Candidly About Illegal and Criminal NSA & FBI Programs of Organized Stalking and Electronic Harassment in the USA & Abroad

We’ve documented US government use of harmful and deadly experiments upon the public (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here for just a few, and that the US tortures people in Orwellian violation of six binding areas of law).

KarenSKaren Stewart, with companion and protector, Mariska, the Anatolian Shepherd

In Karen’s own words: Born in the late 1950s, to an Air Force Officer and his wife. We lived all over the country and in Germany during his career. I had an interest in foreign languages and art, so I got the equivalent of a double major at FSU in German and Fine Art. When I graduated college I applied to the National Security Agency to work as a linguist (translate and report foreign material of interest to the government), and after a stringent background check, was hired in 1982 by NSA. I lived in Columbia, Maryland with my husband. I worked at NSA until 2010 when I was railroaded out of NSA just two years before I could retire because I had dared ask the Inspector General to investigate a matter involving work credit and promotion theft. I moved to Florida in 2011 to get away and wait for the lawsuit (appeal to forbidden retaliatory firing) to be adjudicated by the Judge Lawrence Gallagher at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Baltimore.

Ramola D: Thanks so much for agreeing to do this interview. I have been reading scripts of your Renew America interviews and have listened to your conversations on Wheel of Freedom and Boiling Frogs Post with much interest.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What’s Been Legalized

April 4, 2016

FROM THE START of the reporting based on Edward Snowden’s leaked document archive, government defenders insisted that no illegal behavior was revealed. That was always false: Multiple courts have now found the domestic metadata spying program in violation of the Constitution and relevant statutes and have issued similar rulings for other mass surveillance programs; numerous articles on NSA and GCHQ documented the targeting of people and groups for blatantly political or legally impermissible purposes; and the leak revealed that President Obama’s top national security official (still), James Clapper, blatantly lied when testifying before Congress about the NSA’s activities — a felony.

But illegality was never the crux of the scandal triggered by those NSA revelations. Instead, what was most shocking was what had been legalized: the secret construction of the largest system of suspicionless spying in human history. What was scandalous was not that most of this spying was against the law, but rather that the law — at least as applied and interpreted by the Justice Department and secret, one-sided FISA “courts” — now permitted the U.S. government and its partners to engage in mass surveillance of entire populations, including their own. As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer put it after the Washington Post’s publication of documents showing NSA analysts engaged in illegal spying: “The ‘non-compliance’ angle is important, but don’t get carried away. The deeper scandal is what’s legal, not what’s not.”

Yesterday, dozens of newspapers around the world reported on what they are calling the Panama Papers: a gargantuan leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm that specializes in creating offshore shell companies. The documents reveal billions of dollars being funneled to offshore tax havens by leading governmental and corporate officials in numerous countries (the U.S. was oddly missing from the initial reporting, though journalists vow that will change shortly).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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