Snowden was born in North Carolina, and his family moved to central Maryland, a short distance from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, when he was a child. He dropped out of high school and studied intermittently between 1999 and 2005 at a community college; he completed a GED but did not receive a college degree. He enlisted in the army reserve as a special forces candidate in May 2004, but he was discharged four months later. In 2005 he worked as a security guard at the Center for Advanced Study of Language, a University of Maryland research facility affiliated with the NSA. Despite a relative lack of formal education and training, Snowden demonstrated an aptitude with computers, and he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006. He was given a top secret clearance and in 2007 was posted to Geneva, where he worked as a network security technician under a diplomatic cover.

Snowden left the CIA for the NSA in 2009. There he worked as a private contractor for the companies Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton. During this time, he began gathering information on a number of NSA activities—most notably, secret surveillance programs that he believed were overly broad in size and scope. In May 2013 Snowden requested a medical leave of absence and flew to Hong Kong, where during the following month he conducted a series of interviews with journalists from the newspaper The Guardian. Footage filmed during that period was featured in the documentary Citizenfour (2014). Among the NSA secrets leaked by Snowden was a court order that compelled telecommunications company Verizon to turn over metadata (such as numbers dialed and duration of calls) for millions of its subscribers. Snowden also disclosed the existence of PRISM, a data-mining program that reportedly gave the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Government Communications Headquarters—Britain’s NSA equivalent—“direct access” to the servers of such Internet giants as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.

 

Read more:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Snowden

 

Edward, we thank you for letting us know... Will we see improvements through Biden's Presidency? I dare to dream, but I think not... You are still in exile and Assange is still in prison...

We have the same draconian set up here, in Australia... and witness "K" is still in the docks. Governments do not like their dirty laundry shown to the world...

By Caitlin Johnstone...America is in chaos and the situation is ripe for the roll out of new authoritarian laws aimed at tackling the rise of ‘domestic terrorism’. Never mind that these plans were being drafted well in advance of the Capitol riot.

It’s been obvious for a long time that the best way to stop the rise of right-wing extremism in America that everyone’s so worried about today is not to pass a bunch of authoritarian laws, but to reverse the policies of soul-crushing neoliberalism and domestic austerity which led to Donald Trump. Instead of doing this, the next president is already pushing a Patriot Act sequel and reducing the stimulus checks he’d promised the public before he’s even been sworn in.

President-elect Biden promised unambiguously that if voters gave the Democratic Party control of the Senate by electing Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia earlier this month, checks of $2,000 would “go out the door immediately.” Warnock blatantly campaigned on the promise of $2000 checks if elected, literally using pictures of checks with “$2000” written on them to do so. This was not an unclear promise by any stretch of the imagination, yet when Biden unveiled the “American Rescue Plan” on Thursday, the number 1400 was written where the number 2000 should have been.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512613-caitlin-johnstone-patriot-act/

 

Read from top.

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced via Twitter video Thursday that she’s filed articles of impeachment on President Joe Biden.

Rep. Greene earlier pledged on Newsmax on January 13 to do so on the first day of Biden’s presidency, as reported.

“We cannot have a President of the United States that is willing to abuse the power of the office of the presidency and be easily bought off by foreign governments, foreign Chinese energy companies, Ukrainian energy companies. So on January 21st, I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden,” said Rep. Greene.

The move comes after the U.S. House voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection” last week and as the start of his trial remains uncertain with the House yet to hand over the impeachment articles to the Senate.

 

Read more:

https://saraacarter.com/rep-greene-i-just-filed-articles-of-impeachment-on-president-joe-biden/

 

See: biden's sacrifice...

 

Even Joe admitted that "“I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."

 

This was cavalier and corrupt... ONE CANNOT GO IN ANOTHER COUNTRY AND INTERFERE WITH ITS JUSTICE SYSTEM. The Prosecutor was Shokin who had uncovered some unsavoury financial transactions in the Bidens' foray in Ukraine...

Nationwide Dementiafest: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

By Caitlin Johnstone

Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Joe fucking fucking motherfucking Biden. In a country of 328 million people the guy that gets elevated to the top is literally one of the very worst human beings in the entire population. That’s the “democracy” you’re being told is under attack.

 

And this isn’t even prime Joe Biden. This is coming out of retirement for a half-assed exhibition match Joe Biden. This is way past sell-by date Joe Biden. This is Joe Biden with missing pieces. That’s the sort of animal that rises to the highest elected office in US “democracy”.

The inauguration was a whole internet of liberals performing amazing mental contortions to forget that Joe Biden is a disgusting piece of shit. Now everyone has forgotten who Joe Biden is, including Joe Biden. A nationwide dementiafest.

❖

Obama campaigned on Hope and Change and delivered nothing but neoliberal oppression and imperialist mass murder. Biden campaigned on “Fuck you, no” and people think he’s somehow going to deliver something positive.

People are so cute.

 

...

 

One advantage the far right has over us is that the mainstream consent-manufacturing shitlib culture that is churned out 24/7 by Hollywood is so plainly artificial and cringey. The left needs to fight back by creating culture, real culture, authentic art and media that moves something deep in people, and by rejecting the establishment’s conveyor belt culture instead of just its politics.

This is why something as simple as Bernie Sanders turning up in mittens captured everyone’s hearts and imaginations. It was such a glitch in the whole phony performance and such a nice break from being lied to all the fucking time. We need to give people that experience way more.

 

Caitlin Johnstone.

 

Read more:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/01/23/nationwide-dementiafest-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

 

 

Read from top.

 

On Friday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to create a bipartisan commission to study a possible reform of the Supreme Court. The potential changes pertain, among other things, about whether to expand the number of judges who sit on the nation's highest legal body.

Lots of netizens have trolled POTUS over a video that recently resurfaced online and which showed then-Senator Joe Biden slamming former US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's push to pack the Supreme Court.

In the video that dates back to 1983, Biden is seen apparently telling his colleagues in the Senate about President Roosevelt, who "clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court".

 

"It was totally within his right to do that. He violated no law, he was legalistically absolutely correct, but it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make. And it put in question […] the independence of […] the Supreme Court of the United States of America", Biden added.

Twitter users were quick to issue sarcastic remarks, with one user arguing that POTUS now is "a self-described bonehead", and another calling Biden a person who "used to pretend to have principles".

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202104101082590353-biden-mocked-after-video-of-his-calling-us-supreme-court-packing-bonehead-idea-resurfaces-online/

 

Read from top.

 

 

assange

 

From Glenn Greenwald

 

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday issued a new warning bulletin, alerting Americans that domestic extremists may well use violence on the 100th Anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. This was at least the fourth such bulletin issued this year by Homeland Security (DHS) warning of the same danger and, thus far, none of the fears it is trying to instill into the American population has materialized.

The first was a January 14 warning, from numerous federal agencies including DHS, about violence in Washington, DC and all fifty state capitols that was likely to explode in protest of Inauguration Day (a threat which did not materialize). Then came a January 27 bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks” from “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” (that warning also was not realized). Then there was a May 14 bulletin warning of right-wing violence “to attack higher-capacity targets,” exacerbated by the lifting of COVID lockdowns (which also never happened). And now we are treated to this new DHS warning about domestic extremists preparing violent attacks over Tulsa (it remains to be seen if a DHS fear is finally realized).

Just like the first War on Terror, these threats are issued with virtually no specificity. They are just generalized warnings designed to put people in fear about their fellow citizens and to justify aggressive deployment of military and law enforcement officers in Washington, D.C. and throughout the country. A CNN article which wildly hyped the latest danger bulletin about domestic extremists at Tulsa had to be edited with what the cable network, in an “update,” called “the additional information from the Department of Homeland Security that there is no specific or credible threats at this time.” And the supposed dangers from domestic extremists on Inauguration Day was such a flop that even The Washington Post — one of the outlets most vocal about lurking national security dangers in general and this one in particular — had to explicitly acknowledge the failure:

 

 

"Thousands [of National Guard troops] had been deployed to capitals across the country late last week, ahead of a weekend in which potentially violent demonstrations were predicted by the FBI — but never materialized.

Once again on Wednesday, security officials’ worst fears weren’t borne out: In some states, it was close to business as usual. In others, demonstrations were small and peaceful, with only occasional tense moments. "

 

 

Americans have seen this scam before. Throughout the first War on Terror, DHS, which was created in 2002, was frequently used to keep fear levels high and thus foster support for draconian government powers of spying, detention, and war. Even prior to the Department's creation, its first Secretary, Tom Ridge, when he was still the White House's Homeland Security Chief in early 2002, created an elaborate color-coded warning system to supply a constant alert to Americans about the evolving threat levels they faced from Islamic extremists.

 

Read more:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-terror-has

 

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Meanwhile:

 

The Justice Department is investigating the work of a consulting firm linked to the president’s son for potential illegal lobbying, four people familiar with the probe told POLITICO. 

The firm, Blue Star Strategies, took on as a client the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while Hunter Biden served on its board. Republican operatives’ efforts to investigate Burisma and the alleged corruption that surrounded the firm were at the heart of the first Trump impeachment.

 

Read more:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/03/blue-star-burisma-justice-department-investigation-491681

 

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See also: 

biden's sacrifice...

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW ###############!!!

Remarks By Joe Biden At The Summit For Democracy Opening Session

 

by Joseph R. Biden Jr.

 

 

Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the first Summit for Democracy.

This gathering has been on my mind for a long time for a simple reason: In the face of sustained and alarming challenges to democracy, universal human rights, and — all around the world, democracy needs champions.

And I wanted to host this summit because here is the — here in the United States, we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort.

American democracy is an ongoing struggle to live up to our highest ideals and to heal our divisions; to recommit ourselves to the founding idea of our nation captured in our Declaration of Independence, not unlike many of your documents.

We say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident” that all women and men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to renew it with each generation. And this is an urgent matter on all our parts, in my view. Because the data we’re seeing is largely pointing in the wrong direction.

Freedom House reports, in 2020, that it marked the 15th consecutive year of global freedom in retreat.

Another recent report, from the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, noted that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in at least one aspect of their democracy over the last 10 years, including the United States.

And these trends are being exacerbated by global challenges that are more complex than ever and which require shared efforts to address these concerns:

By outside pressure from autocrats. They seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges. That’s how it’s sold.

By voices that seek to fan the flames of societal division and political polarization.

And perhaps most importantly and worrying of all — most worrying of all, by increasing the dissatisfaction of people all around the world with democratic governments that they feel are failing to deliver for their needs.

In my view, this is the defining challenge of our time.

Democracy — government of the people, by the people,
for the people — can at times be fragile, but it also is inherently resilient. It’s capable of self-correction and it’s capable of self-improvement.

And, yes, democracy is hard. We all know that. It works best with consensus and cooperation. When people and parties that might have opposing views sit down and find ways to work together, things begin to work.

But it’s the best way to unleash human potential and defend human dignity and solve big problems. And it’s up to us to prove that.

Democracies are not all the same. We don’t agree on everything, all of us in this meeting today. But the choices we make together are going to define, in my view, the course of our shared future for generations to come.

And as a global community for democracy, we have to stand up for the values that unite us.

We have to stand for justice and the rule of law, for free speech, free assembly, a free press, freedom of religion, and for all the inherent human rights of every individual.

My late friend Congressman John Lewis was a great champion of American democracy and for civil rights around the world, learning from and gaining inspiration from other great leaders like Gandhi and Mandela.

With his final words, as he was dying, to our nation last year, he reminded our country, quote, “Democracy is not a state, it is an act.” “Democracy is not a state, it is an act.”

So, over the next two days, we’re bringing together leaders from more than 100 governments alongside activists, trade unionists, and other members of civil society, leading experts and researchers, and representatives from the business community, not — not to assert that any one of our democracies is perfect or has all the answers, but to lock arms and reaffirm our shared commitment to make our democracies better; to share ideas and learn from each other; and to make concrete commitments of how — how to strengthen our own democracies and push back on authoritarianism, fight corruption, promote and protect human rights of people everywhere. To act. To act.

This summit is a kick-off of a year in action for all of our countries to follow through on our commitments and to report back next year on the progress we’ve made.

And as we do this, the United States is going to lead by example, investing in our own democratic — in our democracy, supporting our partners around the world at the same time.

From the earliest days of my administration, we pursu- — we’ve pursued a broad-based agenda to prove that American democracy can still do big things and take on challenges that matter most.

That’s why we immediately passed what we call the American Rescue Plan to get shots in people’s arms as fast as possible at home and around the world to help get this pandemic under control, and to stimulate inclusive and lasting economic recovery that’s also helping to drive global growth.

Last month, I was proud to sign a bipartisan piece of legislation, a true act of consensus between Democrats and Republicans in our country: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

This legislation will make a generational investment
to deliver what people need most in the 21st century: clean water, safe roads, high-speed broadband Internet, and so much more — all of which strengthens our democracy by creating good-paying union jobs that will translate to lives of opportunity and dignity for working people, with better access to the tools and resources they need to thrive.

And soon — and soon, I hope — I hope to sign into law a bill we call the Build Back Better plan, which will be an extraordinary investment in our people and our workers and give American families just a little more breathing room to deal with their problems and their opportunities.

Our domestic agenda has been focused on delivering for the needs of the American people and strengthening our democratic institutions at home.

On my first day in office, I signed an executive order to advance racial justice and equality. And my administration recently released our first National Strategy on Gender Equality and Equity.

We’re fostering greater worker power, because workers organizing a union to give them the voice in their workplace, in their community, and their country isn’t just an act of economic solidarity, it’s democracy in action.

We’re making it easy for Americans to register to vote, and we’ve doubled the number of attorneys defending and enforcing voting rights laws through our Department of Justice.

And my administration is going to keep fighting to pass two critical pieces of legislation that will shore up the very foundation of American democracy: the sacred right of every person to make their voice heard through free, fair, and secure elections.

We need to enact what we call the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to prevent voting discrimination, provide baselines for assessing — accessing the ballot box, and ensure the will of the voters is upheld, and so much more.

We should be making it easy for people to vote, not harder. And that’s going to remain a priority for my administration until we get it done.

Inaction is not an option.

And as we continue to work at home to bring the United States closer to what we call a “more perfect union,” we’re doubling down on our engagement with and support of democracies around the world.

Earlier this week, I released the first U.S. government Strategy on Countering Corruption, which elevates our fight against transnational corruption — a crime that drains public resources and hollows out the ability of governments to deliver for the people and just evaporates confidence that the people much need to have in their government.

The strategy includes working with other partners — all of you around the world — to improve transparency, hold corrupt actors accountable, reduce their ability to use the United States and international financial systems to hide assets and to launder money.

And today, I’m proud to launch the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, which will focus efforts across diplomacy — across our diplomacy and foreign assistance programs to bolster democratic resilience and human rights and — globally.

Working with our Congress, we’re planning to commit as much as $224 million [$424 million] in the next year to shore up transparent and accountable governance, including supporting media freedom, fighting international corruption, standing with democratic reformers, promoting technology that advances democracy, and defining and defending what a fair election is.

Let me give you a few examples of the kind of work this initiative is — will entail: a free and independent media. It’s the bedrock of democracy. It’s how the public stay informed and how governments are held accountable. And around the world, press freedom is under threat.

So, we’re committing critical seed money to launch a new multilateral effort — our International Fund for Public Interest Media — to sustain independent media around the world.

And through the — our USAID, we’re going to be standing up a new Defamation Defense Fund for Journalists to help protect investigative journalists against nuisance lawsuits designed to prevent them from doing their work — their vital work around the world.

We’re going to launch new programs to help connect anti-corrup- — anti-corruption activities across civil society, the media, academia, labor, and protect whistleblowers and help partners eliminate money laundering and safe havens.

To ensure that our democracies are strengthening by the voice — are strengthened by the voice of all citizens, this Presidential Initiative includes programs to advance women and girls and civic engagement and political leadership, empowering the LGBTQL [sic] community — plus community — individuals to participate in democratic institutions, promote labor law reform, working or — and worker organizations.

It includes new lines of efforts with our partners to address online harassment and abuse, and reduce the potential for countries to abuse new technologies, including surveillance technologies, to suppress the rights of their people to express their views.

And we’ll stand up two — and we’re going to stand up two rapid-response, cross-cutting initiatives that support the key goals of this summit: the Fund for Democratic Renewal and the Partnership for Democ- — for Democracy program. It’s going to allow State Department and USAID to surge funds to support our partners working on democratic frontlines around the world.

My fellow leaders, members of civil society, activists, advocates, citizens: We stand at an inflection point in our history, in my view. The choices we make, in my view, in the next — in this moment are going to fundamentally determine the direction our world is going to take in the coming decades.

Will we allow the backward slide of rights and democracy to continue unchecked? Or will we together — together — have a vision and the vision — not just “a” vision, “the” vision — and courage to once more lead the march of human progress and human freedom forward?

I believe we can do that and we will if we have faith in ourselves, in our — and in our democracies, and in each other.

That’s what this summit is about.

I’m so looking forward to a productive session and discussions that we’ll have — we’ll have over the next two days. I’m looking forward to the connections we’ll build to support our work moving forward.

So, let’s get to work. Thank you all so very much for your patience.

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph R. Biden Jr.

 

 

Read more:

 

https://www.voltairenet.org/article215051.html

 

 

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Remember, this is the guy who wrote "the Patrior Act" and who keeps Assange in prison...

 

America Has Split, and It’s Now in ‘Very Dangerous Territory’

 

 

By Thomas B. Edsall

 

 

Why did the national emergency brought about by the Covid pandemic not only fail to unite the country but instead provoke the exact opposite development, further polarization?

I posed this question to Nolan McCarty, a political scientist at Princeton. McCarty emailed me back:

With the benefit of hindsight, Covid seems to be the almost ideal polarizing crisis. It was conducive to creating strong identities and mapping onto existing ones. That these identities corresponded to compliance with public health measures literally increased “riskiness” of intergroup interaction. The financial crisis was also polarizing for similar reasons — it was too easy for different groups to blame each other for the problems.

McCarty went on:

Any depolarizing event would need to be one where the causes are transparently external in a way that makes it hard for social groups to blame each other. It is increasingly hard to see what sort of event has that feature these days.

Polarization has become a force that feeds on itself, gaining strength from the hostility it generates, finding sustenance on both the left and the right. A series of recent analyses reveals the destructive power of polarization across the American political system.

The United States continues to stand out among nations experiencing the detrimental effects of polarization, according to “What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?,” a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report written by Jennifer McCoy of Georgia State and Benjamin Press of the Carnegie Endowment:

The United States is quite alone among the ranks of perniciously polarized democracies in terms of its wealth and democratic experience. Of the episodes since 1950 where democracies polarized, all of those aside from the United States involved less wealthy, less longstanding democracies, many of which had democratized quite recently. None of the wealthy, consolidated democracies of East Asia, Oceania or Western Europe, for example, have faced similar levels of polarization for such an extended period.

McCoy and Press studied 52 countries “where democracies reached pernicious levels of polarization.” Of those, “twenty-six — fully half of the cases — experienced a downgrading of their democratic rating.” Quite strikingly, the two continue, “the United States is the only advanced Western democracy to have faced such intense polarization for such an extended period. The United States is in uncharted and very dangerous territory.”

 

McCoy and Press analyzed the international pattern of polarization and again the United States stands out, with by far the highest current level of polarization compared with other countries and regions, as the accompanying graphic shows.

 

See more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/opinion/covid-biden-trump-polarization.html

 

 

Read from top.

 

Methinks that OLD Madam Pelosi isn't helping with her ridiculous crackdown on the January Sixers...

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

US President Joe Biden has renewed the national emergency declared by former president George W. Bush in the days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 for another year.

The “terrorist threat” behind the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people “continues,” Biden wrote in a Thursday memo published in the Federal Register, adding that the “powers and authorities adopted to deal with” the attacks “must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2022.” 

The 9/11 emergency declaration is just one of several Biden has extended this week alone. Also on Thursday, the president prolonged a national emergency he had declared the previous year regarding sectarian violence and human rights abuses in Ethiopia, while on Tuesday he announced the renewal of an emergency declared by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018 regarding the threat of “foreign interference in or undermining public confidence in” US elections. 

 

Biden has declared at least six national emergencies since taking office in January 2021 and extended several more, including the Covid-19 pandemic emergency. The National Emergencies Act endows the president with over 136 powers, most of which do not require congressional approval to wield. Since its passage in 1976, more than 60 national emergencies have been declared, with only about half of them officially concluded.

The president has largely abandoned predecessors’ focus on external terrorist threats like the al-Qaeda hijackers held responsible for 9/11, opting to focus attention instead on domestic terrorism, which the FBI has declared to be the primary threat facing the nation.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/562565-biden-renews-911-emergency-terrorism/

 

READ FROM TOP.

I MEAN READ FROM TOP!

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VldBTnA_TcY

 

Agents provocateurs are employed to sow discord... We know. Governments will protect them but won't acknowledge them... It takes a certain twisted mind to be an agent provocateur — but those who perform the task, including infiltration of "radical" Church groups (6 JAN 2021), enjoy the dynamics of being DEVIOUS and being paid for it... It's the game of TRAITORS in real life...

 

READ FROM TOP.

I MEAN READ FROM TOP!

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

JOE BIDEN IS BAD FOR AMERICA. HE'S BAD FOR THE WORLD... HE IS A CROOK, A LIAR AND A BRAGGART... AMONGST MANY BAD DEEDS DONE BY JOE BIDEN, WE HAVE CHOSEN THREE — (WE COULD HAVE PICKED 197 RECORDED BAD DEEDS AND MORE THAN 100,000 GAFFES):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecH1SI9ufr8

Scott Ritter on Joe Biden Mocking War

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-yrD2WMKiA

Grothman Plays Video Of Biden Bragging About Getting Ukrainian Prosecutor Fired In Oversight Cmte

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AWg6GrbllQ

Biden brags inventing patriot act

 

IMPEACH JOE ASAP, PLEASE.....

 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED... JOE WOULD NOT HESITATE TO DESTROY YOU...

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/35235

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW

it's time for being earnest.....

The CIA Wants More Power to Spy on Americans!

by Andrew P. Napolitano 

 

Americans need to be aware of the unbridled propensity of federal intelligence agencies to spy on all of us without search warrants as required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

These agencies believe that the Fourth Amendment — which protects the individual right to privacy — only regulates law enforcement and does not apply to domestic spying.

There is no basis in the constitutional text, history or judicial interpretations for such a limiting and toothless view of this constitutional guarantee. The courts have held that the Fourth Amendment restrains government — all government. Last week, the CIA asked Congress to expand its current spying in the United States.

Here is the backstory.

When the CIA was created in 1947, members of Congress who feared the establishment here of the type of domestic surveillance apparatus that the Allies had just defeated in Germany insisted that the new CIA have no role in American law enforcement and no legal ability to spy within the U.S. The legislation creating the CIA contains those unambiguous limitations.

Nevertheless, we know that CIA agents are present in all 50 statehouses in the United States. They didn’t arrive there until after Dec. 4, 1981. That’s the date that President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333, which purports to give the CIA authority to spy in America — supposedly looking for narcotics from foreign countries — but keeps from law enforcement whatever it finds.

Stated differently, while Reagan purported to authorize the CIA to defy the limitations imposed upon it by the Constitution and by federal law, he insisted on a “wall” of separation between domestic spying and law enforcement.

So, if the CIA using unconstitutional spying discovered that a janitor in the Russian Embassy in Washington was really a KGB colonel who abused his wife in their suburban Maryland home, under E.O. 12333, it could continue to spy upon him in defiance of the Fourth Amendment and the CIA charter, but it could not reveal to Maryland prosecutors — who can only use evidence lawfully obtained — any evidence of his domestic violence.

All this changed 20 years later when President George W. Bush demolished Reagan’s “wall” between law enforcement and domestic spying and directed the CIA and other domestic spying agencies to share the fruits of their spying with the FBI.

Thus, thanks to Reagan and Bush, and their successors looking the other way, CIA agents have been engaging in fishing expeditions on a grand scale inside the U.S. for the past 20 years. Congress knows about this because all intelligence agencies are required by statute to report the extent of their spying secretly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

This, of course, does not absolve the CIA of its presidentially authorized computer hacking crimes; rather, it gives Congress a false sense of security that it has a handle on what’s going on.

What’s going on is not government lawyers appearing before judges asking for surveillance warrants based upon probable cause of crime, as the Constitution requires. What’s going on is CIA agents going to Big Tech and paying for access to communications used by ordinary Americans. Some Big Tech firms told the CIA to take a hike. Others took the CIA’s cash and opened the spigots of their fiber-optic data to the voracious federal appetite.

If government lawyers went to a judge and demonstrated probable cause of crime — for example, that a janitor in the Russian Embassy was passing defense secrets to Moscow — surely the judge would have signed a surveillance warrant. But to the government, following the Constitution is too limiting.

Thus, by acquiring bulk data — fiber-optic data on hundreds of millions of Americans acquired without search warrants — the government avoids the time and trouble of demonstrating probable cause to a judge. But that time and trouble were intentionally baked into the Fourth Amendment so as to keep the government off our backs.

Not to be outdone by its principal rival, the FBI soon began doing the same thing — gathering bulk data without search warrants.

When Congress learned of this, it enacted legislation that banned the warrantless acquisition of bulk data. Apparently, Congress is naive enough to believe that the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, their cousin with 60,000 domestic spies, will actually comply with federal law.

Last week, that naivete was manifested front and center when the CIA sent a letter to both congressional intelligence committees addressing its spying on foreign persons and the Americans with whom they communicate, and asking to expand that reach inside the U.S.

The timing of the CIA’s letter coincides with a decision Congress must make in the next 10 days — whether to reenact Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allow it to expire on April 19 or expand it as the CIA has requested. Section 702 permits warrantless spying on foreigners and the Americans whom intelligence agencies suspect communicate with them. Section 702 is an unconstitutional free pass for domestic spying.

So, notwithstanding the persistent efforts of members of Congress from both parties to limit and in some cases to prohibit the warrantless acquisition of bulk data by the CIA from Americans, the practice continues, the CIA defends it and presidents look the other way.

In 1947, Congress created the CIA monster, which today is so big and so powerful and so indifferent to the Constitution and the federal laws its agents have sworn to uphold that it can boast about its lawlessness, have no fear of defying Congress and always escape the consequences of all this largely unscathed. Even President Harry Truman, who signed the 1947 legislation into law, later acknowledged as much and condemned what the CIA had become.

I suspect the CIA and its cousins will get away with this because they spy on Congress and possess damning personal data on members who regularly vote to increase their secret budgets.

When will we have a government whose officials are courageous enough to uphold the Constitution?

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

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BY Richard Hubert Barton

 

How the U.S. legalizes its criminal global surveillance of communications

 

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) consists of 17 federal agencies. The best known are the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. Briefly, the task of the CIA is human intelligence, the FBI operates domestically with the main focus on terrorism, foreign intelligence operations, and espionage, while the NSA deals with electronic intelligence.

Initially, Congress enacted Section 702 due to the evolution of technology in the years after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed in 1978. By the mid-2000s, many terrorists and other foreign adversaries were using email accounts serviced by U.S. companies. Because of this change in communications technology, the government had to seek individual court orders, based on a finding of probable cause, to obtain the communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad.

That proved costly.

The new procedure under Section 702 involved the Attorney General (AG) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) submitting to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) certifications that specify categories of foreign intelligence that the IC can use Section 702 to collect. Such certifications may be effective for up to one year and must be resubmitted annually. The AG and DNI also submit to the rules designed to ensure that the IC only uses Section 702 without warrants to target foreign persons located outside the U.S. for the purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence information.

However, Congress established Section 702 in 2008 to legitimize an existing surveillance program run by the NSA without congressional oversight or approval. The program, more narrowly defined at the time, intercepted communications that were at least partly domestic but included a target the government believed was a known terrorist. While bringing the surveillance under its authority, Congress has helped to expand steadily the scope of the surveillance to include a new number of threats, from cybercrime and drug trafficking to arms proliferation.

Has such a seemingly orderly and lawful state of affairs prevailed for long in the U.S. Intelligence Community? The article will answer that question too.

Official explanations sound logical and convincing

Nothing better illustrates the practice of applying section 702 than examples of fighting terrorism. Let’s for instance, take a closer look at the case of Hajji Iman.

All told, the second-in-command of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), Hajji Iman, a non-U.S. citizen living in Northern Iraq, was in his earlier life a high school teacher and Imam who later turned to terrorism. His terrorist activities prompted the U.S. government to offer $7 million for information leading to his whereabouts.

The NSA, and its IC partners, spent over two years from 2014 to 2016 looking for Hajji Iman. This search was ultimately successful, primarily due to intelligence activities under Section 702. In addition, NSA collected a significant body of foreign intelligence about the activities of Hajji Iman and his close associates and began tracking their movements.

On March 24, 2016, during an attempt to apprehend Hajji Iman and two of his associates, shots were fired at the U.S. forces’ aircraft from Hajji Iman’s hide-out. U.S. forces returned fire, killing Hajji Iman and the other associates at the location. Subsequent Section 702 collection confirmed Hajji Iman’s death.

I remember that the case of Hajji Iman’s death was highly publicized at the time and idealistically-minded human rights activists insisted that he should have been captured and prosecuted. Similar objections were expressed earlier after gunning down unarmed Osama bin Laden of al-Qaeda in May 2011.

The people in charge of the IC insist that Section 702 is vital to keep the U.S. safe. To back this claim, they give a variety of examples.

Americans are still subjected to abusive searches of their private communications

Several controlling bodies are supposed to ensure no abuses under Section 702, such as annual reports from heads of agencies that collect foreign intelligence under Section 702. In addition, a similar job is done by Congressional notifications on the 702 program. In 2016, alone, the government was provided over 500 pages of reporting to Congress on the Section 702 program. If anything, one may have an impression that Section 702 has many highly-placed individuals keeping their fingers on the pulse to make sure that it is properly applied.

One may quote, for example, the 2014 Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report in which it was stated: “The government’s Section 702 program operates within legal constraints, collects valuable information, and is both well-managed and effective in protecting national security.”

One should emphasize that several commissions investigating terrorist attacks, including 9/11, Fort Hood, the “Underwear Bomber,” and the Boston Marathon Bombing, not only supported Section 702 but seemingly advocated removing barriers to the use of information already lawfully in the IC’s possession.

The rosy picture gets tarnished when the analysis of fighting terrorism includes private communications in the U.S. The IC is accused of spying on Americans.

It should be emphasized that enacted shortly after 9/11, Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect the phone calls, emails, text messages, and other communications of almost any non-American located outside of the United States without a warrant. Agencies such as the CIA and NSA must ensure that a significant purpose of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approves the general rules governing surveillance, but it has no role in approving individual targets.

Section 702 authorizes warrantless surveillance to be targeted only at non-Americans abroad, but Americans’ communications are “unavoidably’’ captured too. Simply because people talk to family, friends, and acquaintances who are located abroad, usually for reasons having nothing to do with terrorism or espionage.

Keeping this in mind, Congress directed intelligence agencies to “minimize” the retention and use of Americans’ information collected under Section 702. Yet, despite this clear mandate, officials from the FBI, CIA, and NSA perform more than 200,000 warrantless “backdoor” searches every year to find and assess Americans’ private phone calls, text messages, and emails.

Such infringements include some alarming abuses. The U.S. government has performed baseless searches for the communications of members of Congress, journalists, and 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. Such violations may be still taking place. Besides, the FBI has performed “tens of thousands” of unlawful searches “in relation to civil unrest.” It targeted 141 people protesting the murder of George Floyd and more than 20,000 people suspected of involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Most recently – and despite procedural changes implemented by the FBI to stem abuses – FBI agents performed improper searches for the private communications of a U.S. senator, a state senator, and a state court judge who reported alleged civil rights violations by a police chief to the FBI.

In response to these abuses, many lawmakers of different political orientations have vowed to reform the law. The key reform of Section 702 amounted to obtaining a warrant before examining Americans’ private communications. It is important to realize that under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, these communications can’t be obtained without a warrant only because the government is targeting foreigners abroad for surveillance. Nevertheless, backdoor searches result from such surveillance and amounted to nearly 5 million such searches conducted by the FBI from 2019 to 2022.

Beginning in the 1960s, the Supreme Court held that the government needed a warrant, not just to seize a person’s “papers,” but to surveil phone calls in criminal and domestic national security investigations. However, the court did not settle whether a warrant is needed for backdoor searches in conducting “foreign intelligence surveillance.”

A decade later, Congress answered that question. Congressional investigations by the Church and Pike Committees revealed in 1976 that the FBI, CIA, and NSA had illegally spied on civil rights and anti-war advocates for decades on baseless claims of Soviet influence. The FBI spied on and attempted to blackmail the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As King was just one of thousands of people targeted by federal agents, Congress implemented a series of reforms, one of which was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Under the law, if the government wanted to engage in domestic collection of Americans’ communications – including their communications with foreign targets – that would require a court order, similar to a criminal warrant, from the newly created Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

This system worked for the next 22 years or so. But after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush’s administration wanted to collect communications of suspected foreign terrorists, including their communications with Americans, and it did not want to wait for FISC approval before doing so. So, it didn’t. Of course, in violation of FISA, the NSA began a massive, warrantless electronic surveillance program that collected large numbers of Americans’ international communications. It was only when this program was disclosed by The New York Times that the Bush administration went to Congress seeking legislative approval for the spying.

Congress responded favorably. The result was the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, of which Section 702 was a key component. As noted, Section 702 allows the government to collect foreign targets’ communications without a warrant, even if they may be communicating with Americans. But Congress did not envision (incredibly) that this would lead to millions of warrantless “backdoor” searches for Americans’ communications collected for foreign intelligence purposes.

When Section 702 was set to expire on April 19, 2024, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson scheduled a vote a few days before its expiry on a new act. The most influential in preserving the FBI’s warrantless access to 702 data were the House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Turner and a ranking member Jim Hines. They narrowly won in their campaign for maintaining warrantless FBI searches of Americans’ communications. The Biden administration also opposed the amendment in a tie vote, 212-212.

Some apparently important, nevertheless cosmetic changes, were introduced into the FBI’s procedures and at present are part of the 702 statute. They require employees to affirmatively “opt in” before accessing the wiretaps and permission from an FBI attorney must be sought before conducting the so-called “batch queries” of the database. Importantly, the communications of elected officials, reporters, academics, and religious figures are now classified as “sensitive” and must be approved by those higher in the chain of command.

While advocates for 702 surveillance often imply that Americans who are wiretapped are communicating with terrorists such an assumption is dubious. The official position of the U.S. government maintains that it is impossible to know which U.S. citizens are being surveilled or even how many of them there are and declares that the chief aim of the 702 program is to acquire “foreign intelligence information,” a term that encompasses not only terrorism and acts of sabotage but information necessary for the government to conduct its own “foreign affairs.”

Angela Merkel’s call to Obama: are you bugging my mobile?

As mentioned earlier, the IC uses Section 702 to target without warrants foreign persons located outside the U.S. for the purpose of acquiring foreign intelligence information.

One may suppose that countless ordinary people all over the world whose communications are recorded and searched, most often accidentally, even if they are not wrongdoers, can do little or nothing about it. In the majority of cases, they might be even unaware of having their communications recorded. But there are foreign politicians, high-ranking military, business people, and scientists who through Section 702 have their communications searched without issuing any warrants.

Perhaps the best known is the phone tapping scandal where the U.S. IC bugged official and private conversations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013. After all, it wasn’t a supposed case of spying on terrorists or leaders from the Western designated “authoritarian regimes” but rather a case of spying on a close ally.

German media and government functionaries were furious. Merkel’s Interior Minister Hans-Friedrich told Bild am Sonntag: “Bugging is a crime and those responsible for it must be held to account.”

The head of Merkel’s party in parliament, Volker Kauder called the bugging of her phone a “grave breach of trust” and said the U.S. should stop its “global power demeanour”.

What Bild am Sonntag further claimed must have sent shock waves through the German public. Namely, the paper said the NSA had increased its surveillance, including the contents of Merkel’s text messages and phone calls, on U.S. President Barack Obama’s initiative and had started tapping a new, supposedly bug-proof mobile she acquired that summer.

Interestingly, according to the paper, the NSA first eavesdropped on Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schroeder after he refused to back then-president George W Bush’s war in Iraq and continued when Merkel took over in 2005.

And that’s not all, 18 NSA staff working in the U.S. embassy in Berlin, some 800 meters from Frau Merkel’s office, sent their findings straight to the White House, and not to NSA headquarters.

Given the spying scandal, in an unprecedented move, Berlin summoned the U.S. ambassador.

As if it wasn’t enough, German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the U.S. had been spying on Merkel’s phone calls since 2002 and that Obama was told about the operation in 2010 but didn’t stop it.

In sharp contrast, the NSA denied that Obama knew about the spying.

Obama hypocritically apologized to Chancellor Merkel when she called him (not him calling her) and told her that he would have stopped the bugging had he known about it. Is the president of the U.S. in control of his country?

The rift over American surveillance first emerged earlier in 2013 with reports that Washington had bugged European Union offices and tapped an astonishing half a billion phone calls, emails, and text messages in Germany in a typical month. What comes to mind not just of a shrewd political observer but an ordinary thinking Westerner is this: how can you trust American assurances and American democracy?’

In line with the available information, it is known that the IC monitored in October 2013 phone conversations of 35 world leaders. Their phone numbers were supplied by U.S. government officials. The Guardian cited documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and added that the White House, State Department, and the Pentagon staff were urged to share contact details of foreign politicians with the NSA.

On the other hand, Le Monde reported the NSA had collected tens of thousands of French phone records between December 2012 and January 2013.

The only leader apparently not concerned about possible tapping was former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard because, as she said rather foolishly and naively, she had always praised the U.S.

Why is the U.S. IC de facto tolerating terrorism?

It is abundantly clear that the U.S. IC spies on foreign citizens including heads of state and also on American citizens using warrantless intrusion. Given the massive penetration of global communications, it is plausible that the U.S. authorities are acutely cognizant of terrorist communications. How could they not be? Indeed, one can imagine the U.S. IC not only being able to intercept and search terrorist communications but also being part of them.

Under those circumstances, can anyone imagine the absence of communications between U.S. intelligence and Daesh? Rather, it is reasonable to assume that such communications must have been intense concerning the U.S. pursuing regime operations in Libya and Syria. This leads to another question: Why was there no Western media publicity on such activities? The answer seems to be obvious: the U.S. IC not only knows how to boast about fighting terrorists but also how to effectively hush up its cooperation and support for them.

Anyone in their right senses may extend investigating the U.S. intelligence to other places where terrorists are undisturbed in violating human rights. This would apply in particular to the Nazis in Ukraine who are responsible for genocide in the Donbass, Crimea, and the Belgorod region where they deliberately target the civilian population.

Furthermore, NATO members monitor and participate in communicating with the Ukrainian Nazis and also supply them with arms instructions and coordinating their civilian targets. Can anyone be surprised that there is no publicity in the West about those crimes against humanity? What’s more, politicians like the present Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, flatly deny such a genocide and denigrate Putin’s assertion that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbass region. Of course, it is simpler to lie than tell the truth.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/23/how-us-legalizes-its-criminal-global-surveillance-of-communications/

 

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