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We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower ... And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying
We reported in 2008 that foreign companies have had key roles scooping up Americans’ communications for the NSA:
At least two foreign companies play key roles in processing the information.
Specifically, an Israeli company called Narus processes all of the information tapped by AT &T (AT & T taps, and gives to the NSA, copies of all phone calls it processes), and an Israeli company called Verint processes information tapped by Verizon (Verizon also taps, and gives to the NSA, all of its calls).
Business Insider notes today:
The newest information regarding the NSA domestic spying scandal raises an important question: If America’s tech giants didn’t ‘participate knowingly’ in the dragnet of electronic communication, how does the NSA get all of their data?
One theory: the NSA hired two secretive Israeli companies to wiretap the U.S. telecommunications network.
In April 2012 Wired’s James Bamford — author of the book “The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America” — reported that two companies with extensive links to Israel’s intelligence service provided hardware and software the U.S. telecommunications network for the National Security Agency (NSA).
By doing so, this would imply, companies like Facebook and Google don’t have to explicitly provide the NSA with access to their servers because major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as AT&T and Verizon already allows the U.S. signals intelligence agency to eavesdrop on all of their data anyway.
From Bamford (emphasis ours):
“According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon…
At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004.”
Klein, an engineer, discovered the “secret room” at AT&T central office in San Francisco, through which the NSA actively “vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T” through the wiretapping rooms, emphasizing that “much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic.”
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake corroborated Klein’s assertions, testifying that while the NSA is using Israeli-made NARUS hardware to “seize and save all personal electronic communications.”
Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s.
***
“Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California company, said. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”
With a telecom wiretap the NSA only needs companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple to passively participate while the agency to intercepts, stores, and analyzes their communication data. The indirect nature of the agreement would provide tech giants with plausible deniability.
And having a foreign contractor bug the telecom grid would mean that the NSA gained access to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the U.S. without technically doing it themselves.
This would provide the NSA, whose official mission is to spy on foreign communications, with plausible deniability regarding domestic snooping.
The reason that Business Insider is speculating about the use of private Israeli companies to thwart the law is that 2 high-ranking members of the Senate Intelligence Committee – Senators Wyden and Udall – have long said that the government has adopted a secret interpretation of section 215 of the Patriot Act which would shock Americans, because it provided a breath-takingly wide program of spying.
Last December, top NSA whistleblower William Binney – a 32-year NSA veteran with the title of senior technical director, who headed the agency’s global digital data gathering program (featured in a New York Times documentary, and the source for much of what we know about NSA spying) – said that the government is using a secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act which allows the government to obtain:
Any data in any third party, like any commercial data that’s held about U.S. citizens ….
(relevant quote starts at 4:19).
I called Binney to find out what he meant.
I began by asking Binney if Business Insider’s speculation was correct. Specifically, I asked Binney if the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act was that a foreign company – like Narus, for example – could vacuum up information on Americans, and then the NSA would obtain that data under the excuse of spying on foreign entities … i.e. an Israeli company.
Binney replied no … it was broader than that.
Binney explained that the government is taking the position that it can gather and use any information about American citizens living on U.S. soil if it comes from:
Any service provider … any third party … any commercial company – like a telecom or internet service provider, libraries, medical companies – holding data about anyone, any U.S. citizen or anyone else.
I followed up to make sure I understood what Binney was saying, asking whether the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act was that the government could use any information as long as it came from a private company … foreign or domestic. In other words, the government was using the antiquated, bogus legal argument that it was not acting “color of law” using governmental powers, and that it was private companies just doing their thing (which the government happened to order all of the private companies to collect and fork over).
Binney confirmed that this was correct. This is what the phone company spying program and the Prism program – the government spying on big Internet companies – is based upon. Since all digital communications go through private company networks, websites or other systems, the government just demands that all of the companies turn all of them over.
Let’s use an analogy to understand how bogus this interpretation of the Patriot Act is. This would be analogous to a Congressman hiring a hit man to shoot someone asking too many questions, and loaning him his gun to carry out the deed … and then later saying “I didn’t do it, it was that private citizen!” That wouldn’t pass the laugh test even at an unaccredited, web-based law school offered through a porn site.
I then asked the NSA veteran if the government’s claim that it is only spying on metadata – and not content – was correct. We have extensively documented that the government is likely recording the content as well. (And the government has previously admitted to “accidentally” collecting more information on Americans than was legal.)
Binney said that was not true; the government is gathering everything, including content.
Binney explained – as he has many times before – that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants when it wants to go after someone.
Binney said that former FBI counter-terrorism agent Tim Clemente is correct when he said that no digital data is safe (Clemente says that all digital communications are being recorded). Binney gave me an idea of how powerful Narus recording systems are. There are probably 18 of them around the country, and they can each record 10 gigabytes of data – the equivalent of a million and a quarter emails with 1,000 characters each – per second.
Binney next confirmed the statement of the author of the Patriot Act – Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner – that the NSA spying programs violate that Act. After all, the Patriot Act is focused on spying on external threats, not on Americans.
Binney asked rhetorically: “How can an American court [FISA or otherwise] tell telecom to cough up all domestic data?!”
Update: Binney sent the following clarifying email about content collection:
It’s clear to me that they are collecting most e-mail in full plus other text type data on the web.
As for phone calls, I don’t think they would record/transcribe the approximately 3 billion US-to-US calls every day. It’s more likely that they are recording and transcribing calls made by the 500,000 to 1,000,000 targets in the US and the world.
In other news, NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999
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They have to record your every movement and saying for the sake of the children. Get with the program!
children
terrorists
drugs
the holy trinity of propaganda
Ahhh.... the good ol days... back when a piece de la resistance could appear on sites like this that would lay out in black n white the extent to which Merika's domestic infrastructure had been deliberately turned over to the hands of 'foreign' companies...(note: a slight evasion of the truth... which is that Merika's domestic.....hands of....foreign[but dual-citiiZed!!!]nationals!!!... acting as agents of a foreign power!!!) But... relative to the times we are livin thru... a heady expression of insightful dissent!!!!
Anybody home>>>? companies...nationals...power!>??? get it? Talmudists do not consider you(goy dupes)as humans... therefore your presumed 'rights' are void... and there is nothin 'inviolable' about your person... your soul... nor integrity of being that has not already been stolen...sullied... or made redundant. Don't worry about "invasions of privacy".... you might have worried about 'invasions of the body snatchers'... but the pod peeple are already here... and life agin has imitated the movies.
Tribes? What tribes? Israelis? What Israelis? Dual-citiiZens? What dual-citiiZens? BnaiBrith...Frankist-Sabbatean cyrptos... kosherkillerkklowns>....the moneypower>>>??? let's find out just what the key word term is to get one's ass kicked outta here agin.... it never was about a 'religious persuasion'... you can take that to the bank!
then all the world will know... just who rules the roost!Totally RECIDIVIST OUTLAW PEEPLES OF THE WORLD -UNITE N FIGHT - BACK!
(Disclaimer: all-pervasive mind-control techniques may limit your ability to compute basic empirical data... as in put 2+2 together... but do not be alarmed... you will still be allowed to vent here in completely harmless fashion...while waiting for your bus to arrive!)
OH...ya..as usual...got the screen shot dudes!
Calm down and wait for the real action to begin. I no longer get upset over the creeping inevitability of pervasiveness. It's simply an extension of the control our government has been building on for decades and that took no Jews or other group we want to conveniently blame for all our problem. It appears that in many ways we haven't progressed pas the dark ages when blaming minority groups for problems was the norm. I'd LOVE to see the comments if the outside firm was Iranian - lots of twisting and turning trying to justify that. LOL
The President of the United States - Valerie Jarret is an Iranian. Former slum lord too.
But...who or whom is going to fix this and the other stuff...we r fucked....face it
But, tango, the outside firm WAS NOT Iranian.
Your attention is directed to the FACTS.
There is no creeping inevitability, only diligent parasites at work.
Parasites prosper in an environment (system) which is conducive to their normal function.
There most certainly is "creeping inevitability" -- individual parasites in certain key positions are becoming less and less critical over time, and if unchecked -- the frankenfreak and its Skynet appendage will eventually be able to fully function without the sustenance of the evil symbiotic relationship.
there you go again...
inserting a word [jews] into a discussion which apurpose leaves such a non-applicable trigger word aside... and avoids the misapplication of critical reasoning by so doing.
Is your case one of inattention... an inadvertent confusion of the subject here...
or something less benign>>? Foreign nationals... foreign agents... foreign powers\\\ dual-citiiZened...
talmudists practice a radical form of racial hegemony which eschews the old testament for a series of pronouncements made by it's chief apologists which govern the conduct of it's adherents and provide a rationale for their contempt of those outside the group.
this controversy was never about religious persuasions... you can take that to the bank.
Yes, entirely believeable, but why?
What is the motivation? What is the Ideology behind this Bolsheviklism? Why the thirst to destroy your fellow man? Why the need for Total Control? What is the Point of all this maddness?
What is the Driving Force?
The building of a "State" doesn't work and cannot produce. Accordingly Lenin came to this conclusion in less than 12 months and decided to murder ~11 millions because the "State" could not / would not produce enough food for them. Shortly after he adjusted the sacrifice to 24 million, which he attained by the time of his death in ~1924.
I would suggest that the argument is between the structure of the order of humanity, either as a "Society" or as a "State".
This whole trend of the "leadership" classes from the politicians, bureaucrats, academics, MSM, economists and Bankers, is sheer idiocy which has been done before many times and for which the evidence exists in written history.
Again: Why?
Ho hum
Many people who are going to win anyway cheat, because they are insecure usually.
@"what is the motivation.."
.
creation in the realm of symbol,
either that or maintenance of symbol/s.
right and wrong does not enter into preservation
of existing symbol-structure. man , in general,
does not comprehend the meaning, impact or
implication of manipulation of it; we are "purely"
driven by it, right or wrong, there the power.
.
power. motivation, power. repeat. moar.....
power, money, control
the holy trinity of oligarchs
@why?
because man projects his love and contempt for himself and
his god/s, his internal relationships with his own
consciousness, his strategies to cheat himself and to
harm himself, onto the other people in his environment.
(beware the self loathing leader but is there any other kind?)
first his children and family, then community and then
the greater world. the technique, through language, is
powerful and it does corrupt absolutely.
commandments didn't solve the problem, constitutions
and laws don't solve the problem and certainly technology
does not solve the problem resulting from the power of
the word/s. only failure and destruction can correct
the misuse or misallocation of power, or perhaps insight
and wisdom but i'm not holding my breath as these things
seem to be rare in the current environment.
.
The Genius George Carlin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpK2mUu271A
.
@why?
.
" why do they put cocks at the top of the weathervanes?
because if they put cunts up there the wind would blow right
through." George Carlin
this is a crude joke but there may be something to it?
what do you think mr. a?
and best to you.
we accept these projections of the broken,
compromised and conflicted and it is that acceptance
that we follow, like lemmings, that will be our
hard fate to our doom. as you know, it starts with the
"idea", the concept, money; that bit of leverage
that moves the man in the world or moves the man
to recreate the world or moves the man off the world,
into the heavens?
Grant McLennan - Ice In Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaiUtwBAeoQ
It's all about power & control; and given the new cultural Marxist policy of not mentioning the tribe on this site, might I add this has nothing to do with the tribe as can be evidenced by the purely incidental connection to Israel.
The perception of power and control. (As Ben will also soon find out if he ceases Q-easing...)
Doesn't anyone here besides me find it utterly astounding that they have the technology and budget to intercept every communication known to man but are rendered useless in defending the citizens of their country against an attack in Boston perpetrated by suspects the Russians had even gone to the lengths of warning them about?...
This is just soooo fucked up... we are descending very quickly into a very dark place.
What are the chances that those in control of these intellegence agencies (or private companies) will NOT feel inclined to use this information to blackmail or buy every politician or judge etc. out there for their own personal gain?
No more tranny porn web sites for me President Choomwagon...
Everybody starting to feel nice and safe now?
great post zero
Thanks Davey... I ran out of drugs again...
;)
The perception of power and control.
That's exactly right. It's a virtual panopticon that supresses resistance before it ever forms by detering it due to a fear of surveillance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
men with nothing to lose have everything to gain.
When the perception of fear of surviellance turns to the reality of surveillance you have changed the fearful to the fearless.
So true but terribly sad that desperation is necessary before good men will do what is necessary to stop evil.
Indeed, I asked this same question myself about the brothers, Speedbump and Deckstain. If they got their plans from the Intertubes, and hung out in New Bedford with idiots driving stolen cars with "Terrorista 1" license plates, how is it that the Craft contractors were not able to prevent the Marathon bombings? They were there, we know, and apparently with detectors in case the device was "dirty". Is our intelligence apparatus now so craven that they are allowing incidents to go forward to gain even more data? It is like they treat citizens as bugs in a jar, and hey, know that you are now living in a world where it is evil vs evil. If you don't see one in the mirror, then there are no good guys anymore...
Stopping terrorists. Is the excuse, but not the goal.
More data and access to it as well to be sure in addition to the more obvious and mundane need of this parasitic security state apparatus... namely...
CASH!!!
Just think of any successful bombings as an essential component of a successful fundraising campaign.
Imagine a protest by flooding the pipes with counter-intel. Have all Gen Xers text message "Boom boom chicka boom boom" and watch bitches melt.
They wouldn't even break a sweat.
3/4 of worldwide email volume is already SPAM, and even the private sector has resources to to analyze the text and discard the waste.
If you want to overwhelm State resources, you need to increase their workload exponentially, and inhibit their ability to increase resources proportionality.
The real answer is very simple. about 2% of the population are genetically defective socio/psychopaths. They are crazy people, who are obsessed with control and destruction. Societies collapse because this segment of the population eventually figures out how to get control. They appear normal in practically every way, and are often very intelligent. Their major flaw is that they have no feelings. The smart ones figure this out and learn how to mask their problem so that they appear normal.
All the other arguments about what is going on are just so much window dressing on this fact. Do some research on this subject and you will understand what is happening.
"... They are crazy people, who are obsessed with control and destruction..."
They are not crazy, they are sick. Their seeming power- and control-seeking behavior are symptoms. They are not obsessed with those behaviors - it's basically all they have. Destruction is not an intent or goal of any kind. It may be a consequence of their power- and control-seeking actions, but serves no purpose in and of itself. They want to own things and people, not destroy them.
"...Societies collapse because this segment of the population eventually figures out how to get control..."
I disagree. Psychopathy is an infectious but cureable social disease, not a permanent 'condition'. Some small percentage of the population may be genetically predisposed to it, but that 2% or whatever - by themselves - cannot possibly control the other 98%. You need a more substantial part of the population to actively participate to varying degrees in their own control no matter what the cause. Not all of them by a long shot - not even a majority - but way more than 2% in a realistic, chronic scenario.
And I would say there is little calculus on the part of psychopaths to figure out any kind of grand control schemes. They are power- and control-seeking because that's part of psychopathy by definition. Everything they do is to that end. They don't need to reason, moralize or figure out anything first. They don't even need to recruit help - other less powerful psychopaths or the newly-infected are drawn to them like moths to a flame.
Psychopathy is, for the most part, a social disease, not a biological one. Organizations can succumb to psycopathic infections just like people. Put a psychopath in any leadership position of an organization and both the other leaders and organizations themselves are subject to becoming psychopathic. Healthy people have little chance of success in leadership roles inside a psychopathic organization. You're either with them or against them. Psychopaths always need 'little people' to do the day-to-day work in any organization. Little people are irrelevant otherwise. They don't need to be recruited or swayed - they simply need to obey.
"...They appear normal in practically every way, and are often very intelligent. Their major flaw is that they have no feelings...."
I would also contend that psychopaths most certainly have feelings. In fact, very powerful ones that drive them to their odd behaviors: power- and control-seeking accompanied by unbounded paranoia of losing either one. What they don't have is any degree of empathy. They either do not have or successfully repressed any capability to experience or understand others feelings - especially loss, pain and suffering.
"...The smart ones figure this out and learn how to mask their problem so that they appear normal..."
Psychopaths, even dumb ones, mimic emotional expressions of healthy people to gain their trust. The underlying purpose isn't to 'mask their problem' but to position themselves to exploit power and control opportunities. Gaming people and gaming the system for their personal benefit is normal to them. They don't understand anything else.
Lobaczerski is a good read on psychopathy. We all have an instinctive immunity to pathocratic influence at an individual and group level. No pills or invisible man assistance is required - it's in your DNA. Temporarily distracting people from their own immunity does not magically make psychopathy a terminal disease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponerology
Political Ponerology {BBS} (available via bittorrent)
The only part I disagree with you about, is that psychopathy is curable. I don't think so. Most psycholigists and psychiatrists don't think so. Most therapists find out later, when they think they have cured one of these guys, that they were being played. Not curable.
Not curable but easily controlable in a free society, as there is no central authority for psychopaths to flock to and thus no way for them to become sociopaths. It's only when a territorial monopoly on the use of force is created that such authority comes to be, and generalized sociopathy becomes the norm.
It's the nature of the beast, which is why it must be eradicated.
Fortunately, the genie is out of the bottle — the Internet, crypto-currencies, exponential technological growth in general — and there's no putting it back in, its empowerment of the individual assuring that the ugly era of the state is coming to an end.
Until then, the state can kiss my ass.
sanely say somethibg utterly insane...man that guy's smart and rational. passionately say something sane...man that guy's nuts so what he's saying must be too...benn there...now what?
"The real answer is very simple. about 2% of the population are genetically defective socio/psychopaths."
I think you got that backwards. its 98% are social/psychopaths. Only about 2% of the population is sane.
In gun control the operative word is not guns - you can start there.
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Redacted by executive order
Q: Obviously they both do the same things to different targets. The NSA targets us and Anonymous targets them. But what exactly does Anonymous not do that the NSA does do?
A: Bullshit about what it is doing.
Funny thing is that anyone could do some hacking and call themselves anonymous. The CIA/FBI are probably taking advantage of that.
Combining the people who didn't trust Bush and the ones who don't trust Obama adds up to a sizable part of the citizenry. But even if all the critics were proved wrong, even if the CIA, NSA, FBI, and every other branch of the federal government had been improbably filled, top to bottom, with incorruptible patriots constitutionally incapable of wrongdoing, this would still be so: The American people have no idea who the president will be in 2017. Nor do we know who'll sit on key Senate oversight committees, who will head the various national-security agencies, or whether the moral character of the people doing so, individually or in aggregate, will more closely resemble George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Yoo, or Vladimir Putin.
What we know is that the people in charge will possess the capacity to be tyrants -- to use power oppressively and unjustly -- to a degree that Americans in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000 could've scarcely imagined. To an increasing degree, we're counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils. Bush and Obama have built infrastructure any devil would lust after. Behold the items on an aspiring tyrant's checklist that they've provided their successors:
Even if you think Bush and Obama exercised those extraordinary powers responsibly, what makes you think every president would? How can anyone fail to see the huge potential for abuses?
NOBODY knows who will be voted in 2017.
Read more at :-
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/all-the-infrastructure-a-tyrant-would-need-courtesy-of-bush-and-obama/276635/
Read more on the NSA's Mass Surveillance programs and Prism at :-
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/verizon-revelations-tom-clements.html
It's too late.....
500k-1M targets? That's quite a list.
"...But what exactly does Anonymous not do that the NSA does do?..."
Scale well to an insatiable consumer?
The NSA records every electronic communication that the Federal Family deems of interest - forever. The Federal Family and alphabet agencies voracious appatite for personal information is insatiable - their needs outweigh any constitution by their own perverse 'legal' declaration, so they are untouchable through the legal or political process.
Anonymous grabs what scraps they can for consumption by the little people. Important and interesting, but nothing that ever seems to get the sheeple too riled up. Anything that hints of 'your government is evil' quickly kills the people's appetite.
Thus: Anonymous locates hard-to-find spinach in order to feed a starving, but child-like malnourished populace. The NSA pushes data cocaine to our crack-head Federal masters.
naivete of whistleblowers....
"Men always lie" and I am a man.