Archive for June 13th, 2013
“Foreign” Intelligence Surveillance services are tapping you: How legit and legal?
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 13, 2013
You are being tapped: How legit and legal?
Is it big news, a surprising news to you? Being tapped, calls, internet, social platform…. Is this urge of tapping your every move and actions by governments and multinational companies meant to safeguard your security and safety?
Amnesty et al. v. Clapper: FISA Amendments Act Challenge posted this June 6, 2013:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted by Congress after the abuses of the 1960s and 70s, regulates the government’s conduct of intelligence surveillance inside the United States.
This Act generally requires the government to seek warrants before monitoring Americans’ communications.
In 2001, however, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to launch a warrantless wiretapping program.
And in 2008, Congress ratified and expanded that program, giving the NSA almost unchecked power to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and emails. In February 2013, the Supreme Court dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the law.
Less than an hour after President Bush signed the 2008 amendments, the ACLU filed its lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality.
The case, Amnesty v. Clapper, was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of attorneys and human rights, labor, legal and media organizations whose work requires them to engage in sensitive and sometimes privileged telephone and e-mail communications with individuals located outside the United States.
In 2009, a judge in New York dismissed the suit on the grounds that the ACLU’s clients couldn’t prove that their communications would be monitored under the new law.
A federal appeals court reversed that ruling in 2011 and the Obama administration appealed the issue to the Supreme Court, which heard oral argument in October 2012.
In a 5-4 ruling handed down on February 26, 2013, the Supreme Court held the ACLU plaintiffs don’t have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping program.
You can view the court filings here.
Uncrunched posted this June 6, 2013 on WordPress.com: Triangulating On Truth – The Totalitarian State
The Guardian breaks a big story yesterday – a court document authorizing the FBI and NSA to secretly collect customer phone records. All of them, for all Verizon customers.
Then today the Washington Post breaks an even bigger story – a leaked presentation stating that the NSA is “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies” to collect information on users. The project is code-named PRISM.
These are the huge repositories of user information from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. Dropbox, we’re told, is “coming soon.” Twitter is noticeably absent.
And the counter stories – most of the companies mentioned in the NSA presentation have denied that the NSA has access to their servers.
And people are pointing out that the Verizon order doesn’t include actual phone conversations, just the metadata around those conversations.
On the WP story, that means one of these things must be true:
1. The NSA presentation is fake and the Washington Post got duped, or
2. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. are lying, or
3. The presentation is real, and the companies are carefully drafting responses so that they aren’t technically lying.
I believe the third option above is truth.
The denials are all worded too similarly and too specifically:
Comparing denials from tech companies, a clear pattern emerges:
Apple denied ever hearing of the program and notes they “do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order;”
Facebook claimed they “do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers;”
Google said it “does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data”; And
Yahoo said they “do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.”
Most also note that they only release user information as the law compels them to.
How else could these companies be supplying the data?
Easy, by simply sending a copy of all data to the NSA. Verizon’s court order, for example, required that they send call data daily.
The companies sending the data have both immunity from prosecution and are also prohibited from disclosing that the NSA has requested or received the data.
The truth of what’s going on becomes obvious.
The U.S. government is compelling companies to turn over all personal information of users to the NSA. They have immunity for this, and they are absolutely prohibited from admitting it.
The result is a massive NSA database that includes information about everything we do online, and everything we do offline that has any online ghost (checkins, photos, etc.).
If twenty years from now the government wants to listen to my phone calls from today, they’ll be able to, because they’re all being stored.
Or see who I voted for, or who I associate with.
A simple AI can parse all this and profile me. And a hostile government, intent on attacking political enemies, can target me (or anyone).
If you missed this story from May read it now. Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente says that the U.S. government already has the ability to listen to past phone calls:
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
That’s why Mathew Ingram is totally correct when he says that we desperately need “a stateless repository for leaks” (such as WikiLeaks) to have any chance of fighting back.
But what I would like to see right now is for people at these internet companies to stand up and say the truth, all of it, about their dealings with the NSA.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the CEOs or lower level employees.
It can be anonymous or on the record. Unless that Washington Post presentation is a fraud, then a lot of people in Silicon Valley know what’s going on, or parts of what’s going on. They have a duty to stand up to the government, and their employers, and tell the world the truth.
Because right now it certainly looks to me like we’re living in a totalitarian state. And the amount of control that state has over all of us, through intimidation and fear, will only grow over time.
Now is the time to stand up and talk, and be a hero.
Or not, and be complicit.
For my part, I don’t give a damn that Senator Feinstein and others in our government say that this is “called protecting America.”
It doesn’t, it’s Orwellian and it kills liberty and freedom on a scale never seen before. It’s not a way to stop terrorism. It IS terrorism.
The courts are allowing this. The government loves this. The only ones left to oppose it are us.
A few details on my countless Part-Time jobs
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 13, 2013
A few details on my countless Part-Time jobs
Readers have stumbled on my auto-biographic section https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/introspectionpart-time-jobs-continue-38/ and I decided to reminisce on a few of them, my countless Part-time jobs.
I recall in 1978, I landed a lunch waiter job at a small eatery serving Greek food for the White-Collar employees of nearby companies in Downtown Houston, and at a mall.
It was a hectic 45 minutes job, satisfying clients with “shawarma-kind” sandwiches of sliced cow meat and sesame sauce stuffed with a few slices of green vegetables of lettuce and tomatoes… A few clients ordered the Greek salad dish with cubes of “goat cheese”, and lettuce and tomatoes…
The eaters could order double martinis from the nearby bar, but the effects of alcohol might have shown at work, and never on the magnitude of the tips.
The hourly wages were insignificant, less than $2 on the ground that the tips will make us rich beyond belief. And we had to share the tips. Cleaning our black trousers, white shirts and black bow tie were not reimbursed, and neither the transportation costs back and forth for just a couple of hours work.
I recall we could come earlier and enjoy one of these standard sandwiches, in order to be fit and ready for the adventure that never stopped for a second.
I recall working as plunger at a Mexican eatery. My hands were swimming deep in a morass of cheese, oil, pieces of meat, and all kinds of stuff. Slipping on the greasy kitchen floor was pretty common, and we were not ordered to wear head gears or knee and elbow safety cushioned attachments… No tips in these part-time and hectic jobs, just half a dollar more per hour, or most probably half a dollar less than standard minimum wages…
Working at fast food multinationals was no improvement: You were allowed 20 minutes break after over 2 full hours of non-stop work: serving, mopping floor, cleaning, preparing the food, deep frying potatoes, slicing vegetables… at minimum wages that never increased for years in order to encourage business development and benefit from high turn-over economic strategies…
One of the fast food franchises I worked for was Roy Rogers, and in Houston. Is this franchise still alive? My shift was from 6 to midnight and we were to clean up the entire establishment before closing. We did eat plenty of sliced meat and fried potatoes, and gained weight.
Another job was a waiter at a Lebanese restaurant, owned by two Druze brothers: Shawarma, falafel, humos….I still have the T-shirt with the immutable Cedar tree printed on it. The T-shirt is too tight on me now, even though I have lost plenty of weight. This job was also in Huston and at the same period…
I was “young”, 28 of age, a fresh graduate MS in Industrial Engineering, and ready for all kinds of experiences, acquiring “talents”, eager for surprises and adventures.
I believe I worked in all these part-time jobs, at minimum wages, after I was fired from an “engineering” job at a company that manufactured blowers and cranes
I was to “cost-estimate” the parts that went into the finished product, in a tree-like chart, so the manager would be able to figure out the trend in cost increases, and more likely for tax purposes, or just to give the impression that this company is highly serious…
I was supposed to place calls to a center for the daily cost of every bolt, screw and small elements…that were used in the parts.
I figured out “how to estimate” the cost of these pieces without calling, just adding 5% every couple of weeks… As if the end product price tag depended that much on these cost-estimated parts…
This semi professional job was more unnerving than the action-packed part-time jobs: I was allocated a small room, humid and dim, inside and right above the fabrication floor. Doing standard cost-estimation additions and subtraction… That didn’t mean much to me or to anyone else…
And this sprawling city of Houston had no public transportation, and my old car wouldn’t start, or stopped on my way to “work” and was late to “work” and spent my bi-weekly checks on repairing the car…
I couldn’t enjoy the fresh air and just watched the workers down floor, and smoking was my excuse to get out of my “chamber”, a job Dickens described of these accountants in England banks in the 18th century…
Adonis Diaries 