Hey FOLKS ??? The NAZI'S aren't over there ? ..we brought um over here! ...Papers,Papers! ...Papers Please !!! http://endthelie.com/2012/12/13/attorney-general-secretly-gave-government-power-to-create-store-dossiers-on-innocent-americans/#axzz2FG7ADUXI
It is now being reported that U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder secretly gave the U.S. government the authority to create and store
dossiers on innocent Americans not suspected of committing any crime, without
any debate or approval from lawmakers.
Attorney General secretly gave government power to
create, store dossiers on innocent Americans
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the
Lie
It is now being reported that U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder secretly gave the U.S. government the authority to create and store
dossiers on innocent Americans not suspected of committing any crime, without
any debate or approval from lawmakers.
This is hardly surprising since
Holder gave the same entity, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) the ability to store the personal
information of Americans for up to five years, even without so much
as a suspicion of the individual being involved in criminal activity of any
kind.
Furthermore, this is the same
Attorney General who claimed that secret reviews of classified
evidence count as due process when deciding if the executive branch can assassinate Americans allegedly
involved in terrorist activity.
While in days past, the NCTC could
not store data compiled on U.S. citizens unless they were at least suspected of
some terrorist activity or were otherwise relevant to an ongoing terrorism
investigation, they not only can collect and store massive databases of private
information but also “trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of
behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation,”
according to Wired’s Threat Level.
It just continues to get worse, if
such a thing is even possible. Holder now instituted changes that allow
databases filled with U.S. citizens’ private information to be shared with
foreign governments for their analysis as well.
Of course, this is all done under
the guise of fighting terrorism, something which is patently absurd given that
Americans are included in the databases even when they do not have the most
tenuous of links to terrorism.
According to one former senior White
House official quoted by the Wall Street Journal,
the new changes are “breathtaking in scope.” This did not, however, stop
counterterrorism officials from attempting to downplay the seriousness of this
new development, which was first reported by the Journal.
“The guidelines provide rigorous
oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow
purposes,” claimed Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
These types of claims are regularly
made, but one must realize that they are likely without much merit seeing as the Obama administration didn’t even
have formal drone guidelines while they were killing a 16-year-old American and countless others abroad
with unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Currently, the NCTC’s Terrorist
Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database houses data on over 500,000
people either suspected of terrorist activity or links to terrorism which
includes “friends and families of suspects, and is the basis for the FBI’s
terrorist watchlist,” according to Threat Level.
However, the new rules will likely
make this database even larger since the NCTC can now gather any and all
information they claim is “reasonably believed” to contain “terrorism
information.”
This could include – and if the
government’s history is any indicator, likely will – personal information
ranging from financial forms submitted by individuals attempting to get
federally-backed mortgages to health records of individuals who sought out
mental or physical healthcare at government-run medical facilities, such as
Veterans Administration hospitals.
Similar proposals but forth by the
Bush administration in the past were shot down after a great deal of outcry,
but it seems that the Obama administration is somehow immune to this type of
scrutiny and condemnation.
Threat Level cites the Pentagon’s
Total Information Awareness program which, in 2002, “proposed to scrutinize
both government and private databases, but public outrage killed the program in
essence, though not in spirit.”
“Although Congress de-funded the
program in 2003, the NSA continued to collect and sift through immense amounts
of data about who Americans spoke with, where they traveled and how they spent
their money,” Threat Level adds.
While the Federal Privacy Act
prohibits government entities from sharing private data for any purpose other
than that for which it was originally obtained, this is actually only in
principle.
In reality, government agencies
regularly avoid this restriction “by posting a notice in the Federal Register,
providing justification for the data request. Such notices are rarely seen or
contested, however,” according to Threat Level.
It seems that the justification
being used in an attempt to make this slightly more palatable to the public is
the 2009 case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, better known as the underwear
bomber.
However, we now know that this case
– like another underwear bombing plot earlier
this year along with countless other cases – was
intimately linked to the government
itself.
While they claim that systems like
that now implemented in the NCTC are necessary because “Abdulmutallab wasn’t on
the FBI watchlist, but the NCTC had received tips about him, and yet failed to
search other government databases to connect dots that might have helped
prevent him from boarding the plane,” we now know that his father made several
calls about his son, all of which were apparently ignored.
Furthermore, eyewitness testimony
presented in court and in media reports (see TV news
report on the subject here) by practicing lawyer Kurt Haskell
makes the entire government narrative look dubious at best.
As Haskell stated in court, “I
became further saddened from this case, when Patrick Kennedy of the State
Department during Congressional hearings, admitted that Umar was a known
terrorist, was being followed, and the U.S. allowed him into the U.S. so that
it could catch Umar’s accomplices.”
It just got worse when Haskell
noted, “Michael Leiter of the National Counter terrorism Center admitted during
these same hearings that intentionally letting terrorists into the U.S. was a
frequent practice of the U.S. Government.”
So, is this something that should be
remedied by giving the government even more power over the private information
of Americans? I see no reason to believe that would help anything at all.
The NCTC claims that their
counterterrorism activities were hindered because they “couldn’t look through
the databases trolling for general ‘patterns,’” according to the Journal.
While former Department of Homeland
Security Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan attempted to defend the
rights of Americans by arguing that the new rules were a “sea change in the way
that the government interacts with the general public,” according to the ABA Journal.
This led to the conclusion that, as
Threat Level put it, “every interaction a citizen would have with the
government in the future would be ruled by the underlying question, is that
person a terrorist?” Callahan ended up losing her battle and subsequently left
her position after which she entered private practice.
So are these new powers necessary or
justifiable? I seriously doubt it. Let us know what you think in the comments
section of this post.
Did I forget anything or miss any
errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or
perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to
contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips,
questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your
fancy.
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