U.S. gives big, secret push to Internet surveillance

Justice Department agreed to issue "2511 letters" immunizing AT&T and other companies participating in a cybersecurity program from criminal prosecution under the Wiretap Act, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

by Declan McCullagh

April 24, 2013 8:59 AM PDT http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57581161-38/u.s-gives-big-secret-push-to-internet-surveillance/

NSA director Keith Alexander, shown here in a file photo, who's also the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.
The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.
"The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained over 1,000 pages of internal government documents and provided them to CNET this week. "Alarm bells should be going off."
Those documents show the National Security Agency and the Defense Department were deeply involved in pressing for the secret legal authorization, with NSA director Keith Alexander participating in some of the discussions personally. Despite initial reservations, including from industry participants, Justice Department attorneys eventually signed off on the project.
The Justice Department agreed to grant legal immunity to the participating network providers in the form of what participants in the confidential discussions refer to as "2511 letters," a reference to the Wiretap Act codified at 18 USC 2511 in the federal statute books.
The Wiretap Act limits the ability of Internet providers to eavesdrop on network traffic except when monitoring is a "necessary incident" to providing the service or it takes place with a user's "lawful consent." An industry representative told CNET the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It's not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department.
In 2011, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn publicly disclosed the existence of the original project, called the DIB Cyber Pilot, which used login banners to inform network users that monitoring was taking place. In May 2012, the pilot was turned into an ongoing program -- broader but still voluntary -- by the name of Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot, with the Department of Homeland Security becoming involved for the first time. It was renamed again to Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program in January, and is currently being expanded to all types of companies operating critical infrastructure.
The NSA and DOJ declined to comment. Homeland Security spokesman Sy Lee sent CNET a statement saying:

DHS is committed to supporting the public's privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Accordingly, the department has implemented strong privacy and civil rights and civil liberties standards into all its cybersecurity programs and initiatives from the outset, including the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program. In order to protect privacy while safeguarding and securing cyberspace, DHS institutes layered privacy responsibilities throughout the department, embeds fair practice principles into cybersecurity programs and privacy compliance efforts, and fosters collaboration with cybersecurity partners.

Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security official and founder of Red Branch Consulting, compared the NSA and DOD asking the Justice Department for 2511 letters to the CIA asking the Justice Department for the so-called torture memos a decade ago. (They were written by Justice Department official John Yoo, who reached the controversial conclusion that waterboarding was not torture.)
"If you think of it poorly, it's a CYA function," Rosenzweig says. "If you think well of it, it's an effort to secure advance authorization for an action that may not be clearly legal."
A report (PDF) published last month by the Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan arm of Congress, says the executive branch likely does not have the legal authority to authorize more widespread monitoring of communications unless Congress rewrites the law. "Such an executive action would contravene current federal laws protecting electronic communications," the report says.

President Barack Obama leaving a National Security Agency Christmas party held across the street from the White House at the Blair House last December.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Because it overrides all federal and state privacy laws, including the Wiretap Act, legislation called CISPA would formally authorize the program without the government resorting to 2511 letters. In other words, if CISPA, which the U.S. House of Representatives approved last week, becomes law, any data-sharing program would be placed on a solid legal footing. AT&T, Verizon, and wireless and cable providers have all written letters endorsing CISPA.
Around the time that CISPA was originally introduced in late 2011, NSA, DOD, and DHS officials were actively meeting with the aides on the House Intelligence committee who drafted the legislation, the internal documents show. The purpose of the meeting, one e-mail shows, was to brief committee aides on "cyber defense efforts." In addition, Ryan Gillis, a director in DHS's Office of Legislative Affairs, sent an e-mail to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee, discussing the pilot program around the same time.
AT&T and CenturyLink are currently the only two providers that have been publicly announced as participating in the program. Other companies have signed a memorandum of agreement with DHS to join, and are currently in the process of obtaining security certification, said a government official, who declined to name those companies or be identified by name.
Approval of the 2511 letters came after concerns from within the Justice Department and from industry. An internal e-mail thread among senior Defense Department, Homeland Security, and Justice Department officials in 2011, including associate deputy attorney general James Baker, outlines some of the obstacles:

[The program] has two key barriers to a start. First, the ISPs will likely request 2511 letters, so DoJ's provision of 3 2511 letters (and the review of DIB company banners as part of that) is one time requirement. DoJ will provide a timeline for that. Second, all participating DIB companies would be required to change their banners to reference government monitoring. All have expressed serious reservations with doing so, including the three CEOs [the deputy secretary of defense] discussed this with. The companies have informally told us that changing the banners in this manner could take months.

Another e-mail message from a Justice Department attorney wondered: "Will the program cover all parts of the company network -- including say day care centers (as mentioned as a question in a [deputies committee meeting]) and what are the policy implications of this?" The deputies committee includes the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy director of national intelligence, the deputy attorney general, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"These agencies are clearly seeking authority to receive a large amount of information, including personal information, from private Internet networks," says EPIC staff attorney Amie Stepanovich, who filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security in March 2012 seeking documents relating to the program under the Freedom of Information Act. "If this program was broadly deployed, it would raise serious questions about government cybersecurity practices."
In January, the Department of Homeland Security's privacy office published a privacy analysis (PDF) of the program saying that users of the networks of companies participating in the program will see "an electronic login banner [saying] information and data on the network may be monitored or disclosed to third parties, and/or that the network users' communications on the network are not private."
An internal Defense Department presentation cites as possible legal authority a classified presidential directive called NSPD 54 that President Bush signed in January 2008. Obama's own executive order, signed in February 2013, says Homeland Security must establish procedures to expand the data-sharing program "to all critical infrastructure sectors" by mid-June. Those are defined as any companies providing services that, if disrupted, would harm national economic security or "national public health or safety."
Those could be very broad categories, says Rosenzweig, author of a new book called "Cyber War," which discusses the legality of more widespread monitoring of Internet communications.
"I think there's a great deal of discretion," Rosenzweig says. "I could make a case for the criticality of several meat packing plants in Kansas. The disruption of the meat rendering facilities in Kansas would be very disruptive to the meat-eating habits of Americans."

Topics:

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Regulation,

Legislation,

Legal

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william lynn,

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Is Congress Trying to Exempt Itself From Obamacare? The Interesting Details

Apr. 25, 2013 11:05am Becket Adams

Getty Images.

Members of Congress are supposedly engaged in “high-level” discussions about exempting themselves and their aides from participating in the Affordable Care Act (i.e. “Obamacare”), according to POLITICO.

Or are they?

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein says this isn’t the case. But let’s look at both sides of this story.

Here’s what POLITICO reported:

Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

[…]

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.

One source told POLITICO: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

The reaction to the report has been unpleasant (to say the least).

“If the Republican Party leadership in Congress goes along with this ride, there will need to be a new third party that challenges both the GOP and Democrats,” writes Red State’s Erick Erickson.

“There’s a word for this in the English language: ‘Corruption,’” National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke said in a tweet.

“If congress exempts itself from Obamacare it must give every American the right to have the same exemption. Anything less is an outrage,” Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tweeted.

“And now Washington truly becomes a satiric novel,” NRO’s Jonah Goldberg chimed in.

Enter Ezra Klein.

“There’s no effort to ‘exempt’ Congress from Obamacare. No matter how this shakes out, Congress will have to follow the law, just like everyone else does,” he writes. “Based on conversations I’ve had with a number of the staffs involved in these talks, the actual issue here is far less interesting, and far less explosive, than an exemption.”

See, according to Klein, all this Congressional exemption talk stems from an amendment proposed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during the 2010 “Obamacare” debates. The amendment, supposedly designed to back Democrats into an uncomfortable corner, forces members of Congress and their aides into the exchanges. However, instead of balking at the proposal, Democrats lovingly embraced it and it ended up in the final law.

Here’s the amendment as it appears in the health care bill:

The only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are — (I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or (II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).

Klein says this is highly unusual.

“Large employers — defined in the law as employers with more than 100 employees — aren’t allowed onto the insurance exchanges until 2017,” he notes, “and only then if a state makes an affirmative decision to let them in.”

“But the federal government is the largest employer in the country. So Grassley’s amendment means that the largest employer in the country is required to put some of its employees — the ones working for Congress — on the exchanges,” he adds. “But the exchanges don’t have any procedures for handling premium contributions for large employers.”

Associated Press.

And this, according to the WaPo’s wonk, is where we run into problems. The amendment was never supposed to pass and was instead supposed to force Democrats into an awkward position. Instead they said, “Okay,” it passed, and now no one knows what to do with it.

“It’s not clear that the federal government has the authority to pay for congressional staffers on the exchanges, the way it pays for them now in the federal benefits program,” he writes.

“The reason is that the Office of Personnel Management — which is the agency that actually manages the federal government’s benefits — hasn’t ruled on their interpretation of the law,” he adds.

In short, the report’s author swears, “no one is discussing ‘exempting’ congressional staffers from Obamacare.”

Rather, he continues, they are “discussing creating some method through which the federal government can keep making its current contribution to the health insurance of congressional staffers.”

But business journalist Megan McArdle says the Klein analysis misses the mark.

“First, this is, in fact, about exempting themselves from Obamacare,” she writes. “This is a provision of Obamacare. It is in the bill. You may think that it shouldn’t be in the bill, or that it shouldn’t be in the bill in the way that it’s written.”

“But — assuming that these discussions are actually happening — Congress is considering exempting itself from the one provision of the bill that actually directly affects Congress,” she adds. “As far as they’re concerned, this is exempting themselves from Obamacare; the rest of the bill affects Hill staffers only indirectly.”

So who’s in right? Well, at this point, it’s unclear. It’s Klein’s sources versus POLITICO’s sources.

Of course, there’s this from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio):

We're not sneaking any language into bills to solve Dems' #hcr problem. The solution to this & other ObamaCare nightmares is #fullrepeal.

about 6 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SpeakerBoehner

Speaker John Boehner

And there’s this from the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein:

Reid aide: "There are not now, have never been, nor will there ever be any discussions about exempting members" or aides from Obamacare

about 3 hours ago via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@samsteinhp

Sam Stein

Still, regardless of who is telling the truth, this episode is just another reminder that the health care law is a complex, headache-inducing labyrinth of unintelligible legalese that even Congress can’t figure out.                                                                    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/25/is-congress-trying-to-exempt-itself-from-obamacare/

Who’s ready for full implementation in 2014?

Consensus Shredded; Major Media Up Against The Wall

Thursday, 25 April 2013 05:52 John Rappoport

This article was written by John Rappoport and originally published at Activist Post
Television news is shriveling. And it’s under attack from a new breed. You can call them counter-programmers, video freaks, whatever.

But they’re winning.

Every dollar and inch of technology the networks employ move toward an irrefutable image on the screen. “Here it is. Look.”

And counter-programmers say, “Look again. See those guys in the yellow jackets standing right near the bomb when it goes off? They don’t move at all. They’re fine.”

There is something very powerful in that response, because people are addicted to images. When the image you’re watching blows up, because somebody forces you to see something new, you start to wake up and effect a cure, even if you don’t want to.

Image-addiction is sacred to people.

No one goes to the movies and comes out saying, “You know, images don’t really add up to anything. It’s a waste of time.”

No one walks into the Sistine Chapel, looks at Michelangelo’s ceiling, and says, “Why did they bother? They could have just written down a message to explain what the ceiling means.”

No one asks, “Why did they have the president sit there in the Oval Office and address the nation? He could have written a statement or talked on radio.”

Image.

Unbeatable.

So when major media cover a monster of the story, on television, they’re producing images by the ton, day after day, and the anchors are telling us what they add up to, and most viewers soak it all in and accept the force of it as irresistible truth.
If television presents Aurora, Sandy Hook, Boston, and if it pours thousands of impact images at us and tells us what they mean, what are the chances television will, upon learning new facts, reverse course?

What are the odds?

Virtually zero.

Of course, the networks are unwilling to admit mistakes or lies. But at another level, this is television’s unwillingness to injure the medium itself and what it does.

“We showed you all those images and we burned them into your brains, to program you, and now we’re going to say that was an illusion?”

Never happens.
The people who own and run television never turn around, on a huge story, and endanger their medium by admitting that the images were deceptions. Because they’re drug dealers, and their drug is Image.

If the Constitution were written today, people would want to watch it being done, in the room in Philadelphia. They’d want to watch the men at work. They’d want to make up their minds about the Constitution as they would any other television show.

“Well, today, amid long-winded arguments about the proposed Bill of Rights, audience share dropped eight points.”

Why does Obama take the Sandy Hook parents around with him, as he promotes his gun agenda? So audiences can hear them speak? So audiences can see them speak.

Why do the networks lay on those interminable news-talk programs, with hosts and guests? Why don’t they consign them to radio? Because people want to see the participants talk.

Image.

“Here, let’s sit down and watch these six people talk. Let’s see what they look like when they talk.”

“I love watching Chris Matthews talk.”

Now, when a person gets on (Internet) TV and blows up major media and exposes it and tears it from stem to stern, that’s different. That’s counter-programming. People start to come out of a dream-state and realize they’re finally watching something they’ve been longing for:

“Here’s a television image. See it? It’s a lie. It’s not what you think it is. Let’s do this in slow motion, one frame at a time. Look at the corner over there. Do you see the yellow glare suddenly appearing at the top of the screen? Just beyond the plume of smoke? At the top left? That yellow glare isn’t connected to the burning fertilizer factory in the center of the screen. It’s separate! It’s coming in from the left. And then, less than a second later, the whole building explodes! See it? So what was that glare at the top left? Think about it. Consider the possibilities. For example, the burning building wouldn’t have blown up all on its own…something came in from the left and blew it up…”

Taking an image apart.

It’s the beginning of the end of television.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now, 24/7, wherever videos are posted on the Net. The assault is well underway.

“Look at that gas mask on the ground behind the Aurora theater. Who does it belong to? Was a second shooter wearing it? And there on the pavement, is that a trail of blood leading into the theater?”

Don’t worry about the fact that some of these counter-programmers are making mistakes or unwarranted leaps of judgment. The overall force is taking down television.

Impaling it on its own sword: image.

Television desperately needs events like Aurora, Sandy Hook, and Boston. When the big tragedies hit, and the elite anchors go on the road and show up in the towns where the blood is spilling and the people are in a state of extreme shock, the television audience at home gets another deep injection of mass mind control, through image-insertion.

But now, within days, even hours, counter-programmers are striking back, by playing network broadcast footage and pointing out flaws and contradictions and mistakes and deceptions, and posting these findings.

“You thought image was the end-all and be-all. All right, look at this!”

Crash a picture, take it apart, re-explain it, and you make people think.
This is the formula that’s burying television.

It’s exactly what surrealists did a hundred years ago. Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Alfred Jarry, Dali. But today, it’s happening to the news, to television. Right now. Story by story. For all to see.

Among many other reasons, this is why we’re witnessing the effort to censor and control the Internet. The news networks want to assert a propriety of copyright on their footage and punish those who use it against them.

Backed by billions of dollars, Brian Williams and Scott Pelley and Diane Sawyer say this and show that, and one guy in Ohio says NO and I’LL PROVE IT TO YOU WITH YOUR OWN IMAGES.

The hounds are loose.

These hounds are sitting in rooms making the networks and the greatest law-enforcement agencies in the world look like cheap hawkers at carnivals.

Frame by frame.

Umberto Eco, in 1979, wrote: “A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection—not an invitation for hypnosis.”

No, Umberto, there was never any chance of that happening. Not as an official program of the culture. Instead, we have a new breed now. And they’re buzzsawing those images, splitting them open.

Big newspapers have so-called television critics who size up shows and comment on them. The Internet has television critics who magnify news footage and point to what nobody saw in it.

“Watch this Sandy Hook father who just lost his child come to the podium to speak. Watch. See him smiling and laughing? Watch it again. Here it is. What do you make of that? Keep looking. See him get into character all of a sudden? See him make himself grieve right there? Are you kidding? What’s really going on here?”

“See the puff of smoke from the first bomb in Boston? It goes straight up. Not out into the street. See those people near the explosion? Do they look bothered by it in any way? They’re just standing there.”

These counter-programmers are cracking people’s junk-image-addiction by showing them a “higher order” of those images.

Remember Wag the Dog, that splendid movie about inventing a fictitious war in order to get a president re-elected? The president had to have a war. He was sagging in the polls. So the war was put on television.

But there’s another layer to the story. Television needed the fake war, too. It always needs staged events. Without them it would shrivel and die.

Except the events have to look exactly like “real life.”

When counter-programmers get busy, they reveal the staging, and the whole business falls to pieces.

“Hooked? Do you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t turn on the TV set? Sign up for our ten-day cure. We’ll turn you into a counter-programmer. We’ll take you through our wake-up course in image analysis, and you’ll come out the other side as a meta-wizard, ready to take on the world of false news.”

To say this is corrosive to network television news is a vast understatement. It’s a Waterloo.

Against the citizen video-analysts, television would have only one solution: stop broadcasting footage.

Here is a fragment from a short story I wrote a few days after the Aurora theater massacre. It illustrates the potential effect of a counter-programmer:
I sat in my private cabin and watched wall screens displaying decks on the slow-moving airship; I understood there were seven levels.

On Deck Three, I saw Mr. R. Smith-Jones, a fifth-generation android, who was occupying two rows. He was propped up on a wheelchair-couch.

He was growling and snarling at a doughy flight attendant turned out in a jeans tuxedo and a sombrero made of balloons and artificial peacock feathers.

Smith-Jones’ infamous three-year case, tried in the Superior Court of Newfoundland New York, had ground to a halt, when Judge Sleepy Shigitz decided Smith-Jones had earned the right to multiple classifications of Life Disabled.

On the screen, Smith-Jones was waving two objects which, to me, looked like cataclysmic salt shakers. They were spewing crystals that emitted smoke when they hit the air. Passengers started coughing.

Then I realized Smith-Jones was holding patterning cylinders he’d pulled from his innards. These cylinders played a major role in what his Alamo designers called Repetitive Accommodation. I knew this because Smith-Jones had pulled the trick a number of times, on each occasion subsequently filing suit for environmental incursion. Once, as porters were pushing him up the Matterhorn in his wheel-chair couch, he’d yanked out the cylinders, asserting the thinning atmosphere was slowing down his speech-recognition faculty; he’d won a major settlement in a Swiss tribunal.

All in all, over the course of a hundred years, Smith-Jones’ lawsuits had earned him more than twenty billion dollars.

Now he was foaming at the mouth and spitting. He doubled over and a siren went off. It was amplified by a speaker in his skull. A security guard appeared with a riot baton and sent a blue fork of electricity into his genitals, quieting him somewhat.

Smith-Jones was the majority stockholder of NBCCBSABC Networks, Inc. As such, he had at his disposal the InZap technology.

He deployed it now.

At horrific high speed, he began broadcasting images of a flaming city and people dying and crackling in the heat. Then, black tanks appeared. Soldiers dressed in combat gear moved in and sprayed streets with chemical retardant from wide hoses.

The flames died. Other soldiers ran down and arrested two fleeing suspects, and the InZAP emitted waves of relief throughout Smith-Jones’ cabin. People wept in their seats.

Smith-Jones said, “Thus we are rescued.”
“Thank God,” one passenger said.

A scruffy boy stood up and aimed his cell at a white wall. Pictures appeared there. “As you can see,” he said, “ people actually fried and died, but over at the far right of the street, a soldier is setting the initial fire. See him? The two suspects they caught later were patsies.”

Everyone looked, and everyone froze.

Smith-Jones said, “You don’t understand. I can take all those images away, as if they’d never existed. I own them.”

“Right,” the boy said. “But then what are you going to put on television? Giraffes? Peaceful streets at night under a warm moon?”

Three days later, I would learn that: reclining in his suite at the Ritz Hotel in Beverly Hills, sketching out yet another cause-for-action, this time for improper Hotel tech support on his (merely decorative) breathing apparatus, Smith-Jones stopped functioning.

He entered a state of paralysis. He shut down. According to Hotel employees, he wore an unchanging expression of sadness.

On his night table, he’d left a note:

“My existence is zero. I seem to be employing an unending string of morons who can’t plan and execute a disaster without exposing themselves.

“It’s a bit ironic that the desecration of IQ I’ve fostered all these years, through the medium I own and control, has also been my undoing. Operatives are now unable to perform. I hire them; they fail me.

“The entire population has brains of oatmeal. Yet, when some nobody points out a fatal flaw in my news stream, they all begin to wake up. How is that possible?

“I could sue and sue and sue and gain all the money in the world, but it appears I’m incapable of placing humans in a trance whereby they forget I’m just a machine, a heartless bastard of a machine.

“And that’s all I ever wanted. To make people think of me as one of their own. But I never will. And now I am Not.”

Breaking: Third Bomb Explodes in Boston

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/04/25/breaking-third-bomb-explodes-in-boston/

“Al-Harbi bin Laden, Osama’s son – Running to (or from) America “

America’s Government Betrays its People once Again

Dear Readers: This story will be updated during the day as we sift through what we are finding and begin to piece it together more.

… by  Jim W. Dean, VT Editor

Update 12:55 pm: We have new information that Al-Harbi could not have been back doored into the US without presidential authority. Bypassing a 3-B terrorist watch status is not something an ICE supervisor could have initialed through. We know someone who sponsored an East European nursing student for a visa. The cost? Posting a $1 million bond.
The Bush family has had long and intimate business dealings with the bin Laden family. They bailed George W. out of his short stint in the oil business. They came in to buy out Harken Energy, where it’s subsequent demise went on the bin Laden family tab and was technically off George W’s  future presidential resume. Left unresolved was a $50,000 loan to GW which was never repaid, nor reported as income as a forgive loan.
How could Bush have done this back then? Easy…a few lines written into a house budget bill could have said any member of the bin Laden family was granted automatic visa status per presidential request, and approved by Congress via hiding the lines in a big bill.
Yes, folks…this kind of stuff is done whenever they want to. That’s why up and coming hustlers want to join the ranks. There is a lot more to this. We will keep posting.  Jim Dean.

____________________________________

They say he is the spitting image of his father

Oh, no…don’t say I tricked you with the title. This is a news bomb if there ever was one. The Saudi national that Glenn Beck has been making a big fuss over is…Osama bin Laden’s son, Al-Harbi.
But this is just for openers. His nick name is the Crown Prince of Terror, and has been reported to have vowed revenge on the US for killing his father. While we don’t have confirmation of his nickname and threat, we do know he has 3-B status…terrorist.
Yeah…it kind of upset my morning, too. Dear folks, this is what we get when we have a system of government where 90% of what they classify is for no other reason than to hide from us what they know we would have them hanging from light poles if we knew they were doing.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, they want to be able to hit a few keystrokes and know everything about us, past and present, even if you are the shoe shine man. I wrote in an article on  King Abdullah II, of Jordan’s police state, that you cannot even set up a shoe shine stand there without a security clearance.
When I want to bed last night after working on some other emerging bombs on the Boston bombing, coming soon…I was taking some more time to review again what the local media took a pass on with their extensive reporting.

With Intel analysis you always follow a dual track…what you can see, and what you can’t that you should be able to. The later shows you that someone has stuck a wedge in the door and there has to be a motivation to do that. Often you can unravel a complicated conspiracy by pulling on this one thread.

It appears bin Laden’s son Al-Harbi has the gift of ‘good connections’ like is dad.

One of the notes I made was why didn’t local media follow up on the story of the guy running aways when the slide show captured of his jumping up and running off in his tattered clothes from the bombing site, when no one else did.
It as an obvious story to follow up on as to WHY he ran off.
There was the report of the cops picking him up, and the story left off where it was assumed he was a panicked survivor. Now we know why he was running.
He was here quietly going to school, but on a student visa to Finley Ohio. He has been in Boston for six months.
Homeland Security can track any of you reading this down in a jiffy if they want to, but it seems they can’t keep up with  someone tagged with 3-B status…terrorist.  Or could they?
Somebody walked him through folks. The whole thing is so bizarre that we may find out that the kid is getting survivor’s benefits for his father having worked for the CIA, as Tim Osman, during the Soviet-Afghan war.
Al-Harbi is the son of Osama’s third wife, Kahiriah Sabar. He was not present at the Abbottabad raid. Letters confiscated there revealed that Al-Harbi was being groomed as his father flag bearer.

Technically ICE has stated that Al-Harbi was never considered for deportation. But sources claim that the deportation file was created at 4pm on Tuesday for Abful Rahman Ali Al-Harby, by and official with the National Targeting Center, a counter-terrorism sub agency of the US Customs and Border Protection and DHS.

The file indicated that that Al-Harbi was linked to the Boston bombing and was to be processed for revocation of his visa on national security grounds, the congressional source said.
But what does not add up at all is why would anyone in the government want to process anyone to leave the country that was linked to the bombing, with no mention of any investigation clearances, which given, would have removed the need for his removal. The only possible reason might have been that someone realized that a screw up was made granting him a student visa when he was a 3-B.
We will be posting more as we find it. But this is just the tip of the iceberg folks. The US involvement with the Saudis is a scandal, especially the terrorism side of it.

And the Bush family involvement with them, personally and financially reflects a completely out of control situation where even past government officials and anoint themselves as unprosecutable and they market that in the business world to anyone that cuts them in on a deal.

_______________________________

36

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Posted by Jim W. Dean on Apr 25 2013, With 2886 Reads, Filed under Editor, WarZone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

By John Rolls (Reporter)

Boston Bomber’s Background Check Highlights Amnesty Bill Flaw

Thursday, April 25, 2013 10:31

(Before It's News)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Jon Feere, April 25, 2013

While amnesty advocates are exploiting the horrific Boston Marathon attack as justification for quickly passing an amnesty, the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the failed FBI background checks of terrorism suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev indicate that the government does not have the capacity to adequately vet the backgrounds of 11 million illegal aliens, and that an amnesty might actually facilitate terrorism.

The FBI reportedly spent part of 2011 and an unknown amount of resources investigating Tsarnaev’s ties to terrorism after an apparent alert from Russian intelligence officials. The FBI saidit “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign” after interviewing Tsarnaev and his family and checking his travel records and Internet activity. As noted by Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho):

[The FBI] actually interviewed [Tsarnaev], they interviewed neighbors, they interviewed relatives, and there were no red flags raised. They were doing the best they could do with the information they had, but they uncovered absolutely no facts here that raised the matter to a level that this man should get 24-hour surveillance, or any of the other things that are available to the FBI to watch them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his allies are arguing that because terrorists may be living in the United States illegally, passage of the Schumer-Rubio amnesty would benefit national security. Rubio explained:

The fact is that today there are 11 million people already in this country and we don’t know who they are, why they’re here, and what they’re doing. That is not only an economic problem, it’s a huge national security problem as well.

But the background checks in the Schumer-Rubio bill will be much less rigorous than the background check conducted by the FBI on Tsarnaev. The bill’s background check provision does not require face-to-face interviews with immigration officials. No provision requires an applicant’s neighbors or family members to be interviewed, and an applicant’s internet activity certainly will not be analyzed. Even with face-to-face interviews, the 1986 amnesty (Immigration Reform and Control Act) still resulted in massive amounts of fraud; it is estimated that 25 percent of all amnesty recipients, or 700,000 individuals, acquired U.S. citizenship fraudulently.

Related Topics:

 

The fraudulently amnestied aliens included 1993 World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima who used his new status to travel freely to and from the Middle East to pick up terrorist training. Had immigration law been enforced, he would have been removed from the country as an illegal alien visa-overstayer and the attack might never have occurred. The grant of citizenship and travel documents facilitated his terrorist training overseas. The attack killed six and injured over 1,000 people and caused over $500 million in damage.

It is important to remember that illegal aliens have taken part in almost every major attack on U.S. soil perpetrated by Islamic terrorists, including the first attack on the World Trade Center, the Millennium plot, the plot to bomb the New York subway, and the attacks of 9/11. Other foreign-born terrorists have been Legal Permanent Residents, asylum applicants, and naturalized citizens. The U.S. immigration system has failed to protect Americans on many occasions and it is unlikely Schumer-Rubio will benefit public safety.

Within six months of passage of the Schumer-Rubio bill, illegal aliens would be entitled to driver’s licenses, travel documents, Social Security accounts, and a significant number of state-level benefits.

http://www.cis.org/feere/boston-bombers-background-check-highlights-amnesty-bill-flaw?utm_source=E-mail+Updates&utm_campaign=d7d2a5a8e3-Amnesty_bill_facilitates_terrorism4_25_2013&utm_medium=email

Evidence Mounts Boston Bombers Were FBI Assets

Wednesday, April 24, 2013 17:46

http://beforeitsnews.com/terrorism/2013/04/evidence-mounts-boston-bombers-were-fbi-assets-2446044.html

(Before It's News)

As tens of thousands of members of the public have come out to show support for the alleged Boston Bomber as continues to mount the suspects were being handled by the FBI in a terror plot they failed to foil.
At the center of the effort are calls to have the United States government investigated for the role it is suspected in playing in the Boston Bombings.
In all over 15,000 people have joined the Facebook page calling for alleged bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be released and thousands more have signing an online petition to the White House web page along with numerous other petitions, events and campaigns created in his support.

As more people turn to media sources outside of the control of the federal government the more steam the effort will gain.
In fact, even members of the government are openly calling for an investigation to government’s involvement in the bombings and not only pointing out on the record but to media as well.
What we know now is that the United States government was tipped off to alleged Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ties to an underground militant group created and supported by the CIA which is ran by a terrorist known as Russia’s Bin Laden.
This information was revealed through Russia Today and was made public while the FBI was still hiding the fact they had been tipped off that Tamerlan made an overseas visit during which he was seen with terrorists with known ties to the CIA in 2011.
After the FBI was forced to admit they were in fact contacted by Russian intelligence they stated Tamerlan was cleared after being investigated in 2011.
The FBI claimed the investigation ended with a request to the Russian government for more information after which there was no further contact and no further information supplied.
We now know that is not the truth and Tamerlan had in fact been put on the United States terrorist watch list and the top-secret no fly-list.
Despite being placed on these lists, Tamerlan was still allowed to fly out of the country back to Russia where he once again was observed meeting up with the terrorist cell by Russian Intelligence.
During his stay he also is said to have attended a CIA-sponsored workshop which is funded by the United States government to promote democracy overseas and achieves such means through radicalizing local populations into taking up revolution against the government in power.
This information, which again was known to the United States government whom the media continues to quote in blatantly lying the bombers had no ties to overseas terrorist organizations, was again released just today by the Russian media.
The workshop was held by the NGO “Fund of Caucasus”, which is funded by the CIA-linked Jamestown Foundation, and holds workshops such as “Struggle for independence of the Caucasus” and The anniversary of genocide of the Chechen and Ingush peoples which are aimed at destabilizing the region by stirring anger against the current Russian government.
Workshop Description: “The evening dedicated to the 68th anniversary of the Chechen and Ingush peoples deportation to Central Asia in 1944, was organized by the “Fund of Caucasus” on February 23rd, 2012. The evening was held at the conference-hall of business-center “Kalas”. This tragedy – mass deportation of the Chechns and Ingushes – was evaluated as a part of general imperialistic policy of the Russian Empire and totalitarian Soviet regime.”

Further thickening the plot is the recent revelation that the bombers’ Uncle was also on the CIA’s payroll through the USAID foreign aid front and has ties to intelligence agents in his former homeland where he was a well connected oil-executive with crime to Russian crime bosses and involved in ring of offshore oil company’s Swiss investigators learned where laundering billions of dollars for the purposes of international corruption of western public officials.
Yet despite these clear ties, the FBI lied about what they knew and allowed him to fly anyway.
The corporate media has also confirmed today that the United States government was contacted multiple times by Russian Intelligence about Tamerlan’s activities and ties to those overseas terrorists.
In fact, the Washington Post reported today that CIA was contacted directly and they had also placed Tamerlan on the terrorist watch list.
Why would the FBI first fail to disclose they were tipped off about Tamerlan? Then lie about their knowledge of Tamerlan’s activities claiming they had no knowledge of terrorist activities or ties to foreign terrorist groups? Why are they still lying about it and why the media is continuing to echo their lies at the same time reporting contradictory information in the same exact reports revealing the feds were in fact notified, several times, and continue to allow this plot to happen?
More than likely it will soon be revealed, that like so many previous terror plots the FBI was in fact handling the Boston Bombers.
Perhaps they intending to conduct a sting operation like planned when they enticed the 1993 World Trade Center bomber into conducting and attack – which went horribly wrong and ended up with the World Trade Center actually being bombed.
The conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 bombings fall into the category of “the government let it happen” verse “the government made it happen” offering up numerous motives for each case.
The conspiracy theories around Boston Bombings will be no different as more and more information is revealed connecting the bombers to the CIA and the “let it happen” conspiracy becomes more of a fact than fantasy.
Indeed, special operations mercenaries were photographed in operation at the Boston Bombings.
Live bomb drills were being conducted during the event, drills which were first openly reported and admitted with the media now claiming they no longer occurred.
The government’s narrative continues to change and as it does so does the information the corporate media echoed.
As that information changes the government controlled corporate media will undoubtedly continue their all out crusade to conform the public opinion against doubting the government narrative or supporting the movement to free the alleged suspect who is looking more and more everyday like he was set up as his family has claimed since the outset.
The media’s campaign of disinformation, in which we even, sees the media cannibalizing itself, is one that has all of the hallmarks of a Black Ops information operation campaign not dissimilar to the CIA’s famed operation mockingbird.
Luckily the public’s distrust in their reporting has lead to a massive tuning of the propaganda machine perhaps much more than has ever been seen before.
Of course, this is not without good reason as there is plenty of proof of repeated lies and manipulation by the America’s state run press.

This is not conspiracy either but a provable fact openly admitted by Former President George Bush In this YouTube video, watch him admit he plants fake news stories for political agendas.               

Bush admits he participates in the long standing federal government practice of planting fake propaganda news stories in US media.
In this clip, Bush tells a reporter it has been a long standing federal government practice to pay journalists to run fake pre-packaged news stories, which serve as government propaganda to further political agendas.

Or take last year’s infamous CNN scandal in which they were caught running a staged interview with the Syria activist who had become the corporate media’s poster child in drumming up support for war in Syria.

<</iframe><!–<!==
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~ Syria Activist Danny Caught Staging Complete Fake CNN Interviews ~<

Syria activist Danny, the poster child to justify a military invasion in Syria, has been caught staging entire an entire CNN interview including directing fake gunfire off stage.

Raw video footage of the Syria activist Danny as he waits to do a live video interview with CNN shows him directing off-stage fake gunfire and explosions, as well as being directed to tell CNN he has been retrieving the bodies of civilians from buildings that collapse due to Syria army mortar fire. It also shows Danny totally exaggerating a sense of fear and urgency as he goes from being totally calm, smiling and even somewhat bored before the on air interview starts to acting totally scared, hysterical and pretending he is in the middle of a war zone as soon as the actual interview starts.

I have condensed footage of the original video to remove 5 uneventful minutes of watching him waiting around before the interview because most people will not stay interested long enough to get to the parts were he starts directing his off-stage actors to start the faked off stage gunfire. Also below are two detailed reports from the Intel Hub and Infowars on this incident, which outline more faked activist reports and other crimes committed by the rebels.

Of course, as many no this practice is nothing new.
See this video of fake green screened CNN footage during the first Iraq war in the 90s or even this footage of the CIA admitting to planting fake stories.
There are numerous examples, with dozens of stories out of CNN, The BBC, Al-Jazeera and others exposed as false government propaganda dealing with Syria just last year.
Now that we have established that it is not insane to believe the conspiracy theories claiming the media lies but rather it is an insane to accept the government’s promulgated conspiracy that the media always tells the truth let us continue with the Boston Bombings.

Police State Show Of Force Not Working

• maybe we R waking UP 2 the NAZI look/tactics ???

For first time in 17 years most Americans reject government crack down

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
April 25, 2013

In two separate polls conducted following the Boston bombings, most Americans have said that they do not support expanded government surveillance or an infringement on civil liberties.
A Fox News poll asked respondents “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”
In response, 45 percent said they would not be willing to sacrifice some of their liberties, compared to 43 percent of (shee)people who said they would.
That number is down from from 54 percent on figures from 2006, and down from a high of 71 percent the month after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
It also represents the first time since 1996 that more people are unwilling to give up freedoms than those who are willing, indicating that Americans are increasingly rejecting government invasion into their privacy in the name of fighting terrorism.
Only 27 percent of respondents said they feared another terrorist attack, while 58 percent said they were simply angry about the attack. 81 percent said their everyday lives would not be changed after the bombings.
A separate Washington Post poll found that more Americans were concerned that the government would go too far in investigating terrorism than that it would not go far enough, by a margin of 48 percent to 41 percent.
57 percent said that they were not confident in the government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks, with just 15 percent saying they had a “great deal” of confidence in the government.
95 percent said they did not leave work early or stay at home after the attacks, and 92 percent said they were not avoiding crowded or public places because of a risk of terrorism.
Both polls were conducted before Friday’s martial law style city wide lockdown.
—————————————————————-
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

This article was posted: Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 12:20 pm

Tags: police state, terrorism

Falsely Identified ‘Boston Bomber’ Found Dead In River

Sunil Tripathi originally fingered as culprit by 4chan users
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
April 25, 2013

Image: Sunil Tripathi/Facebook

One of the individuals identified by 4chan users as a possible Boston bombing accomplice has been found dead in the Providence River.
“Police in Providence pulled a man’s body from the Providence River on Tuesday, and authorities said it is “very possible” that it is Sunil Tripathi, 22, a former Brown University student who has been missing since mid-March,” reports the Boston Globe.
Tripathi’s possible connection to the Boston bombing was first raised by users of the 4chan website when it was pointed out that his image bore a similarity to one of the suspects first named by the FBI who later turned out to be Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev.
Users of the Reddit website later apologized to Tripathi’s family for making the erroneous connection, with one moderator writing, “We cannot begin to know what you’re going through and for that we are truly sorry.”
According to Zero Hedge, the misidentification of Tripathi as one of the Boston bombing culprits means it “could be time to reevaluate the crowdsourced approach to “solving” crimes.”
However, given the innumerable other contradictions that skeptics of the official narrative behind the bombings have put forward, with particular emphasis on the possibility that the Tsarnaev brothers may have been patsies or otherwise radicalized or duped by intelligence agencies, Tripathi’s death takes on more prominence.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended a workshop sponsored by the CIA-linked Jamestown Foundation.
- Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on both CIA and FBI watchlists in addition to drawing the attention of Russian investigators who attempted to alert the FBI in 2011.
- Former FBI employee Sibel Edmonds believes the two alleged bombers could have been recruited by the FBI.
- Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the alleged bombers, claims the men were “framed by the authorities” and that the video of a naked man being arrested on the night the suspects were captured, which authorities claim was an unrelated individual who was later released, was in fact Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The video shows an uninjured man being led to a squad car, whereas police claim Tsarnaev was badly injured when he was captured and later died in the hospital.
- The alleged bombers’ aunt Maret Tsarnaeva also claims that the man seen being arrested in the video was Tamerlan Tsarnaev. She also says that she was threatened and told not to speak to the media.
- Contradicting claims by authorities that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his own brother, an eyewitness to the incident said that police ran over Tsarnaev with an SUV and then pumped bullets into him.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 12:43 pm

Tags: domestic news, terrorism

Department of Justice secretly gave internet service providers immunity when conducting surveillance

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie

Keith Alexander, Director of the NSA, Chief of the Central Security Service and Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command (Image credit: Center for Strategic and International Studies/Flickr)

According to documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Department of Justice secretly authorized the interception of electronic communications on certain parts of AT&T and other internet service providers’ networks.
Previously, EPIC obtained documents on the National Security Agency’s Perfect Citizen program which involves monitoring private computer networks. This latest revelation deals with an entirely different program first called Defense Industrial Base Cyber Pilot, or DIB Cyber Pilot, though it is now operating as Enhanced Cybersecurity Services.
While this type of activity might be illegal under federal wiretapping legislation, the Obama administration gave the companies immunity when monitoring networks under a cybersecurity pilot program.
“The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “Alarm bells should be going off.”
The alarm bells should get louder when one realizes that while this collaboration between the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the private sector began focusing only on defense contractors, the program was massively expanded.
Thanks to an executive order dated February 12, 2013 entitled, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” the program was widened significantly.
The order expanded it to cover other “critical infrastructure industries” which includes “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”
Declan McCullagh, writing for CNET, points out that this includes “all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.”
The documents reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) and Defense Department were directly involved in pushing for this secret legal authorization.
NSA director Keith Alexander participated in some of the discussions personally, according to the documents.
Attorneys from the Justice Department signed off on the immunity despite the Department of Justice’s and industry participants’ initial reservations, according to CNET.
The legal immunity was given to participating internet service providers in the form of “2511 letters,” as the participants in the confidential discussions refer to them.
A 2511 letter is named after the Wiretap Act, 18 USC 2511, which the participants will not be held to by the Department of Justice.
According to CNET, “the 2511 letters provided legal immunity to the providers by agreeing not to prosecute for criminal violations of the Wiretap Act. It’s not clear how many 2511 letters were issued by the Justice Department.”
DIB Cyber Pilot was first publicly disclosed in 2011 by then Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn but in 2012, the pilot program expanded into an ongoing program dubbed Joint Cybersecurity Services Pilot. As of January it was renamed yet again, this time to Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program.
The same model used under the DIB pilot will be used under the new program, which means that participating companies “would be required to change their banners to reference government monitoring.”
The DHS privacy office stated that users on participating company networks will see “an electronic login banner [stating] information and data on the network may be monitored or disclosed to third parties, and/or that the network users’ communications on the network are not private.”
It is not clear how the banner will be worded exactly, but a 2011 Department of Defense Office of General Counsel PowerPoint presentation obtained by EPIC reveals eight of the elements that should be part of the banner:

1. It expressly covers monitoring of data and communications in transit rather than just accessing data at rest.
2. It provides that information transiting or stored on the system may be disclosed for any purpose, including to the Government.
3. It states that monitoring will be for any purpose.
4. It states that monitoring may be done by the Company/Agency or any person or entity authorized by Company/Agency.
5. It explains to users that they have “no [reasonable] expectation of privacy” regarding communications or data transiting or stored on the system.
6. It clarifies that this consent covers personal use of the system (such as personal emails or websites, or use on breaks or after hours) as well as official or work-related use.
7. It is definitive about the fact of monitoring, rather than conditional or speculative.
8. It expressly obtains consent from the user and does not merely provide notification.

“EPIC staff attorney Amie Stepanovich says the banner the government proposed is so broad and vague that it would allow ISPs not only to monitor the content of all communication, including private correspondence, but also potentially hand over the monitoring activity itself to the government,” Threat Level reports.
Similarly troubling is that it would only be seen by employees of participating companies, meaning that outsiders who communicate with those employees would have no clue that their communication was under surveillance.
“One of the big issues is the very broad notice and consent that they’re requiring, which far outpaces the description of the program the we’ve been given so far of not only the extent of the DIB pilot program but also the extent of the program that expands this to all critical infrastructure,” Stepanovich said, according to Threat Level.
“The concern is that information and communications between employees will be sent to the government, and they’re preparing employees to consent to this,” she added.
Both the NSA and Justice Department declined to comment to CNET but Sy Lee, a DHS spokesman sent a statement to CNET saying:

DHS is committed to supporting the public’s privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Accordingly, the department has implemented strong privacy and civil rights and civil liberties standards into all its cybersecurity programs and initiatives from the outset, including the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services program. In order to protect privacy while safeguarding and securing cyberspace, DHS institutes layered privacy responsibilities throughout the department, embeds fair practice principles into cybersecurity programs and privacy compliance efforts, and fosters collaboration with cybersecurity partners.

However, even individuals in the Justice Department “expressed misgivings that the program would ‘run afoul of privacy laws forbidding government surveillance of private Internet traffic,’” according to EPIC.
Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security has no problem lying to Congress about their privacy breaches. Why anyone should believe that they would be honest now isn’t quite clear.
While the NSA claims they “will not directly filter the traffic or receive the malicious code captured by Internet providers,” EPIC points out that it is unclear how they can detect malicious code and prevent its execution without actually “captur[ing]” it in violation of federal law.
Former Homeland Security official Paul Rosenzweig likened the NSA and Defense Department asking the Justice Department for 2511 letters to “the CIA asking the Justice Department for the so-called torture memos a decade ago,” according to CNET.
“If you think of it poorly, it’s a CYA function,” Rosenzweig said. “If you think well of it, it’s an effort to secure advance authorization for an action that may not be clearly legal.”
This perspective was reinforced by a Congressional Research Service report published last month.
The report states it is likely the case that the executive branch does not actually have the legal authority to authorize additional widespread monitoring of communications unless Congress rewrites the law to give that authority.
“Such an executive action would contravene current federal laws protecting electronic communications,” the non-partisan report states.
However, CISPA – which the House passed last week – would actually give formal authorization to the program without resorting to workarounds like 2511 letters.
Since CISPA simply overrides any and all privacy laws at the state and federal level, any program like this would be given the legal green light.
Even more troubling  is that the internal documents show that in late 2011, NSA, DoD and DHS officials actively met with aides on the House Intelligence committee who actually drafted the legislation.
“The purpose of the meeting, one e-mail shows, was to brief committee aides on ‘cyber defense efforts,’” as CNET put it.
Ryan Gillis, a director in the DHS Office of Legislative Affairs also sent an e-mail to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, discussing the pilot program during the same period.
It is hardly surprising that at least one of the same companies getting immunity under the 2511 letters has expressed support for CISPA, since both give network providers immunity from prosecution.
AT&T and CenturyLink are the only two providers publicly announcing their participation in the program thus far.
However, an unnamed government official cited by CNET said that other unnamed companies have signed a memorandum of agreement with DHS to join the program and are undergoing security certification.
“These agencies are clearly seeking authority to receive a large amount of information, including personal information, from private Internet networks,” Stepanovich said to CNET. “If this program was broadly deployed, it would raise serious questions about government cybersecurity practices.”
Rosenzweig points out that the expansion into the many sectors outlined in the executive order above could potentially even include the monitoring of meat packing plants.
Indeed, the language is broad enough to include just about anything at this point.
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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