Sunday, September 27, 2015

Lockheed Exec Admits Key To Space Travel Is ESP

August 4, 2015 by Christina Sarich.

To View More Sources For Ben Rich’s Comments Click HERE

“We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects, and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity. Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do it.” (1)

“We now have technology to take ET home. No it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations. We know what it is. We now have the capability to travel to the stars.” (1)

“There are two types of UFOs — the ones we build and the ones ‘they’ build.” (1)

Ben Rich is a UCLA engineering alumnus who was also the director of Lockheed Martin’s super high tech aircraft division called Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991. Rich admits that the key to space travel among the stars is not necessarily advanced mechanics, or the ultimate rocket fuel, but something more esoteric – ESP.

One of the main hurdles to mankind in reaching other worlds off-planet has been the sheer distance and time it would take to get there. Our current space shuttles (at least with the horse-and-buggie-like technology that has been released to the public) only travel 17,500 miles per hour. This means that visiting the second nearest star to our planet, Proxima Centauri, a meager 4.22 light years away, would take several life times. Of course, then there are fuel costs, which would be more than prohibitive using conventionally imagined space travel.

Worm holes could be used like short cuts through Sunday traffic, and ‘warp drive’ or anti-gravity, which Boeing has admitted to working on could also shorten the ride, but we’d still be looking at more rocket fuel than Exxon, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and BP combined have ever even sneezed at.

Overcoming Space Time

Rich gave a tip to a fellow alumnus of UCLA, Jan C. Harzan, a nuclear engineer that is currently on the board of directors for MUFON – the world’s oldest and largest UFO phenomenon investigative body – and has recently been promoted to executive director. Harzan says that when he was eight years old, he saw a craft hovering 30 feet from him with the only discernible means of propulsion being a ‘humming noise’ it was making. Harzan knows from speaking with Rich that it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light – but how?

Rich, a man running one of the most secretive and advanced aircraft development organizations in the world, and responsible for the creation of several highly advanced stealth planes, including the SR71, and the F117, spoke at a fundraiser in 1993 that Harzan hasn’t forgotten. He met with Rich for Q&A after his presentation and he told him that ‘it won’t take a lifetime’ to travel to the stars, but that with ‘ESP’ we can do it easily. He inferred to Harzan that ‘all things in space and time are connected.’

Other scientists that have worked for Lockheed admit similar phenomenon concerning UFOs and space travel.

(MIND BLOWING)Lockheed Skunkworks employee speaks out "Technology from Extraterrestrials"

Harzan says that the technology works exactly like ESP, and that the stealth technology which Rich used to develop his many aircraft was based on a Russian scientist’s mathematics, which reiterates this basic principle.

How Does ESP Work?

ESP, or extrasensory perception is the ability to transmit thoughts or events at a distance without actually being there in physical form. Schrödinger’s Cat (the wave-particle collapse), parallel universes, the many-worlds hypothesis which explains how we might live in multiple webs of alternate timelines, and their relationship to perceived reality are all relevant to this observable fact.

Interplanetary space travel is all about consciousness, not the archaic assumption that we’d have to paddle our own rocket-fueled boat to get to the planet next door.

To View More Sources For Ben Rich’s Comments Click HERE

Navajo Nation removes tax on healthy produce, raises tax on junk food in public health effort

by Amy Goodrich
food

http://www.naturalnews.com/051332_Navajo_Nation_junk_food_tax_diabetes.html
(NaturalNews) In December, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the U.S. to pass a soda tax. Navajo Nation, however, is taking this one step further. After almost four years of legislative battle and several attempts, Navajo Nation will become the first place to implement a 2 percent tax on junk food or food items with "minimal-to-no-nutritional value". The tax will expire and be revised in 2020.

Last year, Navajo implemented an amendment that removed the 5 percent tax on the sale of fresh fruits and vegetables.

For the Dine Community Advocacy Alliance (DCAA), a group made up of volunteers grievously concerned about diabetes and obesity rates on the reservation, the tax is another major achievement.

According to the Navajo-area Indian Health Service, about 10 percent of Navajo Nation residents have diabetes, and another 30 percent are pre-diabetic. In some age groups, obesity rates spike to almost 60 percent.

Junk food tax advocates believe the law will make a positive change and help people to be more mindful about what they put into their mouths. The tax will generate an estimated $1 million a year, which can be used to support health and wellness projects such as the creation of greenhouses, local farmers markets, community gardens, and cooking classes.

Are the people of Navajo as pleased with the tax as the DCAA? The nation is a 27,000-square-mile area where almost half of the population lives under the poverty line. According to the DCAA, there are only ten grocery stores to be found in the entire area, leading many people to turn to gas stations and convenience stores for food shopping.

"Less money for fruits is nice, but it doesn't even out," Ann Neagle, who lives on the reservation, told the Los Angeles Times. "For people on a fixed income, we can't afford things to get more expensive."

The Los Angeles Times also reported that for one bag of apples, a customer will pay around $7. This could also buy him 30 boxes of Maruchan Ramen Noodles or seven frozen Banquet Value Meals.

Most Navajos understand the relationship between food and health, but many of them simply have no other choice.

"It's not going to do anything except make it more expensive," said Preston Yazzie, 20, in the Los Angeles Times. "I'll still buy chips or whatever. But maybe it'll help some people."

The USDA has called the region a "food desert" based on how hard it is to get fresh fruits and vegetables compared to the availability of processed or junk food. Even those who live close to a grocery store do not necessarily have access to healthy food.

In one survey, the DCAA found that approximately 80 percent of a random store's inventory would fall into the group of junk food or food with "minimal-to-no-nutritional value".

Denisa Livingston, a spokeswoman for the DCAA who is also a community health advocate and Navajo tribe member, says that she hopes that the removal of tax on fruit and vegetables will increase the demand, which will hopefully improve the availability of fresh, whole foods in local markets and grocery stores.

"This is the start of making people aware that we are living in a food desert - something that's not normal," says Livingston. "If you [compare] the Bashas' grocery store on the reservation and in Phoenix, looking at the layout, you see they have much more healthy foods available in Phoenix compared to here."

Navajo is the first ever to implement such a tax, and it is unclear what the future will bring. The biggest challenge will be making the shift from convenient, cheap, processed junk food to fresh, affordable produce available to all people living in Navajo.

Sources for this article include:
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-navajo-tax-20150330-story.html
http://www.dinecollege.edu
http://www.npr.org

The Box (2009): Esoteric Analysis – Shadow Government Revealed

jay008 / June 29, 2011

Film Poster. Cameron will be sacrificed to Mars.

“You are the experiment.”
By: Jay

As I often lay out here, fictional films can show you more about what is really going on that the fictional mainstream news outlets The Box is one of the most striking examples. The Box (2009) is Richard Kelly’s most recent film—Kelly of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales fame. All of Kelly’s films contain deep esoteric themes, and The Box is no different. In fact, it’s one of the most, well, “illuminist” films I’d seen since Eyes Wide Shut. The Box also contains hints and homages toward Kubrick, in fact. On the surface, the viewer is presented with a moral dilemma: It’s a film about compromising morals and suffering the consequences. On another level, it describes the elite worldview and control system with stunning detail—but not just the elite perspective—it also contains an even deeper, initiatory quasi-masonic level, as I will argue. The film was not a critical success, but I suspect its meaning went over the head of most.
The story takes place in 1976, where NASA Viking Mission camera engineer, “Arthur” (James Marsden) and his wife “Norma” (Cameron Diaz), have just purchased a large, new home. They are the typical middle class suburban family, pictured as overwhelming mediocre, in fact (on purpose). We then learn that a certain “Arlington Steward” (Frank Langella) has been resuscitated and released from the burn unit. Early one morning Arlington arrives in a black Lincoln, a “man in black,” and mysteriously drops a box off at Norma’s door, while Arthur heads off to NASA to privately construct a prosthetic foot for Norma, who is slightly crippled. Recall, of course, that in many purported “UFO” experiences the so-called “men in black” arrive on the scene, etc. Note that I am not advocating aliens and the assorted myths attached thereto. This will be relevant later in the analysis, however. Norma discovers the box has another box in it with a large red button on top, and Norma is astonied.
Meanwhile, Arthur finds out he has been rejected from acceptance as an astronaut, a longtime personal goal. Presumable funding for the new house and car would come from the astronaut position he was counting on. Norma teaches English at a local Catholic private school, and significantly, they are studying Jean-Paul Sartre’s play, “No Exit.” A certain miscreant in class has appeared who attempts to embarrass Norma by asking her to show the class her club foot. Norma acquiesces. This is relevant to those in the know concerning Sartre’s philosophy—Sartre proffered that as we mature, it becomes evident we are simply hiding behind various “masks” as a kind of cloak to escape the radical freedom we are condemned to.

Jean-Paul Sartre. Someone should have made him wear a mask.

For Sartre, Norma’s clubfoot is an imperfection she hides because it’s a reminder that her beautiful appearance which masks the clubfoot is a facade. It’s not real. Were Norma to embrace her defect, she would actually be free from the stigma such defects produce in our psyches. Indeed, for Sartre, we even hide behind such roles as “suburban middle class wife,” because there is a kind of ease in accepting this pre-programmed role handed on from the previous batch of middle class suburban forebears. Sartre calls this “being in itself,” and likens it to inanimate rocks. Those who become “free” realize that reality presents “radical freedom,” and when this is accepted, one becomes “being for itself”-being that is free and undetermined. This will be relevant for the later “initiatory” reveal.

“Table for two, dude.”

Norma mentions to another student in class the famous Sartre quote that “hell is other people,” because it would be like others “knowing all your faults.” We also note that Arthur’s young son doesn’t believe in Santa when the subject comes up in the kitchen, because Arthur is a “scientist.” It is also relevant that this is Christmas time. This is relevant because we are supposed to understand that “scientism” is another mask, Sartre would contend. The “scientist” hides behind the mask of “rational inductionist,” and when presented with mystery or radical freedom, he timidly avoids the fearful conclusion by resting his faith in the imagined totality explanatory power of “science.” Arthur and Norma are about to encounter something they could never have imagined.

Shadowy shadow government figure no one is aware of, who watches as Watchers do.

The next day NASA gives a press conference for the upcoming Viking Mars Probe and curiously interjects statements about the expected discovery of “alien life” and “ancient alien civilizations.” In fact, this is precisely what Arthur C. Clarke and the NASA videos at the time were promoting. Isn’t it somewhat obvious that you will find what you’re looking for? It’s not very scientifically “neutral” to be so completely sold on the idea of alien life. Instead, we are being given a larger clue as to the meaning of where the film is going—the underlying new mythology that the supposed “science establishment” has predetermined we will “discover.” The new “discovery” will be that there is “life” elsewhere in the galaxy, thus exotheology. Exotheology is the planned new cosmology that replaces man’s origins and telos with aliens and apotheosis. However, The Box is going to give us a veiled clue as to who the “aliens” really are. During the press conference, one reporter asks why NASA is working closely with the NSA, which goes unanswered.
Norma too loses her job, and Arlington arrives and offers them both one million dollars if they push the button on the box, which will result in the death of someone whom they do not know. They have 24 hours to make a decision. Arlington leaves as abruptly as he came, and the couple find themselves in a quandary. Arlington, we notice, is disfigured in his face from the burn, and Norma begins to sympathize with him. Then, oddly, we see an image of a surveillance camera at NASA looking down on the workers with a strange man in a suit looking into the camera. This figure is crucial, but he only shows up in the film a couple of times, purposefully looking on from the background. He is in the shadows, another “man in black,” and represents the shadow government, controlling the NSA and NASA. We never learn his identity, other than that he is the “employer” of Steward. “Steward,” is his name obviously because he is a representative. If you are incredulous, bear with me, as I will show this beyond any shadow of a doubt as we proceed. Norma ends up deciding to slap the button, after coaxing a still doubtful Arthur over their need for money, yet who isn’t willing to push it, but allows Norma to. Here we have an echo of the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-3, where the woman is particularly at fault. The have now fallen. The couple then goes to see the play her English class had been working on, which is Sartre’s “No Exit,” where three people discover they have been escorted to hell by a valet who is a kind of devil, and the rest of the drama takes place in the same room (and a room is a box), where the torment ends up being each other, fulfilling Sartre’s quip that hell is “other people.” We start to see that Arthur and Norma and their son are the ones being escorted into their “hell.” The box they have been imprisoning themselves in is their own life and lies.

The “man in black,” Arlington Steward, the “steward” of the gods, in a Kubrick-esque scene.

It is also important that intermittently throughout the film the television is on in the couple’s home, and almost every time what is briefly seen is relevant on an esoteric level. The television, you see, is a box, too. The first time you hear someone saying that “people are causing pollution,” the next time it mentions NBC and then “Barry Goldwater.” Now, all of these are relevant as setting the timing of the film, but also the deeper meanings. In 1976, the modern globalist “environmental” movement was fresh on the scene, but keep these things in mind as we progress through the film. The couple then attends a Christmas party with co-workers and fellow townsfolk where things begin to get strange, when random persons in the crowd ogle the couple, and give them dirty looks. They all play a game where you pick random presents under the tree, and Arthur picks a box which he discovers has a blurry photo of Arlington in it.
Meanwhile, a new babysitter had been staying with , and notices they are being watched by a random stranger through the window. She takes him to the basement after a discussion of comic books, and it’s interesting to notice that the covers of the comics she looks at feature an alien, a casket floating in space, and a skull imposed over a gateway. The babysitter Arthur’s Arthur C. Clarke poster, and says “My dad knows him.” Arthur C. Clarke’s “third law” emblazoned on the poster now comes to the fore, which becomes a clue to another deeper esoteric theme: that “magick” is indistinguishable from science. The lesson that Arthur will learn as he experiences the events is that science isn’t the end-all be all of existence, and in fact, what he will undergo is a magickal initiation, constituting his gnostic process of apotheosis, as he and his Eve have now “fallen.” This is why many viewers were confused as to the meaning of some of the scenes during the film’s final 30 minutes.

The science fiction casket.

We then transition back to the Christmas party where a certain creepy waiter provokes Arthur by laughing at him, and who is the same student who embarrassed Norma in class. A waiter escorts Norma to the phone, while suddenly going mute and forgetting what he was doing, as his nose suddenly begins to bleed. Arlington knows Arthur has been trying to track down who he (Arlington) is, and warns them that they made a deal which cannot be broken. No one can know who has selected them, nor what the deal was. Arthur ends up punching the student from Norma’s class, while he (the student) merely laughs and also has a nose bleed, after flashing a peace sign/two with his fingers. As Arthur and Norma leave the party, someone has etched into the ice on their car’s windshield “NO EXIT,” and as they drive away, another waiter flashes the “two sign” with his fingers. Now it is starting to make sense, as Arthur also finds out that Arlington’s car is registered to the NSA. Arthur begins to think he understands how his family is being constantly surveilled.

“The Day of the Moron”: destruction and death at the gates of the two pillars.

Next, a bizarre scene appears on the family’s television: the Twin Towers! Seemingly out of place, yet recall that the several other television references appear to have a subtle significance. Global pollution, Barry Goldwater, NBC and now the Twin Towers. The year is 1976, so the towers had just been finished a couple years beforehand. This is no accident.

The intentionally-placed twin towers on a “box.” It was on a box that most people saw these come down in a psy-op.

The towers came down in 2001 of course, and films and intelligence warnings and operation manuals such as Operation Northwoods, as well as others, had long contained those very scenarios. What few are aware of are the occult and magical correspondences of the destruction of the towers, which extend beyond merely political ends.

Arthur C. Clarke’s famous “third law,” from the Ten Commandments of Psience

The twin pillars “falling” has a relevance to kabballah, as well as Freemasonry, which have, as their “gateways” the twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, as well as the notion of the “middle pillar.” Recall that on 9/11 three towers fell, not just two. In the occult, and in the Golden Dawn in particular, the middle pillar signifies equilibrium between the two side pillars of mercy and severity, as well as being the “pillar of initiation and integration.” It is the balance between the yin and yang, dark and light, male and female, etc. It is the product of Arthur and Norma—their son, the child of the union. The middle pillar is also the “wand” of the magician, and has a phallic connection, and this is exactly what is happening to the “scientist” Arthur, as he undergoes his initiation. The middle pillar also has reference to the six-sided cube of space (all directions), which many associate with the Holy of Holies in the Levitical temple, from which all of this is borrowed because the numerical gematria of the middle pillar is “26” (6 sides, 8 points and 12 edges), which is a perfect cube. And a perfect cube is a box. The destruction of the towers has the significance of the production of the new order of the ages, since all initiatory theories include the idea of the death of the old, and resurrection into the new. This is what will happen to Arthur, too.

The Masonic “middle pillar” of initiation.

Back to the story: Arthur begins to freak out, and takes the babysitter home, and while driving, she realizes he has blood on his hands, and comments to that effect, bringing to mind the idea of guilt. The babysitter makes a strange reference to looking into the “light” and passes out after a nose bleed. We have seen this constant appearance of red blood now, which is relevant because Arthur is working on the Mars mission. Mars is the “red” planet, and corresponds to the “god of war,” and the devil, if you will. So we have more hints as to who is running this show. Arthur discovers that she isn’t really a babysitter after finding her ID, and we then are shown the fact that Arlington is building what appears to be a “Stargate” of some kind at the NASA facilities. We hear again the television that “the eagle has landed,” and the Mars mission will show us definitively that there is “life on other planets.” So, the NSA is tied in with NASA, and we then find out that Arlington is brainwashing his “employees” who are also “test subjects” into mindlessly submitting to his magical techno Stargate “light.” We then are told that Arlington died in the E.R. from a lightning strike, and when he awoke, he was a different “entity” who now serving a new “employer.” The surface level meaning of the story is that his consciousness is now invaded by a kind of invasion of the body snatchers alien, as are all the others who pass through Arlington’s employers’ “light.” This is the “light” of gnostic and Freemasonic initiation. You thought it was crazy so far—well, it only gets crazier.

The human resource exploitation intelligence manual that shows the three-pillared gateway.

Arthur and Norma are busy tracking down Arlington and the secret government testing they have now been clued into, and end up at the large public library, which is to become a church/lodge. This makes sense, as a library is a house of knowledge, or gnosis, and this is where Arthur in particular will undergo his ritual initiation. Arthur is led in a liturgical procession to the “holy of holies” of the library, in whose doorway appears Arlington’s wife, who grants him a occultic liturgical “blessing.” We are then shown a large painting on the wall above the “holy entrance way” that is the same as Arthur’s poster, which shows a magus being initiated.
Now Arthur has understood that science and magick are indistinguishable. In the room, Arlington’s wife reveals herself as “Clymene,” who was, in fact, one of the Titanis and a goddess, and whose name is reminiscent of Klymenos, or Hades. Arthur is then shown three pillars that are watery, aetheric gateways. He must choose one, as the rest result in “eternal damanation,” he is told. He recalls that everyone had held up the number two, so he chooses the middle pillar. He is then taken up into the light and sees what he later describes as “heaven.” Simultaneously, Norma had been ushered elsewhere in ritual fashion to see Arlington, whom she tells she “loves.” Arlington says “take my hand,” which is reminiscent of marriage, and we then see Norma laying on her bed, and as she awakes, floating above her in a watery cube is Arthur, who awakes and “the water is broken,” and he falls onto the bed. Arthur has gone through a baptism of sorts, inside a watery casket, and is now reborn. Remember that we had seen skulls and caskets already, and caskets and death are common in religious initiation ceremonies.

Welcome to the Most Holy Church of the Library Gnosis. Please place your late fees in the collection plate.

We then learn see that Arlington has been doing all this as a “test,” and the test is a massive experiment conducted by the shadow government, who are now revealed as his employers. Not only is this the shadow government, we are even shown a striking reference to the actual layout of the shadow government where Arlington looks at a large screen that has flapping tiles that alternate to show a map of the entire globe. It’s a kind of early Google maps, and amazingly what is revealed briefly on the map is the actual layout of Northcom, Centcom, etc.! You see, this is the real shadow government, and not only is this film throwing it all in your face, 99% of its viewers would have been utterly clueless. This is why the film confused so many.
Arlington’s NSA lackey asks him why is all this happening, and he responds that the test is being conducted to see who is allowed to survive, and whether the earth should be depopulated! The test involved being presented with federal reserve notes – fake money, and the moral dilemma of whether one will choose to support the greater good of humanity, or choose a selfish path of killing another human to obtain paper money. Note that Arlington didn’t bring anyone a bunch of gold bars. Instead, it is paper currency, and for those in the know, this is how the shadow government maintains control—through control of the issuance of currency. Now we understand the previous references to pollution and the green agenda and NBC. We then see that Arlington is lining everyone up secretly in a police state setting and sending all his actors through the brainwashing stargate, preparing for the next test scenario. We are then shown a brief scene where the grid displays a magic square! This only further confirms that those running the shadow government are an occult magical-minded, scientific banking elite. Their grid has long been in place, and we are, in their estimation, a huge psychological test ward.

Arlington’s grid shows the actual shadow government – Northcom, Centcom, etc.

After a bit more paranoia and attempting to run, Arthur is apparently caught by the men in black and we see him enigmatically emerge from Arlington’s luminous brainwashing-stargate. This confused many people, because it seems to be out-of-place and out of sequence. But this is done on purpose, because Arthur’s senses have been altered, as he has passed out of time and space into the aether for initiation, and emerged back on earth. However, his purgation is not finished, as he is now made to sacrifice his wife or child to continue on, as Arlington’s employers are not happy with Arthur’s opposition to their plans.

The actual Pentagon Northcom, etc., map.

Arthur ends up killing Norma so that their son can live on, but ultimately it means Arthur must give them both up. We think that Arthur is going to be nabbed by the police, and when they arrive after he has shot his wife, it should be noted that he is not led into a police car. The men in black arrive to take him away, not the police. Arthur is one of them now. He has been initiated and has sacrificed all he previously held dear. His son is now under the care of the shadow government, they tell him, and we see him in a window with who appears to possibly be our mysterious “employer” who has only appeared briefly in the background.

Peculiar shot with the magic square, showing the google-earth-like matrix spy grid.

It is important to call attention to the fact that his name is “Arthur,” which conjures up images of the Arthurian tales, where the king is seeking the magical holy grail. That is present here, too, as Arthur has found his “grail,” which is truth of the magical shadow government. His wife was “Norma,” which sounds like “normal.” Her mundane existence was the result of his fall, but her “sacrifice” to Mars allowed his redemption and “deification” to occur. By following the clues and hints found all around him, Arthur discovered the truth, and exited the hell of his own making, as Sartre would say. The box has a layered meaning, but the most crucial have been outlined already—it is, Arlington says, the object we spend most of our time in—cars, which are metal boxes, houses, caskets, etc. The film takes the box, the cube of space-time and the holy of holies, and transforms it into the object of elite scientific envy—to master this realm and become gods. This is what Arthur C. Clarke often wrote about and is the paradigm from which the transhumanists and technocrats operate. And it is they who make up the shadow government. Thus, The Box not only displays this worldview, on a deeper level, it is telling you—as you watch a box (a TV screen or a movie screen), that this is precisely what is actually happening: does the shadow government see all this as a test.

“You are the experiment.”

2001 Space Odyssey Interview w. Arthur C. Clarke - part 1

Profiled From Radio to Porn, British Spies Track Web Users’ Online Identities ~ hehe can any~1 say ..."controller files" thum nazi's & "their" pals the vat~tee~can ...wet dreams Oops ..."it's" ...fer the kids hehe ... wanna "know" Y nut~in ever & i mean fucking NEVER ...will geet down for ....us ...we's ALL's gots an ..... controller file

By Ryan Gallagher

Global Research, September 26, 2015

The Intercept 25 September 2015

Region: Europe

Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

There was a simple aim at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”
Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs.
The mass surveillance operation code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.
The revelations about the scope of the British agency’s surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous reports based on the leaked files have exposed how GCHQ taps into Internet cables to monitor communications on a vast scale, but many details about what happens to the data after it has been vacuumed up have remained unclear.
Amid a renewed push from the U.K. government for more surveillance powers, more than two dozen documents being disclosed today by The Intercept reveal for the first time several major strands of GCHQ’s existing electronic eavesdropping capabilities.
One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.
The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens all without a court order or judicial warrant.
Metadata reveals information about a communication such as the sender and recipient of an email, or the phone numbers someone called and at what time but not the written content of the message or the audio of the call.
As of 2012, GCHQ was storing about 50 billion metadata records about online communications and Web browsing activity every day, with plans in place to boost capacity to 100 billion daily by the end of that year. The agency, under cover of secrecy, was working to create what it said would soon be the biggest government surveillance system anywhere in the world.

Radio radicalization

The power of KARMA POLICE was illustrated in 2009, when GCHQ launched a top-secret operation to collect intelligence about people using the Internet to listen to radio shows.
The agency used a sample of nearly 7 million metadata records, gathered over a period of three months, to observe the listening habits of more than 200,000 people across 185 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

A GCHQ graphic illustrating how KARMA POLICE works

A summary report detailing the operation shows that one aim of the project was to research “potential misuse” of Internet radio stations to spread radical Islamic ideas.
GCHQ spies from a unit known as the Network Analysis Center compiled a list of the most popular stations that they had identified, most of which had no association with Islam, like France-based Hotmix Radio, which plays pop, rock, funk and hip-hop music.
They zeroed in on any stations found broadcasting recitations from the Quran, such as a popular Iraqi radio station and a station playing sermons from a prominent Egyptian imam named Sheikh Muhammad Jebril. They then used KARMA POLICE to find out more about these stations’ listeners, identifying them as users on Skype, Yahoo, and Facebook.
The summary report says the spies selected one Egypt-based listener for “profiling” and investigated which other websites he had been visiting. Surveillance records revealed the listener had viewed the porn site Redtube, as well as Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, Google’s blogging platform Blogspot, the photo-sharing site Flickr, a website about Islam, and an Arab advertising site.
GCHQ’s documents indicate that the plans for KARMA POLICE were drawn up between 2007 and 2008. The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.”
The origin of the surveillance system’s name is not discussed in the documents. But KARMA POLICE is also the name of a popular song released in 1997 by the Grammy Award-winning British band Radiohead, suggesting the spies may have been fans.
A verse repeated throughout the hit song includes the lyric, “This is what you’ll get, when you mess with us.”

The Black Hole

GCHQ vacuums up the website browsing histories using “probes” that tap into the international fiber-optic cables that transport Internet traffic across the world.
A huge volume of the Internet data GCHQ collects flows directly into a massive repository named Black Hole, which is at the core of the agency’s online spying operations, storing raw logs of intercepted material before it has been subject to analysis.
Black Hole contains data collected by GCHQ as part of bulk “unselected” surveillance, meaning it is not focused on particular “selected” targets and instead includes troves of data indiscriminately swept up about ordinary people’s online activities. Between August 2007 and March 2009, GCHQ documents say that Black Hole was used to store more than 1.1 trillion “events” a term the agency uses to refer to metadata records with about 10 billion new entries added every day.
As of March 2009, the largest slice of data Black Hole held 41 percent was about people’s Internet browsing histories. The rest included a combination of email and instant messenger records, details about search engine queries, information about social media activity, logs related to hacking operations, and data on people’s use of tools to browse the Internet anonymously.
Throughout this period, as smartphone sales started to boom, the frequency of people’s Internet use was steadily increasing. In tandem, British spies were working frantically to bolster their spying capabilities, with plans afoot to expand the size of Black Hole and other repositories to handle an avalanche of new data.
By 2010, according to the documents, GCHQ was logging 30 billion metadata records per day. By 2012, collection had increased to 50 billion per day, and work was underway to double capacity to 100 billion. The agency was developing “unprecedented” techniques to perform what it called “population-scale” data mining, monitoring all communications across entire countries in an effort to detect patterns or behaviors deemed suspicious. It was creating what it saidwould be, by 2013, “the world’s biggest” surveillance engine “to run cyber operations and to access better, more valued data for customers to make a real world difference.”
HERE WAS A SIMPLE AIM at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.”
Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs.
The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.
The revelations about the scope of the British agency’s surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous reports based on the leaked files have exposed how GCHQ taps into Internet cables to monitor communications on a vast scale, but many details about what happens to the data after it has been vacuumed up have remained unclear.
Amid a renewed push from the U.K. government for more surveillance powers, more than two dozen documents being disclosed today by The Intercept reveal for the first time several major strands of GCHQ’s existing electronic eavesdropping capabilities.
One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps.
The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens — all without a court order or judicial warrant.
Metadata reveals information about a communication — such as the sender and recipient of an email, or the phone numbers someone called and at what time — but not the written content of the message or the audio of the call.
As of 2012, GCHQ was storing about 50 billion metadata records about online communications and Web browsing activity every day, with plans in place to boost capacity to 100 billion daily by the end of that year. The agency, under cover of secrecy, was working to create what it said would soon be the biggest government surveillance system anywhere in the world.

Radio radicalization

A GCHQ graphic illustrating how KARMA POLICE works

The Black Hole

A document from the GCHQ target analysis center (GTAC) shows the Black Hole repository’s structure.

GCHQ is able to identify a particular person’s website browsing habits by pulling out the raw data stored in repositories like Black Hole and then analyzing it with a variety of systems that complement each other.

KARMA POLICE, for instance, works by showing the IP addresses of people visiting websites. IP addresses are unique identifiers that are allocated to computers when they connect to the Internet.
In isolation, IPs would not be of much value to GCHQ, because they are just a series of numbers — like 195.92.47.101 — and are not attached to a name. But when paired with other data they become a rich source of personal information.
To find out the identity of a person or persons behind an IP address, GCHQ analysts can enter the series of numbers into a separate system named MUTANT BROTH, which is used to sift through data contained in the Black Hole repository about vast amounts of tiny intercepted files known as cookies.
Cookies are automatically placed on computers to identify and sometimes track people browsing the Internet, often for advertising purposes. When you visit or log into a website, a cookie is usually stored on your computer so that the site recognizes you. It can contain your username or email address, your IP address, and even details about your login password and the kind of Internet browser you are using — like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
For GCHQ, this information is incredibly valuable. The agency refers to cookies internally as “target detection identifiers” or “presence events” because of how they help it monitor people’s Internet use and uncover online identities.
If the agency wants to track down a person’s IP address, it can enter the person’s email address or username into MUTANT BROTH to attempt to find it, scanning through the cookies that come up linking those identifiers to an IP address. Likewise, if the agency already has the IP address and wants to track down the person behind it, it can use MUTANT BROTH to find email addresses, usernames, and even passwords associated with the IP.
Once the agency has corroborated a targeted person’s IP address with an email address or username, it can then use the tiny cookie files associated with these identifiers to perform a so-called “pattern of life” analysis showing the times of day and locations at which the person is most active online.

the agency was extracting data containing information about people’s visits to the adult website YouPorn

In turn, the usernames and email and IP addresses can be entered into other systems that enable the agency to spy on the target’s emails, instant messenger conversations, and web browsing history. All GCHQ needs is a single identifier — a “selector,” in agency jargon — to follow a digital trail that can reveal a vast amount about a person’s online activities.
A top-secret GCHQ document from March 2009 reveals the agency has targeted a range of popular websites as part of an effort to covertly collect cookies on a massive scale. It shows a sample search in which the agency was extracting data from cookies containing information about people’s visits to the adult website YouPorn, search engines Yahoo and Google, and the Reuters news website.
Other websites listed as “sources” of cookies in the 2009 document (see below) are Hotmail, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, WordPress, Amazon, and sites operated by the broadcasters CNN, BBC, and the U.K.’s Channel 4.

In one six-month period between December 2007 and June 2008, the document says, more than 18 billion records from cookies and other similar identifiers were accessible through MUTANT BROTH.
The data is searched by GCHQ analysts in a hunt for behavior online that could be connected to terrorism or other criminal activity. But it has also served a broader and more controversial purpose — helping the agency hack into European companies’ computer networks.
In the lead up to its secret mission targeting Netherlands-based Gemalto, the largest SIM card manufacturer in the world, GCHQ used MUTANT BROTH in an effort to identify the company’s employees so it could hack into their computers.
The system helped the agency analyze intercepted Facebook cookies it believed were associated with Gemalto staff located at offices in France and Poland. GCHQ later successfully infiltrated Gemalto’s internal networks, stealing encryption keys produced by the company that protect the privacy of cell phone communications.
Similarly, MUTANT BROTH proved integral to GCHQ’s hack of Belgian telecommunications provider Belgacom. The agency entered IP addresses associated with Belgacom into MUTANT BROTH to uncover information about the company’s employees. Cookies associated with the IPs revealed the Google, Yahoo, and LinkedIn accounts of three Belgacom engineers, whose computers were then targeted by the agency and infected with malware.
The hacking operation resulted in GCHQ gaining deep access into the most sensitive parts of Belgacom’s internal systems, granting British spies the ability to intercept communications passing through the company’s networks.

Cryptome surveillance

In March, a U.K. parliamentary committee published the findings of an 18-month review of GCHQ’s operations and called for an overhaul of the laws that regulate the spying. The committee raised concerns about the agency gathering what it described as “bulk personal datasets” being held about “a wide range of people.” However, it censored the section of the report describing what these “datasets” contained, despite acknowledging that they “may be highly intrusive.”
The Snowden documents shine light on some of the core GCHQ bulk data-gathering programs that the committee was likely referring to — pulling back the veil of secrecy that has shielded some of the agency’s most controversial surveillance operations from public scrutiny.
KARMA POLICE and MUTANT BROTH are among the key bulk collection systems. But they do not operate in isolation — and the scope of GCHQ’s spying extends far beyond them.

GCHQ’s logo for the SOCIAL ANTHROPOID system

The agency operates a bewildering array of other eavesdropping systems, each serving its own specific purpose and designated a unique code name, such as:SOCIAL ANTHROPOID, which is used to analyze metadata on emails, instant messenger chats, social media connections and conversations, plus “telephony” metadata about phone calls, cell phone locations, text and multimedia messages; MEMORY HOLE, which logs queries entered into search engines and associates each search with an IP address;MARBLED GECKO, which sifts through details about searches people have entered into Google Maps and Google Earth; andINFINITE MONKEYS, which analyzes data about the usage of online bulletin boards and forums.
GCHQ has other programs that it uses to analyze the content of intercepted communications, such as the full written body of emails and the audio of phone calls. One of the most important content collection capabilities isTEMPORA, which mines vast amounts of emails, instant messages, voice calls and other communications and makes them accessible through a Google-style search tool named XKEYSCORE.
As of September 2012, TEMPORA was collecting “more than 40 billion pieces of content a day” and it was being used to spy on people across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, according to a top-secret memo outlining the scope of the program. The existence of TEMPORA was first revealed by The Guardian in June 2013.
To analyze all of the communications it intercepts and to build a profile of the individuals it is monitoring, GCHQ uses a variety of different tools that can pull together all of the relevant information and make it accessible through a single interface.
SAMUEL PEPYS is one such tool, built by the British spies to analyze both the content and metadata of emails, browsing sessions, and instant messages as they are being intercepted in real time.
One screenshot of SAMUEL PEPYS in action shows the agency using it to monitor an individual in Sweden who visited a page about GCHQ on the U.S.-based anti-secrecy website Cryptome.

Domestic spying

Partly due to the U.K.’s geographic location — situated between the United States and the western edge of continental Europe — a large amount of the world’s Internet traffic passes through its territory across international data cables.
In 2010, GCHQ noted that what amounted to “25 percent of all Internet traffic” was transiting the U.K. through some 1,600 different cables. The agency said that it could “survey the majority of the 1,600” and “select the most valuable to switch into our processing systems.”
Many of the cables flow deep under the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. East Coast, landing on the white-sand beaches of Cornwall in the southwest of England. Others transport data between the U.K. and countries including France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway by crossing below the North Sea and coming aground at various locations on England’s east coast.
According to Joss Wright, a research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, tapping into the cables allows GCHQ to monitor a large portion of foreign communications. But the cables also transport masses of wholly domestic British emails and online chats, because when anyone in the U.K. sends an email or visits a website, their computer will routinely send and receive data from servers that are located overseas.
“I could send a message from my computer here [in England] to my wife’s computer in the next room and on its way it could go through the U.S., France, and other countries,” Wright says. “That’s just the way the Internet is designed.”
In other words, Wright adds, that means “a lot” of British data and communications transit across international cables daily, and are liable to be swept into GCHQ’s databases.

A map from a classified GCHQ presentation about intercepting communications from undersea cables.

GCHQ is authorized to conduct dragnet surveillance of the international data cables through so-called external warrants that are signed off by a government minister.
The external warrants permit the agency to monitor communications in foreign countries as well as British citizens’ international calls and emails —for example, a call from Islamabad to London. They prohibit GCHQ from reading or listening to the content of “internal” U.K. to U.K. emails and phone calls, which are supposed to be filtered out from GCHQ’s systems if they are inadvertently intercepted unless additional authorization is granted to scrutinize them.
However, the same rules do not apply to metadata. A little-known loophole in the law allows GCHQ to use external warrants to collect and analyze bulk metadata about the emails, phone calls, and Internet browsing activities of British people, citizens of closely allied countries, and others, regardless of whether the data is derived from domestic U.K. to U.K. communications and browsing sessions or otherwise.
In March, the existence of this loophole was quietly acknowledged by the U.K. parliamentary committee’s surveillance review, which stated in a section of its report that “special protection and additional safeguards” did not apply to metadata swept up using external warrants and that domestic British metadata could therefore be lawfully “returned as a result of searches” conducted by GCHQ.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, GCHQ appears to have readily exploited this obscure legal technicality. Secret policy guidance papers issued to the agency’s analysts instruct them that they can sift through huge troves of indiscriminately collected metadata records to spy on anyone regardless of their nationality. The guidance makes clear that there is no exemption or extra privacy protection for British people or citizens from countries that are members of the Five Eyes, a surveillance alliance that the U.K. is part of alongside the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
“If you are searching a purely Events only database such as MUTANT BROTH, the issue of location does not occur,” states one internal GCHQ policy document, which is marked with a “last modified” date of July 2012. The document adds that analysts are free to search the databases for British metadata “without further authorization” by inputing a U.K. “selector,” meaning a unique identifier such as a person’s email or IP address, username, or phone number.
Authorization is “not needed for individuals in the U.K.,” another GCHQdocument explains, because metadata has been judged “less intrusive than communications content.” All the spies are required to do to mine the metadata troves is write a short “justification” or “reason” for each search they conduct and then click a button on their computer screen.
Intelligence GCHQ collects on British persons of interest is shared with domestic security agency MI5, which usually takes the lead on spying operations within the U.K. MI5 conducts its own extensive domestic surveillance as part of a program called DIGINT (digital intelligence).

We think and behave differently based on the assumption that people may be watching.

GCHQ’s documents suggest that it typically retains metadata for periods of between 30 days to six months. It stores the content of communications for a shorter period of time, varying between three to 30 days. The retention periods can be extended if deemed necessary for “cyber defense.”
One secret policy paper dated from January 2010 lists the wide range of information the agency classes as metadata — including location data that could be used to track your movements, your email, instant messenger, and social networking “buddy lists,” logs showing who you have communicated with by phone or email, the passwords you use to access “communications services” (such as an email account), and information about websites you have viewed.

GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham, England.
www.gchq.gov.uk

Records showing the full website addresses you have visited — for instance, www.gchq.gov.uk/what_we_do — are treated as content. But the first part of an address you have visited — for instance, www.gchq.gov.uk — is treated as metadata.
In isolation, a single metadata record of a phone call, email, or website visit may not reveal much about a person’s private life, according to Ethan Zuckerman, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Civic Media.
But if accumulated and analyzed over a period of weeks or months, these details would be “extremely personal,” he told The Intercept, because they could reveal a person’s movements, habits, religious beliefs, political views, relationships, and even sexual preferences.
For Zuckerman, who has studied the social and political ramifications of surveillance, the most concerning aspect of large-scale government data collection is that it can be “corrosive towards democracy” — leading to a chilling effect on freedom of expression and communication.
“Once we know there’s a reasonable chance that we are being watched in one fashion or another it’s hard for that not to have a ‘panopticon effect,’” he said, “where we think and behave differently based on the assumption that people may be watching and paying attention to what we are doing.”

Light oversight

A GCHQ spokesman declined to answer any specific questions for this story, citing a “longstanding policy” not to comment on intelligence matters. The spokesman insisted in an emailed statement that GCHQ’s work is “carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.”
It is unclear, however, whether there are sufficient internal checks in place in practice to ensure GCHQ’s spies don’t abuse their access to the troves of personal information.
According to agency’s documents, just 10 percent of its “targeting” of individuals for surveillance is audited annually and a random selection of metadata searches are audited every six months.
When compared to surveillance rules in place in the U.S., GCHQ notes in one document that the U.K. has “a light oversight regime.”
The more lax British spying regulations are reflected in secret internal rules that highlight greater restrictions on how NSA databases can be accessed. The NSA’s troves can be searched for data on British citizens, one document states, but they cannot be mined for information about Americans or other citizens from countries in the Five Eyes alliance.
No such constraints are placed on GCHQ’s own databases, which can be sifted for records on the phone calls, emails, and Internet usage of Brits, Americans, and citizens from any other country.
The scope of GCHQ’s surveillance powers explain in part why Snowden toldThe Guardian in June 2013 that U.K. surveillance is “worse than the U.S.” In an interview with Der Spiegel in July 2013, Snowden added that British Internet cables were “radioactive” and joked: “Even the Queen’s selfies to the pool boy get logged.”
In recent years, the biggest barrier to GCHQ’s mass collection of data does not appear to have come in the form of legal or policy restrictions. Rather, it is the increased use of encryption technology that protects the privacy of communications that has posed the biggest potential hindrance to the agency’s activities.
“The spread of encryption … threatens our ability to do effective target discovery/development,” says a top-secret report co-authored by an official from the British agency and an NSA employee in 2011.
“Pertinent metadata events will be locked within the encrypted channels and difficult, if not impossible, to prise out,” the report says, adding that the agencies were working on a plan that would “(hopefully) allow our Internet Exploitation strategy to prevail.”
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Documents published with this article:

the gipster

Sunday, September 27, 2015