Hey Everybody !!! - Guess Who's Gonna Choose The NSA Technical Advisory Review Group !!!
This Independent Technical Review Group Brought to You By the Booz Allen Hamilton Director of National Intelligence™By: emptywheel
Monday August 12, 2013 4:36 pm
<snip>
When Obama announced Friday the formation of a technical advisory group to review our SIGINT programs, I naively believed “outside” and “independent” meant “outside” and “independent.”
So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy — particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy. [my emphasis]
I also naively believed this was an effort to take up Ron Wyden and Mark Udall’s call to get an independent review of the program, which the rest of the Senate Intelligence Committee thwarted a year ago.
Nope!
In the memo Obama just released ordering James Clapper to form such a committee, those words “outside” and “independent” disappear entirely. Link (.pdf): http://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2013inteltech.mem_.rel_.pdf
The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust. Within 60 days of its establishment, the Review Group will brief their interim findings to me through the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the Review Group will provide a final report and recommendations to me through the DNI no later than December 15, 2013. [my emphasis]
And neither Obama nor the Intelligence Committees get to hear from this Group themselves. It all goes through James Clapper...
<snip>
More: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/08/12/this-technical-review-group-brought-to-you-by-the-booz-allen-hamilton-director-of-national-intelligence/
From DOD: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=120613
= new reply since forum marked as read
... then?
You were expecting something different? 
and ...figured out that folks would figure out that he would set up something like his "Catfood Commission to Devastate SS/Medicare."
So...nothing would surprise me these days. I was was only "waiting for the details" of how his New Initiatives would be Carried Out.
Now I know!
Thanks! 
We gotta keep going with the "TRUTH To POWER"...and parsing every damned and damning word out of our Elected Representatives Mouths to Hold THEM ACCOUNTABLE.
That's what "Citizens of Democracy DO!" Yet...it seems we work SO ALONE...these days ...speaking for Democracy and the Rights of Citizens guaranteed by Constitution and Bill of Rights...no matter how far the "FAR LEFT" goes to try to UNDO all of this.
We FIGHT BACK! And...maybe we will get the Ear of our Dem Party and the Ear of our President who will be there for over 3 and a Half Years. If he hears from us NOW...it's our Lips to President's ears?
"HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL" and that's a GOOD THING...imho.
and he's coming for your calling records next. Obama will be able to watch you as you starve. 
citizens! All the bullshit, any time, all of it in one handy and easily accessible place! With multiple Linckosaurus-Blue Links from here to there!
WOO HOO!111!!!!
Clapper's advisory group seems like an example of the problem rather than a solution. Why does this administration put the fox in charge of the henhouse again and again?
WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER
Wargle Blargle!
Oh wait, this isn't Free Republic?
No...not really. 
War, Inc merged with Washington DC, personified.
War Is Sell - Washington Elite Benefits from War
Christopher Bollyn
October 31, 2001
War has always been a profitable money machine for shrewd investors with foresight, but the extremely close connections of the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity investment firm and major war profiteer, to the Bush and Bin Laden families raise unavoidable questions of waging war for profit.
Established in 1987 the Carlyle Group was founded by David Rubenstein, a former staff member in the Jimmy Carter White House, and his two partners, Dan D'Aniello and Bill Conway. Today there are 18 partners in the firm and one outside investor. The Washington Post has described Carlyle as a "merchant banking firm" set up "to serve corporations and wealthy families." From the beginning the founders of Carlyle have recruited former politicians as consultants: former President George H. W. Bush is among them, along with a host of other Bush family cronies.
The Bush connection to the Carlyle Group is nothing short of a scandal, according to Larry Klayman, a notable government watchdog best known for pursuing the scandals of former President Bill Clinton. Now that the United States is bombing Afghanistan and allocating huge sums of money for defense, including $40 billion for the "war on terrorism" and more than $200 billion [1994 dollars] for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the conflict of interest is "direct," Klayman says. "President Bush should not ask but demand that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group." Carlyle owns many of the companies that will share in the $200 billion JSF deal.
"Carlyle is as deeply wired into the current administration as they can possibly be," Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said. "George Bush is getting money from private interests that have business before the government, while his son is president. And, in a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit financially from his own administration's decisions, through his father's investments. The average American doesn't know that. To me, that's a jaw-dropper."
The Carlyle Group, which claims to be the largest U.S. private-equity fund with some $14 billion in assets, makes money by investing in undervalued companies and reselling them at a profit, employing a host of former top-level government officials from the Bush and Reagan administrations, including former President Bush, in a global "money machine." The Washington Business Journal said in May that the Carlyle Group "seems to play by a different set of rules." Carlyle is a high-end business open only to the very rich. The Carlyle empire has investments around the world, owns numerous defense related companies outright, and has considerable business with the U.S. government. It owns so many companies that it is now one of the biggest U.S. defense contractors and a major force in global telecommunications. Carlyle also serves as financial adviser to the Saudi government.
Carlyle's directory reads like a Who's Who of high-profile Republicans going back to the Reagan administration. The chairman is Ronald Reagan's former defense secretary, Frank Carlucci. Former Secretary of State James Baker III, former Budget Director Richard Darman, and Arthur Levitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission through most of the Clinton administration, are all senior advisers to the firm.
CONTINUED...
http://www.bollyn.com/war-is-sell-washington-elite-benefits-from-war
What Frank Church warned us about. And to think, I still hope for change.
A whole truck load of fucking chocolates....
Wow, that's impressive! Trust is going to bust out all over because of that.
How come there was no objective to make sure none of the programs violate the 4th Amendment? Maybe it just slipped his mind.
I'm sure this is all part of his strategy. You just need to have faith. I find politics is much like worshiping the Lord, sometimes the people in charge work in mysterious ways.
I know this isn't a laughing matter, but man I needed that.
And actually... neither do I... having only joined in Jan. 2002.
Nice try, though.
that I was being a 'screamer' , 'hyperbolic' and 'irrational' for not trusting Obama's speech on Friday. 
You know what I miss about Bush? There were no pretty speeches when he announced shit that was going to fuck us over as a nation.
HEY! This is another BIG ONE headed for the "Obama Accomplishments List".
Accomplishment#127: Created a "Technical Review Group" to protect our Freedoms!!!
ANOTHER ACCOMPLISHMENT!!!!
Which way to the Mission Accomplished Parade?
You will know them by their [font size=3]WORKS.[/font]
Clappy.
for lying to Congress?
Oh, well, maybe Congress will impeach Clapper for lying to them?