July 28, 2013

Glenn Greenwald: Low-Level NSA Analysts Have ‘Powerful and Invasive’ Search Tool (ABC This Week)

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Today on “This Week,” Glenn Greenwald – the reporter who broke the story about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs – claimed that those NSA programs allowed even low-level analysts to search the private emails and phone calls of Americans.

“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years,” Greenwald told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things. It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”

Greenwald explained that while there are “legal constraints” on surveillance that require approval by the FISA court, these programs still allow analysts to search through data with little court approval or supervision.

“There are legal constraints for how you can spy on Americans,” Greenwald said. “You can’t target them without going to the FISA court. But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.”

“And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added.

But the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee told Stephanopoulos he would be shocked if such programs existed.

“It wouldn’t just surprise me, it would shock me,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia, said on “This Week” Sunday.

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“It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool, exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described,” Greenwald said.
~~~

More at:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/glenn-greenwald-low-level-nsa-analysts-have-powerful-and-invasive-search-tool/

Greenwald, said: I defy the NSA to DENY this.

Who do you believe: vile Saxby Chambliss who defiled war-hero, paraplegic Max Cleland, or a reporter who is trying to reveal a secret program that government officials continue to lie about?

July 25, 2013

NYT: Paula Deen’s Cook Tells of Slights, Steeped in History

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/us/paula-deens-soul-sister-portrays-an-unequal-bond.html?src=me&ref=general

SAVANNAH, Ga. —

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For 22 years, Mrs. Charles was the queen of the Deen kitchens. She helped open the Lady & Sons, the restaurant here that made Ms. Deen’s career. She developed recipes, trained other cooks and made sure everything down to the collard greens tasted right.

“If it’s a Southern dish,” Ms. Deen once said, “you better not put it out unless it passes this woman’s tongue.”

The money was not great. Mrs. Charles spent years making less than $10 an hour, even after Ms. Deen became a Food Network star. And there were tough moments. She said Ms. Deen used racial slurs. Once she wanted Mrs. Charles to ring a dinner bell in front of the restaurant, hollering for people to come and get it.

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Now, Ms. Deen, 66, is fighting empire-crushing accusations of racism, and Mrs. Charles, 59 and nursing a bad shoulder, lives in an aging trailer home on the outskirts of Savannah.

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In 2010, Lisa T. Jackson, a white manager working at Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, the restaurant Ms. Deen set up for her brother, Earl Hiers, known as Bubba, voiced claims of racism and sexual harassment in the Deen empire.

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Ms. Jackson told Mrs. Charles that she was paid less than others who helped run the kitchen and who had not been there as long. Those people were white. Ms. Jackson introduced her to S. Wesley Woolf, the Savannah lawyer who would go on to file the suit.

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Much more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/us/paula-deens-soul-sister-portrays-an-unequal-bond.html?src=me&ref=general

Paula Deen needs to make restition to her employees. What a racist, selfish piece of work.

July 16, 2013

What's up with Carl Devin (D?-MI). NO on military assault change. NO on fillibuster change. WTF?

Rand Paul, Ted Cruz join Kirsten Gillibrand push on military sexual assault (No Levin, McCaskill)

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But the New York Democrat’s climb remains steep: She’s facing down the full force of the Pentagon’s lobbying machine, a Republican-controlled House cool to her idea and a rival bill backed by fellow Democratic Sens. Carl Levin and Claire McCaskill that aims to stamp out military sexual assault without disrupting the chain of command.

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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/kirsten-gillibrand-military-sexual-assault-94241.html#ixzz2ZDdNPbBA


And then there's:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Carl Levin Tuesday said he will oppose Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to end filibusters of President Obama’s nominees, saying he cannot support an effort by the majority to change the Senate’s rules by “fiat.”

Angered by Republican filibusters, Reid is threatening to use an end-run around the chamber’s arcane debate rules to use a simple majority to change those same rules: something that has been dubbed the “nuclear option.”

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Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnstanton/key-democratic-senator-will-oppose-efforts-to-end-filibuster

Does anyone have any thoughts or insights as to what's going on here? Is this just a coincidence, or a trend? Appreciate thoughts here.



edited to correct state!

July 15, 2013

K &R! Can we get this out of "conspiracy theory"? People really need to broaden their minds!

Think, read, believe what you see...

July 12, 2013

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport

Edited to include Snowden's entire statement, which includes damning information about how our government is spying on us. The entire statement should be read.

http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Edward Joseph Snowden delivered a statement to human rights organizations and individuals at Sheremetyevo airport at 5pm Moscow time today, Friday 12th July. The meeting lasted 45 minutes. The human rights organizations included Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and were given the opportunity afterwards to ask Mr Snowden questions. The Human Rights Watch representative used this opportunity to tell Mr Snowden that on her way to the airport she had received a call from the US Ambassador to Russia, who asked her to relay to Mr Snowden that the US Government does not categorise Mr Snowden as a whistleblower and that he has broken United States law. This further proves the United States Government’s persecution of Mr Snowden and therefore that his right to seek and accept asylum should be upheld. Seated to the left of Mr. Snowden was Sarah Harrison, a legal advisor in this matter from WikiLeaks and to Mr. Snowden’s right, a translator.

Transcript of Edward Joseph Snowden statement, given at 5pm Moscow time on Friday 12th July 2013. (Transcript corrected to delivery)

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

January 1, 2013

Rep. Cole (R-OK): "We now have a great deal more leverage against the White House."

Rep. Tom Cole on MSNBC just now.

So the Rethugs are crowing already. And they know what so many of us are REFUSING to admit. We've given up our strong hand for some short-term deals - but in the next round, when the rubber hits the road - we've got nothing to put on the table - except spending cuts.

We were holding all the cards - and the support of the American people - to get a really fair deal for the middle class, and make long-term fixes. Now we're just waiting for our kids to be taken hostage. Again. And we always pay.