The Real Story On The Trump Wiretapping - And The Story Behind The Story

President Trump created a firestorm when he accused President Obama of bugging his phones during the campaign. My first thought was that while this was likely, it was a tactical mistake. After all, basic intel 101 is that when you find something like that, you keep quiet about it and use it to feed false intel to your enemies. But as it has turned out, President Trump was correct to go public with this, and in fact it was a brilliant tactical stroke, which is why the Democrats and their trained seal media are suddenly backing away from a real investigation. Because as we'll see, President Trump was 110% correct. And that's going to end up being a major scandal that might even reach as far as former President Obama.

For a novice at politics, President Trump has been demonstrating real mastery of the game. Or perhaps its just that the Democrat media believes it's own horse manure so thoroughly that it still hasn't figured out who Donald Trump is, or how he got elected.

One of President Trump's tactics has been to tweet directly to the American people on various issues, after which the news cycle simply follows him and devotes lots of space to what an idiot he is. After which, facts come out they are forced to report showing that he was totally correct in the matter.He's set them up a number of times, and each time they are more revealed as the partisan whores they are, as opposed to being actual journalists.

The recent Sweden controversy is a good example.Trump was ridiculed for calling out Sweden as a place where taking in thousands of unassimilated, unvetted refugees has resulted in a dangerous situation complete with no go areas. Even the Swedish government weighed in. And then, the next week, Rinkeby, one of those no go areas in Stockholm, saw violent riots break out with the overwhelmed police actually fleeing the Muslim mobs and fires burning unchecked because the area is deemed to be too dangerous for firefighters to enter without police protection. Whole stories and reports on the horrendous situation in Sweden also surfaced to prove that President trump knew exactly what he was talking about.

Trump has done the same thing here.

The 'Russia hacked the election' meme has been part of the Democrat catechism ever since Trump won the election. of course, no less than a certain ex-president said this was impossible...at least when he thought Mrs. Clinton was a cinch to win:



But the Democrats and their media fellow travelers have continued to use this successfully. Funny, no 'reporter' ever asked any of them that since all the polls showed Mrs. Clinton winning, why would Putin and the Russians waste time and energy helping the candidate who was going to lose? Ohhh, why bother asking? The answer's so obvious, n'est pa*?

Aside from using the 'Russia hacked the election' nonsense to try to deligitimize Trump's election, there was another, more insidious reason to keep this fiction recycling itself in the media. And that was to tie President Trump's hands and if possible, keep him from enacting his agenda at least until the 2018 midterms.

The Senate Democrats, led by the odious Chuck Schumer know Majority leader Mitch McConnell quite well by now as the gutless coward he is. They've realized he has no intention of doing what Harry Reid did to force through Obama appointees with the Nuclear option of a simple majority vote. And so, they have been slow walking all of President Trump's cabinet appointees to a degree never seen before. And that's just the beginning. Because of that, as former Speaker Newt Gingrich pointed out on FOX news, President Trump hasn't even been able to begin to fill 2,000 other political vacancies within the administration. That especially affects the Department of Justice.

A number of these positions are now filled by Obama appointees, and most of them can be depended on to do their best to sabotage Trump's agenda as a fifth column behind the scenes.

By tweeting as he did, President Trump focused attention on the bogus 'Russia hacked the election' nonsense. And as usual, after a couple of days of hysterics from the Democrats and their media, coupled with an Orwellian non-denial from Obama's spokesperson, the real facts began to come out as attention was focused on this.

As the BBC reported, the Obama Administration did indeed wiretap the Trump Towers as well as Donald Trump and many of his campaign associates. Back in June of 2016, they applied for a Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA) warrant to monitor members of the Trump campaign, but were denied.That,by the way is almost unheard of unless there is no real evidence. Out of 35,000+ requests for surveillance, the FISA court has only ever rejected 12. That also suggests that the evidence was truly non-existent against Trump.

They tried a second time a month later, in July and were rejected again. They tried a third time, before a new judge and succeeded on October 15th, three weeks before the election.

According to what's surfacing now, Obama or someone in his administration  circumvented both the regular command of the FBI and the regularly appointed federal courts, by placing the entire case as a FISA case (probably under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from the third request for a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the court unwittingly granted. And which was then misused to spy on Trump, and many connected to Trump's campaign. It was President Obama, you'll remember who changed NSA policy just before he left office and instructed his security people toshare and preserve intel on this. He may live to regret that.

Additional proof of this comes, ironically, from the New York Times.On January 19th and 20th 2017,when President Trump was inaugurated, the New York Times emphasized the ongoing 'investigation' in a front page story by reporter Michael S. Schmidt:

"American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

"The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him."

"The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House."

Well, well! Now let's flash forward to March 4, 2017. Lo and behold there's a story in the New York Times with this headline: Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.' The author? Why, reporter Michael S. Schmidt, of course!

It's getting to the point they can't even keep their lies straight any more. Now the same Obama trained media seals who used the press to smear Trump are now demanding that he help them by denying what openly appeared - in the narrative they put out to try and destroy his presidency.

My personal choice for ringmaster of this circus is Obama lackey John Abu Brennan, former head of our CIA. He was almost certainly the 'senior official' referred to by the BBC and made a huge mistake in thinking he could put this out there without Trump calling him on it.As you may have noticed, the media isn't asking John Brennan anything. They're deliberately not putting him on the Sunday shows and the other usual outlets.

Instead, they're pushing Orwellian non-denials from the likes of James Clapper and Obama spokesperson Kevin Lewis. Meet the Press's Chuck Todd simply swallowed Clapper's lame horse manure without a single follow up. He never even asked Clapper to respond to the BBC story. Media whores like Chuck Todd have already gotten their marching orders. This needs to go quietly away. Among other things, Donald Trump just exploded the whole 'Putin hacked the election for Trump' mythology. It can't be safely used anymore.

And there's a good reason why. There are a number of crimes that appear to have been committed

In order to wiretap any American citizen suspected of illegal activity involving foreign intelligence, approval is needed from a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)judge.

FISA, 50 USC 1801 was deliberately designed as a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. That's because FISA evades the usual federal court process to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment forbids. So the FISA laws are limited and can be applied only for surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” situations. So a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances. If the application for such a warrant was deliberately constructed with false information, that is a major felony under section 1809, which makes it a crime for anyone to either perform electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA  or to disclose or use  the information gathered from it. 

Misusing the FISA system when foreign intelligence is NOT involved is another felony. So is perjury or conspiracy to commit perjury when it comes to say, testimony in congress used to falsely accuse Attorney general Jeff Sessions.


Then there's this. FISA law forbids  the dissemination of the information. But Obama's people issued orders to exactly that, if published reports are true about the administration sharing the surveilled information far-and-wide to promote unlawful leaks to the press.  FISA strictly segregates information gathered by surveillance  into two categories. Either it's  highly confidential, classified intel involving serious espionage,terrorism or  or  acts of war or  it's information that shouldn't have been gathered and needs to be immediately deleted, not  sourced nor disseminated. 

Since the intel gathered in spying on the Trump campaign  wasn't FISA material, it was supposed to have been  deleted and destroyed. Instead, Obama's crew did the opposite,ordering that it be preserved, and ordering the NSA to search it, keep it, and share it. After which Obama’s Attorney General, Loretta Lynch  issued an order to allow broader sharing of information.

That's not anything she would have the authority or the gall to do unless she had received direction - directly for the President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Now you know why the Democrats and their media creatures are backing away from this like a vampire from garlic.

Obama in now in the middle of the worst scandal since Watergate. Even worse, another of his little tricks backfired badly. As I reported earlier, Obama had the attack on Sessions planned way beforehand. He changed the order of succession in the Department of Justice deliberately so that one of his appointees would be in charge of the bogus 'Russia investigation.'

But President Trump, being no fool, did exactly the same thing. So the new acting Attorney General is now Dana Boente, the man Obama removed from succession...and Trump just put him back in charge. Boente is a solid , ethical prosecutor very much along the lines of Jeff Sessions,and he now has the opportunity to make a real name for himself.

The question, of course is "what did President Obama know, and when did he know it?" The rats on this sinking ship are unlikely to be willing to do jail time to protect Obama, at least not all of them. One of the smaller fish is going to talk in exchange for immunity.

Barack Husein Obama may go down in history not just as the first black president but as the first president to be a convicted felon. And he may end up with some interesting company.


* Ain't that the truth?

Gen. Michael Flynn Resigns As Trump's National Security Advisor

General Michael Flynn has resigned as President Trump's National Security Advisor, after it was learned that the Justice Department informed the White House that it believed he might be subject to blackmail.

The axe fell when Flynn admitted that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other senior officials about his communications with Sergei Kislyak, who is Russia's ambassador to the United States. In his resignation letter,Flynn said:

"Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology."

Along with his resignation of course.

What happened is that the FBI had intel that Flynn had discussed sanctions on Russia with Kislyak, but Flynn told administration officials that he hadn't. Pence repeated the misinformation on national television.

While Flynn didn't do anything illegal, this was a bad mistake on his part. But like the soldier he was, he owned up, took the blame and paid the price, a sad end to an honorable career.

To their shame, the Democrats are absolutely ecstatic over this.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a Leftist progressive. He said Flynn's resignation was "all but ordained the day he misled the country about his secret talks with the Russian Ambassador."

"In fact, Flynn was always a poor choice for National Security Advisor, a role in which you need to be a consensus builder, and possess sobriety and steady judgment," Schiff said in a statement. "It is certainly no role for someone who plays fast and loose with the truth."

Schiff, of course,has no military, hands on intel or national security experience whatsoever. So of course, he knows all about what's needed in an NSA advisor.

And that's interesting, considering that Rep. Schiff and his fellow Dems were all in for Hillary Clinton, whom we know deliberately endangered national security by putting classified material on an unprotected server to hide her crooked deals and operated her office as Secretary of State  for her own profit like a mega high priced escort service, pay for play.

Flynn made a bad error in judgement and he had to go. And there are stories floating around that he may have been responsible,inadvertently perhaps, for several media leaks. But by comparison with Mrs. Clinton's disgraceful, self serving misdeeds and outright felonies...no contest.

Retired Army Gen. Keith Kellogg is a longtime trusted policy adviser for Trump. He  has been appointed acting national security adviser, according to a White House statement. Kellogg was the former commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, and he has years of combat, national security and command experience.

He may end up getting the gig permanently.

Another possibility being talked about is retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, the former deputy commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command. Former CIA head General David Petraeus was apparently also mentioned, but I doubt he gets it because of his own national security problems.

Either Kellogg or Harward would be a good choice, and Kellog will do a great job holding things together until a decision is made.

NSA Dodges; Refuses To Say It Doesn't Spy On Congress

Senator Bernie Sanders,an Independent from Vermont, sent a letter to the NSA Friday, asking whether it has or is "spying" on members of Congress and other elected American officials.

In his letter, Sanders specifically defined "spying" as "gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or e-mails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business."

The NSA didn't answer the Senator's question, but their response was most revealing: "Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons."

In other words, they have none. And of course in the process of hoovering up data on virtually every call, internet customer and e-mail in America, the calls members of Congress and other elected officials are being scooped up as well.

Attorney General Eric Holder pulled the same stunt at a congressional hearing last summer when he responded to Senator Mark Kirk, (R-Illinois) by saying that the NSA had no "intent" to spy on Congress, but that this was something that needed to be discussed privately..and of course, not under oath.

What the Attorney General undoubtedly had in mind was James Clapper, director of National Intelligence being caught in a blatant lie to Senator Ron Wyden(D-Oregon) while testifying to Congress last March that the NSA was not collecting data on millions of Americans:



That was before Edward Snowden's leak on exactly what the NSA was doing, and before the news on how internet and cell providers were being forced to cooperate.

The idea of the NSA recording and storing metadata on the communications of members of Congress and other elected officials gives rise to some interesting possibilities, especially since we're talking about the Obama Administration.

Remember, this is the man who won his senate seat by getting his people to shop for a judge who would unseal the sealed divorce records of his Republican opponent Jack Ryan, which contained some of the usual wild, unproven accusations one finds in a contentious divorce where child custody is involved.

And let's not forget the suspicious timing of the leak on General David Petraeus' extramarital affair...after he testified before Congress backing up the Administration's fairy tale on Benghazi, something he did a 180 on a month later, once the president's re-election was safely in the bag and the leak was used to discredit him.The data used to find out about his affair came from phone records that were used to match up with certain hotel bills.

And dare we mention the way the IRS was used to go after President Obama's perceived political enemies?

The same techniques can be used to sway members of Congress to vote a certain way, or to 'persuade' a popular senator or governor not to run for office.

In spite of what the Obama Administration and tools like Clapper and Holder might say, we do have an expectation of privacy. It's called the Fourth Amendment, something I'm sure President Obama has little familiarity with:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Our Founders put this in the Constitution for a good reason, and they would be would be amazed at how tamely we've repeatedly allowed this right to be violated.

Senate Panel Okays Legislation Attacking Bloggers And New Media

 

The senate judiciary committee just cleared the way for legislation defining who a journalist is..and thus who qualifies for protection from warrantless surveillance, having to reveal sources and secret government subpoenas of phone records, e-mails and personal information.

This emerged out of the Obama Administration scandal involving the Associated Press, when the Justice Department secretly subpoenaed almost two months of telephone records for 21 phone lines used by reporters and editors for The Associated Press and secretly used a warrant to obtain some emails of a Fox News journalist.

The new legislation follows closely on guidelines given to the committee by Attorney General Eric Holder, and they are designed specifically to make it a lot easier to attack bloggers and new media journalists and video makers.

Under these guidelines, a "covered journalist" is defined as an employee, independent contractor or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information. The individual would have been employed for one year within the last 20 or three months within the last five years.

It would apply to student journalists or someone with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years.

'Freelance' in this case is defined as paid work.

For example, writing unpaid freelance pieces for internet outlets like American Thinker, or unpaid op-eds for other publications is not does not protect your rights.

The committee later approved the overall bill on a 13-5 vote.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a chief proponent of the medial shield legislation, worked with Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as well as representatives from news organizations, on the compromise.

"I think journalism has a certain tradecraft. It's a profession. I recognize that everyone can think they're a journalist," Feinstein said.

The overall measure would incorporate many of the changes proposed by Attorney General Eric Holder in July. Criticism of the collection of the material without any notice to the news organizations prompted President Barack Obama to order Holder to review the department's policy.

Holder's revised guidelines called for the government to give advance notice to the news media about subpoena requests for reporters' phone records unless the attorney general determines such notice would pose a clear and substantial threat to the investigation. Search warrants for a reporter's email would only apply when the individual is the focus of a criminal investigation for conduct not connected to ordinary newsgathering.

The bill makes clear that before the government asks a news organization to divulge sources, it first must go to a judge, who would supervise any subpoenas or court orders for information. Such orders would be limited, if possible, "in purpose, subject matter and period of time covered so as to avoid compelling disclosure of peripheral, nonessential or speculative information."

Holder's revised guidelines do not call for a judge to be involved before the government asks a news organization to divulge sources. However, the guidelines call for a new standing News Media Review Committee to advise the attorney general on such requests.

These protections only apply to the new definition of 'journalist'. If you have a blog or a YouTube channel, no matter how well established or reputable and the writers or videographers are unpaid citizen journalists, it's open season.

First amendment? Huh? Wha?

Call your representatives to broaden this narrow definition if you value your freedom of speech and press.

The Rewards Of 'Cooperation' With The NSA - Verizon Given Huge Federal Contract

 

Yes, selling out your customer's private information to the Feds can pay big dividends.

In a press release, Verizon announced that thecorporation had been selected for a huge new contract with the Department of the Interior:

The U.S. Department of the Interior has selected Verizon to participate in a $10 billion, 10-year contract to provide cloud and hosting services. This is potentially one of Verizon's largest federal cloud contracts to date.

Verizon is one of 10 companies that will compete to offer cloud-based storage, secure file transfer, virtual machine, and database, Web, and development and test environment hosting services. The company is also one of four selected to offer SAP application hosting services.

Each of the 10 agreements awarded under the Foundation Cloud Hosting Services contract has a potential maximum value of $1 billion.


According to a court order labeled "TOP SECRET,"  that was outed by Britain's  Guardian, federal judge Roger Vinson ordered Verizon to turn over the phone records of millions of its U.S. customers to the National Security Agency (NSA) in a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The order, issued in April by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court  compels Verizon to provide these records on an “ongoing daily basis” and hand over to the NSA an electronic copy” of “all call detail records created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.”

That means the phone numbers involved, the electronic identity of the phone or computer used, any calling card numbers ) used in making the calls, and the time and duration of the call. So if you're a
Verizon customer, your detailed phone records were and will continue to be handed over to the  NSA .

To my knowledge, Verizon did not appeal the order or protest in any way .

The Fourth Amendment to the Cnstitution affirms  “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” and that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The government isn't even bothering to make a pretense that any of the millions of records seized involves 'probable cause'. Or that anyone is committing any kind of crime. All they're doing is scooping up millions of digital records and storing them on the chance that  maybe, one day something suspicious might be found.

And given this president's use of the IRS, that something might very well be a declaration to run for office, an affiliation, or a bit of criticism the government doesn't like, what have you.

In fairness to Verizon, they're hardly the only ones doing this. All the telecom companies are, and as we see, the rewards for going along can be substantial.

 Nor is the FISA court, which was specifically designed to protect our liberties doing much to prevent this either. In 2012, the feds made  1,789 requests to th eFISA courts to  monitor the electronic communications of American citizens.The court approved every single one of them . 

Our Constituion? Just a piece of outdated paper to these boys.

Snowden Granted Asylum In Russia

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has left his improvised quarters at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow after the Russian government granted him temporary asylum for one year.

The U.S., of course, wanted him extradited for revealing the details of secret and highly intrusive NSA domestic surveillance programs as well as a number of other details on how the agency operates. And they had been pressing the Russian government hard to send Snowden back.

Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela offered Snowden refuge, but there are no direct commercial flights to Latin America from Moscow and he was concerned the United States would intercept his flight.Especially after the Obama Administration pressured four U.S. allies in Europe to refuse to let a plane carrying Bolivia's president home from Moscow to use their airspace because Snowden might have been on the plane.

Needless to say, that did not win us any friends in Latin America.

However, the Russians said 'nyet' and Snowden has now taken up residence in a secret location.He's going to need to stay very under the radar to avoid a convenient accident, although I have a feeling he may have informed the feds that there are a number of highly classified and juicy items that will come out if anything happens to him...sort of a personal insurance policy.

His residence permit allows him to live anywhere in Russia. His Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena told the press that he gave Snowden his certificate and that he left in a taxi accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks.

According to his lawyer,Snowden has been passing the time while he was holed up in the airport learning Russian. Another incentive for him to do this is pictured here:



Yes, it's Anna Chapman, the gorgeous Russian spy with the 180 IQ who was arrested by the U.S. back in 2010 and later deported back to Russia in a prisoner swap..and who has already said publicly she finds Snowden "very attractive."

So the question remains...why would Russian leader Vladimir Putin agree with this, at the risk of straining ties with the U.S.? Because there is no risk.

Here's something that's not exactly a secret to anyone with any knowledge of foreign affairs. President Obama is not exactly regarded with much in the way of respect by either our allies or our foes.

In fact, as he's proven on numerous occasions, he's regarded as amateurish, arrogant, easily manipulated and downright deceitful when it comes to anything he says, no matter what public niceties are mouthed before the cameras in the photo-ops.

There is hardly one U.S. ally who now has better relations with the U.S. than they did back in 2009, and in many cases the relationship is far worse.

Putin in particular has every reason to regard him in this way.From the ridiculous START treaty to his cynical abandonment of Poland and the Czech Republic after they went out on a limb and committed themselves to helping our missile defense system to the Russians simply laughing at the Iran sanctions, he's more than proven he's flexible when Putin cracks the whip. Not only that, but the one time Putin actually tried working on something serious with him, a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian Civil War, the entire project collapsed when Putin found out that President Obama had secretly shipped 1,800 U.S. Marines behind his back to the Jordan-Syria border.

Aside from destroying any vestige of trust between Putin and Obama, the president's actions also torpedoed an agreement between Putin and the Israelis not to introduce certain advanced weapons systems like the S-300 missile defense systems into the region in exchange for an Israeli pledge not to attack Assad's troops and facilities in Syria.

So in Putin's eyes this is just one more way to twist the knife as payback. And who knows...if Snowden becomes a Russian citizen, (especially if he gets together with the fetching Ms. Chapman) Vladimir Putin may find a way to put his knowledge and talents to use.

Breaking: The Feds Want Your E-Mail Passwords

 

Major internet providers are going public - they're receiving increased request from the federal government to turn over massive numbers of private e-mail passwords.

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

While some of the major internet providers say they've successfully resisted government orders for passwords and encryption codes, a number of others simply refused to answer. And even the ones that claim they haven't could be lying simply to avoid a massive flood of people dropping their e-mail accounts and use of their search engines and web facilities.

The actual legal rationale is, as the article puts it, 'murky'. My first impulse is to say that this is a clear violation of th4e Fourth Amendment's provisions against unreasonable search and seizure, particularly when is comes to massive scooping up of data from people who are under no suspicion of doing anything to warrant it.

And while the surveillance is troublesome, we've has this kind of surveillance before during wartime.The difference now is that for the first time we have a president and an administration willing to use it as a weapon against their political opponents rather than just for national security purposes:

The Justice Department has argued in court proceedings before that it has broad legal authority to obtain passwords. In 2011, for instance, federal prosecutors sent a grand jury subpoena demanding the password that would unlock files encrypted with the TrueCrypt utility. 

The Florida man who received the subpoena claimed the Fifth Amendment, which protects his right to avoid self-incrimination, allowed him to refuse the prosecutors' demand. In February 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit agreed, saying that because prosecutors could bring a criminal prosecution against him based on the contents of the decrypted files, the man "could not be compelled to decrypt the drives." 

In January 2012, a federal district judge in Colorado reached the opposite conclusion, ruling that a criminal defendant could be compelled under the All Writs Act to type in the password that would unlock a Toshiba Satellite laptop. 

Both of those cases, however, deal with criminal proceedings when the password holder is the target of an investigation -- and don't address when a hashed password is stored on the servers of a company that's an innocent third party. 

"If you can figure out someone's password, you have the ability to reuse the account," which raises significant privacy concerns, said Seth Schoen, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

How The Obama Administration Uses Your Car To Spy On You

In yet another infringement on our liberties, Big Government has been using your car to spy on you, withlittle or no judicial oversight or warrants.

And no, this is not tinfoil hat stuff.

According to a new study by the ACLU, the increased use of automated scanners has amassed a huge data base of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, cross referencing it with the information the DMV has on you. This normally includes your address, your Social Security number, your fingerprints, a complete physical description as well as your address. Since this is all the information needed to run a complete credit report on you, a trained expert can do a pretty good idea of piecing together your financial information as well.

Not only is your personal data accessible. Th enew technology enables the powers that be to check your habits and your daily routine. They can see which bar someone might be frequenting, whom your friends are whether you're joining a protest, getting medical or mental help, cheating on your spouse spouse and much more. The records can be digitally stored and kept for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.

And just like PRISM, the technology casts a wide net. It scoops up records the plates of everyone in the vicinity, not just some one whom might be a suspect under investigation.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to track a car with a GPS, no such judicial oversight is needed for the plate scanners. There's also nothing stopping the feds or other government agencies from accessing it either, and you can rest assured they have.

Land of the free my eye.

GOP chairman of House Intelligence Committee Puts His Foot In His Mouth...

Rep.Mike Rogers(R-MI) is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He went public on one of the Sunday shows today, saying that the NSA's surveillance program was just dandy, stopped 'dozens of plots' (which of course no one can recall or name a single one) and that there was a lot of what he called “misleading rhetoric,” including reports that the NSA was listening to phone calls. He called the program a “lockbox” with “lots of protections.”

Too bad for Rep. Rogers that at he wasn't paying attention. Just the day before, the NSA was admitting that they did in fact listen to phone calls..without any warrants whatsoever. And simply on the say so of one 'analyst':

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."

If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

Whoopsie.

Not only that, but there's little or no oversight over who has access to the private data on American citizens that been stored digitally...perhaps for later use against the Obama regime's political enemies, just as the IRS was.

Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls -- in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established "listening posts" that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, "whether they originate within the country or overseas." That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.

William Binney, a former NSA technical director who helped to modernize the agency's worldwide eavesdropping network, told the Daily Caller this week that the NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. "They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that's what they record," Binney said.

Brewster Kahle, a computer engineer who founded the Internet Archive, has vast experience storing large amounts of data. He created a spreadsheet this week estimating that the cost to store all domestic phone calls a year in cloud storage for data-mining purposes would be about $27 million per year, not counting the cost of extra security for a top-secret program and security clearances for the people involved.

An Amazing Interview With Edward Snowden, The NSA Whistle Blower

What we're seeing here is the scooping up of an incredible amount of personal data that was thought to be private from ordinary Americans and its storage for later use.

And not just for security purposes..but to identify political enemies.

Given how the Obama regime has used the IRA, HHS, and other agencies as weapons against what it perceives as its political adversaries, does anyone doubt that this data could be used the same way?

Picture this - you're a Republican candidate for senator whose running ahead in the polls, but the regime has access to all your personal data - your private e-mails, your internet activity, your communications with your doctor,your lawyer, your accountant, your family, everyone.

All of it can be scanned and examined to provide dirt for your opponent to use.

Or let's say you had a divorce a few years ago where the records were sealed because certain allegations were made, certain things were said between you and your ex that neither of you wanted your child to be affected by and both of you agreed it was better to just move on. All of those records could be unsealed and used against you, even things you might have said or written in anger that you latter apologized for or repudiated.

Far fetched? Unlikely?

In fact, that's exactly what Barack Obama did to Jack Ryan to win his senate seat, with the aid of some judge shopping and the Chicago Tribune. And that was without the assistance of the NSA and the power of the presidency behind him.

This is tyranny unfolding, and this is a very big deal.

Tyranny By Stealth

The recent scandals on far reaching and intrusive data gathering are far more serious and pervasive than most Americans dream.

The NSA and the FBI have been caught out mining internet providers for private data on millions of Americans, and coercing telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T to over data on every call, text, e-amail or other internet usage to them.

The private data of millions of Americans was scanned and almost certainly digitally archived.

This was all done in secret, and was only found out because the British Guardian published a scoop on it.

And it gets worse. We've now being told about a top secret project known as PRISM. What essentially happened is that someone in the intelligence community was so revolted and concerned by what he or she saw everyday that they went to the Washington Post with a PowerPoint slide presentation, talked to the Post and their reporters, and the Post wrote the story up and put it out. And the story is that practically every major company involved in digital usage in America is being forced to allow the Obama regime access to their servers and all the date contained on them...all of the E-mails, texts, tweets, phone calls, online sales, photographs, everything done via the Apple, Microsoft or Google servers, which the NSA is able to look at in real time. The Post quoted their source as saying, "It was so scary. They can watch us as we type."

And they're hoovering it up by the truckload.

This is so far beyond the scope of anything that's ever been done before that the inevitable comparisons by the Left with the Bush warrantless wiretaps borders on ludicrous.

The Bush Administration program, which was outed by the New York Times a year after the Times found out about it was an entirely different animal. It involved not a blanket dragnet of American citizens and the pillaging of their privacy but the concentration on calls by individual and select suspects in the United States to suspect numbers overseas in countries like Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

As Stephen Hayes' superb biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney relates, the Times was fully briefed by the administration when they first got hold of the story via leaks, and the Times agreed to keep the program confidential.

That changed on year later in the run up to the 2004 election, when getting John Kerry elected and defeating George W. Bush became more important to the people running Pravda-on-the-Hudson than keeping a program vital to our national security secret from our country's enemies.

President Obama's sole comment on this is to reaasure Americans that no one is 'litening to your telephone.



After Benghazi, after Fast and Furious, after the AP scandal, the use of the IRS, HHS and Department of Justice as weapons against the Obama regime's political enemies, does anyone seriously believe that anymore?

Even the New York Times doesn't believe it, and that's simply amazing given how they've covered for this president at every turn. Although true to form, they exercised their usual hypocrisy and bias selectively 'edited' their original harsh criticism to tone things down.

Meanwhile,Obama's Department of Justice is fighting tooth and nail to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

What we are seeing is no less than progressive fascists resorting to type. It is tyranny by stealth.

Take a few minutes and go to the above link. It may ring some bells.

I'll have more on this later.