This is truly interesting, but NOT in a good way… And eIA’s post HERE kinda set me off on this trail…
We ‘are’ being watched, and you can bet at least ‘some’ of us are on a variety of lists, thanks to DHS among others…
The FBI has the e-mails of nearly all US citizens, including congressional members, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. Speaking to RT he warned that the government can use information against anyone it wants.
One of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history resigned in 2001 because he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the constitution.
He asserts, that the FBI has access to this data due to a powerful device Naris.
/snip/
RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the President. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency – in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?
WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Buffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the electronic frontiers foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.
RT: What are they going to do with all of that? Ok, they are storing something. Why should anybody be concerned?
WB: If you ever get on the enemies list, like Petraeus did or… for whatever reason, than you can be drained into that surveillance.
RT: Do you think they would… General Petraeus, who was idolized by the same administration? Or General Allen?
WB: There are certainly some questions, that have to be asked, like why would they target it (to begin with)? What law were they breaking?
RT:In case of General Petraeus one would argue that there could have been security breaches. Something like that. But with General Allen – I don’t quite understand, because when they were looking into his private e-mails to this woman.
WB: That’s the whole point. I am not sure what the internal politics is… That’s part of the program. This government doesn’t want things in the public. It’s not a transparent government. Whatever the reason or the motivation was, I don’t really know, but I certainly think, that there was something going on in the background, that made them target those fellows. Otherwise why would they be doing it? There is no crime there.
/snip/
We ‘are’ being watched, and you can bet at least ‘some’ of us are on a variety of lists, thanks to DHS among others…
The FBI has the e-mails of nearly all US citizens, including congressional members, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. Speaking to RT he warned that the government can use information against anyone it wants.
One of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history resigned in 2001 because he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the constitution.
He asserts, that the FBI has access to this data due to a powerful device Naris.
/snip/
RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the President. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency – in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?
WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Buffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the electronic frontiers foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.
RT: What are they going to do with all of that? Ok, they are storing something. Why should anybody be concerned?
WB: If you ever get on the enemies list, like Petraeus did or… for whatever reason, than you can be drained into that surveillance.
RT: Do you think they would… General Petraeus, who was idolized by the same administration? Or General Allen?
WB: There are certainly some questions, that have to be asked, like why would they target it (to begin with)? What law were they breaking?
RT:In case of General Petraeus one would argue that there could have been security breaches. Something like that. But with General Allen – I don’t quite understand, because when they were looking into his private e-mails to this woman.
WB: That’s the whole point. I am not sure what the internal politics is… That’s part of the program. This government doesn’t want things in the public. It’s not a transparent government. Whatever the reason or the motivation was, I don’t really know, but I certainly think, that there was something going on in the background, that made them target those fellows. Otherwise why would they be doing it? There is no crime there.
/snip/
RT report in full and video HERE.
And when you tie it in with all the phone companies being ‘required’ to maintain your text messages for TWO YEARS just in case they are needed for a criminal case… Article HERE.
And they already capture GPS data, and you add photo recognition software, and police cars/cities with cameras… Yeah, we have NO privacy left *unless you’re in your own house in the basement, not connected to the net, not watching TV, just reading a book…
I’m a little skeptical about this. I don’t doubt that the .gov has been looking into email that they shouldn’t have, but having nearly all email seems a little over the top. The feeds to get it would be enormous. And the ability to search it for something useful would be challenging.
I was recently directed to an interesting e-mail hosting service. Most of them, like hotmail or gmail, require you to give them identifying information.
Not this one. You don’t have to provide anything other than a username (which could be nothing more than a random series of letters and numbers) and password.
If you access it through a VPN or one of the many IP rediriecting sites, there would be no way to link it to you.
They swear that even they can’t read your e-mails due to their security implementation and that they never sell their e-mail lists to third parties.
They have two levels of free accounts, one without adds with limited functionality (but everything you’d probably need) and one that is ad supported with a little more functionality, and then there are more levels of paid accounts with more features, but as soon as you provide them with a credit card, there’s a paper trail so that would be self defeating if doing it for privacy against government intrusion.
I just signed up last week and am still trying it out, so I can’t vouch for the service with any kind of voice of experience, but so far, it’s seemed to work well for me.
If you’re concerned about being spied upon, it could be a good option:
http://lavabit.com
BTW, I’m not affiliated with them in any way and, as I said, have only been a user for about a week, but I just wanted to pass along the information.
Seems to me that this is a gross violation of the 4th amendment; we get so concerned about the 1st and 2nd potentially being violated—where is the outrage here?
We have NO privacy any more, and there’s no outrage … or so it seems. Isaac Asimov once opined that the advance of civilization involved nothing so much as an increased loss of privacy.
The first time I read that, I thought it was funny. Now, not so much.
I’m also a little skeptical, but to be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me. Keith Alexander always did chafe a bit under the yoke of “thou shalt not collect data on Americans” directives.
On a related note: You do know that every time one purchases a firearm, there’s a record kept.
That is, if you use a Credit Card.
All the Feds have to do is access any Credit Card account, look at your record of purchases, and see if you bought anything from Bob’s Guns and Tackle.
So they can shred all the 4473’s they want, they can just come at you under RICO and Patriot Act.
And they’ve had that power for years.
Andy- I’m guessing they ‘have’ the feeds…
Sailor Curt- Good point!
Anon- Because there is little/no publicity until it’s too late, and the MSM is not going to cover stuff like this… They don’t want anybody looking over ‘their’ shoulders too closely… (My guess)
Rev- Good point!
DB- Another good point!
Les- Yep… sigh…
I am with both you and Andy. Are they watching, yes! Will some innocent person or two or 100 get screwed yes, but in the scheme of the problems out there are most of us on the radar?????
Agirl- I ‘think’ we are… Just sayin…