Orwellian

Obama Denies Domestic Spying But He’s Wrong

"Obama on the Jay Leno show said 'We don’t have a domestic spying program.' He said 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an e-mail address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.' Obama is incorrect. The XKeyscore program of the NSA spies on everyone. 'A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.' It’s not the only program of the government." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama Denies Domestic Spying But He’s Wrong

Obama: ‘We don’t have a domestic spying program’

"Obama said the programs were critical to counterterrorism work. But he said more needed to be done to assure Americans they were not being spied on themselves. 'We don’t have a domestic spying program,' he said. 'What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.'" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingObama: ‘We don’t have a domestic spying program’

Think Government Is Intrusive Now? Wait Until E-Verify Kicks In

"If this part of the bill passes, all employers will be forced to use the government-run, Web-based system that checks potential employees' immigration status. That means, every American will have to obtain the federal government's prior approval in order to earn a living. E-Verify might seem harmless now, but missions always creep and bureaucracies expand. Surely we should link E-Verify to the criminal records of pedophiles? And why not all criminal records? We don't want alcoholic airline pilots, disbarred doctors, fraudster bankers and so on. E-Verify will be attractive as a way to enforce hundreds of other employment laws and regulations." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingThink Government Is Intrusive Now? Wait Until E-Verify Kicks In

Creepy: The State of California Pokes My Cell Phone

"Some cellphones received only a text message, others buzzed and beeped. Some people got more than one alert. It’s the Wireless Emergency Alert program, a cellphone version of the Emergency Alert System on your television. Cellphone owners receive messages automatically, based on their proximity to the emergency, not based on their phone number. 'If you’re from Texas and that’s where your phone number is based and you’re traveling in California at the time of the Amber Alert, you’ll receive the text message about the Amber Alert in California on your Texas-based phone,' said CHP spokeswoman Fran Clader." Continue reading →

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Monday Morning Skeptic: Questioning Authority in the Sprawling Boston Bombing Case

"Mistakes were made. Lots of them—and on more than a few significant aspects of the story. But do such details really matter? If you believe in the infallibility of the FBI, probably not. But the Boston Marathon bombing investigation has bloomed into a complex filigree of related inquiries—from the unsolved triple murder in 2011 in drowsy Waltham, Mass., to the rare 'shelter-in-place' order and live-TV posse search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 19, to the puzzling FBI-agent shooting death in Florida of an unarmed friend of the Tsarnaevs who might have been able to answer crucial questions–had he lived." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingMonday Morning Skeptic: Questioning Authority in the Sprawling Boston Bombing Case

Fmr. NSA chief: Snowden defenders ‘20-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex’

"'If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?' said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to 'nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years'. 'I’m just trying to illustrate that you’ve got a group of people out there who make demands, whose demands may not be satisfiable, may not be rational, from other points of view, may not be the kinds of things that government can accommodate,' Hayden said." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingFmr. NSA chief: Snowden defenders ‘20-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex’

Berkeley: What We Didn’t Know

"California investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld adds significantly more in Subversives, which is based on some 300,000 pages of FBI documents, pried out of the resistant agency over more than two decades in a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. I thought I knew all that was going on, but it turns out there was much that none of us knew, from the fact that the FBI secretly jammed the walkie-talkies of monitors directing a huge 1965 anti-war march I covered to the agency’s decade-long vendetta against Clark Kerr, the man who was first chancellor at Berkeley and then president of the University of California system." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingBerkeley: What We Didn’t Know

NEW Spying Scandal — Is This One the Last Straw?

"The DEA unit responsible for this program is a secret organization. It cannot be investigated by defense attorneys or called into court. Even the location of the Special Operations Division is classified. Now Your so-called 'representatives' promised you that the NSA only spies on those associated with foreign terrorists. They’ve insisted that there is no domestic aspect to this spying. You now know this to be untrue. It’s just one more lie. So let me ask you ... When will enough be enough ? At what point does our so-called government cease to be legitimate? At what point do we declare it to be a criminal entity?" Continue reading →

Continue ReadingNEW Spying Scandal — Is This One the Last Straw?

Senate edited Snowden’s Wikipedia page to change description from ‘dissident’ to ‘traitor’

"In a move sure to grind the gears of conspiracy theorists everywhere, a member of the US Senate recently edited Snowden’s Wikipedia page from describing him as a ‘dissident’ to a traitor, according to the entry’s changelog. The user’s IP address was quickly traced back to the US Senate. It is not clear if the person is an active Senator, a staffer or an intern, but the change certainly came from the Senate. The attempted edit, made August 2, was rejected by a moderator on the grounds it ‘seemed less than neutral,’ according to the posted rejection, which also listed the IP address and showed it was registered to the US Senate." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingSenate edited Snowden’s Wikipedia page to change description from ‘dissident’ to ‘traitor’

City Of Concord Confuses Concerned Residents With Domestic Terrorists

"A city that has had two homicides in the past decade needs an armored vehicle to protect itself against weapons of mass destruction, as well as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive attacks, according to City Manager Thomas Aspell. In an application for Homeland Security federal funding of a $258,024 BEARCAT tank, Aspell named three groups as presenting 'active and daily challenges': Occupy New Hampshire, Free Staters, and Sovereign Citizens. This information was only uncovered after a public records request from the ACLU, focusing on the trend of the militarization of police forces in peaceful, small-town communities." Continue reading →

Continue ReadingCity Of Concord Confuses Concerned Residents With Domestic Terrorists