The Government Is Snooping Into The Personal Information Of Private Citizens
Recently, it has been coming out that our government has been snooping into the personal data and information of private citizens.
This isn't just a recent incident that has been uncovered either.
This type of behavior by our government has been going on for a very long time.
The difference now is that we are discovering how extensive this snooping is.
It is now time for us as a nation to turn the microscope back onto our government so that everyone can see what is really going on behind the curtain of their government sponsored media.
People simply could not get along with one another if what people thought about each other or knew about each other was revealed.
People would also be compelled to not reveal thoughts that they wanted to be revealed, such as new ideas that go against conventional wisdom.
Revealing speech that people want to be kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known severely represses our God-given and constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech.
If you have a right to speak or not to speak, then you should also have a right to commit your thoughts to paper or electronic records and keep the records private.
It doesn't matter if their process performs just as they claim it does without having any American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely gathers quite a lot of American information.
The government argues that it is going to use this data to catch terrorists or potential terrorists who intend to violate the rights of innocent people.
If this is the logic that they are using, then the government itself has become the potential terrorist! Which of these two entities (terrorists or government) is a greater threat to us? If you answered this question by saying that terrorists are the greater threat, then you are totally ignorant of the historical fact that governments have killed a staggeringly greater number of citizens than terrorists have.
The PRISM is Cracked Even with great personal risk to himself and his family, a career intelligence officer, Edward Snowden, felt compelled to disclose information about a secret government program called PRISM.
Firsthand experience with these systems and the horror of their capabilities drove him to provide 41 PowerPoint slides about how PRISM works and its capabilities.
He decided to move to Hong Kong, China before releasing this information.
In spite of the personal potential risks connected with this leak, he asserted that he felt compelled to blow the whistle after he concluded that the current administration wasn't living up to its campaign promises of change and transparency.
He revealed that, "I had an authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal email.
You don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to have eventually fallen under suspicion...
and then they can use this system to go back in time and...
derive suspicion from an innocent life".
He went on to say, "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.
With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.
If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts.
I can get your emails, passwords, phone records and credit cards.
I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things.
I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded.
That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
" In a message enclosed with the initial group of documents he produced, Snowden wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant".
He has additionally asserted in an interview released Sunday that "allowing the U.
S.
government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest".
Snowden is saying that he would "ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy".
Initially, only 4 of these slides have been revealed by the media, but just these few have caused quite a big stir.
Such a leak is incredibly exceptional considering the previous record of the NSA, which prides itself on ensuring an enormous level of secrecy.
He chose to deliver this information to The Washington Post in an effort to reveal what he believes to be a total intrusion on personal privacy.
As he also revealed, "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type".
"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world," charged Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian after finding out about what information was leaked.
More recently Greenwald has said that the newspaper is deciding on when to introduce the next report related to details reportedly furnished to him by Snowden.
He states "dozens" of articles could be released from the documents, and that the Guardian plans to pursue each and every one.
The Government's Response to This Leak Our President recently said in a public news conference that, "I don't welcome leaks, because there's a reason why these programs are classified".
He insisted that it was, "impossible to have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy".
He also added that it was, "up to the government to make the choice".
He even mocked the people who "complain about Big Brother".
He proceeded to denounce news outlets for informing the general public about the PRISM system.
So the government's initial reaction is to criticize the news outlet that is "guilty" of unveiling such a leak.
He also said that, "if you can't trust the government, then we are going to have a problem".
This last statement sounded a lot more like a threat than a word of caution.
In a campaign speech from when he was originally running for President in 2007, he vowed to overturn warrant-less wiretaps, email reading and other government policies that encroached on our civil liberties.
It seems that either someone has convinced him to change his mind about this or that he already had another agenda in mind at that time.
The present political administration has aggressively targeted and pursued whistle-blowers like US Army Private Bradley Manning, whose trial on accusations of sending classified information to the Wiki-leaks online site started last week - three years after his arrest.
"America has struck the 'right balance' between privacy and government power", stated the President.
He even inferred that spying on the myriad of specifics about Americans' day-to-day lives in effect safeguards our civil liberties.
The NSA has revealed that it has filed a criminal report with the US Justice Department over the leaks that triggered the controversy.
The US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, declared on Sunday that he had just recently asked the Justice Department to start a criminal investigation into the leaks.
Lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen.
Dianne Feinstein of California and House Speaker John Boehner have already accused this man of committing an "act of treason" that needs to be prosecuted.
A senior figure in Hong Kong law enforcement, Regina Ip, has recommended that the NSA whistle-blower depart from the city.
Ms Ip's message was offered after Snowden decided to make his name open to the public, despite the potential risks to himself as well as his friends and family.
Snowden's exact location in Hong Kong is unknown, but he has stated that he opted to base himself there due to its "strong tradition of free speech".
Roaches come out in the dark - when the light is turned on, they scatter.
Our government is infested with roaches and it is now time for the American people to turn on the light.
We don't know the extent of all the data collection about us.
Once the data is collected, it can be mined for anything they want.
We have scandals concerning the IRS and EPA targeting certain groups - what will they do in the future for groups that disagree? How PRISM Works It allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers, audio, video, photographs, documents, audio chats, video chats, text chats, user-names, passwords, VoIP sessions, connection logs and even live chats!! With this system, the NSA has the ability to reach inside the servers of the contributing organizations and gather both stored communications and even engage in real-time collection on specific end users.
The top-secret documentation given to the Washington Post indicates that virtually all of the top Internet services including Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple, Youtube and PalTalk are all sharing ALL of our user communications with the government.
Here are the dates of "activation" when the NSA got started acquiring confidential user information from Internet service companies:
Providers are legally required to comply with requests for users' communications under US laws, however, the Prism scheme makes it possible for the intelligence services to gain direct access to the companies' servers.
Based on a New York Times story, Facebook and Google have already been reported to be working toward setting up 'online rooms' from which to share personal data with the government.
Through a top-secret program endorsed by federal judges operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.
S.
intelligence network can easily access the servers of these Internet corporations for a wide selection of digital data files.
"The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping straight into the central servers of nine major U.
S.
Internet firms which allow analysts to monitor a person's activities and contacts as time goes by," reported the Washington Post.
PRISM has been referred to by NSA authorities "as the most prolific contributor to the president's Daily Brief" as well as the "leading source of raw material", the Washington Post also reported.
Conclusions All of these Internet services are working in conspiracy with a criminal administration that feels as though there are simply no barriers to their power and that it may spy and snoop on all United States citizens.
PRISM isn't just about keeping track of terrorists, though; it's really about stalking and spying on powerful Americans so that they can leverage this information against them and force them to comply with their wishes.
The present administration has followed a "warped and distorted" view of the Patriot Act, the legislation that sanctioned many types of surveillance for homeland security concerns in the wake of the Sept.
11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Both political parties are major supporters of this government misuse of power as well as the use of authorities to control, bully, censor, oppress, keep track of and spy on unsuspecting Americans.
In fact, their whole power platform depends upon this.
Thought crimes are not actual crimes, nevertheless our federal government has apparently decided that they are.
The government engages in this by using conspiracy legislation.
There is no justice in The Department of Justice in our nation and there is no intelligence in the Intelligence community either.
Our government is illegally tapping into our communications.
This is an invasion of our privacy and is also infringing upon our constitutional right to free speech.
Isn't a government with this kind of power wide open to invading any of our rights that it pleases? Now it is all becoming a proven fact.
The government isn't only reaching down a lot of our pants at the terminal; it's reaching into a lot of our personal phone calls, email messages, bank account activity, personal photographs, online storage data files, Skype chats, Skype phone calls as well as many other things.
Despite what "police statists" like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) might suggest or believe is within the scope of our government's power, the 4th Amendment of our Constitution is quite clear on this issue.
This isn't just a recent incident that has been uncovered either.
This type of behavior by our government has been going on for a very long time.
The difference now is that we are discovering how extensive this snooping is.
It is now time for us as a nation to turn the microscope back onto our government so that everyone can see what is really going on behind the curtain of their government sponsored media.
People simply could not get along with one another if what people thought about each other or knew about each other was revealed.
People would also be compelled to not reveal thoughts that they wanted to be revealed, such as new ideas that go against conventional wisdom.
Revealing speech that people want to be kept private and suppressing speech that people want made widely known severely represses our God-given and constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech.
If you have a right to speak or not to speak, then you should also have a right to commit your thoughts to paper or electronic records and keep the records private.
It doesn't matter if their process performs just as they claim it does without having any American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely gathers quite a lot of American information.
The government argues that it is going to use this data to catch terrorists or potential terrorists who intend to violate the rights of innocent people.
If this is the logic that they are using, then the government itself has become the potential terrorist! Which of these two entities (terrorists or government) is a greater threat to us? If you answered this question by saying that terrorists are the greater threat, then you are totally ignorant of the historical fact that governments have killed a staggeringly greater number of citizens than terrorists have.
The PRISM is Cracked Even with great personal risk to himself and his family, a career intelligence officer, Edward Snowden, felt compelled to disclose information about a secret government program called PRISM.
Firsthand experience with these systems and the horror of their capabilities drove him to provide 41 PowerPoint slides about how PRISM works and its capabilities.
He decided to move to Hong Kong, China before releasing this information.
In spite of the personal potential risks connected with this leak, he asserted that he felt compelled to blow the whistle after he concluded that the current administration wasn't living up to its campaign promises of change and transparency.
He revealed that, "I had an authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal email.
You don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to have eventually fallen under suspicion...
and then they can use this system to go back in time and...
derive suspicion from an innocent life".
He went on to say, "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.
With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.
If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts.
I can get your emails, passwords, phone records and credit cards.
I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things.
I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded.
That is not something I am willing to support or live under.
" In a message enclosed with the initial group of documents he produced, Snowden wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant".
He has additionally asserted in an interview released Sunday that "allowing the U.
S.
government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest".
Snowden is saying that he would "ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy".
Initially, only 4 of these slides have been revealed by the media, but just these few have caused quite a big stir.
Such a leak is incredibly exceptional considering the previous record of the NSA, which prides itself on ensuring an enormous level of secrecy.
He chose to deliver this information to The Washington Post in an effort to reveal what he believes to be a total intrusion on personal privacy.
As he also revealed, "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type".
"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world," charged Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the British newspaper The Guardian after finding out about what information was leaked.
More recently Greenwald has said that the newspaper is deciding on when to introduce the next report related to details reportedly furnished to him by Snowden.
He states "dozens" of articles could be released from the documents, and that the Guardian plans to pursue each and every one.
The Government's Response to This Leak Our President recently said in a public news conference that, "I don't welcome leaks, because there's a reason why these programs are classified".
He insisted that it was, "impossible to have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy".
He also added that it was, "up to the government to make the choice".
He even mocked the people who "complain about Big Brother".
He proceeded to denounce news outlets for informing the general public about the PRISM system.
So the government's initial reaction is to criticize the news outlet that is "guilty" of unveiling such a leak.
He also said that, "if you can't trust the government, then we are going to have a problem".
This last statement sounded a lot more like a threat than a word of caution.
In a campaign speech from when he was originally running for President in 2007, he vowed to overturn warrant-less wiretaps, email reading and other government policies that encroached on our civil liberties.
It seems that either someone has convinced him to change his mind about this or that he already had another agenda in mind at that time.
The present political administration has aggressively targeted and pursued whistle-blowers like US Army Private Bradley Manning, whose trial on accusations of sending classified information to the Wiki-leaks online site started last week - three years after his arrest.
"America has struck the 'right balance' between privacy and government power", stated the President.
He even inferred that spying on the myriad of specifics about Americans' day-to-day lives in effect safeguards our civil liberties.
The NSA has revealed that it has filed a criminal report with the US Justice Department over the leaks that triggered the controversy.
The US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, declared on Sunday that he had just recently asked the Justice Department to start a criminal investigation into the leaks.
Lawmakers including Senate intelligence chairwoman Sen.
Dianne Feinstein of California and House Speaker John Boehner have already accused this man of committing an "act of treason" that needs to be prosecuted.
A senior figure in Hong Kong law enforcement, Regina Ip, has recommended that the NSA whistle-blower depart from the city.
Ms Ip's message was offered after Snowden decided to make his name open to the public, despite the potential risks to himself as well as his friends and family.
Snowden's exact location in Hong Kong is unknown, but he has stated that he opted to base himself there due to its "strong tradition of free speech".
Roaches come out in the dark - when the light is turned on, they scatter.
Our government is infested with roaches and it is now time for the American people to turn on the light.
We don't know the extent of all the data collection about us.
Once the data is collected, it can be mined for anything they want.
We have scandals concerning the IRS and EPA targeting certain groups - what will they do in the future for groups that disagree? How PRISM Works It allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers, audio, video, photographs, documents, audio chats, video chats, text chats, user-names, passwords, VoIP sessions, connection logs and even live chats!! With this system, the NSA has the ability to reach inside the servers of the contributing organizations and gather both stored communications and even engage in real-time collection on specific end users.
The top-secret documentation given to the Washington Post indicates that virtually all of the top Internet services including Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple, Youtube and PalTalk are all sharing ALL of our user communications with the government.
Here are the dates of "activation" when the NSA got started acquiring confidential user information from Internet service companies:
- September, 2007 - Microsoft / Hotmail
- March, 2008 - Yahoo Mail
- January, 2009 - Google Gmail
- June, 2009 - Facebook
- December, 2009 - Paltalk
- September, 2010 - YouTube
- February, 2011 - Skype
- March, 2011 - AOL
- October, 2012 - Apple
Providers are legally required to comply with requests for users' communications under US laws, however, the Prism scheme makes it possible for the intelligence services to gain direct access to the companies' servers.
Based on a New York Times story, Facebook and Google have already been reported to be working toward setting up 'online rooms' from which to share personal data with the government.
Through a top-secret program endorsed by federal judges operating under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.
S.
intelligence network can easily access the servers of these Internet corporations for a wide selection of digital data files.
"The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping straight into the central servers of nine major U.
S.
Internet firms which allow analysts to monitor a person's activities and contacts as time goes by," reported the Washington Post.
PRISM has been referred to by NSA authorities "as the most prolific contributor to the president's Daily Brief" as well as the "leading source of raw material", the Washington Post also reported.
Conclusions All of these Internet services are working in conspiracy with a criminal administration that feels as though there are simply no barriers to their power and that it may spy and snoop on all United States citizens.
PRISM isn't just about keeping track of terrorists, though; it's really about stalking and spying on powerful Americans so that they can leverage this information against them and force them to comply with their wishes.
The present administration has followed a "warped and distorted" view of the Patriot Act, the legislation that sanctioned many types of surveillance for homeland security concerns in the wake of the Sept.
11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Both political parties are major supporters of this government misuse of power as well as the use of authorities to control, bully, censor, oppress, keep track of and spy on unsuspecting Americans.
In fact, their whole power platform depends upon this.
Thought crimes are not actual crimes, nevertheless our federal government has apparently decided that they are.
The government engages in this by using conspiracy legislation.
There is no justice in The Department of Justice in our nation and there is no intelligence in the Intelligence community either.
Our government is illegally tapping into our communications.
This is an invasion of our privacy and is also infringing upon our constitutional right to free speech.
Isn't a government with this kind of power wide open to invading any of our rights that it pleases? Now it is all becoming a proven fact.
The government isn't only reaching down a lot of our pants at the terminal; it's reaching into a lot of our personal phone calls, email messages, bank account activity, personal photographs, online storage data files, Skype chats, Skype phone calls as well as many other things.
Despite what "police statists" like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) might suggest or believe is within the scope of our government's power, the 4th Amendment of our Constitution is quite clear on this issue.