CISPA Author Rep MIke Rogers Says NSA Is Not Spying On US.

This is just fascinating! ( And, yes, I accidentally brushed the enter key and made a blank thread. )

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), author of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act cybersecurity bill, said Thursday that the bill's "information sharing" aspect does not seek to share citizens' information with the government.

"Our NSA is not monitoring the Internet here in the United States," he said at a cybersecurity briefing in Washington, D.C. "I can guarantee you that."

Source

Gee... According to many sources, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation they are, in fact, doing just that.... spying.

The US government, with assistance from major telecommunications carriers including AT&T, has engaged in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.

News reports in December 2005 first revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications. Those news reports, combined with a USA Today story in May 2006 and the statements of several members of Congress, revealed that the NSA is also receiving wholesale copies of American's telephone and other communications records. All of these surveillance activities are in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the US Constitution.

The evidence also shows that the government did not act alone. EFF has obtained whistleblower evidence [PDF] from former AT&T technician Mark Klein showing that AT&T is cooperating with the illegal surveillance. The undisputed documents show that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails web browsing and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers and provides those copies to the NSA. This copying includes both domestic and international Internet activities of AT&T customers. As one expert observed “this isn’t a wiretap, it’s a country-tap.”

Here is a link to a timeline, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation that lists just the events we are aware of... and they contain listings up until just four months ago.

And here is some information about the various lawsuits ( and their dismissals by the courts ) demonstrating that not only the NSA, but the telecom companies can act with impugnity in this regard.

It is woefully obvious that the NSA is just one organization that is actively engaging in Cyber ops in the Americas. In previous threads I have also addressed Cybercommand, their very open domestic social engineering program, as well as aspects of the NSA.

Are the politicians even trying anymore? I can remember a time when they at least tried to tell believable lies - or at least tried to distract us with talk of their dogs or something. This is just ridiculous and, IMO, and according to the evidence, an outright lie.

Now, I'll post this to get rid of the posting faux paus and edit more in over the next few minutes.

reply to post by Hefficide


Wow.. what a load of BS. It is clear the NSA is not just spying on us.. it is spying on every aspect of our lives. I would venture to bet the NSA knows more about me than I know about myself.

www.wired.com...

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

Except for the fact that it was "killed" was just a lie so they could continue the project in secrecy. Never trust a politician to tell the truth especially if they have anything to do w defense or National Security.

The sheep are meant to fear for their safety

not for their rights and dignity

What exactly will it take for people to get pissed enough to stand up and say enough?

Next, they will be taking people in for questioning based on their google searches..

S&F

They're not spying, they're archiving. Big difference.
Besides, I thought the NSA was exempt from any US law where its name was not directly mentioned. Thats a whole lotta leeway....

Originally posted by daryllyn
What exactly will it take for people to get pissed enough to stand up and say enough?

Next, they will be taking people in for questioning based on their google searches..

S&F

They already are. Google announced a month or so ago that the number of requests for information about individual people in the US has increased by leaps and bounds in the last 18 months. Half the people they have entrapped in the FBI stings were found by what they had been searching for on Google.

www.google.com...

Originally posted by daryllyn
What exactly will it take for people to get pissed enough to stand up and say enough?

Leaders! You're nominated by virtue of asking the question!


Plenty of people are saying and have said "enough" .......myself included. Now what?

reply to post by GArnold

They already are. Google announced a month or so that the number of requests for information about individual people in the US has increased by leaps and bounds in the last 18 months. Half the people they have entrapped in the FBI stings were found by what they had been searching for on Google. www.google.com...

And, I thought I was being sarcastic. That is unbelievable.

Thanks for pointing this out.

Originally posted by olaru12

Originally posted by daryllyn
What exactly will it take for people to get pissed enough to stand up and say enough?

Leaders! You're nominated by virtue of asking the question!

I would have zero problem with that.

I like to talk, I am opinionated, and I took a public speaking course. Does that qualify me for the position?

Originally posted by daryllyn

Originally posted by olaru12

Originally posted by daryllyn
What exactly will it take for people to get pissed enough to stand up and say enough?

Leaders! You're nominated by virtue of asking the question!

I would have zero problem with that.

I like to talk, I am opinionated, and I took a public speaking course. Does that qualify me for the position?

Perfect!

My strategy to make my voice heard, was to run for a place on our village/city counsel. I lost! Even in local politics the machine/system is skewed to the elite with money to advertise and promote themselves and their corporate buddies. I see now that an independent, no matter how honorable and sincere is at a distinct disadvantage in "party politics" . This was in a very small village....taking on the feds and NSA would be daunting to say the least.

So called "Grass roots" politics is anything but. Money is the fuel that drives the political engine.

reply to post by GArnold


Someone should do an experiment and do 100 google searches on "suspicious" topics every day. I'd like to know how long it would take before a new "friend" appears with ideas of how to "take down the man".

reply to post by MystikMushroom


Actually, I've pretty much been doing that for the past five years and so far no knock.

has this congressmen heard of the internet???......now, they don't even care if they come right out and lie....and more bothersome to me is that if he lies about "this" (that is so easy to show he's lying), what else is he lying about.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by MystikMushroom

 

Actually, I've pretty much been doing that for the past five years and so far no knock.

no knock??....or so you say (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) i mean really, this is ATS, and every paranoid knows that the MODS are MIB, NSA, FBI, CIA, NRO, FEMA, HOMELAND SECURITY.....not some guy in boxer shorts, surrounded by taco bell wrappers, pizza boxes, empty beer cans, wishing all the while that SO would cut him a check for at least minimum wage.

reply to post by jimmyx


Do we know each other... because that's nearly uncanny.

Originally posted by Hefficide
reply to post by jimmyx

 

Do we know each other... because that's nearly uncanny.

just in ATS...but, i can imagine how it is day after day, the loneliness, the isolation from family and friends, wondering why they just can't understand why you do this.....oh well, have a nice day though!!!!!

Originally posted by Hefficide
Are the politicians even trying anymore? I can remember a time when they at least tried to tell believable lies -

Too big to prosecute. Too big to fail.

In following with mainstream themes of today, we are just too stupid and dumbed-down to bother with.

Even before NSA was made known to the public, when they were a small silent agency, that was what they did: wiretaps on phones of people they suspected were spies. Maybe the article is a technical truth, that NSA keeps itself separate from US. Maybe the technical truth is in the word "spying". I don't have to believe everything I read.

Way back in the 90s before the internet really hit public consciousness I remember reading about a piece of software stolen from a small company apparently by Ed Meese and the DOJ named PROMIS. From what I can recall PROMIS was a database that could essentially sit on top of other databases and absorb information.

Say for example, the govt wants to find someone missing. Through phone records, noticing if any 'friends' have higher utility bills, etc, they could track anyone. And this (stolen) software was sold to law enforcement in plenty of countries with one (secret) caveat; a back door for the CIA and NSA. In the first Gulf War Iraq wondered where the hell the US were getting their intel from.

If they had that then, what do they have now, and what did they have then that may be more powerful than what we have now?

Scary stuff!

reply to post by cuckooold

If they had that then, what do they have now, and what did they have then that may be more powerful than what we have now?

Just means that we are dealing with a "dynamic threat model" that needs appropriate disclosure.