Sources: NSA Targeting Credit Card Use

Sources: NSA Targeting Credit Card Use

www.breitbart.com

The WSJ is reporting that in addition to monitoring cell phone records, emails and web activity, the National Security Agency is monitoring credit card transactions. "NSA has established similar relationships with credit-card companies, three former officials said."

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
online.wsj.com

First Verizon, next PRISM and back doors to to at least 9 major Internet company servers...NOW sources are telling the Wall Street Journal, that the NSA under this administration is now monitoring the credit card transactions of many millions of Americans.

When it rains, it pours...This is Waaaaay out of hand. IMO, this administration has not only lost all credibility...as the NYT now says...THIS administration cannot be trusted with so much private and personal information...as evidenced by this downpour of scandals ( IRS, DOJ, et al).

www.breitbart.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The Total Information Awareness Initiative under a different name:
en.wikipedia.org...

Honestly, Obama is FAR worse than Bush Jr in almost every respect, boggles the mind that anyone supports him.

The funny thing is when you watch NCIS they can pull up all this sort of data in seconds so doesn't surprise me that its been done in real life

Well the difference is in NCIS (or other shows) not only do they get the information in seconds.... but the information is always correct.

I've been dealing with "big data" inside a corporation where all the info is sourced internally and getting the matches to properly work is always a struggle. Just matching things up blindly is how (for example) wells in Colorado end up being mapped in North Dakota.

Substitute people and see the effect.

Now would be a good time to ditch your credit card. If enough people did it, the Banks would have something to say about it, and you never know.
If you owe the credit card company too much money to ditch it straight away , you could draw cash on it in order to keep you ticking over and pay cash for items.
I am amazed that the gvt thinks it can keep getting away with this 'anti-terror' carp. But they do keep getting away with it. Oh well, if you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear.

in a lot of ways i think the question needs to be "what aren't they tracking", sure to be a shorter list then what they are.

phones, internet sites like Google Facebook, yahoo etc, credit cards, (can we also infer atm/debit cards?)(oh and just a "fun" fact for people related to this type of thing, with wal-mart EVERY TRANSACTION including Canadian stores goes right to Bentonville head office, they have been tracking your purchases for years), cameras in public, drones flying overhead, even the new "smart meters" giving info on our electrical usage, that can even purportedly tell them what we are doing even. how about cars through things like onstar and the "black boxes" Obama wants installed on new cars by 2014? that new "Google phone" seems primed and ready for the tasks of big brother. rumors of "smart appliances" that will be able to spy and report via wireless communication. ah the wonderful world of technology we live in that makes our lives better and safer for all. :shk:

reply to post by MaxSteiner

Honestly, Obama is FAR worse than Bush Jr in almost every respect, boggles the mind that anyone supports him.

Indeed, agreed!
But.....
Prepare to have your mind boggled, because there WILL be an Obama supporter coming onto the thread soon to extol his virtues and remind us that Bush started all of this.

Another reason why the evolution of money will be "cashless".
You can't track cash transactions without a paper trail.
Which is why Big media pushes credit cards and the such.
Teach children you can't live without it, then they don't know any better.

But I seriously see adults claiming they can't live without them either.
Of course they are also up to their eyeballs in debt...

I often wonder how much better things would be if we all lived within our means.
(But of course that isn't possible because we NEED that new TV! )

I don't own any credit cards, and teach others to stay away.

Welcome to the age of technology. The government can see every cent you have spent and on what you spent it on if they want. They can see who you called without even having a warrant. They can monitor your conversations if there is any reason. Everyone nowadays is a suspect, the laws have been changed so everyone is a criminal.

On top of that criminals can wipe out your savings and give you huge debts thanks to technology.

Oh well that's life. I pity our young, it is only going to get worse.

In addition to credit card companies...we can now add AT&T and Spring Nextel to Verizon to the NSA's list.

NSA Monitoring Actually Includes Three Top Phone Companies ... And Credit Card Data

On Wednesday we learned the NSA is still collecting phone call information from Verizon customers, and now the Wall Street Journal reports that the agency is also indiscriminately culling data from AT&T and Spring Nextel Corp. subscribers.

It's unclear what the scope of the credit-card data collection was, or if it's still ongoing, but considering the quick pace of government surveillance leaks in the past day, we should know soon enough. (The New York Times notes, "The extraordinary revelations, in rapid succession, also suggested that someone with access to high-level intelligence secrets had decided to unveil them in the midst of furor over leak investigations.")

nymag.com...

The NSA's efforts have become institutionalized—yet not so well known to the public—under laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most members of Congress defended them Thursday as a way to root out terrorism, but civil-liberties groups decried the program.

So, all this secret monitoring began 12 years ago under Bush Jr! I am not at all surprised. No wonder Americans lost so many freedoms during his administration. I always knew he wasn't a true conservative.

Disgusting to see Obama continuing the policies of Bush. He had a chance to reform a broken system, but all he's done is keep it running.

The arrangement with Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, the country's three largest phone companies means, that every time the majority of Americans makes a call, NSA gets a record of the location, the number called, the time of the call and the length of the conversation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Well, that's one relief: they don't get the content of the calls.

The Obama administration, which inherited and embraced the program from the George W. Bush administration, moved Thursday to forcefully defend it.

...

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, phone records were collected without a court order as a component of the Bush-era warrantless surveillance program authorized by the 2001 USA Patriot Act, which permitted the collection of business records, former officials said.

Absolutely appalling. Bush Jr was a total disaster for the USA.

Originally posted by obixman
Well the difference is in NCIS (or other shows) not only do they get the information in seconds.... but the information is always correct.

I've been dealing with "big data" inside a corporation where all the info is sourced internally and getting the matches to properly work is always a struggle. Just matching things up blindly is how (for example) wells in Colorado end up being mapped in North Dakota.

Substitute people and see the effect.

I see your point, but the bigger the corporation, the better their data crunching abilities.... AND....

The US federal government is by far the biggest corporation.

reply to post by Sankari

Disgusting to see Obama continuing the policies of Bush. He had a chance to reform a broken system, but all he's done is keep it running.

He's done a bit more than 'keep it running'.
He has expanded it.
Greatly.

reply to post by Sankari

Well, that's one relief: they don't get the content of the calls.

If they see something that piques their interest, they'll be listening after that.

Yet, for some reason... even though the Russians alerted them, they didn't know about the Boston Marathon bombers. Hmmmmm.

Originally posted by butcherguy
He's done a bit more than 'keep it running'.
He has expanded it.
Greatly.

Where? How? The WSJ article says this was all inherited from Bush—including PRISM, which began in 2007:

PRISM is a top secret electronic surveillance program run by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.

...PRISM replaced the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which was implemented in the wake of the September 11 attacks under the George W. Bush Administration. While the Terrorist Surveillance Program was widely criticized and had its legality questioned because it was not conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, PRISM was authorized by an order of the Court.

(Source).

This is a 100% Bush policy. The only thing that's changed is the fact that people are now aware of it!

All this data has been stockpiled using a court order from the FISA court...so technically nothing about this or stockpiling call logs from Verizon is unconstitutional.

Originally posted by MaxSteiner
The Total Information Awareness Initiative under a different name:
en.wikipedia.org...

Honestly, Obama is FAR worse than Bush Jr in almost every respect, boggles the mind that anyone supports him.

Well... not quite. All of these initiatives began under Bush. Obama has kept them going—which is absolutely disgusting—but I'm not sure how this makes him worse than the guy who started them in the first place.

Prism has been operating since 2007; the other stuff has been going on since 2001. So the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Americans for 8 years! Don't give Bush a free pass over that. Remember, he wasn't a conservative.

So, how long will it be before we discover that the NSA has back door access to all of our bank records, savings and checking accounts, IRA, etc.?

AND... if the government has access to our credit card records,...can they also amend our statement to state that we purchased a dozen pressure cookers?

reply to post by Sankari

100% Bush?
It all goes back to REAGAN.

Executive Order 12333
Bush amended that executive order.
Obama has amended that executive order three times.

It has been happening to us all along. If you think Obama kept the government involvement the same size or smaller, I have a bridge to sell you.