Hunting for Hackers, NSA Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border

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Photo Credit: NY Times By Charlie Savage, Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson and Henrik Moltke. Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency‘s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents.

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.

The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” — patterns associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the N.S.A. sought permission to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

The disclosures, based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, and shared with The New York Times and ProPublica, come at a time of unprecedented cyberattacks on American financial institutions, businesses and government agencies, but also of greater scrutiny of secret legal justifications for broader government surveillance.

While the Senate passed legislation this week limiting some of the N.S.A.’s authority, the measure involved provisions in the U.S.A. Patriot Act and did not apply to the warrantless wiretapping program. (Read more from “Hunting for Hackers, N.S.A. Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border” HERE)

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The NSA’s Bulk Collection Is Over, but Google and Facebook Are Still in the Data Business

By Kaveh Waddell. Don’t be fooled: Congress may have finally passed the bill reining in the National Security Agency’s bulk-surveillance programs, but your data is still being collected on the Internet.

Lost in the debate over the NSA is the fact that companies like Google and Facebook continue to vacuum up vast troves of consumer data and use it for marketing.

The private-sector tech companies that run the social networks and email services Americans use every day are relatively opaque when it comes to their data-collection and retention policies, which are engineered not to preserve national security but to bolster the companies’ bottom lines.

Critics say the consumer data that private companies collect can paint as detailed a picture of an individual as the metadata that got caught up in the NSA’s dragnets. Companies like Google and Facebook comb through customers’ usage statistics in order to precisely tailor marketing to their users, a valuable service that advertisers pay the companies dearly to access.

“What both types of information collection show is that metadata—data about data—can in many cases be more revelatory than content,” said Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “You see that given the granularity with which private data collection can discern very intimate details about your life.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Bruce Jenner Comes out, and Social Conservatives Logically Take an Apocalyptic View

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Photo Credit: Instagram In the four days since Bruce Jenner came out as a woman named Caitlyn, many Americans have celebrated her transformation as a courageous and even heroic act.

But among the social conservatives who are a powerful force within the Republican Party, there is a far darker view. To them, the widespread acceptance of Jenner’s evolution from an Olympic gold medalist whose masculinity was enshrined on a Wheaties box to a shapely woman posing suggestively on the cover of Vanity Fair was a reminder that they are losing the culture wars.

Across social media, blogs and talk radio this week, conservatives painted an apocalyptic view of America. They said they felt frustrated and increasingly isolated by the country’s sudden recognition and even embrace of transgender people. They see it as immoral and foreign. They drew comparisons to two grimly futuristic novels, George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

“People feel like they’re under siege and that the terms of the debate are now you either applaud it or you’re a bigot,” said William J. Bennett, education secretary in the Reagan administration. “It’s like American culture is being dragged kicking and screaming not only toward acceptance but approval.”

Jenner’s watershed moment — which coincides with the Supreme Court preparing to rule on whether to allow same-sex marriage nationwide — leaves the GOP and its stable of presidential candidates grappling with how to represent conservatives who don’t wish to accept Jenner and more moderate voters who have already done so. (Read more from “Caitlyn Jenner Comes out, and Social Conservatives Take an Apocalyptic View” HERE)

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Edward Snowden Is Not Going Away

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On the two-year anniversary of when his leaks detailing secret spy operations at the National Security Agency first emerged, landing like a thunderclap around the world, the former intelligence contractor appears more confident than ever that his actions have permanently altered the surveillance debate.

“The balance of power is beginning to shift,” Snowden said in a statement provided to select news organizations by Amnesty International and Privacy International. “With each court victory, with every change in law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear.”

Snowden has good reason to be riding high after the Senate broke a logjam this week to pass the first significant reform to government surveillance practices since the nation began supercharging its spying powers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The USA Freedom Act, which was swiftly signed into law by President Obama, will effectively end the NSA’s bulk collection of U.S. call data—the first program exposed by a Snowden-fueled article in The Guardian on June 5, 2013.

But the Freedom Act only deals significantly with one of the NSA’s many spying operations—one that has been deemed illegal by a federal appeals court, ineffective by two government review panels and not even that desired by some high-ranking officials.

And as a stark reminder of that, the journalists who possess the Snowden files were at it again just two days after the law’s passage. The New York Times and ProPublica published new documents Thursday from Snowden’s massive archive revealing that the Obama administration secretly expanded NSA spying beginning in 2012 to collect Americans’ cross-border Internet traffic as part of an effort to thwart and nab foreign hackers. (Read more from “Edward Snowden Is Not Going Away” HERE)

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Protesters Give Clinton Quite the Greeting Outside Fundraiser at Dallas Mansion as $10/Hour Valets Park Luxury Cars

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Photo Credit: Daily Mail They came in Bentleys, BMWs, Maseratis and Porsches. A handful drove Mercedes-Benzes and Lexuses. At least two luxury Tesla eco-cars made the trip.

Valet attendants parked the cars of the deep-pocketed Democrats for $10 per hour and raced around the neighborhood two hours later as a line of millionaires formed.

The guest of honor, Hillary Clinton, arrived in a black Cadillac for her $2,700-per-plate presidential fundraiser.

As the former secretary of state’s Secret Service escort pulled into the driveway of a $11.4 million home near Dallas on Wednesday night, a group of Republican activists were waiting.

When a nondescript Texan, a 20-something man in a silver pickup truck, drove by and yelled ‘F*** Hillary!,’ a small cheer went up. (Read more from “Protesters Give Clinton Quite the Greeting Outside Fundraiser at Dallas Mansion as $10/Hour Valets Park Luxury Cars” HERE)

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Elites Stripping “America” from US History Courses, Replacing it with Globalism, Common Core Collectivism

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Photo Credit: NY Post As the 55 distinguished members of the National Association of Scholars explained this week, the teaching of American history faces “a grave new risk.”

So-called “reforms” by the College Board, which holds a virtual monopoly on AP testing across the country, “abandon a rigorous insistence on content” in favor of downplaying “American citizenship and American world leadership in favor of a more global and transnational perspective” . . .

It’s no coincidence College Board President David Coleman supervised the Beltway operation that drafted, disseminated and profits from the federal Common Core standards.

The social-justice warriors of government education have long sought, as the NAS [National Association of Scholars] signatories correctly diagnosed it, “to de-center American history and subordinate it to a global and heavily social-scientific perspective.”

Their mission isn’t to impart knowledge, but to instigate racial, social and class divisions.

Their mission is not to assimilate new generations of students into the American way of life, but to turn them against capitalism, individualism and American exceptionalism in favor of left-wing activism and poisonous identity politics. (Read more from “Elites Stripping “America” from US History Courses, Replacing it with Globalism, Common Core Collectivism” HERE)

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RINO Boehner Pushing Obamatrade, but Has He Read It?

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Photo Credit: The HillSpeaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said he’s hopeful the House will pass legislation this month granting President Obama fast-track trade powers, but said the votes aren’t there yet . . .

Boehner acknowledged some in his party are opposing the fast-track legislation, known as Trade Promotion Authority or TPA, simply because they don’t trust Obama.

But the Speaker added: “This is not about the president; frankly, it’s about the country. It’s why I’ve worked with the president on a number of trade agreements over the course of his tenure and my tenure as Speaker,” including deals with Panama and South Korea.

Last month, the Senate passed TPA on a 62 to 37 vote. But the bill is facing a steeper climb in the House, where most Democrats are fiercely opposed. The bill would allow Obama to send to Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal among 12 Pacific Rim nations, for an up-or-down vote. Under the fast-track rules, lawmakers would not be able to amend the trade deal . . .

Later Wednesday, Boehner and his entire leadership team hosted a 20-minute pep rally in the basement of the Capitol with more than 200 pro-trade allies, including representatives from trade associations, the agriculture and shipping industries, and manufacturers. (Read more from “Boehner Pushing Obamatrade, but Has He Read It?” HERE)

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COURAGE?! Growing Outrage Over Gender-Bender Jenner Being Chosen Over Lauren Hill, Combat Vet Noah Galloway for ESPY Award

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Caitlyn Jenner excitedly wrote on Twitter “What the hell am I going to wear?” when it was announced that the reality star was to be honored at next month’s ESPY’s with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage.

Caitlyn is the new female identity of former Olympic gold-medal winner Bruce Jenner, which was revealed Monday

But now some are crying foul over ESPN’s decision to choose Jenner, 65, instead of Mount St. Joseph basketball player Lauren Hill, who courageously battled brain cancer while staying on the university team. The 19-year-old lost her fight against cancer on April 10 . . .

But Hill wasn’t the only overlooked candidate people were made about. Iraq veteran Noah Galloway, who lost most of an arm and a leg fighting, but still competes in extreme sports and almost won this season’s “Dancing With the Stars,” also had hundreds of tweets from fans irate over Jenner’s choice.

ESPN would only say to FOX411 of their decision-making process that “many people are discussed every year,” and that “there is no such thing as a runner-up.” They also provided a written statement which said Jenner was chosen “to help move forward a constructive dialogue about progress and acceptance.” (Read more from “Define ‘Courage’: Anger Over Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner Being Chosen Over Lauren Hill, Noah Galloway for ESPY Award” HERE)

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Rand Paul: Don’t Trust a Lying Government

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By Sen. Rand Paul. This week President Barack Obama suffered a serious rebuke. Congress sent the president a bill that he signed that tells him his illegal bulk collection of phone records must end.

Apologists for collecting all the phone records of all Americans all of the time now belatedly say they are OK with ending the bulk collection program. They want you to know that your records are not really protected by the Fourth Amendment. They are only doing you a favor by granting you this reform.

Former Director of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency Michael Hayden writes in TIME that the law is clear. According to Hayden, your records—once held by the phone company—have no Fourth Amendment protection. Hayden writes: “The controlling legal authority here is a Supreme Court case decided in 1979, Smith v. Maryland, where the court held that metadata is not, repeat not, constitutionally protected” . . .

In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in Smith v. Maryland that a few days worth of phone records for a single individual were not protected by the Fourth Amendment. The NSA today, though, collects hundreds of millions of phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans without an individualized warrant. I hardly think Smith v. Maryland contemplated this vast dragnet.

The justices who dissented in Smith v. Maryland, though, were amazingly prescient and on target. Justice Thurgood Marshall—who disagreed with the opinion of the court—wrote that he didn’t share the assumption that customers would “typically know” that a phone company tracked calls internally—and that even if they did, there’s no way individuals would expect the general public or government to be privy to such records. (Read more from “Rand Paul: Don’t Trust a Lying Government” HERE)
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Rand Paul Faces Growing Criticism for Taking Credit for Passage of a Bill he Opposed

By ALEX ROGERS AND DUSTIN VOLZ. Sen. Rand Paul is taking credit for advancing a bill he opposes.

A day after forcing a temporary shutdown of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of America’s metadata, the Kentucky Republican said Monday night that his actions actually boosted the surveillance-reform bill known as the USA Freedom Act, which will likely pass the Senate in the coming days despite his repeated—and vociferous—objections that it doesn’t go far enough protecting the privacy rights of Americans.

Noting that the Senate failed to get the requisite 60 votes before Memorial Day recess and subsequently voted overwhelming Sunday to move the bill forward, Paul told reporters as he left the Capitol that his blockade of the bill helped Freedom Act advocates.

“The government will no longer be collecting in bulk all Americans’ records under a generalized warrant,” he said. “So I think that’s a big step forward.”

“I like to look at the bright side of things,” Paul added. “Before I got involved there were 57 votes. Even though I object to the final vote, there’s now 77 votes for ending bulk collection. So you could say that I—in an unusual way—persuaded 20 people to switch their vote and to vote to end bulk collection. It’s kind of a different way of persuading people, but it seemed to work.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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We the People: Millions of Petitions Delivered to Congress to Stop TPP

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Photo Credit: Breitbart Members of the House and the Senate delivered 2 million petitions to Congress, opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).

The ranking Democrat of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), says that “if there is ever a time in American history that we have got to stand up for the American worker and not for corporate greed—today is that day and the TPP is that issue. The facts are very clear… the TPP follows in the footsteps of other disastrous trade agreements.” Sanders adds:

Over and over again—we were told by corporate America and their representatives about all of the jobs that these trade agreements would create. And over and over again… the proponents of unfretted free trade were wrong. Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would create a million jobs in 5 years, in fact it lost 700,0000 jobs. We were promised that PNTR with China would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Instead it has lead to the loss of over 2 million jobs. And on and on it goes. Everybody knows that the great middle class of this country is disappearing and one of the major reasons is a disastrous set of trade policies, which force America workers to compete with workers around the world who make pennies an hour.

The TPP and TPA proposals that President Obama has negotiated in complete secrecy have unified members from both the Republican and Democratic parties against the trade agreement. (Read more from “We the People: Millions of Petitions Delivered to Congress to Stop TPP” HERE)

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Obama: I Am the Closest Thing to a Jew That Has Ever Sat in the Oval Office

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President Obama once confided to a top adviser that he believes he is “the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.”

In an interview by an Israeli TV station, former Obama adviser David Axelrod recalled the president venting in a moment of contemplation about criticisms that he doesn’t support Israel strongly enough, JPupdates.com reported.

“You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,” the president told Mr. Axelrod. “For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse, anti-Semitic, it hurts.”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest endorsed the sentiment Tuesday, saying Mr. Obama gave a heartfelt speech at a Jewish synagogue in Washington last month that expressed “the kinds of common bonds and common values that are embodied in his administration that are [also] advocated by the Jewish community” . . .

“The world of politics everywhere is divided into two categories: the first and more common is the people who run for public office because they want to be somebody,” Mr. Axelrod said. “A smaller group is made of respectable people who run for public office because they want to do something – something positive. Shape the future in a positive way. I think Benjamin Netanyahu completely falls in the first category. He is a great politician. He knows what he needs to do to get through the next election. But it seems to me that Israel has to think about what they need to do to get through the next generation.” (Read more from “Obama: I Am the Closest Thing to a Jew That Has Ever Sat in the Oval Office” HERE)

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