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Supposedly Secure Messaging App Launched With Gov’t Funds, Headed By Propagandist Now Running NPR: Report

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With over 100 million users, the encrypted messaging service app Signal is touted as private and secure; however, a new report reveals the app was allegedly not only launched with government funds but is headed by National Public Radio’s (NPR) CEO, Katherine Maher.

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, released a piece Monday about the alleged connections between the U.S. government, Maher and Signal. The platform, which prides itself on privacy for users, has been endorsed by notable figures, including National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Eric Snowden, Tesla and Space X founder Elon Musk and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Signal’s technological foundation, however, was originally funded “in part” by government resources, Rufo claims. The technology — used in the Facebook messaging app, WhatsApp — for the platform — which also ran as a nonprofit foundation — reportedly received a $3 million grant awarded by government agency Open Technology Fund (OTF) sometime between 2013 and 2016, according to Voice of America (VOA).

While the OTF is reportedly a spin-off of a government-funded private news service, Radio Free Asia, the technology fund claims their goal is to “advance internet freedom in repressive environments by supporting the research, development, implementation, and maintenance of technologies that counter censorship and combat repressive surveillance to enable all citizens to exercise their fundamental human rights online,” according to their site.

Awards from the OTF to technology platforms are not uncommon; a 2020 VOA report shows the government agency awarded millions to others in addition to OTF. The connection between OTF and Signal, though, is allegedly deeper than just the grant. An anonymous source who “worked extensively with OTF” claimed to Rufo that, over time, it appeared “the project was actually a State Department-connected initiative that planned to wield open source Internet projects made by hacker communities as tools for American foreign policy goals.” The initiative allegedly empowered “activists [and] parties opposed to governments that the USA doesn’t like,” Rufo reported. (Read more from “Supposedly Secure Messaging App Launched With Gov’t Funds, Headed By Propagandist Now Running NPR: Report” HERE)

Eighty-Six House Republicans Vote for Warrantless Surveillance of Americans

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Eighty-six House Republicans on Friday voted against an amendment to require a warrant for surveillance of Americans’ communications.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) proposed an amendment to the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), a bill that would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Section 702 is a law that is meant to target foreign adversaries, but often surveils Americans’ private communications without a warrant.

The amendment tied at 212-212 in the House; a tie in the House means that the measure fails. Although Biggs’s amendment did receive support from a majority of Republicans, 86 House Republicans failed to support the proposal.

A warrant requirement is overwhelmingly backed by Americans. A YouGov poll commissioned by FreedomWorks and Demand Progress found that 76 percent of Americans support a warrant requirement, while only 12 percent oppose.

Only one member of House Republican leadership voted with the majority of the House Republican Conference on warrants requirements: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN). Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) voted against the warrant requirement. (Read more from “Eighty-Six House Republicans Vote for Warrantless Surveillance of Americans” HERE)

Mystery ‘Philanthropist’ Funding CIA and Mossad-Linked Pre-Crime, Facial Recognition Surveillance System Throughout U.S.

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Gabriel, a public surveillance product company linked to the CIA and Mossad has been slowly gaining traction in the United States for several years.

Backed by former leaders of the FBI, CIA, Shin Bet, and Mossad, the company has recently attracted substantial funding from an anonymous philanthropist aiming to install the product suite in every synagogue, school, and campus community in the country.

Gabriel’s suite centers around a “smart shield” panic button that offers two-way communication, live video feed, instant alerting, and gunshot detection.

The suite is meant to detect weapons, fights, and abnormal behavior among people in its vicinity and it includes smart cameras that use facial recognition and AI that automatically manages alert modes for minor to emergency situations.

The company is looking to expand to retail stores, warehouses, data centers, and banks, to further promote its abnormal behavior detection capabilities. (Read more from “Mystery ‘Philanthropist’ Funding CIA and Mossad-Linked Pre-Crime, Facial Recognition Surveillance System Throughout U.S.” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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U.S. Govt Indicted Me Because I Make Privacy Tools, Says Crypto-Chat App CEO

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The CEO of Sky Global – which sold encryption chat software with customized smartphones – has come out fighting after Uncle Sam charged him with knowingly assisting the international drug smuggling trade.

“The indictment against me personally in the United States is an example of the police and the government trying to vilify anyone who takes a stance against unwarranted surveillance,” Jean-François Eap, of Canadian-based Sky Global, said in a statement following the indictment announced on Friday.

“It seems that it is simply not enough that you have not done anything illegal,” Eap continued. “There is no question that I have been targeted, as Sky Global has been targeted, only because we build tools to protect the fundamental right to privacy. The unfounded allegations of involvement in criminal activity by me and our company are entirely false.”

Those allegations are serious: one count of racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; and a second count of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances – including heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine – which also comes with a life-in-prison maximum sentence. The Sky Global website has also been seized.

The US government claimed Eap and a former distributor of the company’s devices, Thomas Herdman, “knowingly and intentionally participated in a criminal enterprise that facilitated the transnational importation and distribution of narcotics through the sale and service of encrypted communications devices.” (Read more from “U.S. Govt Indicted Me Because I Make Privacy Tools, Says Crypto-Chat App CEO” HERE)

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Unmanned Massive Airship to Supply Unprecedented Government Surveillance From Above

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An unmanned airship could revolutionise police and rescue operations by offering silent surveillance from above using an array of high-resolution cameras.

The zero-emission vehicle, dubbed Eon, is designed by British aviation firm Avalon Airships to be a fully-autonomous aircraft that lands on water, allowing it to access difficult-to-reach locations.

The company claims the vehicle, about the same size of a double-decker bus, would fit a wide variety of applications ranging from commercial uses to ambulance, surveillance and policing applications.

It would come equipped with a small, detachable drone that could carry medical supplies, including a defibrillator, to anyone injured below. . .

The Eon would be powered by fully electric motors and stay afloat using helium, making it almost-silent while it cruises through the air, boasting a range of 300 miles (480km). (Read more from “Unmanned Massive Airship to Supply Unprecedented Government Surveillance From Above” HERE)

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FBI Chief: Citizens Should Be 'Deeply Skeptical' of Government

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photo credit: fonstokAmericans should be “deeply skeptical” of government power and law enforcement only should be able to access anyone’s telephone with a court order, FBI Director James Comey said on Friday.

“I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power,” Comey told CBS News’ Scott Pelley in an interview for “60 Minutes” that will air on Sunday. “You cannot trust people in power.

“The Founders knew that,” he said. “That’s why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.”

Comey, 53, who became FBI chief in September 2013, cautioned that courts must grant law-enforcement agencies permission to telephones if the information is deemed to be critical to a criminal case or national security.

Read more from this story HERE.

A Government of Secrecy and Fear

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Photo Credit: APEvery American who values the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, every American who enjoys the right to be different and the right to be left alone, and every American who believes that the government works for us and we don’t work for the government should thank Edward Snowden for his courageous and heroic revelations of the National Security Agency’s gargantuan spying operations. Without Snowden’s revelations, we would be ignorant children to a paternalistic government and completely in the dark about what the government sees of us and knows about us. And we would not know that it has stolen our freedoms.

When I saw Snowden’s initial revelation — a two-page order signed by a federal judge on the FISA court — I knew immediately that Snowden had a copy of a genuine top-secret document that even the judge who signed it did not have. The NSA reluctantly acknowledged that the document was genuine and claimed that all its snooping on the 113,000,000 Verizon customers covered by that order was lawful because it had been authorized by that federal judge. The NSA also claims that as a result of its spying, it has kept us safe.

I reject the argument that the government is empowered to take our liberties — here, the right to privacy — by majority vote or by secret fiat as part of an involuntary collective bargain that it needs to monitor us in private in order to protect us in public. The government’s job is to keep us free and safe. If it keeps us safe but not free, it is not doing its job.

Since the revelations about Verizon, we have learned that the NSA has captured and stored in its Utah computers the emails, texts, telephone conversations, utility bills, bank statements, credit card statements and digital phone books of everyone in America for the past two and a half years. It also has captured hundreds of millions of phone records in Brazil, France, Germany and Mexico — all U.S. allies — and it has shared much of the seized raw American data with intelligence agencies in Great Britain and Israel. Its agents have spied on their girlfriends and boyfriends literally thousands of times, and they have combed the collected raw data and selectively revealed some of it to law enforcement. All of this directly contradicts the Constitution.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chris Christie: Rand Paul ‘Dangerous’ (+video)

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is ripping libertarians — including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — for challenging government surveillance programs and failing to understand the dangers of terrorism.

“This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought,” the New Jersey GOP governor said on Thursday at a Republican governors forum in Aspen, Colo. “You can name any number of people and (Paul is) one of them.”

Christie, a potential 2016 candidate who appeared on the panel with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, said lawmakers who are questioning government surveillance programs should hear from the families affected by the Sept. 11 attacks.

“These esoteric, intellectual debates — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have,” Christie said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Chaffetz: I Don’t Want Government ‘Searching my Facebook Page’

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Photo Credit: Poster Boy NYCRep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) warned that the government’s search for information online is approaching a “dangerous line” of infringing on people’s liberties.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Chaffetz said that there has to be a balance between liberty and security, even as the government works to hunt down potential terrorists.

“We have a very dangerous line — I don’t want my federal government going in and searching my Facebook page,” Chaffetz said.

The way the federal government tracks potential terrorism suspects has come under scrutiny in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, after it was revealed that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was placed on a watch list.

Chaffetz raised the concerns about the government searching for information online after Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another panelist, had discussed investigators’ data mining in the Boston case.

Read more from this story HERE.

Barack Obama’s Surveillance Society (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

After 9/11, Barack Obama and his leftist base were livid that George W. Bush under the Patriot Act was engaged in warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ phone calls and email. We all remember them foaming at the mouth, marching in the streets with their idiotic swastikas and photos of Bush as Hitler.

The Left, proclaiming Barack Obama lord and savior, are eerily quiet now that Obama has taken Bush’s Patriot Act to an unimaginable, Orwellian level.

Obama has embraced Total Information Awareness—TIA for short—which refers to the government’s ability to compile a massive, searchable database, comprised of every type of electronic communication and information imaginable. We’re not just talking about phone calls and emails anymore. Barry Obama has already been compiling literally billions of phone and email records since ascending the throne. Now he’s out for bigger fish.

In September, the National Security Agency will open a one million square foot mega-database facility, built by an army of ten thousand construction workers. Located in Bluffdale, Utah—an area known more for polygamists than Orwellian databases—the Utah Data Center will store information in the yottabytes. A yottabyte—10 with 24 zeros after it—makes a terabyte look like small potatoes. It will take 200 megawatts—enough to power 200,000 homes—to feed this behemoth and will use an air conditioning system larger than what was used for the World Trade Centers—combined. So much for “Green” energy.

What kind of data is Big Brother Obama gathering?

Watch video here:

Read more from this story HERE.