Photo Credit: YouTube
“Speaking of inviting you, I hadn’t even pressed ‘send’ on the email yet,” host Brian Sack told Dossen, played by TheBlaze’s Matt Fisher.
“No need, no need,” Dossen replied dismissively. “Of all the Orwellian bureaucracies, I like to think we give taxpayers the best bang for their buck.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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“Sales of online apps to encrypt cell calls are soaring,” reports Fox News correspondent David Lee Miller. “For as little as a few dollars a month there are now at least half a dozen companies such as Silent Circle and Seecrypt selling apps, making it difficult if not impossible for the government or anyone else to monitor your private communication.”
Miller notes both the sending and receiving cell phones need the app for the call to remain secure.
Michael Janke, CEO of Silent Circle boasted to Fox News that the encryption service his company runs would take “all of the world’s supercomputers put together 44 years to break the encryption of 1 message.”
Harvey Boulter, chairman of Seecrypt, revealed his company is following another trend: alternative technology providers locating overseas to avoid the reach of the NSA.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Reuters
The former NSA contractor who leaked information on the government’s top-secret Internet- and phone-tracking programs on Monday denied being a Chinese spy, calling the speculation a “predictable smear.”
Edward Snowden addressed those rumors, and a number of other questions, during an extensive online chat hosted by Guardian.com. From an undisclosed location presumably in Hong Kong, Snowden blasted the U.S. government’s surveillance programs and indicated he plans to hunker down in Hong Kong as long as possible.
Snowden was asked directly during the chat about speculation he did or would provide classified material to the Chinese government in exchange for asylum.
“This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk ‘RED CHINA!’ reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct,” Snowden answered.
“Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.” Read more from this story HERE.
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NSA chief Alexander to testify on classified leaks in rare public hearing
National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander will address the House intelligence committee on Tuesday in a rare public hearing that could shed new light on the scope of the federal government’s classified phone and Internet surveillance programs.
The session involving two of Washington’s most secretive bodies comes as an NSA leaker, former contractor Edward Snowden, threatens to reveal more government secrets from his hiding spot in Hong Kong.
Alexander has already gone to Capitol Hill several times since Snowden revealed details earlier this month about the government programs — to discuss the agency’s budget and meet privately with congressional members.
But the upcoming meeting, titled “How Disclosed NSA Programs Protect Americans, and Why,” will be the first time Alexander speaks publicly about the agency-led surveillance programs.
The meeting will also come one day after Snowden, the former NSA contractor who gave the classified documents to journalists, conducted an online chat for The Guardian in which the self-proclaimed whistleblower wrote: “Truth is coming and it cannot be stopped.” Read more from this story HERE.
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Father of Edward Snowden urges son not to commit ‘treason,’ to return home
The father of the former NSA contractor who leaked details of the government’s massive Internet- and phone-tracking programs made an impassioned plea to his son to stop leaking, telling Fox News that “I hope, I pray” he does not do anything considered treasonous.
Lon Snowden spoke at length with Fox News about his son Edward’s decision to leak sensitive security details about U.S. intelligence-gathering operations. While defending his son’s integrity and criticizing the government, he pleaded with his son — who is thought to be weathering the political storm from a location in Hong Kong — to return home and not to leak more information.
“I hope, I pray and I ask that you will not release any secrets that could constitute treason,” Snowden told Fox News, in a message meant for his son’s ears. He added: “I sense that you’re under much stress [from] what I’ve read recently, and [ask] that you not succumb to that stress … and make a bad decision.”
Further, Snowden said he would rather see his son return to the U.S. and face the U.S. justice system than stay abroad.
“I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them. I love my son,” he told Fox News’ Eric Bolling. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: William Miller
“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.
His blast came days after the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder outraged New York officials by endorsing a federal monitor for the NYPD.
Kelly appeared to firmly reject Holder’s claim that disclosure of the monitoring campaign seriously damaged efforts to fight terrorism.
“I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government,” Kelly said. “I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: The Guardian
“All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,” Snowden wrote in an online chat hosted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”
Writing from an undisclosed location believed to be in Hong Kong, the former CIA and National Security Agency systems administrator vigorously defended his disclosures about the breadth of U.S. surveillance, including programs that sweep up data about Americans’ telephone calls, emails and Internet use.
…Snowden alleged that intelligence agencies keep the information on government computers “for a very long time” and are available for analysts to view as long as they produce a “rubber stamp” warrant.
“The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant,” Snowden said. “They excuse this as ‘incidental’ collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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Edward Snowden: US government has destroyed any chance of a fair trial
By Ewen MacAskill. In a live Q&A with Guardian readers from a secret location in Hong Kong, Snowden hinted at more disclosures to come and that their publication could not be prevented by his arrest or – more chillingly – his death.
Answering a question about whether he had more secret material, the 29-year-old former National Security Agency contractor wrote: “All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped”…
With opinion in the US divided between those who see him as a traitor and those who view him as a hero, Snowden said he fled the country because he did not believe he had a chance of a fair trial.
“The US government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That’s not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it,” he said.
Snowden, whose leaked documents opened a debate about the balance between intrusive government surveillance versus security, does not regard himself as having committed a crime but instead as the person exposing alleged criminality on the part of the Obama administration. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: AP
“When we were kids, we didn’t need security cameras on the telephone poles to watch us, because we knew God was watching us. We don’t need cameras. We had God,” Ratzenberger, who played Cliff Clavin on “Cheers,” said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C.
Ratzenberger also voiced the character Hamm the Piggy Bank on “Toy Story” as well as other supporting roles in Pixar films.
[Editor’s note: our apologies, but the embedded viewer in this article is not compatible with all browsers]
Read more from this story HERE.
Here’s Actor John Ratzenberger’s introduction of Allen West last week:
Photo Credit: Daily Caller
By Breanna Deutsch and Sarah Harvard. Sarah Palin energized a group of social conservatives at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference Saturday, blasting the Obama Administration’s apparent lawlessness, calling the current state of America “Orwellian,” and urging the United States to stay out of Syria’s chaotic and brutal civil war.
In comments to the Daily Caller, the 2008 candidate for vice president also declined to join many of her fellow Republicans in condemning National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, saying the real problem was the government’s violation of Americans’ rights…
Palin appeared confident and comfortable on stage while inveighing against the NSA tracking American citizens’ phone calls, noting that domestic spying had not prevented the Boston Marathon bombings.
“Our government spied on every one of your phone calls, but they couldn’t find two pot-smoking deadbeat Bostonians with a hotline to terrorist central in Chechnya,” said the Alaska Republican, “And it’s built an apparatus to sneak into all of the good guy’s communications, but whoopsie daisy, it missed the Fort Hood mass murder of our troops despite this Islamic terrorist declaring his ideology in numerous army counseling sessions and even on his own business cards.” Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: Daily Caller
By Katie McHugh. Former Vice President Dick Cheney declared National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden ”a traitor” and questioned whether Snowden acted alone or coordinated with the Chinese government as a spy on ‘Fox News Sunday’ this weekend. The prominent hawk also pushed back against Sen. Rand Paul’s concerns about Americans’ constitutional rights.
“I’m deeply suspicious obviously because he went to China,” Cheney told host Chris Wallace. ”That’s not a place where you ordinarily want to go if you’re interested in freedom and liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.”
Cheney feared Snowden would release additional documents that could inflict harm on the U.S. while aiding China. Read more from this story HERE.
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Liberal Media (a/k/a “Establishment Media”) Continues to Hammer Snowden
In the below video, liberal Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation strongly criticizes Snowden. Next, listen to reporter Glenn Greenwald – who broke the Snowden story – as he highlights the press’s hypocrisy on this issue.
Photo Credit: AP
The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.
The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ…
It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white “radomes” that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Yutaka Tsutano
2. You can’t shut off Obama’s Presidential Notifications that AT&T has so graciously mandated for all iPhone users.
3. It’s difficult to remove the symbol of the “Apple” on the back of the device, an icon praising Adam and Eve’s decision to rebel against God by tasting the forbidden fruit (it’s also common knowledge that Apple sold its first PC for $666.66).
4. Any time you run out of power, you cannot simply replace the battery with a charged, spare battery because Apple has designed the iPhone without a removable battery.
5. There are far more open source, free programs available on the non-iPhone Android platforms, there are other phones with better displays, and there are many phones now available with better processing power.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”
If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.
Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler’s disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.
Read more from this story HERE.