Obama Won’t Audit the Federal Reserve but He Will Allow US Spy Agencies to Sift Through Your Financial Records

Barry is against allowing an audit of The Federal Reserve because he knows there would be civil unrest if Americans found out that the government is screwing us out of our money in favor of giving it to special interest groups who buy the presidency.

Reuters reports, via Chicago Tribune:

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.

Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of “suspicious customer activity,” such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.

The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.

The planning document, dated March 4, shows that the proposal is still in its early stages of development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.

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Secret Legal Review Thinks Obama Has Broad Power to Order Pre-Emptive Strike in Case of Cyberattack (More Usurping of Congressional Powers)

Congress isn’t giving Obama this power so Obama is going to use an executive order to grant himself more powers that usurp Congressional authority.

WASHINGTON — A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad, according to officials involved in the review.

That decision is among several reached in recent months as the administration moves, in the next few weeks, to approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyberattack. New policies will also govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code — even if there is no declared war.

The rules will be highly classified, just as those governing drone strikes have been closely held. John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and his nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, played a central role in developing the administration’s policies regarding both drones and cyberwarfare, the two newest and most politically sensitive weapons in the American arsenal.

Cyberweaponry is the newest and perhaps most complex arms race under way. The Pentagon has created a new Cyber Command, and computer network warfare is one of the few parts of the military budget that is expected to grow. Officials said that the new cyberpolicies had been guided by a decade of evolution in counterterrorism policy, particularly on the division of authority between the military and the intelligence agencies in deploying cyberweapons. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the record.

Under current rules, the military can openly carry out counterterrorism missions in nations where the United States operates under the rules of war, like Afghanistan. But the intelligence agencies have the authority to carry out clandestine drone strikes and commando raids in places like Pakistan and Yemen, which are not declared war zones. The results have provoked wide protests.

Mr. Obama is known to have approved the use of cyberweapons only once, early in his presidency, when he ordered an escalating series of cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. The operation was code-named Olympic Games, and while it began inside the Pentagon under President George W. Bush, it was quickly taken over by the National Security Agency, the largest of the intelligence agencies, under the president’s authority to conduct covert action.

As the process of defining the rules of engagement began more than a year ago, one senior administration official emphasized that the United States had restrained its use of cyberweapons. “There are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done,” the official said.

The attacks on Iran illustrated that a nation’s infrastructure can be destroyed without bombing it or sending in saboteurs.

While many potential targets are military, a country’s power grids, financial systems and communications networks can also be crippled. Even more complex, nonstate actors, like terrorists or criminal groups, can mount attacks, and it is often difficult to tell who is responsible. Some critics have said the cyberthreat is being exaggerated by contractors and consultants who see billions in potential earnings.

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NSA Whistleblower: “Everyone in US Under Virtual Surveillance”…Obama Worse Than Bush

Team Obama won’t like this getting out. The Obama regime has cracked down and prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other administration in history. The self-proclaimed most transparent administration actually hates transparency and wants to stop whistleblowers from letting the truth out.

From RT.com:

The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.

Binney, one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, resigned in 2001. He claimed he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called ‘Naris.’

This year, Binney received the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama, one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?

William Binney: Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.

RT: And it’s not just about those, who could be planning, who could be a threat to national security, but also those, who could be just…

WB: It’s everybody. The Naris device, if it takes in the entire line, so it takes in all the data. In fact they advertised they can process the lines at session rates, which means 10-gigabit lines. I forgot the name of the device (it’s not the Naris) – the other one does it at 10 gigabits. That’s why they’re building Bluffdale [database facility], because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, emails are going to be stored there in the future, but right now stored in different places around the country. But it is being collected – and the FBI has access to it.

RT: You mean it’s being collected in bulk without even requesting providers?

WB: Yes.

RT: Then what about Google, you know, releasing this biannual transparency report and saying that the government’s demands for personal data is at an all-time high and for all of those requesting the US, Google says they complied with the government’s demands 90 percent of the time. But they are still saying that they are making the request, it’s not like it’s all being funneled into that storage. What do you say to that?

WB: I would assume that it’s just simply another source for the same data they are already collecting. My line is in declarations in a court about the 18-T facility in San Francisco, that documented the NSA room inside that AST&T facility, where they had Naris devices to collect data off the fiber optic lines inside the United States. So, that’s kind of a powerful device, that would collect everything it was being sent. It could collect on the order over of 100 billion 1,000-character emails a day. One device.

RT: You say they sift through billions of e-mails. I wonder how do they prioritize? How do they filter it? 

WB: I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it. I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.

RT: Were you on the target list?

WB: Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my email. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them.

RT: Do you think we all should leave messages for the NSA mail box?

WB: Sure!

RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the president. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency, in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?

WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.

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NSA Surveillance Violated Constitution, Secret FISA Court Found

Nothing new here. The current batch of Congressional malcontents care nothing about our rights protected by the US Constitution.

From Cato Institute:

Americans are being told that there’s no need to worry about the broad surveillance programs authorized by the controversial FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Yet a report from Wired this weekend paints a more disturbing picture: National Security Agency surveillance enabled by the FAA was found “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment” by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “on at least one occasion.” The court also found that the government’s implementation of its authority under the statute had “circumvented the spirit of the law.” Despite these troubling rulings from a court notorious for its deference to intelligence agencies, Congress is so unconcerned that lawmakers don’t even want to know how many citizens have been caught up in the NSA’s vast and growing databases.

These revelations come by way of a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden—who will be speaking about this very government spying program at Cato this Wednesday—from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which approved Wyden’s request for declassification of a few morsels of information about secret FISA Court rulings. In the interest of permitting some minimal public debate about the FAA, which is currently before Congress for renewal, Wyden was told he would be allowed to say the following—and only the following publicly:

• A recent unclassified report noted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has repeatedly held that collection carried out pursuant to the FISA Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
• It is also true that on at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
• I believe that the government’s implementation of Section 702 of FISA has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.

That first statement is almost certainly a direct reference to Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s assertionsin a recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee—which noted that the Court has blessed much of the surveillance under Section 702, the part of the FAA that permits warrantless acquisition of international communications. Given the massive volume of NSA surveillance, however, the fact that some NSA surveillance was held constitutional is much less significant, for purposes of public accountability, than the fact that some of it wasunconstitutional. Feinstein’s summary of those positive classified opinions was made public weeks ago, apparently without much trouble. Yet only now that the FAA renewal has made it through multiple committees is the public permitted to know—after much tooth-pulling from a senator, via a letter released late on a Friday afternoon—how incomplete that summary really was.

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Obama Administration’s Answer to Stop National Security Leaks: Polygraph Intelligence Officers

How about we polygraph Obama and his National Security Team who leaked the national security secrets to make Obama look strong?

From The Hill:

Officials at the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies will be given expanded polygraph tests under a new Obama administration directive aimed at stamping out national-security leaks.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, on Monday announced a series of steps intended to stop the leaks after a furious backlash from Congress over news reports that revealed closely guarded secrets.

The same clueless James Clapper who didn’t have a clue about the Christmas terror plots in England nor did he know about the terrorist plots aimed at the U.S. He had to be reminded, on national television, about the plot.

The most significant measure is the addition of a new question to the polygraph tests that are used by intelligence agencies. Officials will be asked during the lie-detector tests whether they have disclosed classified information to members of the media, according to Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Clapper.

President Obama’s spy chief is also ordering a review of how the intelligence agencies report contact with members of the media, and will consider changes if he finds the policies inconsistent or insufficient.

The second directive in Monday’s announcement was a request for the Intelligence Community Inspector General to lead investigations of leaks when the Department of Justice declines to do so.

Clapper’s order applies to 16 intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency. He said in a statement that the new measures were the “right thing to do” and “in the interest of our national security.”

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Hey Americans: The Government Admitted It Is Using Your Cell Phone Data to Track You

Where are all those left-wingers that bitched about Bush wanting to tap the phones of suspected terrorist at now that we learn the NSA, under Obama, is using our cell phone data to track US?

From the Business Insider:

A group of Senators questioned the general attorney for the National Security Agency Tuesday about whether U.S. intelligence agencies are using cell phone geo location data to track U.S. citizens without their knowledge.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the leader of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olson told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that: “There are certain circumstances where that authority may exist.”

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Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA

Google is in deep with the Obama administration. We have learned that Google steals emails, passwords and IP addresses. Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, sits on Obama’s technology council. Like Obama, Google supports net-neutrality. and I’m sure it is helping make the internet easier to wiretap. I also wouldn’t be surprised that Google supports Obama’s internet identification idea.

Now we learn that Google has a “secret relationship” with the NSA spy agency.

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.

The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.

Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.

“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.”

Consumer Watchdog may have an ally in Issa, a California Republican. In July, he sent a letter to Google raising concerns that White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, the former head of global public policy for Google, had inappropriate e-mail contact with company employees.

This was done to avoid Presidential disclosure laws.

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