NSA Halts Mass Unconstitutional Surveillance U.S. Domestic Phone Records

Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says

The National Security Agency has shut down a controversial program that collects domestic phone and text records, a senior Republican congressional aide said.CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

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The National Security Agency has shut down a controversial program that collects domestic phone and text records, a senior Republican congressional aide said.CreditCreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times

By Charlie Savage

• 4 March 2019

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has quietly shut down a system that analyzes logs of Americans’ domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide, halting a program that has touched off disputes about privacy and the rule of law since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The agency has not used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not ask Congress to renew its legal authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year, according to the aide, Luke Murry, the House minority leader’s national security adviser.

In a raw assertion of executive power, President George W. Bush’s administration started the program as part of its intense pursuit for Qaeda conspirators in the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and a court later secretly blessed it. The intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden disclosed the program’s existence in 2013, jolting the public and contributing to growing awareness of how both governments and private companies harvest and exploit personal data.

The way that intelligence analysts have gained access to bulk records of Americans’ phone calls and texts has evolved, but the purpose has been the same: They analyze social links to hunt for associates of known terrorism suspects. . . .

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/nsa-phone-records-program-shut-down.html


Copyright 2019 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to The New York Times content)

Europol Chief Warns Of Terrorist Threat From Encrypted Communications

     Sunday, 29 March 2015, LONDON - Europol Chief Rob Wainwright told BBC Radio Live 5 that encrypted communications and those on the "dark net" made anonymously have become the biggest problem for law enforcement seeking to monitor terrorist communications. Mr. Wainwright who is the chief of Europe's police acknowledged that Edward Snowden's revelations about the enormous scope of unconstitutional NSA and criminal GCHQ spying on ordinary citizens' communications was the basis for the universal distrust by technology companies and ordinary citizens of the US and UK agencies and their governments for repugnant enormous continuing violations of individuals' fundamental privacy rights.
     Incidentally in "Citizen Four" the film about Mr. Snowden's path through making his astounding revelations of secret government abuses of enormous global proportions against citizens' fundamental liberties which earlier this year as covered in the Ninth Amendment won the Academy Award for best documentary film Mr. Snowden in one aside when the GCHQ comes up in conversation states to two select reporters present with him in his Hong Kong hotel room that the abuses of the British GCHQ were even significantly wider-ranging than the NSA's  (which it seems hard to believe is even possible although in any case the NSA and GCHQ are partners in crime and share their illegally gained citizen surveillance information).
     Mr. Wainwright said that law enforcement was trying hard to regain the trust of technology companies who increasingly are working to make encryption of communications available to individuals. The Ninth Amendment editorial board suggests that this seems a tall order and questions exactly how law enforcement is "trying" as neither U.S. officials including President Obama, the head of the NSA, the FBI chief, CIA chief murderer John Brennan, nor their British government counterparts are known to the Ninth Amendment to have given any indication that they intend to cease their repugnant and blatantly unconstitutional and illegal universal spying practices against ordinary citizens. In fact quite the opposite from all news accounts.
     One issue looming in the U.S. is that certain sections of the so-called "Patriot Act" the misuse of which blatantly unconstitutional legislation has appalled even its original congressional sponsor face sunset provisions in coming months which will kill significant provisions of the cynically misnamed Patriot Act failing congressional intervention (the Obama administration favors the continuation of these provisions in force but so far has claimed it will not intervene if Congress fails to act to preserve these provisions).
     Europol Chief Wainwright in warning of encrypted communications as the biggest problem facing law enforcement which presumably would include those available on certain email accounts most notably the allegedly most NSA-proof encrypted free ProtonMail also covered here in an earlier Ninth Amendment post as well as in many new apps including for cellphones being made widely available specifically referenced his concerns about Apple's new cellphones with encryption that is apparently uncrackable by law enforcement who have been provided no "backdoor" key with which to capture cellphone users every word.  
     Another area of significant concern to law enforcement is the so-called "dark net" which can be accessed easily with the U.S. government created publicly available for free immediate download "Tor" browser which although the FBI claims at least once to have cracked apparently only has endpoint vulnerability which if not exploited makes internet communications impossible to trace. Finally Europol Chief Wainwright also specifically warned of threats posed by availability of social media to terrorists. Mr. Wainwright claimed that IS (aka ISIS aka ISIL) has at least 50,000 Twitter accounts tweeting upwards of 100,000 messages a day.      In response to such challenges facing totally discredited law enforcement which has disgusted entire nations Mr. Wainwright claims that Europol is now setting up a European Internet Referral Unit to identify and remove internet sites used by terrorist organisations. The Ninth Amendment would like to point out that it most likely would be difficult to remove Twitter from online existence. In any case Mr. Wainwright unbelievably went on to apparently even better his American counterparts in criminal surveillance ambitions to state that existing laws are "deficient" and law enforcement should be able to monitor all areas of the online world. Europol Chief Wainwright's reported remarks concluded with him saying "[w]e have to make sure we reach the right balance by ensuring that the fundamental principles of privacy are upheld so there's a lot of work for legislators and tech firms to do".
     The Ninth Amendment will not be holding its breath. Interested readers will find more information on the above at the link below to the BBC News Tech article reporting on the BBC Live 5 interview with Europol Chief Wainwright also providing further links.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32087919

Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved

Where Are The Snowdens Of Yesteryear? NSA Earns Drone Murderer Obama Big Thumbs Up On NSA Massive Unconstitutional Universal Surveillance

     "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

     Saturday, 14 June 2013, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND - The editorial board of the Ninth Amendment is saddened indeed sickened and horrified to hear that confessed worldwide drone murderer Barack Obama, champion and perpetuater of some of the most heinous acts of the unelected former "President" George "little shrub" Bush including perhaps most notoriously, aside from the murder and maiming of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the innocent country of Iraq and the meaningless sacrifice and destruction of the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicepeople and their families and loved ones, the cynically entitled "Patriot Act" mysteriously placed without conference review in a severely "modified" version in the hallowed chambers of the United States Congress just after dawn the day of the infamous vote ink still wet on its pages which largely had nothing whatsoever to do with so-called "terrorism" but rather the several hundred page deathwish list of the United States Executive branch's decimating attacks on the Constitutional birthrights of Americans which previously had been rejected by legitimate Constitutional process countless times and now finally were only given the "color of law" through fraud, trickery, deception, the most despicable of capital crimes and indeed treason through a rushed Congressional vote with members not a single one of which had had any time to read much less consider the monstrous attack on the very fiber of the United States as proposed by the Founding Fathers and ratified by the original states and without doubt the single most devastating piece of unconstitutionally pieced together jumble of toxic garbage ever shoved down the throats of the American people and endorsed by their (largely) misled duly elected representatives (minus of course the Nation's unelected "President" the "little shrub" Bush and his puppetmaster Dick "Pigheart" Cheney - show him the money the man who would sell his own country for a palette of $100 bills - regardless of the meaningless undeliberated totally partisan pre-ordained same day ruling of a U.S. Supreme Court either gone completely demented and senile to the point of complete unfamiliarity with the plain mandates of the United States Constitution or clearly most likely simply treating the requirement of a majority of the electoral vote especially given a very thinly-veiled obvious loss on the popular vote of the people, with pure disdain and a sacred trust in their jurisprudence only to be ignored by a group not even worthy of the deliberations practiced by the Inquisition , or perhaps all of the above, in fact who cares), and back to this same present day murderer Obama champion and perpetuator of the "Bush" doctrines he a man too stupid to even speak a full English sentence but Obama an incarnation who has proven himself to be far more dangerous and far more evil, this same drone murderer Obama now has bestowed his now rendered meaningless "Presidential" endorsement on the the flagrant, obvious, undeniable, unarguable, undefendable and unforgivable violation of some of the most sacred and fundamental rights of the American people as they insisted 250 years ago they were NOT conceding to any government at ANY level.
     The NSA and the presently flourishing malign tumor of other "national security" Executive branch criminal organizations that may be involved in this presently disclosed abomination in complete disregard we have learned by this time of one of the originally adopted Ten Amendments to the United States Constitution that the United States Government has not only recognized but held up previously as a pillar before the world as a beacon of liberty, hope, strength, and endurance, here the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights which unambiguously protects all Americans against UNREASONABLE searches and seizures has been treated with such absolute contempt by a Government that has become so dangerously despotic, besotted with misused and misappropriated powers unfettered so as to have completely lost touch with the hard fact that without the powers entrusted to it by the People it is NO GOVERNMENT AT ALL.
     These are not the patriots. These are not the keepers of the "national security" but rather the protagonists of this Nation's growing INSECURITY through the simple device of the alienation of a rapidly growing percentage of its and the rest of the world's peoples. These are the traitors to the founding trust of the American people and the architects of the horror THEY unfold before the world in the American people's name. The only true security they act to preserve is their own.
      In their ignorance and gluttony have they not seen it is THEY who will make WHOEVER really perpetrated 11 September 2001 the victors. Drone murderer Obama has sickened us beyond our worst imaginings with his hypocrisy. Never would we have imagined that HE could further disgrace and disparage the Constitution of the Greatest Nation ever conceived. So now the Ninth Amendment understands from its Hong Kong Bureau that reportedly THEY even can watch and listen to Obama himself in the Oval Office signing off on his next batch of drone murders, kidnappings, tortures, or assassinations somewhere in the world. Because of course once THEY are everywhere preserving themselves above all else who are THEY going to have left to watch but EACH OTHER?
     Well one could say that when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 that the subsequent burning of the Reichstag was one "convenient" way to get things done. And we suppose one could say it worked for a while, perhaps if the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" had Google, Facebook and all the rest in  their wallets and at their command to distract the people in the "comfort" of their homes as the boots marching in the street became a little bit louder, a little more strident, as the yells became a little bit louder, a little bit closer and more desperate, and the sticks that they carried started to look an awful lot like guns people might not really have noticed much of anything for a little while longer.
     But alas, as the World woke up they learned that nothing earthly can last forever. Pity the editorial staff of the Ninth Amendment thought that with a guiding document as thoughtfully, rigorously and profoundly debated by the greatest and most experienced minds of a great generation and indeed even more in our opinion than any document of government that ever preceded or followed it that the United States of America would well be here largely as we knew it, changed only most likely gradually and thoughtfully according to the express terms set out in the Constitution, that we and countless generations would have this great Nation to cherish and preserve for a long, long time to come.
     So sad to have it trampled by pigs and ignorant thugs with no appreciation what we ALL might have if they could just honor their oaths under a Commander-in-Chief with the moral fiber to stand by what we all know this Great Country gave him (or her) all necessary authority to lead this Great Country by what was right and true. Now that we are all under surveillance perhaps it is Snowden who is the safe one. Hong Kong? Iceland? We doubt it. Just a ploy to get the 15 or 20 "national security outfits to race there so they can blunder over the prize (and the funding). Like the Generals and Admirals making the others wait as they made their way not to be left out of the scene where bin Laden had been trapped within days. So eager for the credit they left the Pakistanis to guard him and, well, you know, he just sort of slipped away.
     No our guess is Snowden's best bet after China and South America must be North Korea. Somehow we doubt the United States has too many thugs who have quite made there cover there yet. Oh but who does come to the rescue when there is no United States left as we know it because, if you have not yet gotten the news, kill your television and get the news, there is no United States of America left as we knew it. United We Stand, Divided We Fall, it is the "People United Will Never Be Defeated".
     God Bless America.

Copyright 2013 Big M All World Rights Expressly Reserved