[PAULYPOKER]

‘Justice Department acting like Gestapo'

As the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the leaks of the government surveillance program, an American academic has accused the department of fighting “the truth” and “acting like Gestapo.”

“The Justice Department does not care about truth. Eric Holder is a very corrupt attorney general,” Randy Short, assistant professor at Bowie University told Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Monday.

Last week, a former defense contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed that the National Security Agency is collecting intelligence about everyone including American citizens through their phone call and Internet records.

Now, the Justice Department is vigorously pursuing Snowden’s case as an NSA employee.

“The Obama administration has gone after and has jailed has done everything they can to suppress whistleblowers more than all the other presidents combined... [and] to prevent people from understanding the creep of fascism in America society today,” said Short.

”So the Justice Department isn’t acting in justice, they are acting like Gestapo.”

He added that it is “a disgrace” that Mr. Snowden faces prosecution for doing what he should do.

The revelations have caused growing outrage among civil liberties advocates in the U.S.

Snowden is reportedly staying in a Hotel room in Hong Kong, a country that has had an extradition treaty with the U.S. since 1998. The leaker faces decades in jail if he returns home and is convicted guilty.

Some reports suggest that he is likely to leave Hong Kong to take asylum in Iceland.

ARA/HJ
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30836....3dPB9EXO.dpuf

PressTV

[Ghenghis Kahn]

boenher aka big boner is calling snowden a traitor.

lol at these clowns

[PAULYPOKER]

NSA defenders justifying dictatorship: Ron Paul



Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said that defenders of the U.S. government’s spying programs are “justifying dictatorship.”

“What is the penalty for people who deliberately destroy the Constitution and rationalize and say, ‘Oh, we have to do it for security.’ Well, frankly, you end up losing–you lose your security and you lose your freedoms too,” he made the remarks in an interview with CNN on Monday.

“When you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous and this is what they do if you are a whistle blower or you’re trying to tell the American people our country is destroying our rule of law or destroying our constitution, they turn it on and they say oh, you’re committing treason,” Paul said.

The National Security Agency was collecting records of millions of American customers of Verizon under a secret court order issued in April, followed by news that the NSA was also pulling private data “directly from the servers” of major U.S. service providers.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden admitted leaking of information about a vast U.S. government surveillance program.

Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul also praised Snowden for bringing transparency to the Obama administration.

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk,” Paul said in a statement on the website of Campaign for Liberty.

“They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”

“The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing,” Paul said.

“The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives – without probable cause and without a warrant,” he added.

AGB/AGB
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30840....zLCH7iTh.dpuf

[PAULYPOKER]

‘US Patriot Act review is hypocrisy’

An analyst believes that lawmakers’ call for review of Patriot Act after the NSA surveillance revelations is “hypocrisy.”

“The same Congress people who created the police state and the infrastructure of the current surveillance state are now the ones who are up in arms about the NSA,” Founder of stopimperialism.com Eric Draitser said in an interview with Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Tuesday.

On Sunday, American lawmakers called for a review of the government's monitoring of phone and Internet activities, also urging a review of the Patriot Act, the post-September 11, 2001 law that gave intelligence agencies broader spying powers.

“We’ve always known that the Patriot Act is a repressive piece of legislation that was put in place to solidify the police state in the United States post 9/11,” Draitser said.

“However, the notion that the Patriot Act somehow gives the authority to the government to conduct the kinds of spying and surveillance and data collection that’s been done by the NSA is of course completely outrageous,” he explained.

The analyst concluded that those lawmakers, who are outraged about the NSA scandal, put in place the Patriot Act to allow the spying on American citizens.

AGB/AGB
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30843....e80mvgHm.dpuf

[PAULYPOKER]

Ellsberg: NSA leaks more important than my Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 197, praised whistleblower Edward Snowden for showing courage and said the leaks about the U.S. government vast surveillance program were more significant than his “pentagon Papers.”

“In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material, and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago,” Ellsberg wrote in an op-ed published by The Guardian on Monday.

Snowden, a former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, has unmasked himself as the source of the disclosure of top secret documents on the U.S. government’s massive surveillance of Americans to the media.

“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he told The Guardian.

Ellsberg, whose leaks revealed the U.S. government’s deception as it was building its case to go to war with Vietnam, described the surveillance program as an “executive coup” against the U.S. Constitution.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Ellsberg said the United States has become a “total surveillance state” and applauded Snowden for his “incalculable service” on behalf of democracy.

The new revelations and a string of other scandals have put the Obama administration on the defensive.

"It's important to recognize that you can't have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience," President Obama said in defense of the NSA program on Friday.

The Justice Department has initiated a criminal investigation into the leaks of the NSA program.

Snowden is reportedly staying in a Hotel room in Hong Kong, a country that signed an extradition treaty with the U.S. in 1998. The 29-year-old tech specialist faces decades in prison if he is brought back to the U.S.

Ellsberg also went to trial but the charges against him were dismissed when evidence emerged that the administration of former president Richard M. Nixon “had agents break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in a search for ways to discredit him.”

HJ/HJ
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30836....dplz0vs4.dpuf

[PAULYPOKER]

'Surveillance of Americans against constitution'


The targeting of American citizens with surveillance without a reasonable cause by the U.S. government is against the constitution, an investigative journalist told Press TV.

Wayne Madsen said on Monday that both President Barack Obama and former president George W. Bush violated the U.S. constitution for using the National Security Agency to monitor American citizens.

The Guardian and Washington Post recently revealed the NSA spying programs. The extensive surveillance practices began in 2007, during the administration of George W. Bush and expanded during the Obama administration.

Madsen said that anyone who has a security clearance and access to classified information has a duty to inform the public about the U.S. government’s violation of the constitution.

Federal documents show that almost five million people hold a government security clearance, having access to classified information.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked confidential documents on the U.S. government’s mass surveillance, was an example of someone with this kind of security clearance.

Snowden is a hero for his disclosure and should not be threatened with prosecution and prison time, Madsen said.

“Many Republicans and Democrats have called for Mr. Snowden’s prosecution and arrest and imprisonment. I doubt that these are loyal American citizens; these are fascist Americans and if they hold those opinions, I don’t think they belong in this country,” he argued.

Madsen said he’s talking specifically about U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, who has expressed strong concerns over the fact that the classified information was revealed to the press. He said Feinstein should move to Israel because she holds tremendous loyalty to Israel.

AHT/AGB
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30830....Ogn0zlBJ.dpuf

[PAULYPOKER]

US likely to blame China for NSA leaks: Ex-CIA officer


The National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

The United States will likely blame the Chinese government for the latest leak of National Security Agency information, a former CIA case officer revealed.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Robert Baer said that American intelligence officials were possibly considering NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s case as Chinese espionage.

The 29-year-old Snowden said that he was behind the leak of the U.S. government’s spying programs. He fled to Hong Kong after admitting the case.

“I’ve talked to a bunch of people in Washington today, in official positions, and they are looking at this as a potential Chinese espionage case,” Baer said.

He added that Washington has no choice but to charge Snowden since he has revealed classified information.

"I just don't see any way out of it," the official said. "Whether you agree with him or not, he's violated the law. They cannot let this pass."

Snowden, who was an ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency, said he acted out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world."

Speaking from Hong Kong, Snowden said he revealed the case because he felt the U.S. was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under," he told The Guardian.

Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years.

AGB/AGB
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30827....nhMbeQXE.dpuf

[PAULYPOKER]

US greater threat to our privacy than Chinese hackers: Mauldin



A renowned American expert believes that the United States is a greater threat to the country’s privacy than Chinese hackers.

He made the remarks after media published a series of top-secret documents describing two NSA surveillance programs, which included gathering hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records and also gathering data from nine large U.S. internet companies.

When asked whether he felt the U.S. or China was the bigger hacker, John Mauldin, founder of Mauldin Economic and author of the Thoughts from The Frontline newsletter, said we've become our own worst enemy.

"Because (they) the U.S. government, basically get permission to go in, and the Chinese have to poke and prod and work at it," he said. "It makes me uncomfortable that they (the federal government) have access to all of that data," he added, predicting that the trend is going to "become more of a problem" in the future.

Mauldin says he does not think the trend will end anytime soon. Instead he suggests, "what we may need to do is limit how the data can be used against a person. We need to set some boundaries up front, if not, we won't have any privacy."

Cyber-security was one of the main topics during a summit this weekend between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama which was held in California.

In recent months, the U.S. has repeatedly blamed China for many cyber attacks against its sites.

Beijing has rejected the allegations and accused the U.S. of staging such attacks against key Chinese websites.

AHT/AGB
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30828....Etl7OE3p.dpuf

[SamDiamond]

Pauly, do you feel like a complete loser when you keep bumping your own threads to get attention?

Not many fans of yours these days Pauly.

[PAULYPOKER]

NO-ONE is a fan of TRUTH.............

If I wanted attention, I would post what EVERYONE wanted to see or read...............

[SamDiamond]

NO-ONE is a fan of TRUTH.............

If I wanted attention, I would post what EVERYONE wanted to see or read...............

And I will ask for the 1000th time.

Of all the places, why select a second tier board on a gambling forum? Where 99x out of 100, the people responding are making a prick out of you.

I really don't think you understand the concept of preaching to YOUR audience.

[PAULYPOKER]

Like I said,Hate the TRUTH not the messenger.........

Trying to ridicule me only makes me more confident..............

[SamDiamond]

Like I said,Hate the TRUTH not the messenger.........

Trying to ridicule me only makes me more confident..............

Again, but WHY HERE? If you want to spread the "truth"-- this would be the LEAST FUKING LIKELY PLACE to post your content.

You would have a larger audience at a board dedicated to broken pogo sticks and unicorns.

[PAULYPOKER]

Leaker may be killed in drone strike!

Ron Paul:
Edward Snowden may be target of US drone strike


Former Rep. Ron Paul

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) warned Tuesday that the U.S. government may use a drone missile to kill Edward Snowden, who recently leaked classified information on National Security Administration surveillance programs.

"I'm worried about somebody in our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone missile," Paul said during an interview on Fox Business News. "I mean, we live in a bad time where American citizens don't even have rights and that they can be killed. But the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what's going on."

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, fled to Hong Kong before disclosing over the weekend that he was behind the leaks of information on NSA's sweeping monitoring of phone calls and Internet data.

His actions have reignited a debate on Capitol Hill around security and civil liberties, and revived bipartisan legislation aimed at declassifying court opinions used to justify mass surveillance.

Paul, an ardent libertarian whose son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), waged an hours-long Senate filibuster in March in protest of the administration's drone policy, lamented that Americans are in an age "where people who tell the truth about what the government is doing" get in trouble.

"I don't think for a minute that he is a traitor," Ron Paul said of Snowden.

"Everybody is worried about him and what they're going to do and how they're going to convict him of treason and how they're going to kill him. But what about the people who destroy our Constitution? ... What do we think about people who assassinate American citizens without trials and assume that's the law of the land? That's where our problem is." The Huffington Post

AHT/ARA
- See more at: http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/30856....BNOypyet.dpuf

[itchypickle]

Better rein down missles on VP Joe Biden first then...just saw his tv interview from 2006 talking about how the NSA was doing this and he doesn't trust them....the people need to know what the givt is doing...they don't have to listen to your calls to know everything about us...this has NOTHING to do with AQ, only govt intrusion.

Google it Pauly. 'Joe Biden on CBS 2006 NSA tracking'


Drones...

[PAULYPOKER]

Edward Snowden and the real issues



Edward Snowden is not a traitor. Nor is he a hero, at least not yet. But he probably will be martyred by an establishment that cannot abide critics.

Both House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.) have called him a traitor, which only shows how ignorant they are. Under our Constitution (and the Espionage Act of 1917), it is not enough for a leaker to do something that might arguable “aid or comfort” an enemy; the leaker must also have the intent, by his disclosures, to betray the United States. No proof exists the Mr. Snowden had either motive.

Quite the contrary. Had he wanted to aid an enemy and hurt the United States, he would not have gone public. He would have secretly disclosed very different information to the agents of a foreign power.

Which raises the question: Why can’t these politicians respect Mr. Snowden for what he is: an ordinary young man who does not claim to be a hero, but is willing to go to jail, if necessary, to start a debate over what our bloated intelligence community and do-nothing Congress are doing to our liberties?

Part of the answer is that the politicians don’t want to admit that Congress (and the courts) have failed to exercise adequate oversight over a giant network of secret agencies and corporations that is wasting billions of dollars on worthless surveillance and, in the process, invading the privacy of millions of Americans and endangering the capacity of reporters, leakers, and crusading members of Congress to check the secret abuses of secret government.

This scandal is not just about Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency, and Snowden’s profiteering bosses at Booz Allen Hamilton. It is about secret government in general, the militarization of intelligence, the privatization of governmental functions, and the role of secret campaign contributions to prevent adequate oversight of the executive branch and its pet companies.

Senator Feinstein and her colleagues don’t want to admit it, but the secrecy system does not permit her and her colleagues to restrain secret government. Once they get a secret briefing, they are pledged not to discuss what they have learned, even with their staffs. Feinstein is such a weak overseer that she could not even persuade the secret FISA court to declassify its sweeping surveillance orders or the legal rationale behind them. But Mr. Snowden could do that with his leaks. He, not the senator, revealed that the secret court had, with its rubber stamp, rendered the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonably broad seizures meaningless.

This is not Senator Feinstein’s fault alone. It’s not even the president’s fault. The secrecy system is out of control. There are supposed to be three levels of security classifications: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. Bradley Manning’s massive leaks proved that most documents marked Confidential or Secret do not deserve to be classified at all. Much that is labeled Top Secret only needs to be kept secret for short periods of time. The truly important secrets are classified, if that is the right word, well above Top Secret, in that access to them is restricted to people with special authorizations and special needs to know.

This security system, which keeps Congress and the public largely in the dark about matters they ought to know in a timely fashion, is profoundly corrupt. Contrary to what the politicians say, its chief function is not to keep enemies ignorant; most secret information has nothing to do with the kind of details that might help an enemy. Its chief function is to protect bureaucrats and politicians from being held accountable for their failings, including their wasteful distribution of government contracts to companies like Booz Allen.

So, if Congress wants to make the intelligence budget go further, it ought to ask why Booz Allen is paying people of Snowden’s limited education more than $125,000 a year, and taking still more money off the top of the contract for itself. (The company routinely steals valuable employees from the government by paying them more, and then rents them back to their former agencies at an inflated price.) But Congress probably won’t investigate, because Booz Allen has hired Mike McConnell, the former NSA (and National Intelligence) director, as its vice chairman.

Since 9/11 private corporations have greatly expanded the intelligence community. Seventy percent of the community’s budget now goes to private contractors. So members of Congress, reporters, and suspected leakers are not just vulnerable to government surveillance; they are vulnerable to corporate reprisals, should their investigations or disclosures pose a threat to companies in the intelligence business. These surveillance powers can be used not only to protect secret agencies from criticism; they can be used, as General Motors once used them, to try to discredit critics like Ralph Nader.

Many people believe that they have nothing to fear from government/corporate surveillance because they have nothing to hide. But every bureaucracy is a solution in search of a problem, and if it can’t find a problem to fit its solution, they will redefine the problem. In the 1960s, the surveillance bureaucracies redefined anti-war and civil rights protests as communist enterprises; today the same bureaucracies redefine anti-war Quakers, environmentalists, and animal rights activists as “terrorists.” So political activists, no matter how benign, have good reasons to fear these bureaucracies.

Again, most Americans do not worry, because they are not political activists, reporters, investigating legislators, or crusading attorneys general like Eliot Spitzer. Most Americans are like the Germans who did not fear the secret police because they were not Jews. But all Americans depend on reporters, leakers, and crusading legislators to keep government agencies and private corporations under control. So they should worry about government secrecy, the militarization of surveillance, the privatization of intelligence, and the role of corporate money in elections.

Snowden has revealed just enough to show how pervasive this spying is. Will we pay attention, or will we be distracted by irrelevant attacks upon his character? Given all he has sacrificed to let us know what is happening inside our secret government, don’t we owe it to him to pay attention?

ISH/ARA
PressTV

[PAULYPOKER]

One American who isn't for sale



So it's true, as filmmaker Michael Moore once warned us, the Carlyle Group is Big Brother. That's the $176 billion private equity firm that once employed former President George H.W. Bush, his Secretary of State James A. Baker III and a host of political luminaries that would put any other list of America's ruling elite to shame. Plenty of Democrats too, including former President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff Mack McLarty and Arthur Levitt, the man Clinton appointed to head the SEC during the creation of the housing bust.

It is also the firm that owns Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., which, thanks to the revelations of one of its employees, whistle-blower Edward Snowden, we now know collects and stores much of the government's immense PRISM database spying on the lives of this nation's citizenry. This is systematic snooping through the telephone and Internet records of hundreds of millions of Americans conducted by Snowden and others in Booz Allen's employ who had the highest access to our most private personal data while working at a for-profit company.

Our data is their commerce, and ever since 9/11, observing us has become mega lucrative. "Booz Allen Hamilton," The New York Times reported Sunday, "has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States." The word "serving" might be pushing it here, since 98 percent of the firm's revenue of $5.8 billion last year came from the taxpayers, who are the same folks being spied upon.

Heck, Booz Allen knows all about those taxpayers, since back in 1998, during the Clinton presidency, the firm was hired to "modernize" the IRS. "We made some very dramatic changes in the way the IRS is organized," Booz Allen's CEO claimed at the time. How perfect: Make tax collection more efficient and less painful, so the suckers might not notice when you scoop up the loot at the other end.

Of course, to those swinging through the revolving door between the government and its defense contractors, it must be difficult to draw a distinction between their changing roles. James R. Clapper, the chief intelligence official in the Obama administration, who is now investigating this security lapse, was himself a top Booz Allen executive. And it should be of little surprise that John M. McConnell, currently vice chairman of Booz Allen, was previously the chief intelligence official in the George W. Bush administration. It's crony capitalism at its patriotic best.

"The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors," Danielle Brian, executive director of the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told the Times. "This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters."

Brian points out that the for-profit folks spying on us also get to grant high level government security clearances. Those private sector employees are then entrusted to work in the most secretive sectors of the government's national security apparatus, including at the National Security Agency. It's good work if you can get it. In January, the Defense Department granted Booz Allen a five-year, $5.6 billion deal assigning its private sector employees in key positions to advise Pentagon personnel on crafting military policy. Maybe they can find some new conventional wars to fight just in case the one against terrorism loses its profitability.

That could happen now that the American public has been alerted to the fact that in the grand design of that war, it is the ordinary American citizen, even when shopping on the Internet, who gets to play enemy. That reality is what seems to have turned Snowden, like others before him, into a courageous whistle-blower. He signed up for training with the Army Special Forces to go fight in Iraq because he bought the Bush administration's line that it was a war "to help free people from oppression." That misplaced idealism collided with the observation that "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," Snowden told the British newspaper The Guardian.

Still, he continued to serve the government, both with the CIA and then at the NSA, where he worked as a Booz Allen contractor. There he witnessed a part of the sordid story that he chose to share with his fellow Americans. As he explained to The Guardian:

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. ... If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, ************. I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

The folks at Booz Allen, and its parent company the Carlyle Group, love that world as a fabulous profit center, and it is truly inspiring that there are still folks like Snowden whom they can't buy.

AGB/AGB

[PAULYPOKER]

NSA leaker fears for his family’s safety



American whistleblower Edward Snowden, who left the U.S. before disclosing top-secret information about the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program, says he is in constant fear for the safety of his family.

In his first press interview since revealing his identity as the source of the disclosure, Snowden told the South China Morning Post from a secret location in Hong Kong that he is in constant fear for his own safety and that of his family.

Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) warned on Tuesday that the U.S. government might use a drone missile to assassinate Snowden.

Snowden also told the Chinese newspaper that he would stay in Hong Kong “until I am asked to leave.”

“I have had many opportunities to flee HK, but I would rather stay and fight the U.S. government in the courts,” the newspaper quoted Snowden as saying.

The former NSA contractor revealed last week that the U.S. government is massively collecting data on phone calls and Internet records of everybody across the globe including all American citizens.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong from Hawaii on May 20 and has reportedly been changing hotels in the city since then to keep his location secret.

In his interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden also disclosed that the U.S. government had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.

U.S. officials claim there is a growing threat from international cyberattacks against sensitive state and industry secrets in America, blaming China for many of the attacks. China denies the allegations, accusing the U.S. to launch cyberattacks against it.

ISH/ARA

[TheRifleman]

Obama Voters: Just how dumb are they?

It's really sad to see the state that this country is in. Millions of people drank the Barack Obama kool-aid and grabbed on to "hope and change" as if it were some kind of actual policy. Now, when the economy is a mess, and we see Obama's glaring deficiencies on the world stage, there are still people who will vote for him no matter what. Let's take a look at a few... First, check out this outrageous video. The video is an interview with a number of people regarding the terrorist attacks in Libya which claimed the lives of four Americans. Many of the people in the video are not Obama supporters, but check out the ones who are!
Here's a sample:
-- "I give respect to those people in Libya who shot that diplomat because at least somebody -- there's somebody not -- murder, it isn't the way to go. But Libya has just stood up and said that, 'We're not gonna these drones in our country anymore attacking our kids.'"
-- My response is "who cares." He's one man (referring to murdered U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens).




Are these people for real? Unfortunately, yes! But it gets even worse. Howard Stern recently interviewed a number of Obama supporters. Here are some examples of their responses:
-- He got the medical thing goin. He got most of the job like he said he was. You know what I'm sayin'.
-- (Do you think he will eventually find and kill bin Laden?) Answer: He'll eventually do it.
-- (Do you think Obama made the right choice by choosing Paul Ryan as his vice president?) Yes.
-- (Do you think he picked Paul Ryan because he's African American or because he's qualified?) It could be a little bit of both.

These people vote! It's incredible. It's no wonder that Obama just throws out feel-good phrases, because that's all he needs to do. If people have no idea what's going on, maybe they should just stay at home and NOT vote!


http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/2012/0...dumb-are-they/

[The Kraken]

Bowie University

Is that a community college

[PAULYPOKER]

Yahoo fought against US spying program in 2008



When the U.S. government ordered Yahoo to hand in information about its foreign users without a warrant, the company refused it in 2008, according to a report.

The company went to the court five years ago in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid participating in the spying program, The New York Times reported.

“The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant, and Yahoo had refused, saying the broad requests were unconstitutional,” the report said.

When Yahoo’s top lawyers tried to make it clear that their users’ Fourth Amendment right is being violated, the court called their concern “overblown.”

Two NSA surveillance programs, which included gathering hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records and also gathering data from nine large U.S. internet companies, sparked controversy in the United States.

Yahoo has been part of the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program, called Prism, as leaked NSA documents showed later.

Like other tech companies, Yahoo lost the case, as it had no choice but to join the program and hand over the data.

The company’s failure shows a paradox regarding giant tech companies who keep collecting their users’ personal data in order to use them in targeted ads, but they say that they stand up against illegal government’s requests.

In addition to Yahoo, other companies like Google, Twitter and other small businesses have fought parts of NSA Letters, which are sent by FBI to collect information on people.

Google challenged 19 letters and the judge ruled against the company in May. Google, Facebook and Microsoft on Tuesday requested the permission to disclose the classified requests they receive on personal information of foreign users.

Christopher Soghoian, a senior policy analyst and expert in privacy, technology and surveillance at American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said that while the companies’ effort to fight illegal data collection is appreciated, they are mostly meant to save face with users and employees.

“If nothing else happens, this is a way of putting the government on the defensive and shifting the blame from the companies to the government,” he said.

Small companies are more likely to fight NSA letters in courts as they usually have fewer government relations and clients.

AN/AGB

[MUHerd37]

Snowden is working for the Chinese