Thanks go to RHT for this find. . .
H.R. 4681: Congress Just Passed Legislation Ramping Up Mass Surveillance to Super-Steroid Levels.
“When I learned that the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2015 was being rushed to the floor for a vote—with little debate and only a voice vote expected (i.e., simply declared “passed” with almost nobody in the room)—I asked my legislative staff to quickly review the bill for unusual language. What they discovered is one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative: It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American.” Congressman Amash
Good lord. These are our representatives?
Time for Clowngresspeople to return to their home districts. They’re WAY too insulated in DC from what the voters think and are infected by lobbyists and petty party politics.
They can vote via phone or internet and be much more accessible to those who elected them.
Sadly, yes.
Now, now, people. I’m sure Obama would NEVER abuse this power…or Hillary either, right?
And Jack, how can we search the comments of this blog? The search feature seems to not search through the comments section.
Please use some of your copious programming skills to remedy this.
Thank you, kindly.
I am currently reading the book “Masters of the Air” by Donald R. Miller about the air war against Nazi Germany. For anyone interested, I highly recommend this book. I expect the copy I’m reading will be back in the county library next week.
A portion of the book deals with the POW’s and more specifically, gives a peek in the window as to how information was gathered and used by the German military intelligence.
American magazines and news papers were brought in from neutral Portugal, including “Stars and Stripes”. Every word of radio transmission that could be snagged, plane to plane, plane to ground, whatever, was analyzed. Everything from downed planes and crews—log books, briefing notes, diaries, even ration cards, all into the mix. Ration cards had no specific military information on them, but by careful analysis of the differences in cancelation marks, German analysts were able to tell which base PX a particular card had been used at. There was no scrap of information too small for scrutiny. Fully 80% of their intelligence info came from the above. The rest came from POW interrogation.
This massive amount of information was their greatest tool. And they were very smooth. They would plop a thick folder on the desk in front of a POW and say to them “You will not be telling us anything we don’t already know”. One airman recalled his interrogator inquiring as to his mother’s health back in his home town of Terre Haute, and how his kid sister was doing in high school. A smiling Luftwaffe Major asked a pilot from the 381st Bomb Group at Ridgewell why the men there had not fixed the broken clock in the officers club.
Many American airmen assumed there must be spies at every American air base. However, there is no evidence that enemy agents ever effectively penetrated any air base. They didn’t have to.
Consider that the above took place during World War II. Given the wonders of our electronic information age, the possibilities for the same today are staggering.
RHT, years ago as a police detective we were trained in the art of interrogation, although for PC reasons it was called an “interview.” Same thing, absent the torture.
The interview was only as good as the guy doing it, it was as much art as a science. But for the investigators that were truly skilled, the result were pretty amazing.
Assessing the personality of the detainee, playing on his/her personality quirks or weaknesses, watching for subtle clues in body language, it’s the same thing the Germans were doing back in WWII. I doubt much has changed, people are people and there’s only so much tricky stuff we can do. However, that being said we learned a lot from the military tactics and they learned a lot from us.
I also gathered a lot of abstract information through surveillance work, which I enjoyed quite a bit.
It’s like covertly stalking your prey who doesn’t want to be stalked and is using his every resource to avoid it. Back in the day my basic tools were a cold car, a Fargo transmitter, a Minolta 201 SLR, with a variety of lenses and film speeds and whatever weapons I wanted, but nothing too exotic. The best I carried was an HK 91, with twin 30 shot clips. I like the Browning Hi-Power in 9mm, easy to carry and conceal.
The largest camera lens I ever used was about 2000mm. It required sandbagging and a cable shutter release to avoid any movement. It was only useful during cool morning temperatures because hot air distortions ruined afternoon pictures. the DOJ/DEA rule of thumb was for ID purpose you must use 1mm of lens for every 1 ft. of distance. I saw some pretty amazing results from the guys who specialized in this area, aerial photos, night photos, photos through a hole in a news paper at the bus depot, etc. I took thousands of pictures, but most were just routine close-up macro work like on prints or blood splatters, the surveillance part was a break from the boring stuff. We had our own photo lab and that was fun too. I never used it, but we had access to the U-2 spy plane and it could take pics of ‘hot spots” looking for things not too far underground.
In the Early 80’s we were already doing high tech link analysis, (charting using names, addresses, phone #s) but the results varied due to the skill level of the people involved, it was of questionable value IMHO. For example, one of my agent friends at the S.O. was very bright when it came to gizmos, but common sense stupid (you’ve no doubt met this type before). He could (and did) find almost anyone connected to a criminal enterprise because he made so many stupid connections! He was a conspiracy theory nut. If you look hard enough eventually everybody has a connection to something criminal… and he loved finding it, but it served no purpose. When you chart like this its called the ball of twine and its so convoluted.
In the day, link analysis was better used by intelligence networks working on a grand scale of many states. At my low level, link analysis involved too much work to connect the dots and it just didn’t justify me spending to much time in that area, unless it was a really major drug case. However, much later in life I used software that leveraged off our field work and now link analysis became a whole lot better. After 9/11 agencies were getting into the area of intuitive software and internet data mining.
By 2010 the level of sophistication was so invasive, so intuitive that it was considered a national secret. Ed Snowden was one of the guys trained on this program and he would eventually blow the whistle, even though you had to sign your life away with all kinds of non-disclosure papers rarely seen outside the clandestine world of counter-terrorism.
The program that Snowden used could data mine almost anyone and anywhere… I know this to be true.
Didn’t matter if it was restricted DMV records, county records, criminal records, tax records, schools, NCIC, DOJ, bank accounts, email, medical records, charge cards, bank transfers, gun registrations. And eventually all this info was linked to the information from field agents regarding their observations re places, cars, planes, friends, associates, personal habits, family clan affiliation, religious connections, cell phones…anything you can think of, if we could “tag” it for classification it could placed in the big computer and spit back out as a virtual road map of crime complete with pictures of who’s doing what, when, where and how.
This new technology was great for catching bad guys, but it was also Big Brother on steroids and it was still growing when I left, although we were told it wouldn’t be used on American citizens, we know that wasn’t exactly true, Snowden let that secret out. Anyway, that was almost 6 years ago and I was only briefly exposed to this program. I can only imagine what they have spying on [all] of us now, especially anyone of any particular interest.
We’ve lost control of our privacy, we just don’t know it yet.
I’m glad we can now all agree that this type of surveillance is wrong and unconstitutional. I remember in the years after 9/11 the common refrain from many, but especially among conservatives, was “If you have nothing to hide, don’t worry.” I don’t know whether this tune has changed due to the fact that we now have a Democratic president, or if it’s more that it’s been long enough since 9/11 that the right is no longer so willing to abandon freedom in the name of security. Either way, I’m glad to see people have come to their senses on this issue.
More brave new world—
“I was driving 70 mph on the edge of downtown St. Louis when the exploit began to take hold.
Though I hadn’t touched the dashboard, the vents in the Jeep Cherokee started blasting cold air at the maximum setting, chilling the sweat on my back through the in-seat climate control system. Next the radio switched to the local hip hop station and began blaring Skee-lo at full volume. I spun the control knob left and hit the power button, to no avail. Then the windshield wipers turned on, and wiper fluid blurred the glass.”
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/
“It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American.”
In light of revelations that Obama has established a very large “race” database this legislation is indeed disturbing.
I remember saying that trust in the administration was the one key component that would make surveillance for the purpose of protecting the American people palatable. The original legislation was written for that purpose alone and contained safeguards to protect the privacy of ordinary Americans. The law has since been abused.
It’s a matter of trust. I would trust most of the Presidents we’ve had because they demonstrated loyalty to the US and a desire to defend the nation from it’s enemies. It’s one thing to make an error in judgement and quite another to negotiate with our enemies giving them nukes, exchanging one hostage for five terrorists in Gitmo, or creating a “race” database.
When we are at war, and we are at war, we do a lot of things that are outside of our usual sensibilities. It’s sad that we cannot count on our leaders to defend us without creating a big brother database.
Abuse of power is everywhere. I guess that’s why we small government folks would rather take care of ourselves.
Complaining about legislation means nothing if you don’t track how individual members vote and voice your concerns.
Just looking at CA congress members, looks like Tom McClintock,Dana Rorhabacher and John Garamendi voted against. Yes votes were cast by Mike Thompson, Doug LaMalfa, and Nancy Pelosi.
Whatever your beliefs on this legislation, your representative can’t read your mind. You have to call and let them know what you do or do not support.