Obama intel agency secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

[mystery-ak]

Obama intel agency secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years
by John Solomon and Sara Carter
May 23, 2017

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

more
http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of-illegal-nsa-searches-spying-on-americans

[driftdiver]

Our government has wayyyyyy too much information identified as classified.    IMO the do it to keep American citizens from knowing and holding them accountable.

Our enemies already know much of it.

[Cripplecreek]

Its not an Obama intel agency and its still happening.

[Bigun]

Biggest news in a decade and {{{{{{{{{{{{{CRICKETS!!!!!}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

[Smokin Joe]

Its not an Obama intel agency and its still happening.

Right. This has been around since ECHELON and CARNIVORE (CLinton Era). Likely it was behind the drive for digital phones and texting because the intercepts would be easier than working with analog data. Only the abilities and scope of the server farms have increased.

[Smokin Joe]

Biggest news in a decade and {{{{{{{{{{{{{CRICKETS!!!!!}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I don't think people realize that the Obama administration was routinely violating the rights of Americans by surveiling their electronic communications, but then, I have assumed no electronic communication, nor any verbal or written conducted within earshot of a microphone or sight of a camera, respectively, are secure. We used to play 'dubbed foreign horror movie', moving our lips all over while talking to mock the lip movements of the actors, but it could be a worthwhile technique to defeat lip readers.

[skeeter]

Biggest news in a decade and {{{{{{{{{{{{{CRICKETS!!!!!}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I'm outraged. But practically everything that *sshole did outraged me, and the complicity of the press utterly enraged me.

It also conditioned me to expect no consequences for the POS, no matter how outrageous, illegal or hypocritical his behavior. All I can do is shrug.

[EC]

Likely it was behind the drive for digital phones and texting because the intercepts would be easier than working with analog data. Only the abilities and scope of the server farms have increased.

The UK government flat out admitted that was a consideration during the changeover here. I assume the US had the same thoughts.

Everything you say which requires transmission of any kind is monitored. Your physical location is monitored if you live in any size urban area, and sporadically if you don't. If you have a routine that in any way involves interacting with electronics, your routine is known.
There is no such thing as privacy, only an illusion of such to stop people revolting.

[Bigun]

The UK government flat out admitted that was a consideration during the changeover here. I assume the US had the same thoughts.

Everything you say which requires transmission of any kind is monitored. Your physical location is monitored if you live in any size urban area, and sporadically if you don't. If you have a routine that in any way involves interacting with electronics, your routine is known.
There is no such thing as privacy, only an illusion of such to stop people revolting.

A cell phone is nothing more than a low power radio. Same with Wi-Fi.  They can be encrypted but that requires users on both ends to use the same encryption software.  A bit unwieldy for the everyday user.

[Rivergirl]

The Brits dossier on DT was ridiculed and dismissed.  They have our number and it's zero.

[Smokin Joe]

I'm outraged. But practically everything that *sshole did outraged me, and the complicity of the press utterly enraged me.

It also conditioned me to expect no consequences for the POS, no matter how outrageous, illegal or hypocritical his behavior. All I can do is shrug.

I think if anyone studied it, they would discover 'outrage overload' where the sheer volume of outrageous acts and the level of outrage induced numbs people. If you packed that much criminal activity into a single novel, it would be discarded as 'just too much' and people's eyes would glaze over as they tried to read it. Which was what they were counting on, I'm sure. If people had Watergate overload in the 70s, Obama Overload was pretty much guaranteed. (Segue to "How about those (insert name of sports team here)?")

[Smokin Joe]

A cell phone is nothing more than a low power radio. Same with Wi-Fi.  They can be encrypted but that requires users on both ends to use the same encryption software.  A bit unwieldy for the everyday user.

Encryption would definitely be a red flag, and bring demands for the key or surveillance of the movements and other actions/transactions of the users.

[Bigun]

I think if anyone studied it, they would discover 'outrage overload' where the sheer volume of outrageous acts and the level of outrage induced numbs people. If you packed that much criminal activity into a single novel, it would be discarded as 'just too much' and people's eyes would glaze over as they tried to read it. Which was what they were counting on, I'm sure. If people had Watergate overload in the 70s, Obama Overload was pretty much guaranteed. (Segue to "How about those (insert name of sports team here)?")

I think that's right! And I also think the perps are aware of that and using it to their advantage!

[Smokin Joe]

I think that's right! And I also think the perps are aware of that and using it to their advantage!

Sure they are! Lay out the best theory of why our 4 guys ended up dead in Banghazi. Go ahead. I have the "Conspiracy Theory" label all slicked up and ready to paste on. Or the one about running guns to the Cartels using the BATFE and getting a Border Patrol Agent killed with one, and that's just one of thousands, and only one operation (see Gangwalker, too). Saturday nights in Chicago haven't been the same since that one.
Or how the replacement for Holder at AG was a sorority sister of Holder's wife and helped her found the chapter...no connections there (they are thick as thieves) and it just goes on and on and on....

It's so intertwined it's like sorting out which root the honeysuckle blossom is fed by in a tangle of vines, and that's the point. They'd be long gone of natural causes by the time the whole mess gets sorted out by any investigation. BRILLIANT! Especially with a public used to having the crime solved in a one hour, show, max, before they start channel surfing.


But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be sorted, out, charges filed, wherever the investigation leads, on whomever it leads to, for whatever crimes they may have committed, right up to and including the highest offices, and for treason, if applicable.
The way I see it, anyone fighting our troops is the enemy, we were at war, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war qualifies.

[Bigun]

Sure they are! Lay out the best theory of why our 4 guys ended up dead in Banghazi. Go ahead. I have the "Conspiracy Theory" label all slicked up and ready to paste on. Or the one about running guns to the Cartels using the BATFE and getting a Border Patrol Agent killed with one, and that's just one of thousands, and only one operation (see Gangwalker, too). Saturday nights in Chicago haven't been the same since that one.
Or how the replacement for Holder at AG was a sorority sister of Holder's wife and helped her found the chapter...no connections there (they are thick as thieves) and it just goes on and on and on....

It's so intertwined it's like sorting out which root the honeysuckle blossom is fed by in a tangle of vines, and that's the point. They'd be long gone of natural causes by the time the whole mess gets sorted out by any investigation. BRILLIANT! Especially with a public used to having the crime solved in a one hour, show, max, before they start channel surfing.


But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be sorted, out, charges filed, wherever the investigation leads, on whomever it leads to, for whatever crimes they may have committed, right up to and including the highest offices, and for treason, if applicable.
The way I see it, anyone fighting our troops is the enemy, we were at war, and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war qualifies.

Excellent analysis!  Spot on!  And we should also note that the groundwork for their being able to pull this kind of thing off was laid long before any of the current actors were even born! 

It's never going to stop until the barn in Washington is given a good, top to bottom, mucking out and I'm not talking about the elected people there either!

[Smokin Joe]

Excellent analysis!  Spot on!  And we should also note that the groundwork for their being able to pull this kind of thing off was laid long before any of the current actors were even born! 

It's never going to stop until the barn in Washington is given a good, top to bottom, mucking out and I'm not talking about the elected people there either!

The elected people are placeholders. The staffers and the bureaucrats are the ones doing the draft animal work dragging us all down the road to totalitarianism, whether they know it or not. They can sabotage the elected people if the officeholders make a fuss and threaten their jobs, they have the access, they write the letters home, they write the bills and the regs, and they know the misdeeds and weak points of everyone in the fancy chairs.
Failing all that, they can get a few minutes alone and come out rumpled and file a harassment complaint and end a career--and now that 'there's nothing wrong with that' any one of them can make the allegation that will circle the globe a dozen times at lightspeed before the truth gets so much as a breath.
So the leviathan keeps growing, either out of no desire to trim it, or fear of reprisal if they suggest it, and the voters take it on the chin. Only someone who goes in there with a squeaky clean staff of very reliable people stands a chance of standing up to the swamp, and too few qualify. They get 'Beltway Fever before their first month is done, if they didn't have it before they arrived.
I don't know what it will take to clean out that den of thieves, but it won't be pretty. Long before that happens, though, we have to wean the American people off the pablum of short attention span theatre and get them to pay attention. We need to at least achieve Conservative parity in the media, the schools, and universities, to wake up the indoctrinated but disillusioned kids and get them to see why it isn't working, and then, we have a chance.
It's going to be a long haul...