The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept.
The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.
Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases—though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: “The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”
The rulebook, which The Intercept is publishing in full, was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI. Emblazoned with the crests of 19 agencies, it offers the most complete and revealing look into the secret history of the government’s terror list policies to date. It reveals a confounding and convoluted system filled with exceptions to its own rules, and it relies on the elastic concept of “reasonable suspicion” as a standard for determining whether someone is a possible threat. Because the government tracks “suspected terrorists” as well as “known terrorists,” individuals can be watchlisted if they are suspected of being a suspected terrorist, or if they are suspected of associating with people who are suspected of terrorism activity.
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”
The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is “dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.
This combination—a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets. It can also be counterproductive. When resources are devoted to tracking people who are not genuine risks to national security, the actual threats get fewer resources—and might go unnoticed.
“If reasonable suspicion is the only standard you need to label somebody, then it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down here, because then you can label anybody anything,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent with experience running high-profile terrorism investigations. “Because you appear on a telephone list of somebody doesn’t make you a terrorist. That’s the kind of information that gets put in there.”
The fallout is personal too. There are severe consequences for people unfairly labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government, which shares its watchlist data with local law enforcement, foreign governments, and “private entities.” Once the U.S. government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one. It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome—or impossible—to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals.
A chart from the “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance”
In 2012 Tim Healy, the former director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, described to CBS News how watchlists are used by police officers. “So if you are speeding, you get pulled over, they’ll query that name,” he said. “And if they are encountering a known or suspected terrorist, it will pop up and say call the Terrorist Screening Center…. So now the officer on the street knows he may be dealing with a known or suspected terrorist.” Of course, the problem is that the “known or suspected terrorist” might just be an ordinary citizen who should not be treated as a menace to public safety.
Until 2001, the government did not prioritize building a watchlist system. On 9/11, the government’s list of people barred from flying included just 16 names. Today, the no fly list has swelled to tens of thousands of “known or suspected terrorists” (the guidelines refer to them as KSTs). The selectee list subjects people to extra scrutiny and questioning at airports and border crossings. The government has created several other databases, too. The largest is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), which gathers terrorism information from sensitive military and intelligence sources around the world. Because it contains classified information that cannot be widely distributed, there is yet another list, the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, which has been stripped of TIDE’s classified data so that it can be shared. When government officials refer to “the watchlist,” they are typically referring to the TSDB. (TIDE is the responsibility of the National Counterterrorism Center; the TSDB is managed by the Terrorist Screening Center at the FBI.)
In a statement, a spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center told The Intercept that “the watchlisting system is an important part of our layered defense to protect the United States against future terrorist attacks” and that “watchlisting continues to mature to meet an evolving, diffuse threat.” He added that U.S. citizens are afforded extra protections to guard against improper listing, and that no one can be placed on a list solely for activities protected by the First Amendment. A representative of the Terrorist Screening Center did not respond to a request for comment.
The system has been criticized for years. In 2004, Sen. Ted Kennedy complained that he was barred from boarding flights on five separate occasions because his name resembled the alias of a suspected terrorist. Two years later, CBS News obtained a copy of the no fly list and reported that it included Bolivian president Evo Morales and Lebanese parliament head Nabih Berri. One of the watchlists snared Mikey Hicks, a Cub Scout who got his first of many airport pat-downs at age two. In 2007, the Justice Department’s inspector general issued a scathing report identifying “significant weaknesses” in the system. And in 2009, after a Nigerian terrorist was able to board a passenger flight to Detroit and nearly detonated a bomb sewn into his underwear despite his name having been placed on the TIDE list, President Obama admitted that there had been a “systemic failure.”
Obama hoped that his response to the “underwear bomber” would be a turning point. In 2010, he gave increased powers and responsibilities to the agencies that nominate individuals to the lists, placing pressure on them to add names. His administration also issued a set of new guidelines for the watchlists. Problems persisted, however. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office published a report that bluntly noted there was no agency responsible for figuring out “whether watchlist-related screening or vetting is achieving intended results.” The guidelines were revised and expanded in 2013—and a source within the intelligence community subsequently provided a copy to The Intercept.
“Concrete facts are not necessary”
The five chapters and 11 appendices of the “Watchlisting Guidance” are filled with acronyms, legal citations, and numbered paragraphs; it reads like an arcane textbook with a vocabulary all its own. Different types of data on suspected terrorists are referred to as “derogatory information,” “substantive derogatory information,” “extreme derogatory information” and “particularized derogatory information.” The names of suspected terrorists are passed along a bureaucratic ecosystem of “originators,” “nominators,” “aggregators,” “screeners,” and “encountering agencies.” And “upgrade,” usually a happy word for travellers, is repurposed to mean that an individual has been placed on a more restrictive list.
The heart of the document revolves around the rules for placing individuals on a watchlist. “All executive departments and agencies,” the document says, are responsible for collecting and sharing information on terrorist suspects with the National Counterterrorism Center. It sets a low standard—”reasonable suspicion“—for placing names on the watchlists, and offers a multitude of vague, confusing, or contradictory instructions for gauging it. In the chapter on “Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria”—even the title is hard to digest—the key sentence on reasonable suspicion offers little clarity:
“To meet the REASONABLE SUSPICION standard, the NOMINATOR, based on the totality of the circumstances, must rely upon articulable intelligence or information which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrants a determination that an individual is known or suspected to be or has been knowingly engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to TERRORISM and/or TERRORIST ACTIVITIES.”
The rulebook makes no effort to define an essential phrase in the passage—”articulable intelligence or information.” After stressing that hunches are not reasonable suspicion and that “there must be an objective factual basis” for labeling someone a terrorist, it goes on to state that no actual facts are required:
“In determining whether a REASONABLE SUSPICION exists, due weight should be given to the specific reasonable inferences that a NOMINATOR is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his/her experience and not on unfounded suspicions or hunches. Although irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary, to be reasonable, suspicion should be as clear and as fully developed as circumstances permit.”
While the guidelines nominally prohibit nominations based on unreliable information, they explicitly regard “uncorroborated” Facebook or Twitter posts as sufficient grounds for putting an individual on one of the watchlists. “Single source information,” the guidelines state, “including but not limited to ‘walk-in,’ ‘write-in,’ or postings on social media sites, however, should not automatically be discounted … the NOMINATING AGENCY should evaluate the credibility of the source, as well as the nature and specificity of the information, and nominate even if that source is uncorroborated.”
There are a number of loopholes for putting people onto the watchlists even if reasonable suspicion cannot be met.
One is clearly defined: The immediate family of suspected terrorists—their spouses, children, parents, or siblings—may be watchlisted without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity. But another loophole is quite broad—”associates” who have a defined relationship with a suspected terrorist, but whose involvement in terrorist activity is not known. A third loophole is broader still—individuals with “a possible nexus” to terrorism, but for whom there is not enough “derogatory information” to meet the reasonable suspicion standard.
Americans and foreigners can be nominated for the watchlists if they are associated with a terrorist group, even if that group has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. They can also be treated as “representatives” of a terrorist group even if they have “neither membership in nor association with the organization.” The guidelines do helpfully note that certain associations, such as providing janitorial services or delivering packages, are not grounds for being watchlisted.
The nomination system appears to lack meaningful checks and balances. Although government officials have repeatedly said there is a rigorous process for making sure no one is unfairly placed in the databases, the guidelines acknowledge that all nominations of “known terrorists” are considered justified unless the National Counterterrorism Center has evidence to the contrary. In a recent court filing, the government disclosed that there were 468,749 KST nominations in 2013, of which only 4,915 were rejected–a rate of about one percent. The rulebook appears to invert the legal principle of due process, defining nominations as “presumptively valid.”
Profiling categories of people
While the nomination process appears methodical on paper, in practice there is a shortcut around the entire system. Known as a “threat-based expedited upgrade,” it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to elevate entire “categories of people” whose names appear in the larger databases onto the no fly or selectee lists. This can occur, the guidelines state, when there is a “particular threat stream” indicating that a certain type of individual may commit a terrorist act.
This extraordinary power for “categorical watchlisting”—otherwise known as profiling—is vested in the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position formerly held by CIA Director John Brennan that does not require Senate confirmation.
The rulebook does not indicate what “categories of people” have been subjected to threat-based upgrades. It is not clear, for example, whether a category might be as broad as military-age males from Yemen. The guidelines do make clear that American citizens and green card holders are subject to such upgrades, though government officials are required to review their status in an “expedited” procedure. Upgrades can remain in effect for 72 hours before being reviewed by a small committee of senior officials. If approved, they can remain in place for 30 days before a renewal is required, and can continue “until the threat no longer exists.”
“In a set of watchlisting criteria riddled with exceptions that swallow rules, this exception is perhaps the most expansive and certainly one of the most troubling,” Shamsi, the ACLU attorney, says. “It’s reminiscent of the Bush administration’s heavily criticized color-coded threat alerts, except that here, bureaucrats can exercise virtually standard-less authority in secret with specific negative consequences for entire categories of people.”
The National Counterterrorism Center declined to provide any details on the upgrade authority, including how often it has been exercised and for what categories of people.
Pocket litter and scuba gear
The guidelines provide the clearest explanation yet of what is happening when Americans and foreigners are pulled aside at airports and border crossings by government agents. The fifth chapter, titled “Encounter Management and Analysis,” details the type of information that is targeted for collection during “encounters” with people on the watchlists, as well as the different organizations that should collect the data. The Department of Homeland Security is described as having the largest number of encounters, but other authorities, ranging from the State Department and Coast Guard to foreign governments and “certain private entities,” are also involved in assembling “encounter packages” when watchlisted individuals cross their paths. The encounters can be face-to-face meetings or electronic interactions—for instance, when a watchlisted individual applies for a visa.
In addition to data like fingerprints, travel itineraries, identification documents and gun licenses, the rules encourage screeners to acquire health insurance information, drug prescriptions, “any cards with an electronic strip on it (hotel cards, grocery cards, gift cards, frequent flyer cards),” cellphones, email addresses, binoculars, peroxide, bank account numbers, pay stubs, academic transcripts, parking and speeding tickets, and want ads. The digital information singled out for collection includes social media accounts, cell phone lists, speed dial numbers, laptop images, thumb drives, iPods, Kindles, and cameras. All of the information is then uploaded to the TIDE database.
Screeners are also instructed to collect data on any “pocket litter,” scuba gear, EZ Passes, library cards, and the titles of any books, along with information about their condition—”e.g., new, dog-eared, annotated, unopened.” Business cards and conference materials are also targeted, as well as “anything with an account number” and information about any gold or jewelry worn by the watchlisted individual. Even “animal information”—details about pets from veterinarians or tracking chips—is requested. The rulebook also encourages the collection of biometric or biographical data about the travel partners of watchlisted individuals.
The list of government entities that collect this data includes the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is neither an intelligence nor law-enforcement agency. As the rulebook notes, USAID funds foreign aid programs that promote environmentalism, health care, and education. USAID, which presents itself as committed to fighting global poverty, nonetheless appears to serve as a conduit for sensitive intelligence about foreigners. According to the guidelines, “When USAID receives an application seeking financial assistance, prior to granting, these applications are subject to vetting by USAID intelligence analysts at the TSC.” The guidelines do not disclose the volume of names provided by USAID, the type of information it provides, or the number and duties of the “USAID intelligence analysts.”
A USAID spokesman told The Intercept that “in certain high risk countries, such as Afghanistan, USAID has determined that vetting potential partner organizations with the terrorist watchlist is warranted to protect U.S. taxpayer dollars and to minimize the risk of inadvertent funding of terrorism.” He stated that since 2007, the agency has checked “the names and other personal identifying information of key individuals of contractors and grantees, and sub-recipients.”
Death and the watchlist
The government has been widely criticized for making it impossible for people to know why they have been placed on a watchlist, and for making it nearly impossible to get off. The guidelines bluntly state that “the general policy of the U.S. Government is to neither confirm nor deny an individual’s watchlist status.” But the courts have taken exception to the official silence and footdragging: In June, a federal judge described the government’s secretive removal process as unconstitutional and “wholly ineffective.”
The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of a terrorism-related crime. The rulebook justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury’s verdict cannot erase it.
Not even death provides a guarantee of getting off the list. The guidelines say the names of dead people will stay on the list if there is reason to believe the deceased’s identity may be used by a suspected terrorist–which the National Counterterrorism Center calls a “demonstrated terrorist tactic.” In fact, for the same reason, the rules permit the deceased spouses of suspected terrorists to be placed onto the list after they have died.
For the living, the process of getting off the watchlist is simple yet opaque. A complaint can be filed through the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, which launches an internal review that is not subject to oversight by any court or entity outside the counterterrorism community. The review can result in removal from a watchlist or an adjustment of watchlist status, but the individual will not be told if he or she prevails. The guidelines highlight one of the reasons why it has been difficult to get off the list—if multiple agencies have contributed information on a watchlisted individual, all of them must agree to removing him or her.
If a U.S. citizen is placed on the no fly list while abroad and is turned away from a flight bound for the U.S., the guidelines say they should be referred to the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate, which is prohibited from informing them why they were blocked from flying. According to the rules, these individuals can be granted a “One-Time Waiver” to fly, though they will not be told that they are traveling on a waiver. Back in the United States, they will be unable to board another flight.
The document states that nominating agencies are “under a continuing obligation” to provide exculpatory information when it emerges. It adds that the agencies are expected to conduct annual reviews of watchlisted American citizens and green card holders. It is unclear whether foreigners—or the dead—are reviewed at the same pace. As the rulebook notes, “watchlisting is not an exact science.”
Josh Begley, Lynn Dombek, and Peter Maass contributed to this story.
Photo credits: TSA: G.J. McCarthy/Dallas Morning News/Corbis (2); Guidance: Josh Begley; White House: Win McNamee/Getty Images; Airport: Nick Ut/AP Photo
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john demshar
Don’t fly at all.
But we love our comforts, we will not do that. No fliers, no jobs for those friskers.
We are not united.
Two plus two makes five
I think I’m going to throw up…
As the founder of V’ERPA and exposing SCOUS Feres Doctrine atrocities by US Govt I’ve paid the price. Thank you for this reporting.
I thought we had the ultimate police state with George Bush the second, but that was just a taste of things to come compared to what we are getting with Obama. I wonder what the point is of voting anymore.
When Bush the second got elected, I thought we had the ultimate police state, but apparently, it was just a taste of what was yet to come. We thought we’d get some kind of relief with Obama, and what we got was worse. I never thought I’d give up voting, but I’m starting to wonder, what’s the point?
Why are they purposely working in the dark?
March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance—”…allows for dead people to be watchlisted.”
I told you they make work for themselves.
Your point is moot, generally, the information “provided” to local law enforcement usually rely on “parallel construction” tactics; facial recognition & information from “Suspicious Activities Reporting” and hiring local riff raff CIA rejects to do their bidding. The targeted victims aren’t allowed due process because they have NO prior KNOWLEDGE that they’re being spied upon. This is exactly what’s perpetuating the erosion of the 4th Amendment. I would suspect that eventually, this government will be confronted by an onslaught of lawsuits by the victims for slander & defamation & denial to due process.
Hey Cuz–
So here I am suing, saying hey: you guys(NSA++et al) convicted me (w/o due process) by putting me onto some list(s) (at least one which automatically puts me into a n’er do well status (ie falling behind on credit?) simply because I wrote some letters suggesting that most government agencies (city, state and federal) grow like cancer (in a most malignant fashion) and that they’ll never stop unless WTP can muster the appropriate wherewithal to do it ourselves.
And now they’ll allow me to get due process to prove this? LO dudo means I doubt it!
BTW: I’ve been suggesting cuts across city, state and federal budgets for years, but I began to zero in on NSA+++et al after they suggested ‘disappearing’ GG and ES…that was threatening to kill those aforementioned….I dont’ know about ES but GG did not even wince that I know of. Makes you wonder.
Did anyone notice that the first graphic misspells “information” as “informatoin” when describing the document is not classified??? Seems strange that an “official” document would contains such a blatant error….
You mean where it says INFORMAITION or INFORMAITON? I think all three are typos, and as a dyslectic I am quite tolerant of typos. You should see some of my zingers.
Is this legit? I mean, can you trust a document with “Information” so blatantly misspelled on the cover? TWICE? (see picture of the guidebook)
they have there proofreading done overseas. Briazil?
**their
Who cares about a misspelled word?
It’s not misspelled, try googling the term. It is just a term that is not in your vocabulary.
Most reliable information comes from individuals, not mass data collection. It’s like local policing, most arrests are made based on tips, or informants. Police rarely learn of crimes before they’re committed unless someone informs on someone else. And then the local police start taking a close look to find incriminating evidence before they can make an arrest or exonerate them.
The NSA needs to take a close look at how effective policing works. It sounds like they’re doing a lot of useless wheel-spinning, they’re not going forward.
Maybe if the NSA, like local police, had to prove they are stopping crime to justify their existence, then they would become more efficient & effective. Sounds like 99.9% of what the NSA does is wasted time (and money).
“Maybe if the NSA, like local police, had to prove they are stopping crime to justify their existence, then they would become more efficient & effective. Sounds like 99.9% of what the NSA does is wasted time (and money).”
BAM, BIFF, BOFF, CRASH, EEEYOW, KAPOW, POW, and SOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hit the nail on the head.
Transparency brings accountability which leads to widespread credibility – or the lack thereof – and makes available logical policy changes to address either.
The police adhere to no one. If they rob your house they will find other ways like framing you in legal disputes and then go after you again. The NSA has a Watchlist they do not Cointelpro this is the job of police and federal marshals. If you want to clean up the police force you call a legislature. That is unless the legislature wants you to be framed. Then your up shit creek without a paddle. Eventually there will be a gang stalker that goes to far and pushes the suspect over the edge of sanity in which case the police have a choice, get the suspect or drop the charges. If the federal marshals don’t want to drop the charges because they cant figure out how to cover up the crimes of the police force then they proceed with their torture plans. If you want your legal rights represented in the best light you do not call the FBI you contact a constitutional lawyer tell them your story and have them represent you when and if charges are actually pressed against you. This leaves you a window of time to co-operate with FBI officials just in case someone wants to actually nail you with domestic terrorism charges. Then you can be sure the FBI will investigate not only the police department but the federal marshals as well. Depending on what happened to you the USG might hail your work in freedom of speech and beg you not to continue pressing charges so all’s well that ends well and everyone can get back to reality and real work. This is if and only if the person who was tortured beyond belief is willing to remain THE COLOR PURPLE.
The secret movie free to watch now at http://free-secrets-to-the-secret.com don’t get caught up in all the scare mongering create a world of peace your world the way you wnt it to be by deliberate creation and controlling your mind and thus controlling the law of attraction
Chillingly just like the actions of the old USSR. Anyone who is deluded enough to think that they are still free in the USA today, is a lost cause. Total control of your behavior. Nothing else.
Where do victim’s of this go for help. Everyone is afraid to help them. The media ignores these stories even when they know about them. Crooked politicians and their supporters use it to handle their enemies and victims. The average American has no defense against their own elected officials and government. The groups that say they are keeping watch for the American public and holding public officials accountable won’t touch this, and some even get on the gravy train along with their media brothers and sisters. Is anyone willing to tell the truth?
A hacker can get the list of both victims and torturers. I used to work in the film industry, prior to my 24/7 torture. They constantly rotate stalkers/torturers, presumable so that no one can be identified as stalking a single target. The exception to this is neighbors or people recruited at your workplace. I believe they use something similar to what is called a “call sheet” in the film industry. It basically list the “cast” their “role” and this case the action/task they are suppose to perform (the action might be harassment, it might be weapons deployment). That means there is a database of operatives somewhere and a list of targets.
I don’t care if the architects of this human experimentation/torture program have code-word clearance, which means even the intelligence committees in Congress can provide oversight…they hired too many skells off the street and targeted way too many people. Very sloppy, which makes them very vulnerable. A daycare center would be more difficult to infiltrate and hack. By the way, Congress knows they are bombarded by complaints everyday, which they ignore.
Complain to your congressman/woman, your Attorney General, senator ect…not that they are going to do anything, because they are completely useless. But it’s one more complaint in the face of their inaction. Go to your nearest FBI office and file a one page complaint. Just the facts, keep it clean and simple. It is up to the United States government to do their job. We pay taxes that go to numerous agencies. It is not your job to protect yourself from terrorism. It is the job of your elected officials and the law enforcement agencies in your area. Period!
The FBI is most likely on my case and they know that I am coming.
This is what I know about federal agents, having grown up in a household where my father and uncle were Federal agents. You have to make a case, get a warrant, prove evidence etc…They kinda expect results within a period of time. There is no open ended, non-stop, 24/7, we’re going to spend a bazillion dollars harassing Joe Shmoe for years on end and in the end they show no convictions. That’s not how law enforcement works. Not to say they haven’t made some shoddy terrorism cases post 9-11. But EVERYONE was told to work terrorism and make terrorism cases (forget law enforcement, hence the problem we have now). The FBI did pull this harassment crap under Hoover (J Edgar Madman) many years ago, notably to poor Ernest Hemingway, other artists and MLK. They got caught 40 years ago, that doesn’t mean they are running the show now. Get it.
Awww, I thought they’d publish the list, too! How do I know if I’m on the list? I don’t want to field test it in real time. So, Facebook rants, empathy for your fellow humans suffering under oppressive governments, donating towels and dry clothes to the local Occupy Wall Street protest, signing an internet petition, complaining in a public forum about the “do absolutely nothing congress”, even serving your country in its most recent wars and seeing firsthand the the US kills more innocent people than every terrorist organization combined ever did—doing any of these things can put you on the list. I am good and duly fucked, then. Scahill, you’re the man. Whenever I think of “Privatized Warfare”, I think of you; or “Dirty War” I think of you. Your reporting has made you the source for the wrongs done by the US in its “war on terror,” and has given us important info regarding what our govt does to its citizens, citizens of other countries in the name of US citizens, and exactly how paranoid and corrupt the system is. You are to govt corruption what Taibbi is to Wall Street corruption. Keep fighting the good fight. And folks, please don’t for democrat or republican in the midterm elections this year and presidential election in 2016. These folks are dug into their positions of power because we keep electing people from the same bought and sold collectives putting those people up for election. The hope for the future of our country does not rest in the hands of any republican or any democrat. It will come from outside those spheres of influence. I’m definitely on a list now. peace.
At this point, the “underwear bomber” incident has been pretty well recognized as an intelligence operation. I suggest reading the first hand account by Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell who describes how an Indian looking man in a suit escorted the deranged Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab past security and had him put on the plane despite not having a passport or ticket. Any government response to this incident was likely scripted beforehand.
It just gets dumber and dumber.
You would do well to remember that 70 odd % of the Homeland Security budget goes to private contractors. These people hire people who can drive profits. The more suspects, the more profits. It’s the same modus operandus as privatizing prisons.
The whole sorry business is collapsing under its own weight. The whole sorry country is collapsing under the weight of its gut-hanging capitalists. It’s all worth a giggle, but not much more.
Relax. You’re mortal. Human beings are biodegradable.
Legal disputes get dumber and dumber.
Africa for the Africans.
Asia for the Asians.
White countries for EVERYBODY!
It’s genocide.
If the national security state were really concerned about Americans’ safety, they’d curtail all this nonsense:
“no-fly” blacklisting of “suspected terrorists”, and focus on the white-supremacist Cliven Bundy types that kill far more Americans than middle-eastern men of military age do in any given year. I’m more afraid of the skinhead, anti-government, anti-choice, anti-environmentalist., anti-immigrant gun nut fundamentalist Christian guys than any one from the middle east, because I live here–in the U.S., not in the middle east. But does this thought even cross the minds of the FBI or NSA? I strongly doubt it. Would love to see a news story where a “known or suspected terrorist” of the “American Taliban” extraction just described is refused to board a plane.
Barbara, you are scary.
RIght-wingers started this nonsense, but democrats like Clinton have been on board. They repealed the separation of banks and brokerage firms under Clinton, and this country has rotted ever since, under one ponzi move after another,
including starting wars to keep the cash flowing. I don’t know where it ends, all frauds end. This stupid apparatus will not survive a major market crash, although it’s creators are so paranoid they are building it to protect themselves in just such an event.
GUnnut christians are useful fools for the ZIOWASP masters in DC and NYC. Plus they love guns, one of the major industries of the elite cabals, so they are their friends, more or less, even though many of them despise this govt and recognize its horrors.
I doubt ARabs would do much outside of the Mideast if Israel was gone. They might, but then at least we could nuke them honestly for invading land outside of their realm. THen again, culturally, the third world is full of people who have been trained to fight ‘unfairly’ because they’ve been trained by Western colonial oppression to be guerillas. Still, Latin AMerica isn’t invading us, they’re still rotting in their own problems.
Unfortunately, it’s about the money. The average person doesn’t have much choice except to lay low and try to navigate this insanity, while the brainwashed follow the evil over the cliff. Not the first time in human history this has been the case.
It’s easy to get excited about it all, but really, staying out of the way is the best road to survival. When this house of cards comes down, these national structures won’t survive except under such a martial government, and the elites better
wake up if they think this country is germany in the 1930s. We’re a LOT bigger geographically, a LOT richer, and a LOT more aware. Police, as fascist as many are, will have problems of their own rationalizing imprisoning their own regular citizens for nothing. Someone in govt will overstep, and go down in history as the president or congress who tried to declare martial law. Should be fascinating. Of course, they will detonate some heinous weapon on US soil again to try to up the ante. THe smaller attacks are just enough to keep hating Islam, but they need something special to declare martial law, and it still won’t be easy. Plus martial law means the markets go kaput. The fearless leaders have got themselves in a pickle, which is why they’re acting so transparently stupid.
It’s hard to find knowledgeable people in this particular subject, however, you seem like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
At this time I am ready to do my breakfast, once having my breakfast coming yet again to read more news.
At this time I am going away to do my breakfast, afterward having my breakfast coming over again to read other news.
Great informative appearance on Tuesday’s “Democracy NOW!”, Jeremy and Ryan. I just watched it again!
My family members every time say that I am killing my time here at web, except I know I am getting experience every day by reading such fastidious articles or reviews.
United States Constitution:
Article 1, Section 9: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended …
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
Article 3, Section 3: “…no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
Amendment 6: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
Amendment 9: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Amendment 10: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The only people I deem terrorist work for the USG.
If you are not on a terrorist list then you are not a patriot. ( http://www.booksbyoliver.com ).
Surely reading actual news is considered a terrorist act. We’re in!
I agree with one of the posters … it’s climate change (a threat to the Koch brothers) PLUS, IMHO, it’s a search for some truth (a threat to Fox News), it’s a threat to its business model, it’s a threat to agribusiness (4% of US farms produce 66% of its food), it’s a threat to the big five food companies (Kraft, Nestle, … I forgot sorry), it’s a threat to the wage support plan (hiring a bunch of thin skinned and unquestioning employees). BUT it is a great source for political sarcasm, humor, and, sorry, disrespect for the US constitution … damn … always those pesky trade-offs!
This is clearly the U.S. Government’s way of addressing a major driver of climate change. If all it takes to be designated as a KST is to have your contact details in a mobile phone of a previously designated KST, it won’t take long before the entire planetary population with be designated KSTs, including the pilots, TSA agents and even the President. The only people who may remain except will be members of the few remaining primitive tribes. Obviously those people don’t fly much so air travel will cease. It’s a natural consequence.
Once air travel is no longer possible, I suspect the U.S. will seek to prevent KSTs (all of us) from traveling by train, bus, boat or car. It’s really to only way to ensure we are safe.
Three years ago an Amtrak conductor told me that my bicycle’s ticket subjected it to an ID check. We both laughed. That was at least humorous for both of us … but I guess now that the TSA/CIA/FBI/etc tracks dead people, it has become a clear threat to most air-breathing animals on the planet.
“I suspect the U.S. will seek to prevent KSTs (all of us) from traveling by train, bus, boat or car.”
You forgot to mention walking.
Until there is an investigation, prosecution and sentencing of who- ever made those towers turn to dust, things will only get worse. All these stories have one common theme. It started with the day that the laws of physics were suspended.
Thanks, Tomas. Likewise, this data may help shed some much needed light of this ongoing fascist C.O.G./REX84 coup:
The Patriot Act is actually the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism bill, which is actually the old C.O.G./REX84 plan. The C.O.G. plans (continuity of govt, largely drawn up by Cheney and Rummy, even during periods they weren’t part of the govt(!) suspends constitutional law and had actual black ops dress rehearsal for detainment of “hundreds of thousands of political agitators” i.e. anti-war types) were *secretly enacted* on Sept 14th 2001, thus superseding constitutional law and the bill of rights, and has been re-signed into effect every yr since by both empty suits, Bush and Obama. Congress is, by law, required to assess the so called “state of emergency” that justifies C.O.G. periodically to determine if the ‘crisis’ can be terminated as quickly as possible:
http://law2.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title50-section1622&num=0&edition=prelim
This has not happened even once since Sept 14th 2001, and in my estimation, this avoidance has been by design, coupled with the fact that precious little data surrounding this well documented fact (both presidents have re-signed C.O.G. into effect every yr since) has been kept from the public due to very brief mainstream coverage which doesn’t disclose what it actually means/intends…a post-constitutional country.
Continuity of Government Planning: War, Terror and the Supplanting of the U.S. Constitution, by Peter Dale Scott:
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3362
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVTkUMXcU0
Thank you.
Thank you for the great work that you guys do.
Makes you really wonder how free we are. Time to defund the TSA and reduce funding for NCA, CIA, FBI, BPA. While we’re at it lets get rid of the scammy Federal Reserve.
A visit to http://FightGangStalking.com will provide some additional insight into just “how free we are.”
The American Government, CIA, NSA, Police and Homeland Security are the real Terrorists, and they are determined that they will not be exposed, and anyone that tries will be classed as a Terrorist, to protect the real Terrorists in America.
Lots of erudite commentary on here — we are all terrorists, me thinks.
As to lamenting the sad state of our once great nation, whether we went off the rails when we declared ourselves the new imperial/colonial power back when we threw Spain out of Cuba and the Phillipines or after WW1, when Edward Louis Bernays wrote “On Propaganda” and directed his efforts to turning us from a needs-based society to a wants-based one —
I posit that in the founding of the world’s first aparthied state, we are exactly where one would be in such a case.
Fascism.
“War Is Peace”
Slavery Is Freedom”
“Ignorance Is Strength”
All Hail Big Brother
Back when the Labor Movement was making headway, when they were dealt a blow, they would tell each other, “Mourn the dead. Fight for the living.”
Keep fighting. Every day you are above ground breathing, is a Holiday. Every meal a feast.
Bless us all.
whoya gonna trust?
Semper phi…’In Honor We Trust’
SAGE – Simply assume they get everything.
There is crackdown even against academic cryptographers. See more details at http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1942.
Quoting a very ironic part of the blog post:
“The issue reached a comical extreme last October, when Adi Shamir, the “S” in RSA, Turing Award winner, and foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, was prevented from entering the US to speak at a “History of Cryptology” conference sponsored by the National Security Agency. According to Shamir’s open letter detailing the incident, not even his friends at the NSA, or the president of the NAS, were able to grease the bureaucracy at the State Department for him.”
Priceless. Kind of suggests to me that the smartest guys are by no means prevailing. I am pretty convinced that the average contractor on the inside of these issues doesn’t really ‘get’ the larger implications for privacy and freedom, or doesn’t really interact with the issues their actions create from any kind of moral or principled level.
great pay makes the larger implications for privacy and freedom seem much more ambiguous
If I download the document and email it to all the people in my contacts, Does that make them an accessory?
So Why Isn’t Obama On The List? He gave Assistance to Terrorists Directly by Releasing Terrorists from GITMO, So If that DOESN’T GET You A Place on The TERRORIST WATCHLIST THERE’S SOMETHING VERY WRONG!!!
Holy Shit!
What a sick country america has become. My girlfriend went to the us with her daughter and her husband a couple of years ago, it wasn’t pleasant for them when they arrived at JFK, felt like visiting Germany in the thirties, I’m very very glad I’m not american, especially with this new FATCA tax that’s come into being on July 1st!!!
This government is sick and is destroying our once great country.The N.S.A. has stalked me for three and a half years and every time I write a letter to the inspector general of the N.S.A. , the frequence of attacks only increase.It is up to several a day now. John Bertotto
What do you mean by ‘attacks”? Exactly what are they doing to attack you? I’m curious.
You know what I think is the greatest threat in this story? It is the fact that this site does not provide a means to download the download the document being covered in the story. Oh yeah you cn read it on their ‘Flash’ or whatever page, but up CANNOT download it. So once again the potential of profit in the eyes of the greedy trumps needed knowledge.
Here is the download mate
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1227228/2013-watchlist-guidance.pdf
Hi Dudley, there’s a link at the bottom of the page, I was able to download it as a PDF to my own computer.
I think I have been on the watch list since 2004 and still have planes flying over around 15 to 20 minutes after I arrive places. I sure would like to get to the bottom of this issue and violation of my fourth amendment rites! can anybody help?
If information about individuals is collected in bulk under the pretext of fighting terrorism and even in the absence of a “reasonable suspicion ” this means that every human being is a terrorist from a NSA perspective.
every human being is a “potential” terrorist…
When business is slow the FBI will find some very poor to “bribe and bust” in a sting, just to keep everyone’s fear alive.
’5 Examples of How the Government Pressures Poor and Mentally Ill People into Becoming Faux Terrorists’
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/5-examples-how-government-pressures-poor-and-mentally-ill-people-becoming-faux
ht`kitt
Thank you to Binney, Greenwald, Snowden and the author of the fightgangstalking.com website for having the courage to stand up for the truth on behalf of millions of innocent, sane, law abiding citizens who have been placed in a never ending hell due to be targeted, blacklisted, stalked and harassed (after having been “nominated” by a competitor, ex-spouse, vengeful neighbor, military officer, law enforcement officer and or anyone else who abused their positions for purposes of vendetta and privacy invasion). I can only hope that others will expose the facts, as proven in disclosed documents, that those targeted are NOT conspiracy theorists, paranoid schizophrenics, delusional, etc…..as people are now becoming aware that these are simple tools of punitive psychiatry and propaganda by those who deem to cover their crimes against humanity. On behalf of Aaron Swartz, Jeffrey Kantor, Jane Clift and millions of others who have been targeted and had their lives ruined by fabricated “evidence”, grey and black ops, and social smears to bias the entire social world of the targets’ so that they are imprisoned in a Stasiland informant system and suspiciously scrutinized to the nth degree, slandered, and set up. As Gandhi stated, ““Remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.”
@ E. Pavlova:
That was a magnificent comment. Thank you.
Thank you and you’re welcome. As stated, I hope this will all be revealed and those responsible for the corrupt use of their positions will be stopped. Apparently officers/agents can target soon to be ex-wives by deeming the wife as a potential threat. I went through a divorce with a Colonel who works for an Adjutant General. My phone was hacked (including the cellphone camera activated), my computer was hacked and hard drive fried, attorney conversations were listened in on, I was followed (stalked), had private conversations repeated back to me by strangers, asked about the ring that I wore, food that I ate, what shampoo I use, what kind of feminine products I use…I had conversations planted into my voicemail (proving my ex’s involvement), neighbors told me “they could stop when my husband stopped”…I was told by a gentleman friend that he had been warned to stay away from me as “the military has a strong influence over the island of Oahu and no woman was worth dying over”, veterinarians had been contacted and I was slandered in every social circle I have (allegations of kidnapping, child neglect, animal neglect etc…I was called “conspiracy theorist”, “pathological liar”, and “paranoid schizophrenic” when I tried to tell people that my phone was being remotely manipulated (classic gaslighting by the military)….It is also apparent that “they” lie to each given social circle as to why they are watching someone (i.e. false allegations depending upon whom they are tasking to become an informant against the target). I am no threat to anyone or anything. I am an artist, now single mother…now living in poverty. They also sabotaged my reputation as an artist. Similar to the Martin Luther King Jr., “suicide letter” that was sent to King by the FBI in an attempt to get him to commit suicide, they use the “he/she is a fraud” allegation. I lived on Oahu (previous home of Snowden/Booz Allen). I no longer live there.
Exactly right, they lie to each group (with a different lie) to get them to participate in harassing an innocent person. I was on a train home form work, two separate men sitting ten feet apart told me that “my grandparents killed the Jews in Germany” (Fact: My grandparents lived in Queens during WWII) AND the other guy said “it was people just like me during Vietnam who were protesting against him” (Apparently I was an activist baby, protesting from my crib). Neo-Nazi, skin head bikers show up too! On different shifts than the other groups. God know what they tell the Neo Nazis…It would be comical if it wasn’t so deadly.
Well said, E. Pavlova. Thank you.
I’m sorry to hear about what’s happened to you. Keep your head up, you’re not alone.
Interesting — the document on page 49 unequiviallccy states that “torture” is one of the definitions of a terrorist and worthy of inclusion in the terrorist watch list. See 3.18.39 on page 49 of the document.
The revelations of Edward Snowden have taken tremendous courage to expose. The journalists helping to expose them are no less courageous. But without meaning to diminish the weight of the exposures, they truly are of a milder calibre in comparison to the horrors visited by thousands of Americans in classified mind control torture programs with electromagnetic, scalar and nanoparticle weapons systems. Many are driven to insanity from pain. Many commit suicide. The rest die of conditions deriving from the physiological effects of chronic exposure to unregulated and uncontrolled levels of electromagnetic energy that often mimmick natural organic disease states. And not even this website is willing to touch this…
Because they are classified, illegally, political representatives are unable to address the issue as the classification has rendered them legally invisible. And therefore, non-existent. But many around the world know. They can read. And so can you.
So please go read this, so that you know. Thank you. http://peacepink.ning.com/profiles/blogs/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture?xg_source=activity
Thank you. As someone who has experienced these horrors first-hand and alone (no one believes it when you tell them), I have repeatedly thrown myself against the gate through which The Intercept allows the victims of our new Stasi government. No luck yet, but your reasoned plea on behalf of these most-terribly targeted citizens is greatly appreciated.
No need to visit the above linked blog post; it’s gibberish and clearly intended to smear reports of citizens being targeted with directed energy weapons. Stick to Pat B.’s lucid comment above.
Thank you Elizabeth. I do not even attempt to make anyone believe me. Suffice for me to know that the torture contractor knows I am telling the truth.
Many who know the history and the culture of the abuses, often have no trouble getting it. Although some who claim disbelief are decent persons whose disbelief flows from the grotesqueness of the crimes and therefore, genuinely cannot believe that democracies can be, and are, capable of far exceeding dictatorships in abuses of individuals, many ‘disbelievers’ are detractors from the very parties committing the crimes whose sole purpose is to smear the abused in vain hopes of rendering the disclosures of the abuses that they deliver, dismissible and thus blunt their effectiveness.
You see the ilk here and everywhere. One cannot respond to this latter group without one ‘soiling’ oneself in the process. I see them do this all the time, all over the internet. I see them try to throw dirt at GG et al here. I see them throw dirt at most decent individuals I know whose sole crime is to defend the Constitution of their country. They call it “the Game”. And it is straight from the Stasi playbook. So I gladly hand them the rope …Someone, soon will find a need to use it. On themselves.
After visiting your linked post, I note here you are lucid while your blog post is gibberish. Sock puppet I presume?
That link, Pat B.? Gibberish, as Mel noted. It’s disinformation, pure and simple. Want a little truth without the nonsense? Visit http://FightGangStalking.com
It would be very useful if someone who is former military or a scientist could disclose how these experimental weapons that are being used to target people actually work. Do someone need to chip implanted to be targeted in a crowd or can they use biometric signature? Can your phone/computer be used for the targeting? I’ve read that the range of Directed Energy Weapons is 300 yards, but I have occasionally experienced being targeted with a powerful weapon that has a range of 1/2 mile. The size of the weapon appears to have a direct correlation to it’s strength. I was complaining on the train home about being targeted with a military DEW and a guy (who admitted he was military) said a military DEW wouldn’t fit on the train. Interesting! What you do see on public transportation are a lots of suitcases, backpacks, computers plugged in and multiple phones aimed directly at the target. Can multiple weapons combine to create heavier attack? The strongest weapons appear to be housed in SUVs, Vans and Trucks. They’re mobile and can be parked near a target’s residence or work. Many of the symptoms that targets tortured by experimental weapons describe are consistent with being hit with electricity. Intense localized pain, severe muscle spasms/contractions, sudden loss of consciousness. These weapons have existed for over 40 years and are now being perfected.
Who exactly volunteered over the years to have the weapons tested on them, since the are labeled as non-lethal? Why are Directed Energy Weapons such a big secret, when there is a Directed Energy Professionals conference each year and all the big military contractors attend? Just a few questions I have…
Who would volunteer for such pain and eventual death? Someone who was asked casually in conversation if they would serve their country in some capacity? A verbal agreement? Or, if such an agreement was mixed in with, say, mortgage papers. Or even signed when consent forms are presented to a patient getting surgery. There are many ways to obtain someone’s signature without them being aware of what they are really agreeing too. After all there is big money in the life saving and death benefit industry.
the thing is :
not all the people that seem to hate you really hate you,
maybe are just carefull ,
of not being chained for example .
There’s a sniggering terrist sitting somewhere doubled-up over the explosive success of its secret stupidity bomb.
That explains this derailment in the US House last week, then.
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/25/exclusive_freshman_congressman_mistakes_senior_government_officials_for_foreigners
The ssstupid, it burnss us, preciouss.
i had , i have a lot of promblems just for your prejudices .
https://www.facebook.com/TAMMYandGLENN.Whitney/posts/10203446315572277
then if i think of a person is a terorist , me as a usual person then is so ? terorist only for thoghts ? and what you do? shoot him ?
it’s a good way to transform the one you don’t like in a terorist , then comunists do like wise , in the same way .
there is a political practise that has become common in the world now , tallking a lot bad things of the opponent so people will think something is true , they do this in taking the rights to , the comunists do this .
an another strategy of devils really if you interested someone talks about another person that all knows is good one and makes you think if is so , the problem is that if you are more talking to you of that person in the end that person feels you want to hurt him and so you have problems without doing nothing , and you can change the opinions making people to hate you , and that is worst , just thinking and doing nothing there are people whio want to make believe people that you can hurt people just thinking bad , but like this you become stressed so you do really mistakes this time . reall ones .
doing things without stres are the things that we can do better and we can do these , doing a thing that stress you , means you can’t do it actually and you’ll do it wrong , god knows what we can do , and what is to much for us .
thx
To be or not to be, that is the question.
I am sure to make the list for terrorist activities as I have just ate a sandwich, I am sure that falls under terrorist activities as well.
Was it a sandwich made with freedom? Only a terrorist would want such a delicacy. The USG cannot afford to tolerate such suspicious activities.
It a bunch of fucking Bologna. Eat your German god damned sandwich and shut your trap. Cause that’s what hacking into private people’s homes is a fucking trap.
Welcome to the real Amerika, the best country at telling others how to be democratic but the worst at following their own lead. Amerika always takes the easy way out. Look no further then WWII and what we did to Asian Americans or today and what we do to Muslin’s who are Americans.
I don’t want to sound paranoid but I just have to say that for some odd reason this website takes an inordinate amount of time to download. As if it had to pass through a filter of some kind. Is this a common occurence?
I thought everyone was notified, and I’m sorry to tell you this, but everyone who downloads this website even once is automatically placed on the no-fly list. I hope you have your driver’s license up-to-date. You’ll need it!
They probs want us to bend over.
We need a 5th / 14th amendment lawsuit to gain standing to slap down the fascist, militarized, police thugs.
So a well known hippie hacker, Moxie Marlinspike, was put onto one of the watch lists simply because either or both: a) having met someone that was on the watch list(s) or b) the administration didn’t like him. This is just one anecdotal example of the systematic, unambiguous abuse of power that happens when things are done in the shadows.
Hail to the United Secret Police State of America!
Secret Police, with secret laws, and secret punishments!
The country that started with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 NO LONGER EXISTS!
I agree the America our founding fathers(Thomas Jefferson being my favorite) is long gone…If we want it back we have a long hard fight ahead of us, educating the ill informed and changing our government, but I fear we all will be shedding blood in order to regain our country that once was.
All I want to say is: People are overlooking the most prominent fact about America today. America has long been infiltrated by the Nazis and what we are seeing is the application of procedures long put in place and which are now moving at a quickening pace, probably out of desperation because people are wakening and “they” have gotten sloppy, arrogant and bold in their quest. …Anyhow, I’ll just stop here and will leave you with this; “INTENT AND AGENDA” AND OR “AGENDA AND INTENT” (as you see, it can be played both ways)
Oh it’s the Nazis again. You must be an idiot that has been brain washed by micro waves transmitted thru the Alex Jewnes tin foil hat conspiracy website.
Reality Check
First and foremost, Hitler saw the State as the ideal form of social organization; managed by people dedicated to making it finer and stronger. Wrong! He failed totally to get his premise right, i.e., that individual humans each own themselves, and should interact only when and how each wishes to do so – in what we call the “market.” This fundamental error he shares with all who favor the continuing existence of government. Thus, at root, every politician is a Nazi. From: http://strike-the-root.com/monster-in-making#comments
Following WWII there was a program called Operation Paperclip in which many Nazi scientists were brought to the United States in secret. Nazi did have a way to inject their influence into the USA, and it is possible that they had a substantial influence on others as the CIA was set up.
When the CIA was being formed after WWII the US absorbed whole Gestapo networks as well as trainers to get our intelligence apparatus up and running.
Read about it in “Legacy of Ashes” by Tim Weiner – a history of the CIA based on all open sources, which won a National Book Award.
I suggest you contact john mccarthy ( anarcadia ) on ciabook ( “facebook” ), he knows all about cia and the nazis
I suggest you contact john mccarthy ( anarcadia ) on ciabook ( “facebook” ), he knows all about cia and the nazis. http://anarchadia.com/2014/04/10/2014-biggest-genocide-in-human-history/
The Zionists have more influence on US politics and the US in general than the German scientists ever had. Incidentally how many German scientists that came to the US under Operation Paper Clip were actually members of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany?
Paper clips? How about US airplanes? Would that be a good place to hop on?
FYI. More on Yemen, passports and US officials, perhaps related to this story. “US officials have been involved in Mobley’s detention in murky ways since it began in 2010,” among other things in the story.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/us-diplomats-contact-yemen-citizen-sharif-mobley
“Training” societies in tolerating interceptions
http://goo.gl/n36vus
Four days into this story and there is not even five hundred comments posted. If one were to subtract the count-inflating comments of those who habitually employ multiple avatars (loosely speaking) for propaganda purposes then the true count is less than one hundred. How does one explain the waning interest in the ongoing Snowden saga when Glenn Greenwald characterizes the most recent revelations as the most significant to date? Could it be that this strategy of timed release has backfired? Or, is the opposite true: Has saturation resulted in a loss of appetite for new disclosure? Of course there is a third possibility…: People are sick of harboring concerns that they feel powerless to address. Consider the fact that, after a year of revelations, nothing significant has changed in the American political establishment – it is business as usual. Where is the political outrage?
When I first heard of Snowden, I was convinced of his personal integrity and noble (selfless) intentions. Glenn Greenwald did a masterful job of constructing a narrative that would best promote and protect the Snowden brand for profit sake; after all, this is the nature of 21st century journalism. Consumers of the Snowden brand have been asked to ignore all inconsistencies and/or omissions of fact that, if considered, might undermine the effort to advance this brand in a way that would purportedly reign in the alleged excesses of the NSA. To this end, Glenn Greenwald has incessantly advanced the whole cloth argument that Snowden has not profited in any way from the disclosures. In the doing, he asks us to ignore the very real possibility that fame might be the primary motive behind Snowden’s actions. Or, more disturbing still, Snowden could be advancing a nefarious intelligence agenda that aims to further undermine first amendment protections in the name of national security (time will tell).
Glenn Greenwald would have us believe that we can either choose not to critically question Snowden’s motives – with the hope that the disclosures will ultimately affect the type of change that preserves our constitutionally protected rights – or we can indulge our appetite for truth at the risk of derailing the debate that has ensued from those revelations. If one chooses the former then one must ignore the fact that Glenn Greenwald has steadfastly chosen to avoid honestly addressing the fact that:
1. Snowden has worked as a trained intelligence officer for multiple US government agencies
2. Up until the time of the disclosures, Snowden openly harbored contempt for whistleblowers (as can be evidenced by his online activity)
3. After initially speaking with Glenn Greenwald, Snowden sought employment with Booz Allen Hamilton with the specific intent of stealing additional classified documents
4. There is no way that Glenn Greenwald can confirm the fact that Snowden cannot gain access to the stolen documents from wherever he is located. Thus, the repeated claim that Snowden lacks the means to provide his Russian hosts with said documentation is patently false
5. He (Glenn Greenwald) himself has handsomely profited (fame and fortune) from the disclosure of classified documents
6. Miranda was used as a courier of the Snowden documents with reasonable expectation that he would be intercepted by British intelligence while en route.
Plus most of the comments are from only about 10-20 different people. I find it unbelievable there’s not a single commentator from China, Iran, Africa or anywhere. They all have google translate. We know nothing about their opinions at all. Celebrities never commnet?
I presume the government somehow prevents African americans from consuming the entire board, it doesn’t make any sense, you’d think they’d be on the frontline, they’ve waited 600 years for freedom, we’re liberating and not really a peep out of them.
We can almost assume there’s irony in the name “theintercept”, as if the only people reading our comments are the fuckers in the pictures above, like a fake site generated just for some. Technology’s there to put individualized content on our t.v.’s, everywhere we go etc. how would we even know if snowden or greenwald even exist? They’re probably the names of some terrorist’s somewhere that we don’t know about and we’re writing all this stuff in favor of them.
“Plus most of the comments are from only about 10-20 different people.”
Yes. it has become quite apparent that are number of tactics are being employed by the Intercept hive to unduly inflame the opinions of the unwitting bystander in a way that is intended to simultaneous inflate the comment count (site visits). It is for this reason that many of the resident sockpuppets can be equated with a fairground dunk-tank clown whose only purpose is to incite passerbys to participate with the Quixotic hope of achieving resolution that can only arise from legitimate dialectic. Absent the participation of the unwitting, these alters are employed to generate an endless stream of false dialogue to affect the same illusory ends.
How’s the algorithm coming along?
“Apparent”
1. Readily seen; visible.
2. Readily understood; clear or obvious.
3. Appearing as such but not necessarily so; seeming.?
In absence of fact as SP is not present it seems someone ought to ask what evidence if any do you have of Intercept tactics that you elude to..
Not that I expect any evidence will be produced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arH3od_2xIg
“How’s the algorithm coming along?” – Franky goes to Hollywood
Case in point.
The only case you can point to (like all witting or unwitting people who post here) can only be when a member of staff posts with their name.
So while you don’t know you were wrong about the countless people you have accused of being SockPuppets (AKA people who either disagree with you or ask you to produce evidence for your claims) you were definitely wrong about me. That you are still wrong leads me to believe that the algorithm was/is pony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZlBUglE6Hc&list=PLCAot3d0IOhfjg31E6-hOYvTXcsTFyMRr
you could make a little GUI with a blinking red light with an alarm sound every time your algorithm is inflamed by fairground dunk tank clowns.
Scattercock firm
The artist formerly known as:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbcuyeo_szA
“as you are running the risk of inviting others to look for patterns that they might not have considered otherwise..You had better go directly to the group attack with the hope that I haven’t already identified all of the alters in play. I especially appreciate a psychological buzzwords as such specialized language provides unique fodder for comparison. My algorithms are waiting in eager anticipation. What fun!”
Wilhelmina 08 May 2014 at 2:17 am
9-19, 10-20 or 11-21 including you? or are you a ’3′
@R3c
Nice screed and insinuations. But there is nothing in the article which states that Snowden was the source for the ‘Watchlisting Guidance’ document. It is certainly true, as you observe, that many people are apathetic about the erosion of their rights and care more about the source and the rate of publication of stories than the actual content (who, after all, understands the content?). In fact, rather than being outraged, they seem relieved in a perverse sort of way. Most people realized that as their living standards eroded and their opinions were increasingly ignored by policymakers, their power to effect any sort of change had been reduced to a decision of which brand to buy at the supermarket. Knowing their every thought is placed into databases and the algorithms sort them into the appropriate lists means the world, rather than descending into the chaos they feared, is actually an ordered and predictable place. They haven’t assembled to cheer this in the streets – they know their approval or disapproval is of little concern to the authorities. But there is certainly no reason for them to express outrage. When was the last time you witnessed someone outraged at their own apathy?
“Nice screed and insinuations.”
Yet, you feel the need to abandon your chronic theatrics to focus on a single “insinuation” while ignoring the true import of my post.
“But there is nothing in the article which states that Snowden was the source for the ‘Watchlisting Guidance’ document.”
Yes, this is a rather curious fact. The NY Times stated, “An accompanying article suggested that the document had been provided by an intelligence community source other than Mr. Snowden.” Yet, I find nothing in the article that clearly indicates that Snowden was not the source. Have we now moved into the theater of the absurd whereby we accept, as fact, any documentation that feeds into our bias? How many times has Glenn Greenwald criticized MSM journalists for using anonymous government sources in the attempt to advance a particular narrative? Maybe you ought to ask yourself, “Why did the Intercept authors fail to provide the source of this unclassified document?”.
If it’s a new source, certainly The Intercept should step forward with the name so the person can be arrested. That is what any patriotic journalism enterprise would do. Journalists are only supposed to protect anonymous sources who operate with government approval.
“If it’s a new source, certainly The Intercept should step forward with the name so the person can be arrested.”
Arrested? For what?
I am sure their employment duties will prohibit the source from releasing documents stamped as ‘sensitive security information’. While there may be no statutory restrictions regarding the release of technically non-classified documents, I am confident the US government would find a way to charge them with some sort of violation of national security. I am not a lawyer myself, but appreciate that they are highly creative people.
The defense in court might be there was no guideline about release of ‘Sensitive Security Informaiton. But that would be for the lawyers to sort out in court.
“The defense in court might be there was no guideline about release of ‘Sensitive Security Information. But that would be for the lawyers to sort out in court.”
Oh Benito…, you disappoint me! Strawmen and false dilemmas? Really?
It was merely an observation on the misspelling of information as ‘informaiton’ on the title page of the Watchlisting guide. It would be amusing if the case was thrown out on those grounds. I myself am merely an impartial observer and am not trying to make an argument for either side.
@ Wilhelmina:
1. At the time you made this comment, this story had been published for not quite three days ( not four). In view of the fact that there are multitudes of other overwhelming and pressing issues occurring in the world; and two other Intercept articles running simultaneously; it is not unusual to see a reduction of comments on this particular article. How much can one say when presented with a government handbook of rules and regulations specifically itemizing that anything one does or says, might and probably will earn you the classification of “Terrorist.”
2. Mr. Greenwald did not write this article. It was written by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux with other contributors noted. You go on in depth regarding Mr. Greenwald. Why is that? Do you think that he should not to be paid for his journalistic efforts? Why not comment on his article?
3. Mr. Snowden was, and might still be a spy. That is what he did for a living and there has never been a cover-up regarding his occupation. Much good has come out of the revelations that his stolen documents have provided. That it is slow progress is true, but thus far; the evidence that he provided is being used for litigation in a justice system which has been severely corrupted. Of course it will take time. It really does not matter which spy agency he is presently affiliated with when one considers that all intelligence agencies are working for national governments intent upon achieving a one world totalitarian government on planet Earth.
4. People will not run blindly out into the streets only to be beaten or jailed as a “terrorist” when they are smack dab in the middle of a totalitarian regime. Citizens of the United States did not need the documents that Mr. Snowden provided to come to that conclusion. I don’t know what type of outrage you are expecting other than comments on this board, or follow-up articles/interviews by other journalists.
5. What was your purpose in making your comment? Most anybody with common sense, would question everything to include some of the items that you listed (with the exception of Items 2 & 3 which are not necessarily factual). If prior attempts to obtain answers from Mr. Greenwald failed, or he did not answer to your satisfaction, why bother reading The Intercept, much less commenting. Perhaps you have some private vendetta to feed, or would like to otherwise discredit him and Mr. Snowden.
The Intercept, is only one of many alternative news sources. It just so happens that TI is posting documented evidence of government wrong doing that other outlets are not. That fact alone deserves consideration and respect.
Well put!
Che Wilhelmina likes it here though that’s obvious, although you might run the risk of being labeled a sockpuppet if you’re not careful..
WG
@Lyra1
1. Again: subtract the multiple comments by regular posters, and those by their sockpuppets, and you are left with just a handful of legitimate remarks.
2. Again: The source of this manual was not named – which intentionally left open the possibility that Snowden was the source. As Glenn Greenwald has insisted on being the bottleneck through which all things Snowden come to light, it is not unreasonable to conclude that he supplied this documentation to his fellow intercept “journalists.” Until the Intercept reveals the source of this document, I will continue to insist that Snowden could be the source.
3. Grow up. Disinformation campaigns are routinely waged by double agents posing as disaffected and/or disillusioned operatives. Read some cold war history.
4. This response does not speak to my number 4 point; thus it is merely a distraction. Glenn Greenwald is making a claim that is patently false and not one interviewer has challenged him on it. This is the way that disinformation works.
5. Items 2 & 3 are factual. Yet, it is clear that, in taking exception to my commentary, you didn’t even bother to authenticate those points; such is the nature of those who have abandoned truth to promote an agenda in service to their own bias. Lies can not be fought with more lies. Like you, Glenn Greenwald has clearly demonstrated that he believes the end justifies the means. Thus, in taking the NSA to task, he has resorted to methods that are indistinguishable from those of his alleged adversary. Have you ever asked yourself where is all of this “truth telling” leading? What will be the nature of the change that Glenn et al are endeavoring to affect if their value system is identical to those who currently hold power? Do you remember when Glenn Greenwald advocated for the outcome of Citizens United? He is all for corporate personhood. He was clearly in favor of Obamacare in spite of the fact that the entire bill was written by a corporate lobbyist to the disproportionate benefit of the healthcare industry. Have you ever heard him call for an end to the Federal Reserve System? Or even criticize the usury nature of fractional reserve lending. To the contrary, Glenn Greenwald has proven that even the “truth” should be harnessed for its profit potential. How, then, is he any different from those in power?
Why are you so concerned with that which I post? Do you doubt your own position? Why are you (all) so threatened? Look at the length that the hive goes to attack and discredit those that do not toe the party line. Examine the methods that they use to avoid speaking directly to points that they cannot effectively counter; whenever I see such methods employed, I realize that they are consciously aware of their deceit. I believe that in reading your (collective) responses, others will see the game for what it is. So, let the games continue.
‘My algorithms are waiting in eager anticipation what fun’
@ Wilhelmina:
I am fully on board with the possibility your thinking is correct. The circumstances beg the questions that no one wants to ask. Must add that I have missed your thought provoking banter at TI.
Do not take these people too serious, for they either don’t understand or are just possibly, trolls.
What they don’t get is that Politics/Big Business/War etc. is and has always been a game of smoke and mirrors. Snowden/Greenwald/TI may not be part of the game but they are certainly behaving in a manner different to what I had expected that they would.
The game is thousands of years old and short of the French revolution there have not been to many instances where the people have albeit for a short period freed themselves from the despots that ruled them.
I don’t think that Snowden/Greenwald and friends are the ones that will bring about the storming of the Bastille.
@Klaus:
Fully onboard with the ‘possibility’ that Wilhelmina’s thinking is correct…
Which part? Like to put your name by it and offer some evidence (or reasoning where none can be found)
Putting forward wild assertions, as thought provoking as they are (on occasion and stated as such by me on this board) does not give anyone the right to accuse people of being SockPuppets when attempting to discuss points that are raised.
While poking fun at Wilhelmina’s Algorithm I was also asking: “How’s it going”. She/he is convinced that I and others are neither trolls or unable to understand; but that we are all SockPuppets (a little different).
The five or so people that have answered Wilhelmina here in my humble opinion are all unlikely to be SockPuppets as I read their comments…. I could be wrong (although very hard to be wrong about myself).
Being ‘wrong’ is not possible for Wilhelmina, at the point where this happens paranoid delusions take over.
In appealing to the unwitting it seems you are just that.
Wilhelmina is trolling this site and for many years has loathed Glenn Greenwald. At least that’s how it APPEARS to me and my 40 Alters.
“I don’t think that Snowden/Greenwald and friends are the ones that will bring about the storming of the Bastille.”
Neither do I Che Klaus… We’re gonna need more smoke and mirrors than ever before (after the successful storming that is)
Worzel
Scatter Brook Farm
Poppycock
Are shall we say private jokes that only I find funny..
WG
Information is censored in other regime countries such as African countries, Middle Eastern countries and China. They only let the populace see what they want them to see. Google and other internet content is censored if it is seen at all.
“When I first heard of Snowden, I was convinced of his personal integrity and noble (selfless) intentions.”
But in the end, Wilhelmina, you fail to provide any convincing rational, facts, or reasons for first: your convictions; and then later your disillusionment – and therefore you give us no reasons why you abandon what you thought Snowden’s personal integrity and his noble (selfless) intentions intentions were in the first place.
Instead, you divert to Mr.Greenwald and his implied or perceived – but not ever proven by you – intentions or reasons. This simply does not follow.
Why the non-sequitur? If anything has been missed – pleases restate it. After all, as you say: “People are sick of harboring concerns that they feel powerless to address.”
And if concerns are not stated clearly and specifically, they cannot be effectively addressed at all.
In the end it seems your argument has more to do with not whether what Mr. Snowden has revealed is accurate – but rather whether someone else has financially or otherwise individually benefited from these revelations.
So, unless you specifically refute the claims provided with data and evidence to back these claims up – it seems your argument is more about sour grapes or spilt milk than it is about the accuracy of the source or the journalistic integrity of the reporting being provided.
6. Miranda was used as a courier of the Snowden documents with reasonable expectation that he would be intercepted by British intelligence while en route
Which documents? All/THE. With the “reasonable expectation”…. the motive? who’s motive. What has been the outcome.
As this is fact can you elaborate.
Wondering was this part of the the “true import”
One of your favourite abbreviations. IMPORT. A pattern is emerging… !!!!SOCKPUPPET!!!!!
WG (can’t post as Worzel, been this way for months
P.S can anyone explain why I am unable to use my preferred name when posting?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdJ27RynTnQ
Worzel Gummidge
What does any foreign power – Taiwan or Russia gain from knowing how the agencies collect data on citizens? The information in the Snowden releases – so far – has been sensitive to a very high degree for the agencies in the United States who are intent on keeping their surveillance activities, and the amazing extent of those activities a secret. Not much to benefit the Russians in any of those dox in Greenwald’s book.
Also: why defend Britain, when they clearly demonstrate that they’re willing to seize and destroy Newspaper property, under evident threat of more serious action, in order to suppress a legitimate story that they don’t want wafted.
I for one could care less for Edward Snowden he didn’t fight Cointelpro like I did. He’s a wimp on the run. I sat in my house saying fuck you this is FREEDOM OF SPEECH I KNOW YOU ROBBED MY HOUSE FOUND THE PAPER AND FRAMED MY HUSBAND. Paper clip this to your police files…
perjury, blackmail, robbery, torture, and harassment, not to mention the felony for framing a person without due process of the law. Hi ACLU we gonna get some popo ass.
I am a retired Deputy Sheriff I posses an ID that verifies that. Also a disabled veteran which I posses ID to verify my status.
Why am I subjected to extra screening every time I go through the TSA shake down ?
You must be asking as a rhetorical mechanism, because the answer is contained within your question. Specifically, veteran status. (I’m surprised the cop thing isn’t enough to exonerate you as a non-mundane. Most of us mortals are getting used to being under scrutiny or suspicion from armed badgers on a regular basis.)
the “patriot acr” was the most unpatriotic and evil law passed , prior to obummercare, in my lifetime. the power elite is successfully grabbing control and as in ALL despotic states they have their police and soldiers to crush the people while they live in luxury ….. no different than the communists, the arab kings, and all one party nations.
The USA is dead .. illegal aliens, traitorous government workers and officials are getting what hey want.
Time to start over
US Police agencies for the most part have no Constitutional respect and believe they can surveil at will, as much as they like, as long as they like, since the marginal cost of the use of automation is near zero. It other words conduct “massive warrantless surveillance just because they can”. The return of this to our safety is very marginal but the impact on our Liberty is huge. The nonsense needs to be significant curbed, or scrapped.
Worse, Anyone (for doing nothing that rises to the level of true suspicion) can be entered into their National Suspicious Activities database (started circa 2007, or the No-Fly Database or Fusion Center or ) and seldom if ever leave it, resulting in years of intrusive surveillance and harassment. Here’s a lawsuit filed in 2014
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/government-counterterrorism-program-targeted-in-lawsuit-by-civil-liberties-groups/2014/07/10/400af950-0846-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html
A $10/hr security guard with below-average IQ can enter you, or easily convince an overreaching cop to do so. A retail manager or paranoid employer who didn’t how you complained can easily get you into the database (even if they don’t know it) just by complaining to the police.
The 5-eyes countries are basically the entire worlds british population. We had a War of Independence because of the exact same situation we have today. By taking rights away from americans and handing them to police including gun rights they are taking the rights from a 50% (we don’t know the number, they do) r1b population and handing it to a 90% or 100% r1b controlled population.
With british 5-eyes at the helm of u.s. intel and foreign policy, we now have a Cold war II, War of Independence II, Civil War II, in addition to the War on Terror and living in stasiland.
What does the 5eyes collective british population care if americas attacked militarily and our urban cities destroyed, it’ll just wipe out all the non-r1b’s and increase the percentage of them.
british are the terrorists.
AMERICANS INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, FOREIGN POLICY, NATIONAL POLICY IS FOR AMERICANS, NOT THE WORLDS BRITISH POPULATION OR SOME FORIEGN QUEEN SOMEWHERE.
“Israel’s security” depends on 5-eyes, I’ve stated my peace plan about 4 years ago, acceptance of Islam as civil code as pertains to anti-idolatry and withdrawal of every single thing they have in exchange for
This is the first story that has appeared here in months, that was worth reading.
Good job.
where do I sign on?
“Change” you Obama cock suckers can believe in.
Absofuckinglutely!
That’s right fellas! Keep blaming the puppet in complete ignorance of the hand. Can I get a “they took our jobs!” While y’all are still frothing?
On the contrary
“They” never took my job.
I have worked for myself for over thirty years, and have employed many people.
How about you?
You appear to be an Obama-acolyte.
Probably texting furiously on your Obamaphone.
I think the big question is how can this list be abused? Meaning someone with an ulterior motives enlists the resources of the state. I was lucky, I immediately went to the FBI and had them run my name through all the databases. I was clean…but one or two weeks later, who knows what would have happened. These people work in gangs and appear to use federal/state resources to achieve their ends . I’ve actually overhead people say ” do you need an observer?” as they stage their operations. Psychological, military weapons, chemical and biological weapons. There is a group standing around you, as you are attacked, reporting as “observers” ready to call the incident in to law enforcement. They can get away with… just for example, walking in front of me ” a target” on a Long Island beach with an 8 inch unsheathed knife, while the other 6’2″ man holds a large pole, which could be used to hit a target. Intimidation or death threat? Two large men can repeatedly stop, wait, turn around…so I can get close to them. No one calls the police, nothing ever happens to any of the stalkers/terrorist. I would make it 5 seconds anywhere in New York with an 8 inch knife in my hand and I’m a middle age white woman, from a wealthy suburb.
Now onto the Fireman/EMS. Well being Irish Catholic, I always liked firemen, some of my relatives were firemen. Unfortunately, they appear to be on the forefront of terrorizing innocent American civilians. It could be the low pay or the fact that they are sitting around waiting for some action, some are ex-military. I don’t know why they are the worst of the bunch…but they are. When I lived in Queens, EVERY single time I left my apartment, a fire alarm would sound and a fire truck would drive down the block sirens blaring…for an entire year! At first I thought it was some sort of protection and then I realized it had to be harassment, they had to be paid off (extra money for vacation/shopping) and probably didn’t think much of it.
Except they were contributing to psychological warfare against an innocent person, with the ultimate goal being murder. That’s the problem with these lists. Who exactly has access and who is using them for what purpose?
I am often told by anonymous people, “it will get better”. My question is really, when? Because the American Gestapo is 1000 times worse than the East German Stasi. I was there, in the 80′s, I saw the Stasi in action and I had far more freedom in East Germany than I do now. in the United States That doesn’t mean I believe all USG is going along with this terrorism, quite the opposite. I think they know that they and their families can easily become targets too. I spend my days daydreaming….trying to remember, what it was like to be free. I live in America.
The only way it will get better is if people continue to expose what’s going on. Exposure is the Achilles heel for criminals who operate in secret. Why do you think the NSA is freaking out over every revelation? Because reporting on these things will help terrorists? No. Because exposure of the USG’s criminal acts will only show these people for what they really are.
More people are waking up, and more people are beginning to fight gang stalking. We just need to make sure more people learn about just how far the USG’s countintelligence measures go. Fightgangstalking.com has an excellent archive of published news articles detailing this very issue. I encourage you and anyone else who may be interested to give it a visit.
quote: “how is this list being abused”
What percentage of the population is OUR future political, financial, technology leaders? What percentage of the population have that potential? less than 1 percent. So it is very easy (especially having access to their internet activity and school testing results) to locate them, put them on a list or get someone on the list to “encounter” them and spy on them and remove them from contention or ambiguously assassinate them.
and they have so many completely unsupervised personnel that they don’t need to place targets on lists, just have the apparatus in place and make sure they’re hiring the right r1b’s or tokens. They’re way overfunded intentionally and their excuse was triggered by their abuses to begin with.
I posted this story on my facebook wall. Does that mean i’m a terrorist?! Make it go viral! We all live in East Germany now!
After hosting what we thought were grad students in our house in Nairobi, Kenya. Our family fell into the crosshairs of the FBI. This story is but a drop in the bucket of what has actually happened to our family since 2009 up until as late as last October when my daughter went to the US to take care of my youngest son who is a USMC 2X Afghanistan vet who had a horrible accident. The FBI even went to visit my son in the hospital as he lay there with a gunshot wound to the face. Even we, who have been so violently wounded, acknowledge the need for a counter terrorism effort, but to bulldoze everything in their path, is immoral and counter productive. Our story is chilling http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/sudan-fbi-informant-naji-mansour-terrorism….http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/naji-mansour-fbi-audio-transcript
test
Fail
A source of mine mentioned recently that it was odd indeed that the editor of this document, a young attorney named Josef K, happened to live in the one state Obama had not visited, namely the 58th! Numerologically, that’s a four which is harmless and solid enough: The salt of the earth; in Tarot associated with the Emperor. Perhaps you have to board a plane to reach that state–or take a long sea voyage. You can imagine my surprise when this friend of mine then told me that Josef himself had been placed on the no fly list. Apparently he wrote some of the material into a novel he was writing called Das Schloss. You would think with his connections such an error would be quickly corrected, but poor Franz was no longer allowed to contact anyone and had to rely on another attorney who sudden refused to represent him due to his very questionable status. The legal papers were then lost by a judge. His assistant refused to make an appointment for him with the judge; and he was given a name to contact but no telephone number or address; and when he politely asked for those things the assistant slammed down the receiver of her phone. Since that time my friend has not seen him except for once sitting idly in a coffee shop on the main square of the capital city of his state–whose name eludes me presently. To make a long story short, and that is not easy, in fact so difficult that I am now deciding to leave this as a fragment in hopes that someone else will fill in such blanks as he or she can and perhaps bring us up to date whatever that might mean at the time which of course is unknown to me and probably you. Thanks
Germany will now subject US & UK “to the same counter-espionage measures as those of Russia, China and Iran” https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/492734811971534849
“Germany to ‘spy on US and UK intelligence gathering’ for the first time in since 1945.”
“Germany orders surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering according to reports.”
World cup fever
The Intercept: Where bourgeois liberals discover what the oppressed and marginalized have known for centuries.
Yes… nothing to see here, move along now, thanks for your i(u)nvaluable contribution.
If you too hip for the room, the exit is that-a-way >>>>>>
What do you expect from these “revelations?” That the ruling class is going to say “yeah you got us, we fucked up, our bad?” That they’ll willingly give up their power and scale back their operations?
I expect to be further educated as to how far we have gone down the path towards a totalitarian police state. And I am pleased with the Intercept and its authors. That’s why I am here. Why are you here?
We have plenty of ankle-biters and shit-stirrers, so need for you to fill that role, but thanks anyway. Again, why are you here? What do you expect?
I must profusely apologize, by reading down-thread a bit I see that you not merely a lowly shit-stirrer, but a genuine crap-flooder. Awesome! Are you paid by the word?
Yes john, I fully agree that the World does need educating and informing particularly about war crimes, and falsifying events as it appears that those that hold the highest positions are prepared to do anything to prevent the World learning the truth.
http://www.thenation.com/article/166757/why-president-obama-keeping-journalist-prison-yemen#
When the people can no longer trust their Government and their agencies it is critical that publications like The Intercept exist, and also important for people to watch documentaries like The Dirty Wars and Blackwater.
Long live the fearless journalists of the Intercept and The Guardian, and all other individual activists, investigative journalists, and whistle blowers that are prepared to risk so much personally to expose the crimes of the totaltarian, military minded, police state.
Well said, Mister.
Guardian story today on the blacklist rulebook.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/24/us-terrorism-watchlist-work-no-fly-list
Not a scoop, of course, it follows this story, but it does analyze the document anew. We also get to meet Lisa Monaco, the President’s special assistant for homeland security.
Even the original “scoop” won”t change anything. “The Intercept” doesn’t threaten anybody.
Josef K clearly was an over ambitious person and presumptious. The place he lived at was a known haven of foreign agents; and the land lady had connections from the days when she shared herself rather too freely among the chief prosecutors and their lackeys. So Josef had what he had coming. Another thing was his persistent references to a German philosopher named Schopenhauer, a rather pretentious name, calling out for attention. No, K was just the sort these nets are designed to catch. And he according to certain dubious sources had helped weave the very web he found himself in.
Well, yes, although Kafka (d. 1924) knew Prague decades before the show trials of Mlada Horakova and Rudolf Slansky. He probably would have thought he had been too optimistic.
If social media posts can get your name put on a terrorist watch list: would this include members of the Obama administration and Congress who use Twitter, Instagram, etc.? Probably not, for obvious political reasons, but what about after they leave office ?
Sorry why do we care about them? They’re part of the ruling class, you should be aiming your pitchforks at them and attempting to string them up in the public square, not worried about whether they’re above the fray or not, of course they are.
I know right!
This Watchlist Guidance cover makes me think maybe sneaky ol’ GWB was trying to send a message when he said, “They hate us for our freedoms.”
Everyone thought he was still talking about Muslim extremists…
I think the marginalized and oppressed in the U.S. already knew that. Glad to see you waking up though, you’re several decades behind the outrage, though.
Yeah, you’re a big hero of the oppressed…
Shove your crap back up the place you pulled it from.
So you potentially can be prevented from traveling on an airplane for information that may (and probably is) wrong but can never challenge it in court. That is f*#&ed up. I don’t understand how we can tolerate such a f*#&ed up system.
For starters, let’s say you get flagged like Senator Kennedy was. Why can’t they just quadruple check you at the airport and allow you on the plane (and maybe stick a TSA security officer on the plane next to you)? To prevent you from flying entirely based on a name match seems like it violates your constitutional rights.
It’s time you let go of the fantasy that we actually have any rights. The Constitution wasn’t written for you, it was written to protect the property and merchant classes who had the power.
How do we tolerate it? Because it’s easier to post comments on a bourgeois liberal blog than it is to do the actual work of liberation from our oppressors?
A judge in Oregon apparently agrees with me that this is an obvious violation of the 5th amendment right to due process. This was mentioned in the NY Times and Guardian articles that were written in response to the document disclosed as part of this story. This is from the Guardian’s article:
Last month, in a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the inability of individuals to extricate themselves from the list is a due-process violation, rejecting the government’s contention that there is no constitutional right to travel.
fuck you america and israel, you are fucking nazis, so asshole where am i, you prick
Obviously we are not on the list. Except by slight mistake.
Can somebody here explain what “The Intercept” has actually done to change, well, to change anything with respect to the ruling class’ tactics? You can put it in bullet points, just give us something to work with. What has changed in the past year that is substantive for the working class. So far all I see is them doubling down on surveillance and oppressive tactics. Please don’t say “it started a dialogue.” I know that is libertarian shill Greenwald’s most important wish, but it’s an insult to the untold numbers of activists who actually do the hard work of building liberation movements, which Greenwald knows nothing about. Hell, he criticized Chavistas for hating Bush. So he’s no friend of activists and anti-capitalist movements.
But tell us – what has changed? How will this new “scoop” change anything? Typical bourgeois responses like “maybe they can form a committee” and “legislation is key” really don’t count for shit, so skip those, too.
You are vegan red are you in the U.S. just wondering.
Your incessant criticism is the least effective possible use of anyone’s time. From now on, if I see a net by “vegan red,” I’ll just scroll past it. I’ll read news about the corruption in the world, see what interesting or constructive criticism concerned people have, then get back to real life, including real-world activism.
I bet a lot of readers here will do the same.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Quote by ?
Mahatma Gandhi
The presentation of this “article” is something you’d see in the National Enquirer. Gigantic letters BLACKLISTED. Supposedly sinister looking photos. Why the sensationalism? I thought this was a serious blog. You should rethink your strategy, you are becoming a joke before you even get off the ground.
You think the word “blacklisted” is sensationalist? That’s what it’s called.
By “serious”, you clearly mean like mainstream outlets, that is, always giving the establishment the benefit of the doubt, attempting to spin abuses in a positive light, and so forth. It would completely suck if The Intercept becomes that.
Oh trust me I’m way to the left of all of you liberals.
There is absolutely nothing about The Intercept that threatens power in this country. Nothing. Since Snowden appeared on the scene, what’s changed? Other than the doubling down on more surviellance and more tactics to oppress people? What’s changed? Anything substantive? No didn’t think so. You guys aren’t threatening anybody. The owner of this blog would never let his bloggers interfere with neoliberal capital. I guess you are forgetting he’s been a frequent guest at the White House, among his many other liberal activities like funding the Ukrainian coup.
Trust me, this blog will never do shit to threaten anything. Maybe that’s why they need to enlarge their photographs and fonts x100 to National Enquirer proportions – because really who cares at this point. They spy on us. We know that. Tell us something that actually threatens them, maybe I’ll listen.
Wait.. there are liberals on this web site? Fuck, why wasn’t I informed? All the “liberals” on TV are pro surveillance as far as I can tell. What are they doing here? I am suspicious.
Another one that is too hip for the room…. lovely, please enjoy your stay while telling everyone here who they are…. Asshoooole! (using Kevin Klein’s voice in A Fish Called Wanda)
Here you go.
Can somebody here explain what “The Intercept” has actually done to change, well, to change anything with respect to the ruling class’ tactics? You can put it in bullet points, just give us something to work with. What has changed? Other than the doubling down on surveillance and oppressive tactics. Please don’t say “it started a dialogue.” I know that is libertarian shill Greenwald’s most important wish, but it’s an insult to the untold numbers of activists who actually do the hard work of building liberation movements, which Greenwald knows nothing about. Hell, he criticized Chavistas for hating Bush. So he’s no friend of liberation activists.
But tell us – what has changed? How will this new “scoop” change anything? Typical bourgeois responses like “maybe they can form a committee” and “legislation is key” really don’t count for shit, so skip those, too.
Don’t worry, you’re safe; to date their has been nothing serious enough to expose stasi worms like you.
And by the way, how much do those worm gigs pay?
People who invoke the Stasi in comparison to the surveillance state of imperialist empires are not only ignorant, they are clearly capitalists, which means among other things they are completely useless to the masses.
A new stasi disinfo bullet point?
I have mixed feelings about all this,,I know with the Israelis and Palestinians going at it, there must be great anger within both communities here…..I would hope someone is watching, but the guidlines are so vague anyone like Kennedy can be put on the list…..I feel I am already on a list. The targeted list..It is not fun when your whole life is invaded, documented, stalked. I know firsthand how this shit can get out of hand..Ask me I will tell you all about it..
The Israelis and Palestinians are “going at it” in much the same way that an abusive parent and an abused child are “going at it” when the child gets beaten.
“I know firsthand how this shit can get out of hand, and have mixed feelings about this”, says the grubby little stasi internet surveillance role player.
Oh knock off the equivalence to the Stasi bullshit. You don’t know what you’re talking about. The Stasi was nothing compared to the surveillance state of the capitalists.
Invoking the stasi just makes you look like the capitalist tool you are. Really you have nothing else? Lame.
I would like to subscribe to Intercept and I did not see a way to do that. I write for Examiner.com in the areas of Spirituality and Healthy Living. I need to sort out how to submit articles that I have written using Examiner.com to Intercept, if that is possible without getting into copyright issues. They do pay a pittance for my work, e.g. $20 for 4,000 readers in a good month. Whatever else, I want to get on your subscription list.
The founding fathers were a group of overindulgent parents – creating rights for the citizens to do just about anything imaginable.
Fortunately they did not anticipate the advent of air travel, so there is no ‘right to fly’ embedded in the constitution. This means that flying is a privilege, which can be suspended for any reason or no reason. No ‘due process’ is required and the 4th Amendment does not apply.
The development of air travel technology has freed the government from the straitjacket it had been placed in by the constitution. The no-fly-list gives the government additional leverage to control the citizenry by holding the carrot of air travel in front of the people. Support the government and you get to travel; oppose it and you stay home. Any reasonable government would take the same approach. Sure the rules are somewhat arbitrary but that is the whole point; they can be changed at a moments notice without the cumbersome process of public consultation. It gives the government the needed flexibility to deal with any situation that may arise.
This guy, apparently, is from a planet on which governments are not, by far, the most murderous institutions extant.
This guy, apparently, is from a planet on which governments are not, by far, the most murderous entities extant.
Are you and Adam the same person?
I don’t think so. Adam considers governments to be ‘institutions’, while Alex considers them to be ‘entities’. So while their ultimate conclusions are similar, they in fact have radically different conceptions of the proper role of government. Adam is a staunch individualist while Alex is a fervent collectivist.
Oh… that was a good laugh Beni
You should look into the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution which recognizes the Freedom of Movement. Apparently the freedom of movement was considered so fundamental that the framers didn’t think it needed explicit enumeration. Air travel is no different than any other form of travel. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/40103
It has been established that the federal government has the power to set a national speed limit. Suppose they set that speed limit to zero. This would not abrogate people’s right to freedom of movement in a legal sense, but it would restrict it in a practical sense.
In a similar way, the government can grant you the right to fly, but remove your privilege to use an airport.
Are you talking about the Privileges and Immunities clause of Art. IV, which required the various States to recognize the rights of other States’ citizens as state citizens (i.e., US citizenship notwithstanding)? Or the Privileges or Immunities clause of the 14th Am. WRT the rights of US citizens? If the latter, the US Supreme Court largely invalidated that one in The Slaughterhouse Cases ruling of 1873?
Now you see it, now you don’t.
LOL at the “believers” in the KKKonstitution. You folks are a hoot!
It makes nice wallpaper. Other than that, these days …
You would say that, Mussolini.
Love it, Benito. But several readers seem not to have caught on to your irony.
He needs to keep his day job. He’s not all that funny.
I intend to. One of the perks of being a dictator is that people laugh at your jokes, even when they’re not funny.
Sprechen of carrots, just when I decide I won’t fly as another lazy way to take a stand, goog starts dandling a German Eurail pass at me. I read they reopened the Homburg – Beeden – Zweibrucken line but I won’t be riding it anytime soon. No way I’m flying in this hot shot environment. It’s not the plane, it’s the landing spots that I fear. What the frack ever came of that Bluegoose that got shot up in Frankfurt and why were we so keen to keep it hushed up? Concern for Airline’s bottom lines? We typically use such stories to keep the natives terrified, but this was our blood on German soil, so frack it? Didn’t want such a massive security failure thrown at our own feet? Ya’ll freak about the SAMs, I’ll stay away from the ports.
>”…so there is no ‘right to fly’ embedded in the constitution.”
Well, all was spelled-out in the Declaration of Independence …’life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness*’. *for me, the pursuit of happiness necessarily means round-trip airfare to Naples (i’ll take the ferry on over to the Isle of Capri .).
You have a right to ‘pursue’ happiness, but the government has the right to take it away.
Wait a minute. How does he have a right to the pursuit of happiness, if the govt can take it away. The govt may not have to oblige him/her, but… aaah you know what I mean. I’m not well versed in technical debate esoterics.
Pursuit = chase. A dog has the right to chase cars, but not to own a car. Similarly, people have the right to pursue happiness, but not to attain happiness.
In case you forgot what journalism is, see above.
Bravo.
‘Better Surveilled Than Sorry’..
[snip]
“The ACLU has just launched a suit challenging that Suspicious Activity Reporting database, claiming quite correctly — as Linda Lye, one of their lawyers, puts it — that the “problem with the suspicious-activity reporting program is that it sweeps up innocent Americans who have done nothing more than engage in innocent, everyday activity, like buying laptops or playing video games. It encourages racial and religious profiling, and targets constitutionally protected activity like photography.”
You know the old phrase, “it’s a free world?” Well, don’t overdo it any more, thank you very much. Your safety, your security, and the well-being of an ever-expanding, ever more aggressive national (and local) security state and its various up-arming and up-armoring policing outfits increasingly trump that freedom. And let’s face it, when it comes to your safety not from most of the real dangers of our American lives but from “terrorism,” freedom itself really has been oversold. Remember the famous phrase from the height of the Cold War era, “better dead than red”? It seems to have been updated without the commies. Now, it’s something like: “better surveilled than sorry.” And based on that, all behavior is fast becoming potentially suspicious behavior.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175872/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_undue_process_in_washington/
ht`thomas m. engelhardt
More on that lawsuit, July 2014, now in District Ct. for Northern California.
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/gill-v-doj-challenge-governments-suspicious-activity-reporting-program
Cheers,`Nobz….
This is how it always starts. First you create a fear of terrorism (maybe by flying few planes to a building?). Then you pass anti-terrorism laws and regulations that can be applied to basically anybody. Then you start using them against regular people who are just expressing their discontent against the current government. Anybody can be taken without the need to notify anybody for as long a they want without any proof of actual terrorism. Does this sound familiar?
ATTN: Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux –
the link at the bottom of the article, 2013 Watchlisting Guidance (PDF) does not load; the result is a blank pdf frame, with no document. ??
Can you fix that, please?
I got the pdf yesterday. It is extremely slow to download. Took about half an hour. I had visions of the NSA trying to copy my hard drive as a condition of being able to download the document. Ha-ha. Just kidding. I hope.
LOL, maybe now some more us citizens are able to understand, why we here in germany have no good meaning about us governement anymore. But interestingly, nobody stands up and demonstrates against the permanent violation of civil rights in the US. But … maybe this will bring you on the list. Goodbye human rights and hello George Orwell. Happy to live outside the US now.
Headline: “Merkel orders spying on US, Britain” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/25/372780/merkel-orders-spying-on-us-britain/
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered the country’s intelligence service to spy on the United States and Britain following revelations about US spying on Germany. According to reports, this is the first time since World War II that Germany has ordered its foreign intelligence service, the BND, to monitor British and US activities …”
A bit overdue, most german-americans are treated as ragdolls like the rest of us as far as national intel and policy are concerned. There are times they suffer the same torment and abuse when it’s up the individual discretion of the tech abusers . Their participation and complacency is from false belief in their being a beneficiary of the abuses and of having “share of ownership” here. It leads to a one way relationship: their participation in exchange for their demise.
@overthrow-r1b Hello Overthrow, I guess you have never traveled to Germany, right? Where have you got your ‘knowledge’ about Germany? Awhhh… all you know about Germany is WWII, awhhhh… right! Is this all you know about us? Hey, meet us, we love Americans and ALL people from all over the world, but sorry, we don’t like these people, who act against us like “Hitler”. This is past and history, Dear!!! We don’t waste our time to spread fear!
You see, we are a young and happy generation and only want peace, peace, peace, joy and happiness. On top of it, we are working hard, very hard… but in the evening we re having fun with friends from all over the world. Laughter is the most important and sooooooo healthy, you should try. Cheers XXX
I agree, Germans and Germany are beautiful! Visited Bremen-Oldenburg and up to the North Sea nationalpark in 2010 for a conference, and it was fabulous! Travel was so wonderful, no restrictions or hassle until back to US Airways terminal in Frankfurt for flight back to totalitarian backwater USA. It is the ignorance & weakness of Americans that keeps them oppressed. Until they have nothing left to lose no change will come I am afraid.
I don’t understand your response, you may have misunderstood my comment. I don’t know what your talking about.
I was advertising german spying in America to german americans in the intelligence community. And stating that they are only being used just like everyone else. They are being used in a different way in that they are put under the impression that they fall within the ethnic majority and are beneficiaries of the activities of the broader intelligence community which they are not.
of course I make comments like that in retaliation and a direct result of mistreatment in America and I would encourage others to follow suit.
Great story. This list thing is indeed very scary. With no transparency, overly broad criteria, too much arbitrariness in being put on them, and the inversion of “innocent until proven guilty” ; what’s really being described here is a nightmare. And reading about what data may be seized in the so-called “encounters”; well we knew they wanted to “collect it all” – but this is really showing the limitless boundaries that really means.
Of course we didn’t get to this point overnight; I’m just praying that there’s some hope of ending this slide down that precipice of a slippery slope.
1984 has arrived…thirty years late.
Quite interesting that whole group of peoples can be added onto the list, how about ‘Christians’, or ‘vets’, or ‘legal gun owners’. It is coming mark my words, a police state where ALL your constitutional rights will be gone ‘for your safety’. Every word you say whether on a phone, email, blog, social media site, your movements tracked via cameras set up over every town and city street, store, vehicles with on-star to locate your movements, even your spending habits recorded and followed. Wow, and if you don’t follow their program, well it is off to the FEMA camp for you for re-education, or to the giuliteans where you can loose your head. Has anyone noticed the missing homeless people in cities? Where other homeless people have seen them carted off into black SUV’s never to be seen or heard of again. And FEMA camps where they are fully staffed but you can not even go near to. How about this, it’s now illegal to be homeless in the USA, and where your jobs are being sent to other countries. And that your children are the communities, and are not your kids any longer. Or how about that you didn’t start your business, says Obama. Or the schools dumbing down of our children and training them to obey and snitch on your parents and neighbors. The novel by George Orwell, ’1984′ is not to far off, and what gets me is that the majority of people are so preoccupied with entertainment that they don’t even know what is going on in the world today. From corporations of nuclear energy such as Fukushima lying and the world going along with it, it is a 1000 times worst than Chernobyl ever was, and is daily pouring out toxic radiation which is already killing all the life in the Pacific and the beasts of the land in Alaska down to California. I could just go on and on, for we live in a very sick world. May we wake up and begin to take notice before all is lost, and we wont be able to do anything.
Wild stuff indeed. I just reread 1984, and it is quite quaint, considering just how far all of this espionage has gone. The whole thing is quickly going nano scale also, so you won’t even stand a chance of keeping their prying eyes off of you. Their devices are ubiquitous, and do not even require batteries for the nano scale receivers and detectors. These things get their power from the ‘fields’ generated by wireless devices and their ilk. They can be embedded in things at manufacture, and they are so small that even destructive searches don’t find them. How the hell do we stop something we cannot even see? As amazing as technology is, when you open up Pandora’s Box, things can get out of hand instantly. Once the Genie is out of the bottle, it cannot be put back, or coaxed, or cajoled, in again. Houston, we have a problem here!
Check out Neal Stephenson’s prescient “The Diamond Age”. The not so brave us population is going to love breathing in stasi dust because it will keep them safe.
Philip K. Dick is also good dystopian reading apropos of our current situation. Library of America thinks him sufficiently important for his own boxed set.
https://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=311
RT aired comprehensive information packed three and half minute video about this watch-list report.
How do you get on the list? Here’s one way.
nsi.ncirc.gov/
Here’s another way, this time via US Treasury.
http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/sar_guidance.html
Yes, more Kafkaesque than Orwellian at this point methinks.
Great information and graphics, but the word- information is spelled wrong in the introduction title.
Spelt! Not spelled
All of you are now on the watch list! Please report to nearest re-education camp as soon as possible. They offer free anal exams too.
This nation will fall because of its sinful and reprobate ruler who is a Muslim Sodomite that makes his stand against YHWH.
Fall Babylon, fall! You’ve had your day in the sun now may darkness fall upon you for not willing to REPENT. http://www.Tsyion.org where Israel will rule from Israel. Good bye evil nation good riddance.
The evil nation you refer to is of course Israhell.
Police state you have know Idea,too bad The intercept and Glenn will never truly expose what is really going on.They give just enough but don’t expose the extant off what is going on.
Jeff, what is “really” going on? Did Communist Martians just fly out of Alex Jones’ ass? Did Obama give you a colonoscopy with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones? Please elaborate on the extent…
yeah that is not going to happen.laugh all you want that is exactly why the gov gets away with what they do.
Jeff..
Since you’re obviously privy to “the extant off what is going on”, what ‘exactly’ is prohibiting you from ‘exposing’ said transgressions?
Why would you expose something on a blog?What would that accomplish.
Suave ,do you work for the Intercept?
Jeff..
Well, for starters….
“In 2005 Greenwald became active as a writer specializing in issues related to national security, terrorism, and individual liberty. In October of that year, he began writing a *BLOG titled “Unclaimed Territory,” which at first focused heavily on the Justice Department’s investigation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, but then shifted its attention (in 2006) chiefly to the controversy over the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance of international telephone calls. Vis à vis the latter issue, Greenwald (in a 2006 blog post) condemned as unconstitutional the Bush administration’s policy of permitting the NSA to intercept (without a court warrant) international phone conversations involving U.S. residents—provided that at least one party to each call was situated overseas, and that the American was a known contact of a terrorist organization.
Greenwald’s coverage of this issue gained national attention, and he was often cited in news accounts about it. In March 2006, Russ Feingold quoted Greenwald from the floor of the U.S. Senate while introducing Resolution 398, a motion to censure President Bush for allegations of illegal wiretapping.” [snip]
*Capitalized emphasis, mine.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printindividualProfile.asp?indid=2341
Jeff..
Negative. I work for humanity, which includes being acutely proficient at exposing poseurs such as yourself.
Why am I a poseurs as you say,because I don’t agree with you ,talk about hate coming from you.but you are for humanity,lol
Also Glenn’s blog like you like to point out he is friends with the elite on the left so of coarse he would be listened too.How many blogs and and even people who comment here on the Intercept who get made fun of for saying they are being abused and people like you who say they are for humanity laugh at them.So stop acting like writing on a blog for the common man is the same as Glenn’s writing. on a blog.
No need to protect a country that’s been destroyed by a Sodomite named Obama. Don’t you people get it? We have surrendered and the flag on the Brooklyn Bridge makes just that statement.
We deserve everything coming to us as what we did to the Indians is coming back on us. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
America is now a Sodomite country devoid of any knowledge of YHWH their Creator.
I am not bound to this nation because my ancestors made a stupid choice to come here from another nation. I am a believer in YHWH and that makes me Israel not american. I am ISRAEL.
I don’t care what happens to this evil vile and Sodomite nation that turned into a pile of shit from the workings of a Sodomite. Good bye america and good riddance.
“I don’t care what happens to this evil vile and Sodomite nation [...] Good bye america and good riddance.”
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. You might get even more excited than you already are. Also, remember to bring your medications.
But sodomy feels so good! It’s fun for everyone! I used to be like you, I thought anal would suck, that it would hurt – that he’d forget about my vajay! But it’s pretty great, actually, if you use enough lube and really relax. Give sodomy a chance!
Then you shouldn’t accept our sodomical $3 billion a year in military aid and weaponry. We’re the reason there’s a bomb in Gilead, but, okay, you folks don’t need any more white phosphorus this year.
“We deserve everything coming to us as what we did to the Indians is coming back on us. ”
You mean paying them a price they thought was fair for their land or defending ourselves when they scalped our women and children?
@ Garton…Would you not agree that the physical nation state of Israel is also a sodomite nation as well?
Garton, are you the same person as Tony?
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, if you read The Intercept you might be a (suspected) terrorist.
Wow! The Anarchist’s Handbook for government workers. They obviously are concerned with human rights because it takes “likes” from at least two people “in authority” (like Eric Cartman?) to make the no-fly list. i just have to express my gratitude to my government for keeping us bitches safe here in Pussyland. Especial thanks to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush – don’t forget the CIA – for making it all possible by engineering the 911 attacks!
This is amazing work, all. Kudos for all of your efforts and diligence.
Speaking of highly broad, sweeping definitions of terrorism….this certainly applies:
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/journalists-and-anti-vax-campaigners-could-be-considered-terrorists-under-uk-law
“The UK’s terrorism laws are so broad they could be applied to journalists and their supporters, as well as crimes that have nothing to do with terrorism, according to a new report from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation……
……Anderson uses the example of David Miranda to illustrate the discussion. Miranda, who is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the main journalist behind the NSA revelations, was detained for nine hours at Heathrow airport while carrying sensitive information under a terrorism law. A ruling from three high court judges later deemed the detention lawful.
Anderson, whose job is to keep terrorism laws in check, did not say whether or not he thinks Miranda should have been arrested, but questioned whether it was legitimate to use a terrorism law for such a purpose.”
http://www.infowars.com/feds-urge-paramedics-firefighters-to-help-find-extremists/
Feds Urge Paramedics, Firefighters to Help Find “Extremists”
The program targeting EMTs and firefighters also entrenches the perception that there are potential terrorists scheming inside every American home, creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust, when in fact the statistical likelihood of someone being killed by a terrorist is less than that of being killed by a toddler.
How to highlight quoted text?
Michael Chertoff’s (Russian for “Son of the Devil”) invention. Just see how much closer America’s getting to becoming a facsimile of Bolshevik USSR under Lenin and his successor, Stalin. They would be mighty proud right now. Homeland “Insecurity” and its subsidiary (Transportation “Safety” Agency) are modeled after the CHEKA under Lenin and the NKVD under Stalin. Now, isn’t that fantastic (sarc)?
So, what’s next, we say? How about FEMA aka GRU concentration camps aka Gulags? There are reports out there that these camps – err – Gulags are already set up, awaiting the arrivals of millions of “enemies of the State”.
You are now on the watch list. Beware and be afraid.
That is somewhat silly, when I’m sure most injuries that could be related to bomb-making are due to amateur fireworks accidents or botched drug operations. I’m not really sure what other injuries could possibly arise suspicion of terrorism related activities.
Wow. Computers crunch this stuff and with Nasa’s Self learning HUMAN DNA protein strands now able to be stabilized (it stays in a concentric ring without jumbling back to a DNA spagetti strand), computers are smaller than ever and have HUMAN DNA so they self LEARN and can make decisions on their own now. A washer dryer size harddrive storage now is smaller than a DVD and soon a chip the size of your thumbnail will contain and process as much data as a full rack mounted server database. (look up DNA stabilized protein strands developed by NASA’s scientists from around the world. The intent was really to cure diseases and help space travel and harvesting resources and information from other planets. Space requires light payloads and self learning is critical if the astronauts or ground control cannot communicate or they have problems in space.
Now we need to talk about what happens to these targeted individuals … do a search for “targeted individuals” and “electronic harassment” … it isn’t pretty … they are entered into programs for non consensual experimentation … do the research …
A search for how to fight gang stalking is more advisable. Not to say that people shouldn’t learn about targeted individuals, but there is a trove of published news articles from legitimate and credible sources on the subject that can be found by simply searching fightgangstalking.
Also, I don’t want to accuse you of spreading disinformation, but a search for electronic harassment will yield some pretty entertaining websites. While not at all credible, at least the results show that some people in the Ministry of Truth have a sense of humor.
On the up-side, suspects need not worry about updating their CVs. The NSA knows when you received that diploma that is buried in the stack of “things to file”. It knows when you started and stopped working at every job. It knows your job title and your pay rate. It knows when you are sleeping; it knows when you’re awake. So just file a request for information on yourself the next time you need to assemble a summary of your official life.
“You better watch out. You better not pout. Santa-Gov is coming to town.
He sees you when your sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good. So be good for goodness sake.
You better watch out. You better not pout. Santa-Gov is coming to town.”
It is amazing how children’s musical lyrics can apply even in the darkness of the most tyrannical oppression.
Congratulations! The reality of The Intercept is finally approaching the promise/expectation. Excellent piece. Thank you again.
The number of people it must take to keep track of all this shit must be phenomenal, even with automation doing much of the work. It’s a wonder that there’s an unemployment problem in the US. Surely the government can find other crap to keep track of like…maybe how much toilet paper people use.
@ avelna2001:
They are already aware of excesses occurring in toilet paper usage. By the way….you used too much last night and have been escalated on the list.
And I almost certainly didn’t use the correct product. My bad. No more flying for me!!!
If you don’t care for your septic system, how could you possibly care for America??
We are choosing to overlook that indiscretion at this time by calling it “too much.” You may still fly, however; do expect more “patty-cakes” on and after boarding.
Your age is unfortunately showing. This is the kind of critique that did make sense in the mid-1900′s. But computers can now store and search all of this work, easily, cheaply, instantaneously. What Google does is many thousands of times more complicated, say.
Computers can’t pat people down…yet.
Thank you Jeremy, Ryan and most respected whistleblower for this BIG piece of a puzzle whose ultimate dimensions are still unknown!
The poorly defined qualifying activities and weak nomination constraints do seem to intentionally allow for any work-around necessary…
According to them, there’s someone else we should thank but the government would like to interrogate them, too.
THANK YOU, Brave New World Checker! Someone HAS to check these BSers. The proof is in the BSing!
@ NFTAKFA:
The plan is hermetically sealed. It is elegant in it’s simplicity —- so much so that it can be summed up in one word….ALL.
Every once in a while, an asymmetric national security issue pops up that the government is too scared to acknowledge. There are many who are concerned about this “hypothetical,” but the government can’t touch because of plausible deniability concerns. If you shed a light on this issue, I’m sure many in the government would classify you as a “terrorist.”
http://agsaf.org
Artificially Generated Stampede Awareness Foundation
Intercept Editors: Your margins have gone to shit, please fix. One year later, still a Word Press blog. John Cook you’re a joke.
true dat… and still google analytics too…
In light of today’s political environment if your name isn’t on at least 1 Watch List you’ve got no Right to refer to yourself as a Freedom Loving American.
Corrupted Authority Figures have been doing this list thing since 1919. A very small group was making bombs and mailing them to high level organized criminals. The criminals who were bombed were never brought to justice and their relatives continue to take our nation apart and hurt our citizens in every way possible. Since 1919, millions of people have had their lives destroyed by blacklisting, and exactly ZERO crimes or acts of terror have been prevented. Whoever bombed the Stock Exchange in 1919 was never caught. One person who was making the package bombs was caught by regular federal agents investigating the crimes. Since then, Blacklisting has accomplished nothing positive, and many lives have been destroyed.
Why don’t we just start a single government for the whole planet… Then RFID everyone at the moment they exit the womb! Then the bad guys won’t win!
No doubt this list doubles as a political enemies list. With the criteria for being added so loose, how could it not? You say something someone doesn’t like… are strongly against US foreign policy… are possibly extremely anti-Israel… it could be anything — and then a quick scan of your emails determines that you once received an email from a guy that once received an email from a guy that once received an email from a guy that had had a friend in the middle east and once met some jihadist years ago. Three hops away from you is someone that is ‘possibly’ in touch with terrorists. So you’re on the list. Stuff like that no doubt is used to mask the fact that people can be added because of their ideas. Once on the list you can have your life disrupted and have no idea why — and since nobody will ever confirm it, if you complain about it to people they will simply think you are paranoid.
In many cases, the criteria are BS. But because it doesn’t get published, no one knows it is BS. There was an interesting article in the WP yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-security-initiatives-have-chilling-effect-on-federal-whistleblowers-critics-say/2014/07/23/c9dfd794-0ea0-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html?tid=hpModule_308f7142-9199-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239&hpid=z15
I think if our founding fathers could see what was going on, they would be rolling over in their graves. Of course, Richard Nixon is smiling up at us from hell.
That this FBI program is called the Insider Threat Program chills me to the bone, perhaps more than any of the other revelations. America is dead. To the government, we are all their enemies but most of us don’t yet know it. Decades ago, people could leave totalitarian countries and find safe haven and a relatively free life elsewhere. Will this possibility even exist in a few years? Does it even really exist now?
#pocketlitter&scubagear
The Insider Threat Program … ” and a continuous monitoring initiative under consideration in the intelligence community were begun by the Obama administration after the leaks of classified information by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning … In February, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a system was being considered to continuously monitor the behavior of employees with security clearances *“on the job as well as off the job.”*” ~ Story
Another Clapper moment?
This has nothing to do with “terrorism”, this is the creation of a system that will be, or already is being used to crush all government dissent! Soon groups that call for smaller government, or less taxes will be “watched” and blacklisted, and on and on until Congress people that vote against expanding budgets or raising taxes are disappeared in the middle of the night! Government, like FIRE, is a dangerous servant, but a fearful master!
Huh. Is this related I wonder, or just random stupidity by airline?
http://news.yahoo.com/minnesota-man-asked-leave-southwest-flight-critical-tweet-160628031–finance.html
That’s Southwest Airlines for you…”We love our employees; hate our customers”
So how come James Holmes, the movie theater shooter, isnt labeled a terrorist?
Just taking pictures at a factory animal farm supposedly now earns one that distinction…
A too simple answer is probably that Holmes was driven by psychology instead of ideology.
The cover of the Watchlisting Guidance manual might make a decent dartboard. Points double if hitting an agency you’ve worked for OR been victimized by ‘indirectly’ – and triple if a ‘direct’ association ever existed.
Want to turn the ‘targeting’ around at least symbolically for some personal satisfaction?
Make a dartboard.
Of course, these particular fear-merchants will probably then claim how they’re ALL now being ‘targeted’ – and therefore need larger budgets…
@ NFJTAKFA:
I took your suggestion but I need clarification regarding the rules. In this game will the government recognize my inalienable birthrights to privacy if I hit the bulls eye? Must I obliterate the eye completely for recognition?
I had to sleep on it because I couldn’t shake the notion this story shows government recognition of most anything will ultimately be negative.
That, and the big black NCC logo in the center looks a lot more like another part of the bull’s anatomy…
I’m going to stick with ‘points’ for now. However, for greater reality – future editions might answer any desire to “obliterate” part of the board with all other parts of the board throwing darts back at you…
@ NFJTAKFA:
Yes. Viewing the target is a mysterious sort of endeavor….rather like examining the subject matter in a Da Vinci work of art. Ambiguity is evident in the target.
Thanks for pointing that out to me. Perhaps I should resort to using tools with an incising effect…like Pinking Sheers. Not exacting like a dart but infinitely effective for controlling other unruly anatomical parts.
As to your vision regarding realistic expansion of your board game….I must say that “all other parts of the board throwing darts back at you” is critical to the mission of the actual game, and should be therefore be integrated into the design of your board replica.
Remember the Peace Dividend? After Reagan and Gorbachev tore down the wall in Berlin everyone was asking what we were going to do with all of our Intelligence/Military? Looks like the bureaucrats figured out how to keep their jobs.
Now their ox is being gored.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/israeli-shells-hits-un-shelter-gaza-201472413198190287.html
The narrative that Israel apologists are trying to push at this very moment is that it was an errant Hamas rocket. The problem is that even the IDF is acknowledging the incident. They just have a different excuse:
https://twitter.com/IDFSpokesperson/status/492355858680926208
Also, Hamas rockets just don’t have the explosive payload to kill 20 and injure 200. The payload is like 1% of what Israeli missiles carry.
On CNN right now Israeli stooge citing ‘Hamas stores weapons in schools’. Just like they denied an air strike on the only grain mill in Gaza circa 2009.
@ Ben Franklin:
Yes. It is disgusting.
Comments continue on this article:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/21/netanyahus-telegenically-dead-comment-original/#comments
I know I was off-topic, and appreciate the gentle nudge.
Lots of UN outrage over deaths in Gaza. Words seem to be the limit of their actions. Cast Lead had several instances cited by human rights advocates, but definitive action by UN or ICC lingers near death. Will we see even more Israeli actions without consequences? No doubt.
Just wondering how long you held onto this document before releasing it? If it’s from 16 months ago, why weren’t you on this sooner?
They must have been waiting for your arrival and your assistance. When neither your arrival nor your assistance ever materialized, they must have decided that they were forced to plod along without you. At least, that’s my guess. What’s yours?
And the US citizens still believe they are living in a free country.
We’ll , it’s free if free implies ignorance.
Welcome to the Police state Mr. Free American
Shortly after the Underwear Bomber incident a representative from the State Department, Patrick F. Kennedy testified that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was known to the State Department as a terrorist threat. ICE refused to grant a visa– until an (unnamed) Intelligence agency stepped in and overruled State. This EXACTLY how almost every “terrorist” enters the country. It was certainly true in 9/11 and the WTC bombing before that.
Unfortunately, the Intercept conceals these practices and pretends that the spy agencies are well intentioned, but clueless bureaucrats. The article plays into this kind of general disinformation, and in some ways is quite harmful.
Your concluding statement, “The article plays into this kind of general disinformation, and in some ways is quite harmful.”*, is predicated upon your own use of straw-horse “disinformation” when you posit the unsubstantiated premise that, “Unfortunately, the Intercept conceals these practices and pretends that the spy agencies are well intentioned, but clueless bureaucrats.”
Exactly what is the factual foundation for your conclusion that, “..the Intercept conceals these practices..”, and/or that it, “…pretends that the spy agencies are well intentioned, but clueless bureaucrats.”?
For my part I have observed no instance in either the Intercept, or in any of the reporting of its staff of journalists, of any pretending that “..the spy agencies are well intentioned,..”. What has been consistently imparted is that those administrative officials responsible for designing and implementing the activities of the “spy agencies”, regardless of their spurious claims of being “well-intentioned”, are purposefully constructing multiple contraventions of the legal rights of the vary citizens they are sworn to uphold; including their own employees, the citizen bureaucrats whom you choose to denigrate by calling them “clueless”.
I, for one, would very much like to read Jeremy Scahill or Glen Greenwald’s response to your missive.
“Work is love made visible.” KG
As Usual,
EA
*”Unfortunately, the Intercept conceals these practices and pretends that the spy agencies are well intentioned, but clueless bureaucrats. The article plays into this kind of general disinformation, and in some ways is quite harmful.” quoted from “posa 24 Jul 2014 at 12:40 pm”
It sound so crazy that you think this stuff just can’t be made up. it’s like working in a corporation and doing stupid things and questioning, who the F made this up, it’s stupid! And the answer to that question is, someone who not only does not know how things work, but does something stupid because they cannot think of anything else to do!
Couldn’t a handful of known terrorists practically overwhelm the system through a coordinated effort of contacting, emailing, having speed dial numbers etc of non-terrorists that will swell the database of suspects? Since it is so hard to get off and so easy to get on the list, the real terrorists could have a heyday. They could disrupt the business of thousands of people without anything more than pretending to know innocent people…
That’s what’s known as a DDos attack, and they usually aren’t all that effective.
I’m curious as to whether this Rule Book is available to be downloaded to kindle. With amendments, changes, and court interpretations also similarly available on a half-yearly timetable. This kind of access and updating should have the effect of keeping our attention focused. The Rule Book, on kindle, etc. and regularly updated and annotated, will make for interesting reading and may spark some truly creative thinking among those who read it. For instance, we should be able to put together, online, a similar Rule book as a guide for identifying domestic and foreign governmental officials, as well as military persons and NGO officials who are closely identified with governments, who fit the various definitions of terrorists, probable terrorists, wanna-be terrorists, and former terrorists. And with some of these people, they could probably be identified by name without risking being sued for libel.
Don’t worry, they don’t keep terrorist in prison anyway. Or do you also have to be a Muslim before the Ass-Hat-In-Chief will let you go?
So how come BILLY AYERS and OBAMA are A-OK??? Oh, and eric holder the ARMED TERRORIST of Columbia University in 1970. How come ANY of them are legal to fly?????
The only way any of this changes is if people get away from the computer screen, walk outside, march, and raise holy hell. Politicians are notorious cowards; you can get anything passed if people get out and threaten their cushy jobs. Unfortunately, that’s too much to ask of most freedom loving Americans.
And get beaten by the police? Gun to the head for filming?
Peroxide?? Really? Pet information? Clearly this has been taken to the point of extreme absurdity and would be hilariously funny if it didn’t result in potential serious damage to all who have been targeted on these bases.
Peroxide, pets? Have you seen the kind damage a peroxide blonde poodle can do?
Point taken. A HUGE danger to society!!!
Well, I for one am glad that some of you folks take this as seriously as it should be taken!!!!!
I didn’t think I could get more disappointed in the direction of our country. Thanks to you all, I was wrong.
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE UTOPIA, a film by Joel Gilbert (A MUST SEE!)
Obama To Replace American Dream With Socialist Utopia (Infowars/Joel Gilbert)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDCb50nQmQ#t=101
Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Obama – Chicago Communists
Caravan To Midnight – Episode 95 Film Maker Joel Gilbert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCxPn66Y-Aw
One would think that a so-called progressive administration would be extremely sensitive to allegations that it has expanded a McCarthy-style blacklist. At the height of the McCarthy hysteria, there were hundreds of actors, producers, and directors who were unable to find work in Hollywood because of they had been blacklisted for being suspected communists. Just think of the thousands of Muslims who have been blackballed, in part, because of their religion or because they may have a cousin or acquaintance who is associated with some group in the Middle East that has met official disfavor or condemnation. The really disgusted part of this story, however, is the realization you may not know why you’re on the list or how you can convince someone to take you off the list. In one recent case, the government finally admitted a person was on the list because an agent erroneously checked off the wrong box. This blacklist makes a mockery of due process and other rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and it represents a Kafkaesque system totally out of control.
These folks will probably be blacklisted for being Hamas sympathizers:
http://www.alternet.org/world/8-surprising-celebrities-outraged-israels-assault-gaza?akid=12045.241404.IdXy4M&rd=1&src=newsletter1012523&t=3
Now you will probably be put on the list for clicking on that link.
McCarthyism indeed.
It is a good probability that those folks will make it onto the list!
It is probable that those folks will make it onto the list1
Good link, thanks avelna2001 -
Not usually impressed with celebrities anymore, but here are some exceptions.
Progressives are imperialists and capitalists so there’s no cognitive dissonance there. I would describe Obama as a reactionary neoliberal though. He’s not even a pwog.
There are misspellings on their cover page. I’m going to call bullshit on this one.
NEEDS A LARGER HEADLINE! DRUDGE IS NOT IMPRESSED!
Original: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1227228/2013-watchlist-guidance.pdf
Are we talking about the USSR, N Korea or Nazi Germany here? I think my fifth grade teacher lied about the Bill of Rights.
FirstLook,
Shouldn’t this information be delivered with some form of remedial directives? Is this a leak or are they injecting this information?
Because the 5-eyes countries are the entire british population of the world and is apparently the very top level of government, shouldn’t this be portrayed and viewed as a continuation of the American War of Independence via an attack by britian over u.s. sovereignty ?
The geopolitical vulnerability of australia/new zealand appear to be the threat to our sovereignty’s achilles heal in that it is geographically isolated and relatively very weak compared to it’s neighbors in the region.
Shouldn’t we match in direct proportion to britian’s incursion on our sovereignty and rights a tit for tat examination of a “british” australia/new zealand’s relevance?, That is for every inch they encroach upon our sovereignty, we further reveal their vulnerability and the threat they may pose to our sovereignty. Honestly, what do we care if australia/new zealand remain british? It is apparently is to our detriment.
australia and new zealand are not essential to the u.s. security and are not major trading partners as are their Asian neighbors. Our threat is a british population controlling u.s. government, being 1 in 5 british territories and non-independent. australia and new zealand are very dispensable and this can be used as our leverage to force britian to retreat immediately.
FirstLook seems to be walking forward positioning britian to offer a resolution to benefit their “majority”, we see how that turns out for the rest of us.
Israel’s security depends on 5-eyes, we see how well that worked for Jews and Palestinians. Jews should adopt the customs/laws of Muslims/Arabs as a “civil code”, speak Arabic as first language not English and dress like the arabs not Europeans -around 70% of the ydna of jews is from there so it would be allot more natural anyways. Or Russia and China could ensure Jews a perfect security to emigrate into Asia. Asian’s have a much higher intelligence rate than the west, most Jews that went there just blended in because there was no ethnic tensions at all. Please do it.
Obama’s spent 6 years as britians bitch, the very least if anything that he could do is enact the elimination of the 90percent non-r1b prison population to 90% r1b law enforcement/judiciary.
We have this article on a “no fly list”, weren’t the wright brothers e1b y-dna? Now their at the top of the “no fly list”?!
Hey, they like taking rights away, lets let them take the right to smoke, drink alcohol, do drugs, watch porn, eat gmo’s from all the non-r1b’s. Lets let them take all those rights back where they came from.
as if they let fathers naturally teach their children not to sin. Everyone I know on drugs cited government abuse as the reason.
When you think about, Osama bin Laden won his war against the west. A $500,000 operation against the Twin Towers triggered a $2 trillion response to wage war in the middle-east and turn our own government against us. We’ve become the most financially and morally bankrupt nation in the modern world as a result of 911. Bill Clinton was right, Bin Laden was a “formidable opponent.” And I don’t say that with admiration at all, I’m glad Bin Laden is dead. But unfortunately, his legacy lives on in every civil right we have lost since that terrible day. Any citizen with a thought his/her own can arbitrarily be put on these lists, and our Congress is doing nothing to stop it.
If the Gov’t was wiretapping nuns )peace activists) in Baltimore in 2005, than anyone can be placed on the list…ANYONE.
Actually, our government can be considered complicit with Bin Laden in subjugating the American people. The surveillance community loves Bin Laden and monsters like him.
Actually, Oliver North warned us to fear him before Clinton did.
The CIA, not Osama bin Laden, started Al-Qaeda. They put together large lists of terrorists. They brought them together. They use Osama as a figure head. These were documented and accepted facts of the 1980s. The story is that the CIA turned control over to Osama, but that is impossible for one reason and unlikely for another. It is impossible because Osama could not run an organization that large and scattered with his limited resources. It is unlikely, because why would the CIA turn it over? “We have met the enemy, and it is us (Oliver Hazard Perry)”.
“The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”
Say that again? It’s not classified but the truth would be dangerous to whose security?
Sorry, but I couldn’t get through the article without noticing the misspelled word “informaiton” on the huge graphic that’s supposed to represent an image of the Watchinglisting Guidance Book. The word is misspelled TWICE (once at the very top and then again in the text at the bottom) and should be spelled “information”.
Mr.s Scahill and Devereaux
Why can’t a searchable PDF be downloaded from this site? I’ve tried to save as a PDF and it doesn’t work unless you do each page at at time, and when I look at the text option you can only bring up one page there too.
No doubt you can find it in a format more to your liking somewhere else.
Just FOUR clicks are enough for downloading this 144 MB document in its entirety. Here is how: 1. Invoke the document by right-clicking on the PDF URL. 2. Go to page view/Thumbnails. On the extreme LHS, you see the usual clickable 4-arrow icon for full-screen view. 3. Click to obtain the single-page version (in this case, http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227228-2013-watchlist-guidance.html#pages/p1) and look at the RHS sub-panel for “Document Cloud). 4. Click on “Original Document (PDF) »” to download the entire document as a single PDF.
I know how to get to the document, I’m asking why it is not searchable.
Im not from mid east but I look like I might be. I get singled out almost always and I got used to it. LOL
i will only comment about one aspect: USAID been spooked up a LONG TIME, not a surprise they are integrated in this process at all…
Is there some legal issue with providing a direct link to download documents? I love the reporting done on The Intercept, The Guardian, and The Post but why do you not give me a direct download link? Am I missing something obvious to everyone else? RIght now I have to open Firefox developer tools, see that the document is hosted on DocumentCloud, then go digging around their terrible and slow website trying to find the document _that I am already looking at_ on The Intercept. Am I an idiot?
There’s an interesting statement at the start of this article that says, “Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,”.
It is impossible to predict anything!
If you think otherwise, identify just one prediction you would bet you life on. And yet we have Governments around the world, driven by the insanity of the US, profiling people as suspected terrorists on the basis that ‘prediction’ is proof; proof of guilt without any evidence nor ability to prove one’s innocence.
If you think this is legitimate, consider this, if they can predict your likelihood of becoming a terrorist, then they can also predict the likelihood of you NOT becoming a terrorist, AND on that basis can happily pass you through any scanning or surveillance confident that you are not and never will be a terrorist. Many people, myself included, and most of you, fit this category, so why am I, and you others, who are checked at every instance, not recognized as ‘permanently cleared’ and therefore able to safely be excluded from all security checks?
If prediction works it works both ways! Applying prediction as proof of guilt is ridiculous but if this is the standard to be used then it should also be used to predict proof of innocence AND eliminate 99% of screening requirements at any and all venues.
We routinely bet our lives on scientific predictions. Please try to refrain from generating easily falsifiable rhetoric, it only provides our opponents strawmen for the propaganda mill.
I’ll happily bet my life that the sun will not go nova Tomorrow. I routinely bet my life on the prediction that my phone battery can’t produce a lethal shock.
The problem with prediction is that it can’t really be tried in a court of law (you haven’t actually done anything illegal), which means prediction leads to negative government action without due process. There is also not an actual investigation into a crime, because again, no crime has occurred to investigate.
p.redictive analytics . there’s a saying in the computer business garbage in garbage out. given that there are so few people in any population who will commit acts of terrorism improving The odds may not help you very much. 1 in 10 million verses 1 in 100 thousand Isnot exactly finding a needle in a haystack. checking out false leads has a high opportunity cost. furthermore there’s no time to check out all the false leads so some people will be left in legal limbo. there are three types of insights I come from machine learning only one of them as of any value what do you do with the others
I miss Lyla, She was my favorite Jew. She was awoken in her Maryland condo by a ruckus out in her parking lot shortly after 9/11. Some resident was being muscled away by some vague authority and folks were being told to stay inside their homes. Lyla went out on the balcony to see what was up. Not normal for this neighborhood. She was barked at through a squawker to get back inside. The next day, her nephew calls her from his agency job and tells her the next time someone tells her to get inside she better go faster. Snarky little puke thought his status gave him a right to school his old auntie? She asked him where they took her fellow condo resident. “You’ll never see him again.” And she didn’t.
Lyla never lied. Her life was full of enough drama to keep her occupied. She even had her own Long Island sounding board. “Lyla Says.” Fuck a bunch of questions!!
I think miss Lyla’s troubles most likely fall under the auspices of Obama’s “Insider Threat Program”. *The “Watchlisting Guidence” program (i.e. Blackisting) is different.
Welcome to the Hotel California … such a lovely place … Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ” *Eagles
She was your favorite Jew? Do Jews have a different criteria than other humans in order to make them your favorite whatever? Ass.
How odd, I adore your name sake and even depicted his amazing story from 1901 to his glorious take down of MacArthur at the hearings, but you castigate me for calling a friend a Jew, a friend who made much ado about it, too. I bet you haven’t many Jewish friends from the sound of you. Beep, Beep. “Mussolini Hit and Run Driver,” NYTs 1931.
Smedley could sniff out fascists before they bottled their own stink. How dare you tell me how to think or speak? Lyla would defiantley give you the heave ho. Bigots of any kind have got to go. You are welcome to your shite opinion, icehole.
Yeah, so what? Here we have an obvious and clear gOVERnMENt, who has all but thrown out the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and if you can even say that there is any form or structure of Independence, than you are too delusional to help.
And what does the “Constitution” believing and loving “Patriots” do about it?? They type their disdain for it in comment sections all over the internet, and convince themselves that in today’s technological world this is how we fight against them to stop them.
Wow, and we wonder why they continue to move forward in a faster pace each day. The net is almost securely around the nation, and its capture is all but completed, and yet NOT ONE BULLET DID THEY HAVE TO FIRE!!!
Our Forefathers would kill everyone of us!! For we allowed the very group they threw off these shores to come right back and enslave us with their usury and debt!!
Shame on every American who isn’t out in the streets and our borders protecting this nation, and taking out those who oppose our Constitution, Bill of Rights and our Declaration of Independence!!
The ones who are in charge wipe their asses with what the people still cling to, which is now nothing more than a piece of toilet paper.
And, still the TV is on, and the brains of the public turned off.
Well said.
Eventually, we will all be on the list.
“Eventually, we will all be on the list.”
No, if a tipping point is reached when the list affects the airlines’ cash flow in ticket sales, our keepers will see the light and make adjustments.
“In a set of watchlisting criteria riddled with exceptions that swallow rules, this exception is perhaps the most expansive and certainly one of the most troubling,” Shamsi, the ACLU attorney, says
As usual the ACLU looks at the letter of law only and lays down a simple hierarchy based on that. It’s about time they distinguished what is most troubling on paper from what is most troubling in reality. The guidebook is a license to abuse and the potential and real abuses it is being used for are the most troubling. It’s not a meaningless point to make because it does affect how lawyers fight abuses, you know, those million lawyers that are out there, if they ever show up.
A million victims versus thousand – what is more troubling? They both are, the thousand victims of the worst exception and the million of the whole riddled recipe for abuse. Lawyers rarely slice it in several ways, they never talk that way, or about strategies for confronting that and it bothers people.
Please make the document available as a PDF that we can download.
Ihr Amis seid doch wirklich am Arsch und total hysterisch. Ihr (Bush) habt den Terrorismus selbst erfunden und jetzt schädigt ihr den Rest der Welt mit Eurem blöden Sicherheitswahn. Nie wieder werde ich in Euer banales Land mit oberflächlichen Menschen reisen. Lernt zuerst mal Zivilisiertheit und Kultur.
Aber Ihr seid bankrott und auf dem absteigenden Ast seit den 90er Jahren. Nur merkt Ihr das nicht.
Don’t hold your breath on our “learning civility and culture” anytime soon. We still legally execute people with lethal injections that take 2 hours to kill the victim. We have state governors that call out the National Guard at the public expense to (ostensibly) prevent refugee children from crossing the border. Yes, not all Americans are like this but enough are, and they seem to be in charge.
This blacklist causes so much fear and it is so unnecessary. It is government incompetence. And it threatens free speech, a First Amendment violation.
How do we make it stop?
NON-COMPLIANCE on a mass scale. Starve the beast. Do not fly. DO NOT COMPLY.
You call your representatives in local, state, and federal government. It may be boring for some people but it’s the one way we can change this.
Rallies and protests also help.
Hello the DHS and whoever else is reading this comment
you should probably mark me down as suspected radical.
Already done.
The same way we made the drug war stop.
(Hint: we couldn’t)
Thank you George Bush!
The government has been widely criticized for making it impossible for people to know why they have been placed on a watchlist, and for making it nearly impossible to get off. The guidelines bluntly state that “the general policy of the U.S. Government is to neither confirm nor deny an individual’s watchlist status.” But the courts have taken exception to the official silence and footdragging: In June, a federal judge described the government’s secretive removal process as unconstitutional and “wholly ineffective.”
I can only think of this paragraph from Franz Kafka’s The Trail when I read shit like this:
“[T]here can be no doubt that behind all the pronouncements of this court, and in my case, behind the arrest and today’s inquiry, there exists an extensive organization […] And the purpose of this extensive organization, gentlemen? It consists of arresting innocent people and introducing senseless proceedings against them, which for the most part, as in my case, go nowhere. Given the senselessness of the whole affair, how could the bureaucracy avoid becoming entirely corrupt?” Franz Kafka – The Trail.
One of these days we are going to be asking ourselves: How did we get here?
You should be asking yourself that right now. The slope isn’t slippery anymore. Its a free fall.
“we” have always been there and done that. It is just now that we got smart enough to smell that kind of cr@p. well actually it was getting way too smelly
RCLopez
“…Letting the days go by….”
There is water at the bottom of the ocean.
Remove, carry the waterboy. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and this stable could use a good hosing down.
We need to elect a president in 2016 who will undo all this. Hilary won’t help, she’s part of the establishment. Maybe Rand Paul.
“I’ve never argued against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an active crime going on. If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash, I don’t care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him.”
-Rand Paul
“Maybe Rand Paul.”…or not.
You’re assuming Hillary will be the nominee. Sure looks like Elizabeth Warren will run to the left of Hillary. Rand Paul is pretty much the only hope on the team Red though.
I wish that that were possible. Unfortunately, merely electing a new president won’t do squat.
The road we’re on at present doesn’t lead to the undoing of the security state.
We need a new societal paradigm. Something that will, of course, be fought against, tooth and nail. Sorry.
Voters need to reject the two party system and elect people from the two largest political parties that have been consistently against police state tactics: the Libertarians and the Greens. But thanks to fear devices like the “spoiler theory”/”lesser of the two evils”, and the corporate media’s blackout against third parties, I’m not holding my breath that voters will wake up by 2016, let alone this November.
I hope I am wrong though and people do finally reject the pro-police state politicians. And if that happens…well, I worry that the aforementioned politicians might try to rig the vote to keep themselves in power, or worse, declare opposition parties illegal/”terrorists”. As a Green myself, I’d have to hope I could somehow make it to Iceland or something and claim political asylum. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to potential scenarios that could develop in this country were it to turn even further authoritarian. The very real possibility of this stuff happening is just frightening. But as Giles Corey once said: “More weight.”
You don’t need fear devices or a media blackout; our voting system is fundamentally broken and it always has been. When you have naive “majority rules” voting, mathematical game theory says you’re going to end up with just two parties: it’s called Duverger’s Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
Even George Washington could see this happening in his term as President — most of his Farewell Address is warning against the evils of parties, which our Constitution provides no defense against.
If voting mattered, they wouldn’t let you do it.
I know I was on there a year ago for some posts I wrote. I thought about it after I wrote them but figured as being a veteran would especially exclude me from any anti American database. A week after no kidding I was being tailed by multiple cars everyday for a month. My cell phone started wonking out regularly ie snapping pics of my face with the front camera on my iPhone without ever entering the camera app. Then I would go to my pics and no pics would even be there all of them gone. My cell would get super hot and I got denied a gun by the fed dept without any reason. I tried calling every person who helps with that and they all said they couldnt tell me the reason.
EXCELLENT EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!!
I was blacklisted for filing misconduct complaints against deputized law enforcement officers who in turn cried out to BIG BROTHER who labelled me as a “trouble-maker” and threat to national security because I was right and they were wrong. The Feds using undercover intelligence informants filed fictitious Suspicious Activity Reports with the Department of Homeland Security to initiate 24/7 surveillance of my entire family. The Feds have also hired a private foreign military security contractor to attack my family with Direct Energy Weapons which all of my family members experience the same medical symptoms (headaches, sneezing, coughing, ringing ears) at specific days of each month. This article will definitely assist me in bringing to light the torture me and my family are currently experiencing.
Thanks for such a life-saving article.
Timothy Whiting
US Army Vet
Palm Springs, CA
Hi tim
Maybe we have to reconsider the “famous” Irak or Gulf war syndroms…may be those are not caused by the war itself but came from other sources?
Take care of yourself and family. BE SAFE
Francisco
Dear Timothy,
Your continued non-compliance is not helping your case. We’ve moved you slightly more, towards the top of the list. Those “directed energy weapons” you were referring to, we call “allergies” in these parts; we recommend Zyrtec to fix that. However, we have reprogrammed your microwave remotely to burn your popcorn. This is your last warning. If you keep this sort of thing up we’ll be forced to anal-probe you at the airport.
Sincerely,
NSA.
Lol, did you lose your tin foil hat?
re: “tin foil hats”
Just another worn-out phrase used by the fearful and the clueless.
It’s usually the accusers that are actually wearing the tin foil hats,as they have no clue as to reality.
And today Wapo says;Russians living in an alternate reality,with their own facts.
All awhile Americans are fed BS morning to evening and are led to believe we are the good guys,despite facts obviously to the contrary,which are hidden by the MSM,and are found online.Yesterday some idiot I know disparaged the internet.Must be making the wackos nervous,truth getting to the people.
Timothy: Please see my articles at VicLivingston(dot)blogspot(dot)com (note Jan 2012 and Dec. 2011 pcs as well as more recent) and try to post a msg/comment.
Who might have done cover page “sensitive security informaiton”
, rest of the pages are okay. “information”
Forgot to comment when I first saw this article this afternoon, but have to confess I am kind of surprised by the lack of additional coverage of this story. I think it is stunning and horrifying, but compared to the response to some other revelations about the Security State, this one seems to be breezing right on by. Hope I am wrong, but…
Perhaps the government has found a new strategy? They simply instruct their mainstream media lackeys not to cover these stories at all. Then articles like this will have a short life span on some blogs and then die out. Then these government programs continue with less and less scrutiny and outrage until their control over us and our willing submission is complete. I can’t believe I’m typing this. Hope I am wrong, too, but….
When the media are owned by the same folks who own the government, what do you expect?
As if anxiety and paranoia aren’t operating at high levels already, supposedly our lovely intelligence agencies participate in banter on forums such as this one. To create confusion, steer conversation into a particular direction, etc. Something to keep in mind while reading these comments.
EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!!
I was blacklisted for filing misconduct complaints against deputized law enforcement officers who in turn cried out to BIG BROTHER who labelled me as a “trouble-maker” and threat to national security because I was right and they were wrong. The Feds using undercover intelligence informants filed fictitious Suspicious Activity Reports with tje Department of Homeland Security to initiate 24/7 surveillance of my entire family. The Feds have also hired a private foreign military security contractor to attack my family with Direct Energy Weapons which all of my family members experience the same medical symptoms (headaches, sneezing, coughing, ringing ears) at specific days of each month. This article will definitely assist me in bringing to light the torture me and my family are currently expericing.
Thanks for such a life-saving article.
Timothy Whiting
US Army Vet
Palm Springs, CA
Thank you for publishing this shameful example of post-9/11 cowardice. Please keep up your outstanding work/service. We need you. I am co-director of Alaskans’ Freedom to Travel USA, an organization fighting to protect our 4th Amendment and other rights by abolishing TSA and its invasive, wasteful and unconstitutional practices. Your work is inspiring to us and, I’m sure, to others.
Well, at least now I know why I was targeted for “extra scrutiny” at LAX…two weeks before that False Flag event: they must be getting TONS of complaints from AMERICANS trying to reenter their own damn country.
Why was I targeted? Because they LIE: they DO place you on the neferious list for excercising your First Amendment Right.
Airport searches are already finding everything, pocket litter and more. So do they really want to list all this?
http://blog.ctnews.com/hottopics/2012/07/18/man-with-%E2%80%98world%E2%80%99s-biggest-penis%E2%80%99-stopped-by-tsa/
Makes you wonder how this blacklist works, really.
Thanks coram nobis. Still laughing.
A friend who was once travelling in a wheelchair was asked if he could stand long enough to go through the old “see-it-all” machine (1st iteration).
He said, yes, he could, but he didn’t want the guys in the viewing room burdened with an inferiority complex for the rest of their natural lives. ;-}
Big Orange picks up this story.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/23/1316195/-Intercept-The-Secret-Gov-t-Rulebook-For-Labeling-You-a-Terrorist
“Big orange.”
Lame.
LOL at the spelling error… SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMAITON…
You all do great work. It’s clear from this story that our country has completely jettisoned Fourth Amendment protections, with the full-throated support and expansion from the President. I’ll hold on to my library cards and my friend in Holland, which means I am probably considered a “potential terrorist” by the U.S. government.
This political cartoon in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is among the things one would not have seen 10 years ago: https://twitter.com/billmon1/status/492143481750450176
Oops. This is what happens when one has two TI tabs open. That was meant for Greenwald’s “telegenic deaths” column.
Mona do my eyes deceive me? Is @MonaH… your twitter handle?
“in love with Internet freedom since 1993″
-Respect
@ Mona:
Interesting never the less.
quote”This political cartoon in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is among the things one would not have seen 10 years ago:”unquote
So is this one…
file:///C:/Users/Walter/Pictures/Not/Political/NSA%20surveillance%20%27has%20no%20legal%20basis%20whatsoever%27%20%E2%80%94%20RT%20Op-Edge_files/nsa.jpg
Excuse me? Is this really the United States? No, can’t be, can it? What have we become?
Where have you been for the last 30 years? lol People need to wake up now. Its funny how people think voting works along with many other things.
Should have a watch list maintained by citizens to include politicians, government individuals who are aiding terrorists. Doesn’t the USG supply weapons to al qu eda, syrian rebels, etc., etc., etc.) Hell, if anyone supports terrorists it’s the USG. And the entire USG staff should be on this watch list. Guilty based on suspicion, no trial, and held indefinitely.
Remember Rambo 3? Sly Stallone and the Mujhadeen?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbSIgAFFZlo
“I’ve got a little list,” updated with iPad technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NLV24qTnlg
We should really cut the flippant remarks tonight. This IS the major story we have all been waiting for. Congratulations to Scahill, Devereaux, Greenwald, and all the journalists working at The Intercept.
I’d really like to write a ha ha funny funny little quip right now, but:
When in the Course of history, it becomes necessary for the GLOBAL CITIZENRY to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with their leadership, and to assume among the GLOBAL CITIZENRY, the mutual protections to which International Human Rights entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of citizens requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all peoples are created equal, that they are protected by INTERNATIONAL LAW with certain unalienable Rights.–That to secure these rights, Governments and Workplaces are instituted among People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Mutual Interests. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that people are more disposed to suffer, while injustices are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to BUILD A NEW SOCIETY.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Nations; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the United States of America is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, foreign and domestic, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the World. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid GLOBAL CITIZENRY.
You might see me on that train, but when I leave you remember I said that the last words on my lips were – I am…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHzSdniqi4g
I’d upvote your comment if I could.
A long train of abuses and usurpations indeed.
@Coram – You’ve probably seen this, but enjoy anyway!
The Trial, Opening Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBp464uBH9A
We should really cut the flippant remarks tonight. This IS the major story we have all been waiting for. Congratulations to Scahill, Devereaux, Greenwald, and all the journalists working at The Intercept.
I’d really like to write a ha ha funny funny little quip right now, but:
“You know…. isn’t it hysterical that the same impotent leftover lefties from the 70?s and their impotent sycophantic admirers not only come out of the woods to discipline any dissidents that don’t tow the line of Queen Amy Goodbitch, but also delude themselves into believing they have anything left to give the world? So, fuck your appeals to authority, which you don’t merit, and your appeals to sympathy, which are only manipulative tactics to keep your bank accounts full.
What the fuck makes you think you can stop the carnage by repressing dissent within your own ranks? You did it with the Obama election, but you lost all credibility because of your phony pandering, and now THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST MOTHERFUCKER! You get it? You talk about exclusion, yet you exclude people every fucking day. What is more hypocritical than that?
Also, “the adults of the planet”?? Who are they? Chris Hayes? Jeremy Scahill? Glenn Greenwald? You got some nerve to consider yourself high and mighty when the only reason you cocksuckers get to have your forum is because you towed the line and ate asshole to get to where you are. Good example you’ve set. I see how much “good” you’ve done. Why don’t you go up to MIT and let Noam Chomsky give you a pat on the back. Maybe he can tell you how much change you’ve effected in the world while you sit back and sip wine discussing Greenwald’s new best seller. Fuckin Phonies! You should be unemployed for just one year and see how it feels you piece of shit!
Finally, we will see each other face to face someday… and when we do you’d better pucker up and kiss my ass because one thumbs down and that’s your ass.
What’s up, Doc?
P.S. You cunts wish I would go away hahahahah not a chance. I’m gonna be a thorn in your side every chance I get. When you get blacklisted by those who masquerade as being blacklisted to appeal to the sympathies of idiot trustfund kids, and then you have nowhere to turn, revenge is the name of the game. If you want a ceasefire you could start by kissing my ass and apologizing!! Otherwise, expect me!!”
Blacklisted, Unemployed & Outed!
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/17/nbc-removes-ayman-mohyeldin-gaza-coverage-witnesses-israeli-beach-killing-four-boys/#comment-57616
Outed? hahahahahaha… How can you out a public post that I never tried to cover it up in the first place? With that said, this new exposé, which, by the way, is NOT a Snowden revelation, is the finest piece that The Intercept has released. There is always more time to settle old scores, but tonight I will refrain. I take it you don’t understand the gravity of this, Mr. Suave?
Now, if you think I will submit, you are severely deluded. I stand by my words, and you can witch-hunt me all day papi chulo, but my shit is fire proof. You, on the other hand, might find yourself tarred and feathered rather quickly. Until then…
Tudaloo, Sweety-Cakes!
@suave:
Well that is an interesting character paradigm.
In the UK.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/22/uk-definition-terrorism-political-journalists-bloggers-watchdog
“UK definition of terrorism ‘could catch political journalists and bloggers’”
“He warned that they could be branded as terrorists even if they had no intention to spread fear or intimidate, and those who employed or supported them would also qualify as terrorists.”
Australia to jail journos for 10 years for publishing #Snowden docs. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/489516884056748032
look all the r1b’s are getting mad cuz everyone knows what they’re doing now!
Quick everyone start reading the Koran and the Buddist texts, they hate that the most!
Since when in this country did anyone need evidence to detain anyone? It’s done all the time. After 9/11 and the Patriot Act and the TSA were started we have been headed for these types of things. The more power they take the more power they want.
IMPEACH him.
I think on the matter of principle, this suggestion has merit, however once Obama is removed, the corrupt system is still in place, as it is a corporatist and militarist (Military Industrial Complex) support of Zionism, Gulf State abuse and submission to Big Energy, Big Agribusiness, Big Pharma and Big Insurance. The next president could be worse, and s/he will have the powers we let Obama have.
We must address the systemic corruption, not its symptoms. This includes the comprehensive corruption of both parties. Mostly Barack Obama is an accomplished actor who missed his calling and became a sociopath because the system required it (not that this is an excuse).
I thank whoever is upstairs for Obama in office. Not because I like him (I don’t Like any of them), but because:
1) A democrat is in office that republicans want to make fail,
2) Republicans Typically like patriot act etc Dems generally dislike
3) Repubs will attack him on surveillance Dems will also generally do so
4) Instead of a 50 50 nation we have a 75 25
Help Criticize/refine this idea Intercept
Obama’s done a lot of damage, just as Bush did before him, and if the damage isn’t halted and reversed-to-whatever-extent-possible before he’s replaced as president, the corruption in the system will only be more entrenched. As for your four points, you see a great deal more difference between the parties than I do, plainly supporting one face of the two-faced charade more than the other, but at least we can agree about not liking politicians generally.
In the US, many countries, “the President” is merely the public face of the deep state. It’s the persistent, hidden power in America that is the problem. Not a single individual. You could elect Jesus and he’d still bomb Russia.
@ Bill Owen:
The deep state is the same “persistent, hidden power” on planet Earth and I agree that when one is selecting a target, one should attack at the base of the pyramid.
Well said Mr. Owen!
huffpo interview with Scahill and Devereux (bootleg). Enjoy!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6ZA2cIXLSc
@ AtheistInChief:
Thanks for posting this.
Point being that the US Security State under the unilateral rule of the Executive branch has transformed the United States of America into a totalitarian regime; condoned and supported by the Legislative Branch and upheld by the Judicial Branch – and that this has been accomplished as a result of the economic control of the nation’s real assets and money supply by none other than the International Central Banking Cartel otherwise known as the elite.
I hear the train whistle blowing and see it rolling down the tracks.
Dog chips? Will they be tracking us through our Cocker Spaniels, now?
“Pocket litter.” Gen. Alexander wasn’t kidding when he was talking about “collect it all.”
Belly button lint may also give clues about a person’s propensity for thought crime.
Hey, I am a terrorist, with arrests going back to resistance against Jim Crow and the Vietnam War. I say proudly Muslim people have every right to fight against Halliburton and EXXON taking their resources.
If you’re on the list you can rest assured that your phone is bugged as well. You may as well try to immigrate to another country rather than live like that for the rest of your life.
Wow shit! Well thanks whoever the hell you are for getting me on a TI list. So there’s no questioning anymore they just judge you no matter what & keep you their!?? How about a chance to earn trust or prove whoever wrong!? This is mentally unstable and very wrong.
A big story indeed Coram. If you need a short break from this story. Here is another demonstrating that you do not need concrete evidence. I highly recommend it.
‘Anything other than social media?’ State Dept’s MH17 evidence secret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRvINebeok
It is a bit strange that the US government has not released satellite data, and Ukraine has not release radar data, air traffic control data, or communication logs. Meanwhile, Russia released satellite images and radar data. The usual US approach: “Trust us. We have really sensitive intelligence we can’t show you.”
This is all consistent with a new theory that has emerged: A Ukranian fighter jet was using MH17 as a decoy.
And that taped recording of a conversation between separatists after shooting down a plane, was time stamped July 16, a day before the tragedy.
>It is a bit strange that the US government has not released satellite data, and Ukraine has not release radar data, air traffic control data, or communication logs.
Not really, I think. The last time they released satellite data, was on the Iraq – Saudi border if I remember correctly. Russian satellite data totally disproved that concrete data. Since then, their (the US) satellite data cannot be revealed because it will reveal how precise that data is, which is obviously a national security risk. I may be mistaken, I have not taken US satellite seriously since.
If the serial liars had the goods on Russia,we would have seen or heard it already.They are using innuendo and false testimony to make their bogus case,and only corrupted idiots think Russia would purposely target that jet,and the Russian weapon angle is bogus,as the Ukrainian military has mostly Russian made weapons also.
All those American weapons murdering Palestinians and the monsters focus on Ukraine,and Russia,in their historical tribal hatred of former places Jews lived before aliyah to Israel.
“Can I see the criteria?”. No, that would be a breach of national security. “But the document is not classified?” It is not. “So, then I can see it?” No, that would be a breach of national security. “Ok, where can I get a clearance to see the contents of this document?” You don’t need clearance to see this document, it’s not classified. “So, I can read it then?” No, that would be a breach of national security. This is when you know you can no longer take these people seriously.
Wanting to see criteria is a sure sign of guilt. Of what, is not so important.
Well done, Hank. If Kafka and Orwell had written together….
Related: *Parallel Construction – Unconstitutional NSA Searches Deny Due Process*
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/07/23/parallel-construction-unconstitutional-nsa-searches-deny-due-process/
Fascism proliferating.
Fascist in the WH
If the potus has the right to kill American citizens extra-judicially just by claiming that they are terrorists who are a threat to national security, then he or she could kill anyone on the list. Is that right? Just being on the list makes one a possible target. The president could have anyone killed secretly. We have no way of knowing if Obama has killed American citizens other than Awlaki, his son, and one other man whose name I’m sorry to say I can’t remember.
And now, unprecedentedly, EVERY president has this right.
So, how’s that hopey-changey thing working out for you?
How’s your absence of intelligence working out for you? I have never voted, nor would I ever vote, for a Democrat or Republican.
SOMEONE tampered with my plumbing after which a strange aerosal spray from a vent through which nothing ever before came. I got a runny nose, then tingly nose, then the skin peeled from the inside, then a sore throat, tightening in chest and muscle spams. The aerosal spray stopped after I sent email messages to a reporter and another source . This is just tip of strange goings on I’ve experienced in the first half of this year. The Patriot Act allows for the poisoning and experimentation of Americans for military purposes. So if I, as a Wikileaks supporter, have been labeled an ‘enemy of the state,’ I guess that means Obama can kill me without a warrant. The media is asleep: this is going on right now all around the country. Reporters need to wake up. Oh wait a minute: there aren’t any left. Just millenials writing about funny gifs & YouTube videos.
Liz, move from Buckingham Palace, to a place with no plumbing.
I only wish it were a joke.
USAID should come as no surprise, this organization has served as an umbrella [front] for American intelligence programs abroad for a very long time. It’s why Putin dis-invited USAID’s presence in Russia, also the Pentagon has been busted using the Dian Fossey Foundation to launder money for weapons provided to militia in Africa (and much more.) Anyone USAID did not like would make the list by default-
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/05/30/usaid-in-central-africa/
For a breakdown of USAID as a front for foreign policy social engineering, use google search: ‘Phillip Agee, Terrorism and Civil Society’
An old story. The Agency for International Dismemberment has been, shall we say, The Quiet American part of outreach overseas.
(PS. Coram nobis recommends the film of that title, the 2002 version of “The Quiet American” with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser).
I think cancelling dinner with my wife tonight may have been a good thing. At least I finished my will. Now, if I can make it through that link before the everclear overtakes the Deep State, I might even remember it.
@ chronicle:
After giving the matter some serious consideration….assuming that natural causes like dying in your sleep are not an option, I have decided that I would prefer something instantaneous like being at ground zero in a Nuclear blast.
Beats the long drawn out thing all to hell and ensures that I get a decent cremation.
I assume from this “rulebook,” (i.e., most likely intended to protect a usurper in our White House), that I have been blacklisted for informing the American people that we have formal authority under our rights to a defense, our Declaration of Independence and Constitution to shoot Obama, i.e., kill him. To kill Obama, however, would in fact hot be “assassination,” but an execution. When the chain of command has been thoroughly corrupted and Obama is supported and defended instead of our Constitution, every American citizen has the formal authority to protect him or herself, our nation and posterity. Obama is ineligible to assume the Office of President. Every member of Congress and justice of the Supreme Court knows this.
You are an idiot who gives Obama cover with moronic statements like this. Obama was elected. Killing him would not be an execution. Killing him would be an assassination ( a word with two asses, one for you, the other for you as well). Did you also question the legitimacy of Bush, or are you just another garden variety racist nut case? For the record, they are both war criminals.
He is just a racist nutcase. And his post is actually quite alarming.
He’ll be getting a visit from the Secret Service any day now. (Which is fitting, since he is indeed an alarming nutcase.)
Lunatic.
While this article includes some alarming information about the potential 4th amendment violations inherent in the no fly list process, I think there is good reason for you to be on the no fly list. You are a nutcase and your claims and threats concerning Obama are absolutely terroristic.
That might be lawless, though through the rule of law a proper trial for treason might yield a death penalty verdict, and also responsibility for war crimes, etc.
Wow, way to openly advocate for the murder of elected officials you disagree with.
Hopefully the FBI has got your number, Clem.
looks like the guidelines are unavailable at this point in time..just a grey page but no progress so wheres the guidlens gone??
Hillary will clean this up. She will eat Put in ‘ s ____ for lunch.
You lot could not even beat a bunch of illiterate tribesmen and you want to take on Russia? How stupid, ahistorical and just plain wrong is that?
Have you been slumbering as of late, Van Winkle? Just this last eve, I witnessed Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Highway almost single-handedly ‘eat Grenada’s lunch’!!
U.S.A., Fuk’ Yeah!!
that is hilarious that you just made that statement~ your ignorance is brighter than the sun! fool-
The purpose of Stalinism is to maintain political control by making the entire population fearful of being the next one to be seized. To achieve that, the definitions and standards must be so broad as to exclude virtually no one. Efficiency in identifying actual terrorists is counterproductive to the real goal of generating fear. When looked at this way, the terrorist watch list is a resounding success. We just have to decide now if we really want to live in a Stalinist system, and if not, what are we going to do about it?
Stalin was eventually killed by his own people. When they’d finally had enough.
I don’t condone violence, or killing outside of absolutely necessity (read : NO CHOICE LEFT). But honestly… WHEN are we as a country going to reach the enough point? Until that happens… this kind of bull puckey is just going to continue happening.
I thought uncle joe died of natural causes?I did read recently where he accused a bunch of Jewish doctors of poisoning him,and right after his death,the Soviet govt released them,so maybe there is a grain of truth there.
Whether or not Stalin was killed by his own people (poisoning?) or died of natural causes, you are correct in that tyrannies always eat their own before they burn themselves out or get taken down. As implied in my first comment, there are not enough real opponents to arrest, so the net widens until everyone is a suspect. That triggers paranoia even among the state’s own goons and bureaucrats who begin attacking each other either in career moves or in what their twisted thinking sees as self-defense. We have not yet reached that stage.
J Edgar Hoover would be proud.
J. Edgar Hoover despised totalitarian regimes and would loathe what we have become. He’s spinning in his grave.
J. Edgar Hoover *was* a totalitarian regime.
The Underwear Bomber was an FBI patsy.
http://www.infowars.com/breaking-kurt-haskell-exposes-government-false-flag-operation-during-underwear-bomber-sentencing/
infowars?? really? c’mon buddy.
I saw an illegal alien from Krypton today.
Yes, the Michigan lawyer who watched the entire scene involving the guy’s handler and his getting onto the plane despite visa anomalies is more than credible. That was an excellent operation for the corporations who supplied the imaging machines that went into airports around the world. Chertoff was involved in that, right?
I remember that.
“…it’s not easy when you’re at 20,000 feet, and your plane is on fire, and people are screaming for their lives, and you have to do an emergency landing… let me tell you, it’s not easy… And what happened since is even worse: finding out that your own government did it to you on purpose.”
On Christmas Day 2009, Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori were on-board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam bound for Detroit, on which the so-called “Underwear Bomber”, Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to set off an explosive or incendiary device. According to the official version of events, this was an Al-Qaeda attack against the United States of America. Joining us to dispute this narrative, is Kurt Haskell himself, who, as a witness to this event, explains why he believes he was in the presence of a staged, false-flag operation, organised by the U.S. itself.
http://themindrenewed.com/topics/false-flag-events
It’s a podcast. I go to sleep to them. As opposed to TV. Or thinking of Mona.
Thanks for that RWTT. Yes, that’s a good idea – to listen to pod casts at bedtime. Much better than radio offerings that late at night. (I have no TV – lost it, curiously, many years ago.)
To find out your government did it to you, and then have a majority of your fellow citizens call you a conspiracy theorist – well that’s a kick in the teeth!
Indeed seer. But I am from the UK. We don’t have laws like you do. So I visit this website.
Hi GCHQ.
I particularly enjoy the phrase: “It is important to remember, however, that watchlisting is not an exact science.”
Who knew?
Alex Jones broke the story about the underwear bomber – He didn’t even have a passport but the CIA was able to get him onto the airplane in Amsterdam. This was just another false flag.
http://www.infowars.com/breaking-kurt-haskell-exposes-government-false-flag-operation-during-underwear-bomber-sentencing/
Do the world a favor and go back to the crazy corner of the internet. While you’re at it, make yourself a tin foil gag to go along with the hat so nobody has to listen to your BS.
Underwear,pop bottle and shoe bomber;All scare tactics to keep people like the following commenter nervous.Does the internet have corners?Or is it round?
The criminals hate the internet.They want control back of their twisted narrative.
A wise man replied to my unspoken question: There is always a way out. But do not run away.
Bill, is that yoouuu? [nytimes bill keller has a, um, lets just say mixed history towards whistleblowers]
No, it was not Bill Keller who gave that lesson to me.
When blowing the whistle against a government like our nation’s government these days, running away IS the way out. I think Chelsea Manning is still waiting for her way out…
In Europe you have not such many controls at the airport. And real terror attacks?
Remember Gladio. You can say a yes CIA/NSA etc. make a good job at their allies.
But you have heard ES, it’s rather on their allies (company spionage).
So, the aim is not targeting “terrorism”.
Are terrorists still the ones tasked with inserting humans into these watch-list DBs? If so, when will the bugs get fixed? Any ETA? 22nd Century, perhaps?
The Newburgh Four would sure like to know.
When I tried to view that Holder affidavit on documentcloud.org J got a 403 error and this message: “Sorry! You need to be logged in to view this page. If you have an account, log in now. If you need an account, contact us or perhaps search our catalog of public documents.”
Thanks to the Intercept, the authors, and the person who provided this information. The Intercept is becoming a primary source of news for me and I look forward to its ongoing expansion.
Does the document explain how an individual is uniquely identified in this system? The idiots who created the no-fly list after 9-11 were so ignorant of systems design, they used a persons name as a primary identifier, as if everyone has a unique name! Almost immediately, people were denied their right to fly based on this design flaw. I’m just wondering, 13 years into these databases,
is there still a problem with ambiguous identifiers? Does the document discuss this core issue?
I read the chapter on use minimum identifiers, and came to these troubling conclusions:
1) There is no requirement to rule out the possibility of ambiguous identification, i.e., steps are not taken to rule out catching a completely innocent person in the web of suspicion,
based on coincidences in birth name, appearance and history.
2) The use of last name as a primary identifier is inherently ambiguous — there are plural last names in Hispanic culture; Asian family names come first, not last. In Arab society, last names are the first names of father, grandfather, etc, not anything approaching a reliable identifier. The system invites use of alias names by terrorists as a simple countermeasure.
I’m appalled by the lack of systems design — it’s as if the designers felt any amount of unfair suspicion levied on innocent citizens by way of design flaws was acceptable “collateral damage”.
Purposeful, to place suspicion upon the unsuspecting. Everything related, and unrelated.
Let’s see;The name must have been either Moshe,Shimon,or maybe Menachem,right?
‘A USAID spokesman told The Intercept that “in certain high risk countries, such as Afghanistan, USAID has determined that vetting potential partner organizations with the terrorist watchlist is warranted to protect U.S. taxpayer dollars and to minimize the risk of inadvertent funding of terrorism.”’
They mean that they must ensure that all terrorism funding by the US is advertent.
As said elsewhere here, it is pure Kafka. Great article.
Good to see you Myers. USAID, CIA front organization.
BTW, you had once linked to a site focusing on being, becoming, raising an autonomous person. I’ve lost it during a browser crash. If you still have it, I’d very much appreciate your posting it again. Thank you in advance.
I think the link you might be remembering is to the site of Tjeerd Andgringa (a cognitive scientist based in the Netherlands), titled ‘Geopolitics and Cognition’.
The page you mentioned is here : http://geopoliticsandcognition.com/AuthoritariansVersusLibertarians.html
Go well.
Yes, that’s perfect. Good travels to you. Many thanks to you, Myers.
Thank you Mr. Scahill. Thank you, Mr. Devereaux. And thank you, brave whistleblower.
Just wondering Why no one mentions that FBI maniacs allowed to torture their targets with remote torture technologies? Is it not a very big deal?
So I guess it is only legal for the government to intimidate its’ citizens???? God bless us all
No one’s leaked the documents yet. I guess it’s out of the question to:
1. Talk to the people making the complaints (there are myriads on Twitter);
2. Hire military experts to perform radiowave measurements and displace walls;
3. Contact military contractors performing testing on directed energy weapons; http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2014/06/arms-raytheon-northrop.html
4. Obtain ”The Non-Lethal Weapons (NLW) Market 2014-2024: Conducted & Directed Energy Weapons (CEW & DEW), Less Lethal Weapons (LLW) & Equipment for Military & Law Enforcement report as well as ” “Global Directed Energy Weapon (Defense, Homeland Security) Market Forecast – Forecasts and Analysis to 2020″
Then put it all together for a true blockbusting ‘game-changer. But until then, I guess we have to wait for someone to hand the goods to a ‘reporter. ‘
So destruction of government property gets you on the list? Gee, has anyone told the National Counterterrorism Center about Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., chief of the Directorate of Operations, who ordered the destruction of government property, the video tapes of CIA torture sessions? When will he get on the No-Fly List?
And what of the officials who destroyed Lois Learners e-mails and hard drive? Surly they met the criteria to be added to the list? Of course US State sponsored terrorism is acceptable and encouraged as usual.
And what methods did they use to get to the server where all the emails are stored?
At least even Santa checks his list twice. With this list it looks like you’re nominated and then you’re stuck.
Does reading this article and downloading the document place me on the list?
You betcha ! did you know that the late Senator Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list?
Yes
Yes, of course it does. At least use a privacy-friendly VPN service, or better Tor. And don’t use your true name. Loose lips sink ships (in this case, yours).
Using a VPN or Tor might get you onto a different list. VPN and Tor traffic are distinguishable from ordinary SSL traffic using deep packet inspection software, which is now widely used by ISPs and governments. “Privacy-friendly” VPNs or Tor might make you a candidate for targeted surveillance, especially in more paranoid countries, and especially if you are a journalist, NGO worker, judge, lawyer, Member of Parliament, political candidate, labor leader, or admin staff for any of these.
VPN services in the US are primarily used for torrenting, video streaming and/or porn, not for activism. So it’s a less serious list, I think. Pick one like HideMyAss or Hotspot Shield, and do some torrenting etc. from time to time, to blend in. You can tunnel a more provacy-friendly VPN service through the first, and another through the second, and so on. Once you’re a couple VPNs deep, you can use Tor for stronger anonymity. In more overtly oppressive nations, such as China or Iran, you will attract attention by using VPNs or Tor. Your best bet there is anonymously hitting open WiFi access points, using a USB adapter to avoid leaking the motherboard adapter’s MAC address. Also, some VPN services have enabled connection via obfuscating proxies (e.g., SSH and SSL for AirVPN, and obfsproxy for iVPN).
Your last names “Cohen”, half of you have j1 y-dna, you where on the list when you were born! Actually everyone that’s not r1b is going on the list eventually, it’s just taking them a while to figure it out.
I suppose the reason for taking healthcare records is so that when you get pregnant they can reserve a space on the list for your baby.
Of course taking your health care records without your consent is a violation of Federal law–HIPPA. But since when do laws apply to our government criminals?
Actually, the accumulation of medical data and control of individuals through the US Health Care System which is actually managed by the US Government (Medicare, CDC, FDA, Affordable Care Act, etc.), plus insurance and pharmaceutical giants, is an integral part of the total control plan. They actually regulate Health Care Providers to do exactly what the combination cited above wants. In short….the object here is to use the Health Care system for voluntary or involuntary implantation of radio frequency control devices (RFID) in the targeted population. In that manner….the elite will have absolute control over people at all times. This idea could possibly be encouraged as a form of National ID which makes lives “easier” or secures the population from “terrorists.” It is being employed already in infants, in towns, and being sold as particularly useful for care-takers of the elderly and/or infirm in the home health arena. Check it out.
Also, think about this before taking unnecessary vaccinations or submitting to unnecessary tests. The Medical Industry in the US is just that….an industry. Do not trust it blindly.
The most salient point I got from this article was that, even at this moment. there are government employees who are disclosing important documents to The Intercept.
Is the NYT relevant anymore? Their Arts and Travel sections aren’t bad, to be fair.
Not sure if this is what you were referring to, but the title page of the guidelines does say “Unclassified”.
It’s unclassified, but it’s not public.
“The guidelines were revised and expanded in 2013—and a source within the intelligence community subsequently provided a copy to The Intercept.”
I’m assuming this line means that somebody provided the document specifically to The Intercept.
There are some good articles in NYT and WAPOST. But, i wait until someone links them. I do go to the guardian itself and check what is going on.
But your point is well taken about “the paper of record”
My understanding is that they got a pile of documents from Snowden and have not published much from them. The WA Post has done a better job.
Actually, NYT got nothing from Snowden. He said that their refusal to publish James Risen’s article about warrantless wiretapping by the govt. in 2003, made him not choose them. He felt they might hide his info also. The NYT got hold of some Snowden documents when the British government raided The Guardian offices in London. To protect their files, The Guardian sent copies to the NYT, as in the US, the govt cannot lawfully raid Press offices. That’s how NYT got ‘some’ of the docs, not from Snowden.
I’m not too keen on WaPo either, but on this subject, they’ve done a good job, no question.
Cheers.
re: “NYT got nothing from Snowden
under pressure from brit authorities the guardian gave documents to the NYT:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/24/us-usa-security-snowden-guardian-idUSBRE97I10E20130824
snipped lede:
> title: Guardian teams up with New York Times over Snowden documents
> WASHINGTON Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:42pm EDT
>
> (Reuters) – The Guardian has agreed with the New York Times to give the U.S. newspaper access to some classified documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, both papers said on Friday.
>
> In a brief story posted on its website, the Guardian said it “struck a partnership” with the Times after the British government threatened the Guardian with legal action unless it either surrendered or destroyed files it received from Snowden about Government Communications Headquarters – Britain’s equivalent of NSA.
undo. forgot to read beyond AIC’s first line, my bad.
cheers
The guardian aint what it used to be,it’s now NYTs east.Only thing worth going there for is the comments,but rarely are you allowed to comment on a certain crazy nation that thumb the worlds eye, and now they’ve shut off Ukraine comments,and put hysterical unverified accusations out there for the fun of it.Their agenda is identical to all the other MSM rags.Neolibcon Zionism.
The scope and lack of strict oversight here is shocking. If history tells us anything, this kind of secret unaccountable power will be abused. We as a country have strayed from fundamental American values.
Plato warned that “the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction,” such that the “excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excesss of slavery.”
as self described “zillionaire” Nick Hanauer wrote in politico last month, his class should most fearful of (no kidding) Pitchforks:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html
no wonder the elite wants to get their police state up to speed, pronto.
@Cupertino Jay – “no wonder the elite wants to get their police state up to speed, pronto.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
BUI -
absent generous newbie host firstlook’s software ability to up vote / credit other comments (yet).. thank you very much BUI.
and all the best getting past the despicable blacklist thingee.
Actually, tonight gives dual meaning to my blacklisting… I used it at first to jab the lefty media that excluded me from their philanthropic endeavors after the Obamamania that swept the nation in 2008, but… I am trying to refrain tonight (Mr. Suave wants to pick a fight however, so… we will see). As mentioned previously, old scores will either be settled, or some apologies will be made to me. Tonight all respect is given to The Intercept!!
My dogs can smell fear. It makes them afraid.
I tell them its okay, no worries, the government is incompetent.
If they were competent, they’d catch the right people. It’s their bloody incompetence that gets us all entangled.
It’s all bark and no bite.
It’s all bark and no bite. -doug wood
And you would be wrong, Doug.
How do you know?
Watch dogs bark. Guard dogs bite.
Only someone who has not been blessed with the ‘Targeted Individual’ experience would say this. Your life can be made miserable very easily. If you don’t keep your wits about you, you will be turned into Pavlov’s dog. Do you think you are strong enough?
To quote Jimi Hendrix:
Are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have
Yes, I am experienced. We could tell stories no one would believe. We have TAO implants. I am typing on one now.
They have no intent to catch the right people. If they did that they’d go out of business. You can’t keep an anti-terror outfit in business, for the long term, without an endless supply of fresh terrorists.
I don’t know how to feel about this article. The world we live in seems so devoid of humanity ..and has been hijacked (no pun intended) by fear and anxiety.. i don’t know if this is a natural reaction to the flood of information we are exposed to..or if it is the information itself that has exposed what has always been there.. but it seems like we forgot what it means to be human..we forgot that we are responsible for each …
I am reconsidering how much of a good idea having children is…
> I am reconsidering how much of a good idea having children is…
(warning to moderators — semi-hysterical off topic rant follows)
maan, you’re preaching to the choir now, nameless, but probably for other reasons.
global warming gonna bitch slap our descendants (if any) like there’s no tomorrow. ummmmm, ’cause after GW worsens, and again, and unto starving kids-kids grubbing in the mud for bugs, any survivors gonna wish upon a star they’d been pre-cycled.
#REM: oh no, i’ve said too much, didn’t say enough.
It’s enough to make me nostalgic for the good old days of enemies lists and illegal wire tapping. How benign Richard Nixon’s
machinations seem today.
“threat-based expedited upgrade?” wtf?
welcome to the United States of East Germany.
Congratulations JS & RD on an article that is sure to travel quickly from here to everywhere around the news sites here and overseas! And thank you!
Based on the sites I visit and my book purchase record at Amazon, I’m a KST for sure. I wonder how deeply KST’s are investigated. IOW, how much do they *actually* know about us who are on their list?
Reads like a typical bill in Congress. What else is new?
Chapter 3 in the document: Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria. See esp. 3.9 on watchlist criteria: “It is not an exclusive list and includes activity that may have innocent explanations wholly unrelated to TERRORISM. Furthermore, some activities conducted by U.S. PERSONS or activities taking place within the United States, may be an exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”
O Kafka! That you could be alive at this hour!
- – -
Don’t worry Ms. X…..we have already gathered ALL of the information and belongings (to include financial assets) pertaining to your ex-husband and transmitted it to relevant enforcement officials. Sleep tight….make sure you keep your cellphone (camera) on the nightstand by your bed, just in case that scoundrel thinks about committing another act of terrorism. We’ll watch out for you.
And as his ex-wife, she gets to end up on the watchlist, too! Free of charge²! How generous!
Hail Congress!
² a charge may be imposed on citizen’s tax bill
You’ve grasped it by its wikileak. They say that relatives, living and dead, are also on their list.
Excellent work.
This should rock the foundation a bit…
Thank you.
How insane is that, National security state America living up to its name. You see the problem is, once someone finds themselves on that list, until that point, people wont give a shit. Thats how our society works nowadays. “well that sucks for them” is most peoples attitude. It really bothers me to think that there could be the chance that I go to get on a flight one day and maybe my name will be in one of these databases. How bizarre for me it is to think they might know my EZ Pass account information and loyalty rewards program info. I want to scream out WTF are you thinking?! Who are these mindless hacks inventing the rulebooks here? I can really imagine like Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton & Dianne Feinstein all sitting in a room together sipping tea and coming up with these criteria and policies while Enya – Sail Away plays in the backround. I mean cmon!
It’s all about labeling a Muslim a terrorist without using the word Muslim.
Find what most Muslims have in common, other than that they’re Muslims, and set it as basis for identifying terrorists.
Yes, Zaid, you are right I’m afraid. And for those of us who are not Muslim, we are suspected domestic terrorists when we sympathize with the ordeal Muslims face in this climate and want it to change for the better, and conversely when we wish Muslims to go back to where-ever and allow the US to be Christian once again. That probably leaves very few who will not ever be on the list.
See you on the train! ;(
What? You can use the word “terrorist” to label a person a terrorist without bringing their religion into it.
Besides, given that the document was meant to be kept secret, and the no-fly list and other lists are still secret, they can label people whatever they want without getting any flak.
There is only one thing more frightening and dangerous than terrorism: counter-terrorism.
It is no wonder why the NSA is extending it’s reach onto every day Americans, when a human network is traced like this. Person (A) can meet a suspected terrorist and become a surveillance target immediately, allowing every person that they ever meet or will meet to become suspected terrorism targets. This surveillance conversation is no longer comparable to a needle in a haystack; This type of surveillance should be compared to a single atom of water in an endless ocean. By not allowing any suspected targets off the blacklist, law enforcements are shooting themselves in the foot and crippling there chances of obtaining useful information.
What does it mean this time?
3.13.6 … Speech advocating a violent or dangerous TERRORIST ACTIVITY is incitement if such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
At some point there has to be an understanding that there must be some sort of due process and testing the evidence. If our own government becomes a truly dreadful one then surly their enemies would have won. Maybe a full deconstruction and declaration that – we are better than that. We are stronger than that. These are our public servants and I would remind them in the final analysis we the people are their ultimate masters. That is the way it was always meant to be. This is the final test – don’t fail it!!!!!
the institutionalization of fear
If terrorism was like a pathogen this would be like an auto-immune disease.
I recently returned from a trip to Turkey doing research (I work in academia). I flew from Istanbul to Paris to Atlanta and then my final destination. Starting in Paris and continuing to this day (I have taken additional trips), I have been subjected to enhanced security though I have gone through additional screening through the Global Entry program. The TSA could not tell me why I was being subjected to this and could not confirm or deny my appearance on any lists anywhere else. As I have told my Congressman, my due process rights have been violated and no one appears to care within the government. I have done nothing wrong but are being subjected to these enhanced screenings without any “trial.”
Heck, I got put on that list for like three years. There would be in the neighborhood of four separate searches getting to the plane and then at least once again each connecting flight. But I know exactly why it happened to me . My stint on the list was a result of getting in to an argument with the regional head of Alaska airlines (in Portland, if I recall). So, it’s not just law enforcement that can do it. If you piss off the right airline employee you can be targeted as well.
Ultimately, I’m pretty sure a cool TSA agent got me off of it somehow when I was flying often on Southwest … at least when I highlighted the frequency of my “random” searches to him, it was the last special screening I received. I realize that’s not much help … just goes to show how arbitrary the whole thing is. Navigating this crap becomes more an application of social engineering skills than it is any particular defined due process.
Look, all that democracy and freedom in America was just for the rubes anyway. It was never real. Today, thanks to the advanced methods of social control available, there is less and less need to fool the slaves into thinking that they are kind of free. Look for more of the same in the coming years.
You should have never written your congressman though. It’s a complete waste of time and now you are a confirmed malcontent.
Now you are posting here. That was another mistake.
Don’t apply for a security clearance.
Since dead people can be on the list. I’d like to add a name along with my own (like I’m not already on it, ha).
Had a dream last night. I was talking to Thomas Jefferson. He was tellling me that the time for patriots to spill their blood and cleanse the abominations of injustice, class privelege and lies which defiles our land is nigh. He said the constitution needs to be rewritten with important imendments folded in, and those favoring the rich eliminated. That the bill of rights expanded and folded into the main document. He said the rich don’t need special privelege since they allready have their needs taken care of. He the rich need to pay more taxes and said that corporations are not people but Soilent Green is.
He said without major changes in the way we conduct our lives America, we would not survive into the future. Said our only hope for survival is to learn to grow our own food so we don’t starve when oil hits $200 a barrel. He said we must agitate for fundamental change in our country and that the opposition from entrenched interest will require that the tree of liberty be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
A spelling error aahhhhhh! amendments. The link here is only to a list of them. Naturally in my dream the existing Supreme Court would be asked to retire.
I see I have some broken english in my original comment, sorry about that.
What a coincidence! He spoke to me too last night. What a vivid dream it was, too!
He said: If you are to enjoy freedom and endure a limited government by the people, then you the people ought to practice the ideas represented in Bill of Rights in your daily lives. To expect any government emanating from a people will conform to constitutional restraints when the People themselves don’t practice those same restraints is pointless, futile. It’s said we get the government we deserve, and I believe that’s true. And more, I believe you must use that idea as impetus to cultivate yourselves in accord with the values of freedom and, most importantly, enumerate and take on its serious and necessary responsibilities. For example, arduously defending the rights of people with whom you vigorously, even contentiously, disagree is an obligation, a responsibility that attaches to freedom. And doing it respectfully, even if you can’t stand the person with whom you disagree, because your respect is for the principle of freedom, a principle far greater than any admirable or offensive personality.
He went on: This is precisely where government by the people has fallen – divisions between groups have been exaggerated to such extent as to make one group wish for another group that they are coerced by government to abandon their personal conscience or die. The purpose this tactic is put to may be as drastic as to eliminate the very idea of conscience from the nation’s memory, for that is prerequisite to the government overtaking freedom entirely and condemning it to death by disuse. But conscience heard and acknowledged is the basis of freedom, conscience and the integrity it informs. Be wary of the government, for the government itself fosters attitudes of divisiveness and strife, as that is where its purloined power resides.
So, you citizens trapped by a fallen ideal, you must take up the banner of freedom and spread the word of how it is a daily practice, a daily responsibility of every person, man, woman, child, to live it every day and in so doing grow strong in freedom and its virtues. That is how you will restore freedom, not with violence, because the government has more violent power under its command than ever known in past revolutions. Now, radical change is to be conducted in peace, the idea of liberty spread from person to person in details of experience that give it breath of life and helps it spread so deep and wide, that the behemoth government falls of its own weak foundation under its own terrible weight.
Thank you Seer, that was very well said.
*note
Comments praising this article will be collated and stored. Anything you say here, will be held against you.
See you on the train!
@ Bill Owen:
It will be my honor!
I want a window seat.
This is exactly what the terrorists would want, the United States to “fold in” in its own citizens like this. Unbelievable.
Well, they *do* hate us for are freedoms.
Hey, who’s doing this to us? The government you say? You mean the government *is* the TERRORISTS™!?!
It is going to be a very big train. We might as well sing a happy song while they search for enough engines to pull it.
From the cover itself, you know it’s a bureaucratic nightmare.
Just think of the corporations involved in supplying equipment and supplies, uniforms, and all the ancillary expensive doodads you need to keep 19 agencies going.
Why is Wall Street at all time highs, you wonder. Look no further… government policy feeds Wall Street, while Wall Street designs government policy.
Bingo!
“…based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,”
What the hell is this, Minority Report?
Jeremy’s long discussed the apparent pre-crime philosophy behind who gets selected for a drone strike, e.g. 16yo U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.
f anyone here has questions about why the US government has developed a massive, total surveillance apparatus, or why politicians from both political parties have expanded the power of the state, the following articles by scholar James Petras will interest you.
The Logic behind Mass Spying: Empire and Cyber Imperialism
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1961
The Deeper Meaning of Mass Spying in America
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1943
The Great Transformation: From the Welfare State to the Imperial Police State
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1903
The Rise of the Police State and the Absence of Mass Opposition
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1904
The Two Faces of a Police State: Sheltering Tax Evaders, Financial Swindlers and Money Launderers while Policing the Citizens
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1905
Signs Of A Police State Are Everywhere
http://www.zcommunications.org/signs-of-a-police-state-are-everywhere-by-james-petras.html
Interesting timing for a watchlist piece. There was an story about @the_intercept’s and Jeremy Scahill published today on Hacker News, specifically how the Intercept picks users to follow on Twitter.
http://discussthetimes.com/blog/twitter/Ten-Women-Is-There-A-Common-Thread/
The Hacker News Link, it was literally just a few hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075384
The consequences of being a “targeted individual” extend far beyond surveillance. For the past decade, this veteran journalist has been subject to various forms of persecution,including home intrusions, stalking and financial sabotage, as well as horrific physical “no-touch” electromagnetic neuroweapon torture delivered via a nationwide celltower grid. My reporting indicates that thousands of Americans share a similar fate. I have written and reported extensively on this nationwide “torture matrix” on my website, VicLivingston(dot)blogspot(dot)com; note the December 2011 article on covert celltower neuroweapon torture and the January 2012 article on “Gestapo USA”.
Vic, your comments on that issue seem to be ubiquitous, but you never make reference to what is now the primary source of aggregated (published) news reports on modern domestic counterintelligence operations in the U.S., – namely http://FightGangStalking.com
Why is that? (‘just curious – I’m not implying that your references to cell towers have anything to do with disinformation or anything.)
I see that the excellent site “Fight Gang Stalking” is beginning to use the more accurate term “Cointelpro stalking” (the “new COINTELPRO” (COunterINTelligencePROgram), though it’s been around for a very long time). Given the way that the wheels of “justice” turn in this country, it will probably be another decade or more before anyone gets around to assisting the victims of this “new” program, many of whom are good, law-abiding people, but that’s the way things seem to work in the U.S. One has to wonder how many of its victims will die before this program sees the light of day. And it IS killing people.
Many thanks to Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux for this article (and the tremendous effort behind it). Thanks, as well, to Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and everyone else who is helping to move the ball along, against what would appear to be nearly impossible odds.
“Gangstalking” is a term invented by the fusion center agency/command nationwide gestapo run by law enforcement and public safety officers to extrajudicially persecute citizens who have been targeted/slandered as “dissidents” or “undesirables”. My article “Gestapo USA” Jan. 2012 VicLivingston(dot)blogspot(dot)com details this taxpayer-funded Stasi apparatus.
What exactly is your theory behind always avoiding any mention of known legitimate published professional credible news sources?
I’m not accusing you of of being a disinformation sock puppet or anything. Just curious. The “Fight Gang Stalking” site seems to have taken the opposite approach to the whole issue.
What is “legitimate” to someone whose neurolinguistics echo that of a paid miliarty intelligence contractor psyops troll? A handout from Lockheed Martin? Please do not answer; we already have a good idea of what you are!
I’ll put my money on the site “Fight Gang Stalking.” Exposing what is better termed “Cointelpro stalking” is only going to be accomplished through “legitimate published professional credible news sources”, as noted by AnonOrwellFan. (I don’t know of any “veteran journalists” who would have handled the formidable problem of “gang stalking” as you have, Vic.)
Very worrying story indeed. We have had very similar laws recently rushed through parliament in the UK. These laws are invasive, a breach of freedom of speech and a step closer to an Orwellian society. Political Journalists and Bloggers can now be regarded as “terrorists”. We are in troubled times and we need to wake up to the reality of what our governments are doing to the world. The rainforest is being raped with entire ecosystems following suit. 80% of the world’s population live on less than a dollar a day and wealth is disproportianely distibuted amongst the populace. It’s time the world wakes up to this reality, otherwise we will be the generation who ruined it all and didn’t raise a finger to change it…
Stunning. The ‘explanations’ for this behavior sound incredibly like the faux-justifications of patients suffering from extreme paranoia.
I might even suggest a delusionally paranoid psychosis. After all, some of this group exist specifically to develop new ways for killing people.
Yes, I agree, the fixations of the establishment are demonstrably delusional and psychotic. I’m just particularly surprised that almost ‘textbook’ paranoia is so bluntly self-confessed by this document as functionally institutionalized.
Nothing generates unquestioned taxdollars for the MIC like institutionalized fear, even if fabricated.
A good time to reconsider the warning the Russians gave the Americans about the Boston bombers
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/us/russia-told-us-bomb-suspect-was-radical-islamist.html?_r=0
‘This extraordinary power for “categorical watchlisting”—otherwise known as profiling—is vested in the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position formerly held by CIA Director John Brennan that does not require Senate confirmation.’
Precisely the reason these unsupervised cabinet positions are vested with the most power: no American would ever willingly give a government official this kind of authority.
Thanks to all involved in researching and writing this story. A great service to us all.
This is prolific. The nature of watchlisting and its relationship to non-violent, essentially mundane, interactions between citizens and law enforcement is Terrifying.
Yes. And anyone on this list, according to the story, might have lethal consequences in an otherwise-routine traffic stop. Police can be trigger-happy given certain … triggers.
might have lethal consequences in an otherwise-routine traffic stop
Some of us know people who’ve experienced lethal consequences already via lies told to police. You don’t even need a watchlist, though it will definitely make things worse.
Congrats on a great scoop.
You don’t say.
Very similar laws have recently been rushed through parliament in the UK. These are troubling times indeed and our liberty is very slowly slipping away. We are getting ever closer to an Orwellian society, with political journalists and bloggers the new “terrorists”. I hope people are waking up to the terrible injustices being dealt out by our governments worldwide…
It was slowly slipping away 100 years ago. We passed Orwellian years ago, and we’re now going full speed into the abyss.
So uncorroborated comments on blogs are likely fair game too.
“While the guidelines nominally prohibit nominations based on unreliable information, they explicitly regard “uncorroborated” Facebook or Twitter posts as sufficient grounds for putting an individual on one of the watchlists.”
Readers of The Intercept also probably qualify for “categorical watchlisting”.
Speaking of passports and Yemen: did this have anything to do with this matter, reported by the Guardian yesterday?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/22/yemeni-americans-us-embassy-sanaa-passports
That’s appalling!
Coram -
thanks for that link. I was also appalled at the treatment these people were given. My heart goes out to Khaled, separated from his family, and his future uncertain. I also feel for the others subjected to this inexcusable behavior.
I wonder if this is the Obama ‘Death Panel’ the Teahdists gleaned in error, from one of their many credible sources. We need smarter info’baggers.
Oh! I thought you were smarter than to make a comment like that.
snark is hard with text-only.
You can say that again. I had a similar experience the other day when I sarcastically said Israel had casualties in the thousands. A couple of posters were incredulous, and wanted confirmation.
Ben, have you ever tried any of these – ;-> :-7 ^o) ? They all mean sarcasm, I just learned.
Our Police State needs criteria to determine who to watch. Since it is done in secret, no need for an intellectually coherent and constitutionally valid set of criteria.
You must have heard about Eco Terrorists who do things like film meat processing plants. They become a national security concern through the “laws.”
Interview with Thomas Drake, a NSA Whistleblower
“Senior NSA Executive: We’re In a Police State”
subtitle: ““We Have a Significant Element of Our Government In League With Corporations and Other Unelected Officials Who’ve Decided That The Constitution Is Essentially Null And Void”
I could provide several quotations, but recommend that you check out the interview
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/06/senior-nsa-manager-police-state-worse-stasi-east-germany.html
Great interview with Mr. Drake, thanks for sharing!
amazing article, thanks.
ummm, is it safe to suppose that commenting here, or up/down voting other comments, be sufficient probable cause for travel blacklist?
or will even just *reading* firstlook.org get us on nsa’s naughty list?
#be afraid, very afraid.
lol good question
is it safe to suppose that commenting here, or up/down voting other comments, be sufficient probable cause for travel blacklist?
Well, I’ve been to Washington DC and back to the midwest since becoming a reader of TI, and a longtime reader of Greenwald. Haven’t been across the border since TI started though, so who knows. I’ll tell you later in August. ;-}
The Intercept isn’t threatening anybody. Greenwald is a tool of those in power, otherwise he wouldn’t be taking a paycheck from his oligarch paymaster. You think a guy with revolving door access at the White House wants to threaten his privilege? Greenwald needs to stop acting like marginalizing the masses began when he became a blogger. It was happening before he was bad-mouthing Chavez and praising Bush for invading Iraq, it was happening before he was apologizing for Republican and Democrat politicians, and it was happening before he was in his flail about his ridiculous uber-KKKonstitutionalism. Libertarians like him don’t threaten anything. Omidyar is well aware of that.
New Declaration of Independence for the World: “We declare ourselves free from oppressive governments and organizations.” #NewDeclarationofIndependence
Major, major story. My compliments.