Featured photo - Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

Shrug Chart - Josh Begley

The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations:

• The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Mich.—a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.

• The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.

• The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract  data to add to the watchlists.

A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data. “The list has grown somewhat since that time, but is nowhere near the 1.5 million figure cited in recent news reports,” he said. He added that the statistics cited by the Associated Press do not just include nominations of individuals, but also bits of intelligence or biographical information obtained on watchlisted persons.

When U.S. officials refer to “the watchlist,” they typically mean the TSDB, an unclassified pool of information shared across the intelligence community and the military, as well as local law enforcement, foreign governments, and private contractors. According to the government’s watchlisting guidelines, published by The Intercept last month, officials don’t need “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to secretly place someone on the list—only a vague and elastic standard of “reasonable suspicion.”

“You need some fact-basis to say a guy is a terrorist, that you know to a probable-cause standard that he is a terrorist,” says Gomez, the former FBI agent. “Then I say, ‘Build as big a file as you can on him.’ But if you just suspect that somebody is a terrorist? Not so much.”

The National Counterterrorism Center did not respond to questions about its terrorist screening system. Instead, in a statement, it praised the watchlisting system as a “critical layer in our counterrorism defenses” and described it as superior to the pre-9/11 process for tracking threats, which relied on lists that were “typed or hand-written in card catalogues and ledgers.” The White House declined to comment.

A milestone

Most people placed on the government’s watchlist begin in a larger, classified system known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). The TIDE database actually allows for targeting people based on far less evidence than the already lax standards used for placing people on the watchlist. A more expansive—and invasive—database, TIDE’s information is shared across the U.S. intelligence community, as well as with commando units from the Special Operations Command and with domestic agencies such as the New York City Police Department.

In the summer of 2013, officials celebrated what one classified document prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center refers to as “a milestone”—boosting the number of people in the TIDE database to a total of one million, up from half a million four years earlier.

The document credits that historic achievement to the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI), a secretive and virtually unknown U.S. counterterrorism unit responsible for maintaining TIDE. “This number is a testament to DTI’s hard work and dedication over the past 2.5 years,” the document declares.

The number is also a testament to the Obama administration’s intensified collection of personal information on individuals with suspected links to terrorism. In 2006, CBS News obtained a copy of the no fly list and reported that it included 44,000 names, including Bolivian President Evo Morales and the head of Lebanon’s parliament. Faced with a widespread public backlash, the government cut the list down to just 4,000 names by late 2009.

The next year, after the so-called “underwear bomber” tried to bring down a commercial airliner bound for Detroit, Obama loosened the criteria for adding people to the no fly list. The impact was immediate. Since 2010, the classified documents note, the National Counterterrorism Center has “created more than 430,000 terrorism-related person records” while deleting only 50,000 people “whose nexus to terrorism was refuted or did not meet current watchlisting criteria.” The documents reveal that more than 240 TIDE “nominations” are now processed each day.

“You might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that it works,” says former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “These agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the national security umbrella.”

Watchlisting by the numbers

In the documents, the government emphasizes that it seeks to add only as many people to the TIDE list “as are necessary for our nation’s counterterrorism mission.” With hundreds of new nominations coming in every day, the numbers provide only a momentary snapshot of a watchlist system that is in constant motion.

An August 2013 slide from the National Counterterrorism Center called “TIDE By The Numbers” lays out the scope of the Obama administration’s watchlisting system, and those it is targeting. According to the document, which notes that the numbers are “approximate,” 680,000 people have been watchlisted, with another 320,000 monitored in the larger TIDE database. As of August 2013, 5,000 Americans were on the watchlist while another 15,800 were targeted in TIDE.

Among the other revelations in the documents:

• 16,000 people, including 1,200 Americans, have been classified as “selectees” who are targeted for enhanced screenings at airports and border crossings.

• There are 611,000 men on the main terrorist watchlist and 39,000 women.

• The top “nominating agencies” responsible for placing people on the government’s watchlists are: the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• The top five U.S. cities represented on the main watchlist for “known or suspected terrorists” are New York; Dearborn, Mich.; Houston; San Diego; and Chicago. At 96,000 residents, Dearborn is much smaller than the other cities in the top five, suggesting that its significant Muslim population—40 percent of its population is of Arab descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—has been disproportionately targeted for watchlisting. Residents and civil liberties advocates havefrequently argued the Muslim, Arab and Sikh communities in and around Dearborn are unfairly targeted by invasive law enforcement probes, unlawful profiling, and racism.

“To my knowledge, there have been no Muslims in Dearborn who have committed acts of terrorism against our country,” Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Intercept. Walid added that the high concentration of Dearborn residents in the watchlisting system “just confirms the type of engagement the government has with our community—as seeing us as perpetual suspects.”

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The documents also offer a glimpse into which groups the government is targeting in its counterterrorism mission. The groups with the largest number of targeted people on the main terrorism watchlist—aside from “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”—are al Qaeda in Iraq (73,189), the Taliban (62,794), and al Qaeda (50,446). Those are followed by Hamas (21,913) and Hezbollah (21,199).

Although the Obama administration has repeatedly asserted that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses the most significant external terrorist threat to the United States, the 8,211 people identified as being tied to the group actually represent the smallest category on the list of the top ten recognized terrorist organizations. AQAP is outnumbered by people suspected of ties to the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network (12,491), the Colombia-based FARC (11,275,) and the Somalia-based al-Shabab (11,547).

The documents also reveal that as of last year, the U.S. had designated 3,200 people as “known or suspected terrorists” associated with the war in Syria. Among them were 715 Europeans and Canadians, as well as 41 Americans. Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently claimed that there are more than 12,000 foreign fighters in Syria, including more than 1,000 Westerners and roughly 100 Americans.

Biometric data

According to the documents, the government does much more than simply stop watchlisted people at airports. It also covertly collects and analyzes a wide range of personal information about those individuals –including facial images, fingerprints, and iris scans.

In the aftermath of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing, the Directorate of Terrorist Identities began an aggressive program to collect biometric data and other information on all Americans on the TIDE list. “This project includes record by record research of each person in relevant Department of State and [intelligence community] databases, as well as bulk data requests for information,” the documents note.

The DTI also worked on the subsequent Chicago Marathon, performing “deep dives” for biometric and other data on people in the Midwest whose names were on the TIDE list. In the process, the directorate pulled the TIDE records of every person with an Illinois, Indiana, or Wisconsin driver license.

DTI’s efforts in Boston and Chicago are part of a broader push to obtain biometric information on the more than one million people targeted in its secret database. This includes hundreds of thousands of people who are not watchlisted. In 2013, the directorate’s Biometric Analysis Branch (BAB) launched an initiative to obtain biometric data from driver’s license records across the country. At least 15 states and the District of Columbia are working with the directorate to facilitate access to facial images from driver’s licenses. In fiscal year 2013, 2,400 such images were provided for inclusion in the secret TIDE database.

According to the documents, BAB offers its “unique skill of facial identification support” to a “broad customer base.” Last year its analysts produced more than 290 reports for other government entities, including the CIA, the New York City Police Department, and the military’s elite Special Operations Command.

All told, the classified documents show, the government compiles strikingly detailed dossiers of data on individuals who have been swept up in its databases. Though some of the documents obtained by The Intercept offer conflicting information on how much biometric data the government collects,the most detailed report shows that:

• In 2013, the main terrorism database included more than 860,000 biometric files on 144,000 people.

• The database contains more than a half a million facial images, nearly a quarter of a million fingerprints and 70,000 iris scans.

• The government maintains biometric data on people that it hasn’t identified–TIDE contains 1,800 “BUPs,” or “biometrics of unknown persons.”

• In a single year, the government expanded its collection of “non-traditional” biometric data, including dramatic increases in handwriting samples (32 percent), signatures (52 percent), scars, marks, and tattoos (70 percent), and DNA strands (90 percent).

“We’re getting into Minority Report territory when being friends with the wrong person can mean the government puts you in a database and adds DMV photos, iris scans, and face recognition technology to track you secretly and without your knowledge,” says Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The fact that this information can be shared with agencies from the CIA to the NYPD, which are not known for protecting civil liberties, brings us closer to an invasive and rights-violating government surveillance society at home and abroad.”

The DTI also goes far beyond accessing information from state driver’s licenses. In managing the main terrorism database, the directorate coordinates with the CIA and the National Media Exploitation Center, a Pentagon wing responsible for analyzing and disseminating “paper documents, electronic media, videotapes, audiotapes, and electronic equipment” seized abroad in military or intelligence operations.

By sharing information with the military, the National Counterterrorism Center asserts, the DTI is able to “obtain additional data fusion points by accessing and exploiting NMEC data holdings.” In return, the directorate “provides NMEC with a classified biometric search capability against TIDE through automated and manual facial identification support.”

The DTI also harvests information from CIA sources, including a secret database called CINEMA— short for CIA Information Needs Management—and a secret CIA program called “Hydra,” which utilizes “clandestinely acquired foreign government information” to enhance the quality of “select populations” in TIDE.

In 2013, DTI and the CIA ran a “proof of concept” for Hydra, using Pakistan as a guinea pig. The DTI provided the CIA with a list of 555 Pakistanis in the TIDE database. After inputting the names into Hydra, the CIA “vetted these names against Pakistani Passports” and provided biographic and biometric identifiers to the DTI.

Pleased with its initial success, the government plans to expand its clandestine data-mining operation. “Future initiatives,” the documents note, “will include additional targeted countries.” The CIA declined to comment on the program.

Josh Begley contributed to this story.

Photo credits: Obama: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images; Crowd: Mario Tama/Getty Images; Iris Scan: Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

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  1. Mr. Scahill and Mr. Devereaux

    “……..As of August 2013, 5,000 Americans were on the watchlist while another 15,800 were targeted in TIDE……”

    5000? Not many Americans have graduated from the TIDE list. That amounts to about .0016% of Americans which just shows that the US is not a real hot spot for the radicalization process. Approximately three thousand on the watchlist have known terrorist group affiliations which is a threat, but small in overall numbers. This article certainly doesn’t pack the punch of the article by Greenwald which demonstrated conclusively that the US and Israeli intelligence work together.

    Thanks.

  2. I’ve been reading some of Mussolini’s comments here and chuckling at the irony. Co-incidentally, I was reading the final chapters of ‘The Gift’ by Lewis Hyde last night, about Ezra Pound and the symbolic gift of his newly finished Cantos to El Duce; at that point crossing a threshold and handing over his ‘creativity’ into the service of the fascist cause.
    Hyde recounted a deeply antisemitic tale from Grimm, called ‘The Jew in The Hawthorn Hedge’ that he saw as a parable for Pound’s life, and as I read, I heard a disturbance downstairs.
    On investigation I saw my neighbour and friend at the bottom of my garden in the hawthorn hedge calling for her dog who had slipped its leash.
    She is Jewish.
    What are the chances of that?

  3. Putting the apparatus in place and as many people on the list as possible allows it to be easily used to watch people not on the list without anyone knowing.

    The apparatus is intentionally way overfunded, their excuse was triggered by their abuses to begin with, therefore was premeditated. They want to appear like their industry is needed so they act accordingly. They intentionally hire people they know will abuse the technology and they hire as many tokens as they can to camouflage the surface.

    The fusion centers inject cia technology to ground level to completely unsupervised employees, they can make allot of changes to your personal life without you knowing at all, or being able to do anything about it if you do know.
    I would like to notify the public of a particularly troubling aspect of my personal experience with these intel organizations. About a year before they attempted to assassinate me I had a very strange feeling when selling one of my cars, the person purchasing it looked allot like me, his girlfriend looked similar to mine as well, I had a beard and if I were to shave I don’t think I would even be able to tell the difference between him or me. When he was purchasing my car I noticed him looking at me in a way that almost seemed like he was studying me to impersonate me in the future… He then purchased my vehicle. So now there’s some guy that basically looks exactly like me driving around in my car.
    About a day before I was tortured I received an email from someone using a bop.gov email address that appeared to be some type of threat to my life and referenced my automobile that just had the tires cut. This about a week after being forced to move 1 block from the fusion center.
    A couple days after they tortured and tried to assassinate me I was stumbling to a religious organization to ask for help and refuge when a car which was identical to the extremely unique car that I had at the time(a different car) stopped in the middle of the street rolled down the window paused and drove off. The car was one of a kind because of the paint job, the non-original rims where matched and the exact same piece was missing off the grill of the car and with the same tinted windows and broken door handles. basically an exact match.
    I found out the fusion center was located there maybe 5 months ago, on the website which is gone now had a statement on the front page similar to this: “we study the threat posed by the danger of cloned vehicles”. I found that statement to be unbelievable. Basically they’re specifically abusing the exact thing they claim they’re trying to prevent and torturing people to death with it.

  4. As a sidebar, let us now look at George Orwell’s classic essay, “Politics and the English Language.” For instance:

    In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. … In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

    There’s plenty more.

    https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

  5. When are they going to release this so-called ‘watchlist.’ We’ve had our lives destroyed via “CoIntelPro” by these government CRIMINALS hiding behind ‘national security threats,’ due to THEIR CORRUPTION & TERRORISM.
    EXPOSING the DOMESTIC “Executive Assassination Ring” is the reason for our TARGETING.
    LibertyAndJusticeUnited (.org)

  6. The lists are good, but they only collect the obvious candidates – people with foreign sounding names, readers of The Intercept, or people who vote for 3rd parties. These people, no doubt, deserve to be harassed, but their potential to inflict real damage is probably quite limited. They generally don’t rise above the level of a simple nuisance.

    What the databases don’t flag are the deep covert agents, the real potential troublemakers – those who have no suspicious activities at all. These are the people who mask their true nature by disguising their real agendas with a calculated series of anodyne activities. Making this level of effort obviously is only worthwhile if it hides the presence of extensive and sinister secret plans.

    So while the DTI has done good work so far, the publication by The Intercept is extremely fortuitous. It is time to demand a much larger database that will hold the names of all individuals who exhibit no signs of suspicious activity whatsoever. Then far more extensive information can be gathered, with the goal of detecting that slight slip (which everyone eventually makes) that reveals their true plans. For example, rather than just monitoring conversations and restricting air travel, satellite cameras could be deployed to track all their movements. Their friends and acquaintances could be also be investigated, and any compromising information could be used as leverage to persuade them to turn against the target. From my experience, applying a little pressure will cause people to confess to all sorts of plots.

    So I hope by the time the next leaker reveals the status of the databases, that rather than a measly million names, they will contain several hundred million or more.

    • “the names of all individuals who exhibit no signs of suspicious activity whatsoever”

      Is writing a letter to your legislature without putting a return address on it suspicious because of the anthrax scare? Would vigilante Bush era congressmen put you on a Union list to be followed and harassed until you confess then attempt to call you a terrorist? How long would they torture for? Would they care? Who would care if you were on a list because business men would loose money if you open your mouth and have an opinion? You want to wait for a list Glenn is compiling for you? What if those names match a terrorist suspected of writing letters and you never called the Oklahoma State legislature to ask and see if they would do such a thing? Does that make you a lazy news mongering fool? This news site is becoming exactly what it said it didn’t want to be, a grotesque form of super high profile media that doesn’t care about the stories that make the terrorist lists what they are. Why would a person become a terrorist? What would they have to do? Who would alert them? The local police station? Could they maybe warn the FBI that a terrorist letter writing fool is on the loose? What about your opinions? Do you have anything to say that might actually bring a company to its knees and you are dumb enough to blast that information all over town? What would the big boys do to you about writing a letter with information they didn’t want out. Kiss you and tell you not to do it again? Wake up friends. The terrorist list has to start somewhere. If they are going to watch a person ask youself why? Call Oklahoma Mary Fallin and ask her. Get her comment on the books so you are ready if the legalities ensue. We’ll see if Oklahoma will prosecute after they followed and tortured for ten years.

      • They passed a car wash, an A&P, a hamburger drive-in with a big Dr. Pepper sign in the window. ‘Just look at that eyesore drive-in,’ Teasle said. ‘They put that thing here on the main street, and ever since, all we’ve had is kids parked, beeping their horns, throwing crap on the sidewalk.’

        Rambo sipped his Coke.

    • quote” It is time to demand a much larger database that will hold the names of all individuals who exhibit no signs of suspicious activity whatsoever.”unquote

      Hahahahahahaha…says the Master of Disguises at Milprop 3.

      quote:”So I hope by the time the next leaker reveals the status of the databases, that rather than a measly million names, they will contain several hundred million or more.”unquote

      At least we know what list you are on. And it isn’t a watch list.

      • TELEVISION TAKE OVER who does that? Let’s say you are in your home and cameras are watching you and you are being recorded. You might say, “I’m going for a cheeseburger.” Then miraculously a cheeseburger commercial comes on. Are you protesting the closing of a GM plant? Miraculously a car commercial for GM comes on! Why do they close GM plants? Because workers compensation is OUT OF CONTROL in Oklahoma CIty. Who watches you first before the NSA decides to put you on their list. It’s FEDERAL MARSHALS!!! They decide issues along with Homeland Security about who will be watched for domestic terrorism. So if you piss off a legislature with your opinionated letters that spell out for people who their city is being destroyed by, workers compensation, police, the legislatures, and the Federal Marshals will stalk you, harass you, take over your television, blink on your computer screen, hack into your email, send you mail that pertains to your troubles, contact your friends and family through twitter to manipulate you as they will think its all one big fucking game and turn your radio in your car into a personal DJ service. This is what the local towns are capable of. The FBI, NSA, and the CIA are busy with people who want to bomb towns and kill innocent civilians to make a political point. They do not have time for stupid bullshit like letters being sent without return addresses. GET YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT OF LAUREN’S LIFE OR TRY AND PROSECUTE HER IF YOU DO THE FBI WILL LAUGH AT YOUR FUCKING ASS LIKE THE INTERCEPT IS RIGHT NOW. GET THE FUCK OUT.

        • If you attempt to prosecute me I will not use a lawyer in Oklahoma as I have lawyer bashed them all. I will contact the ACLU and beg them to take my case on grounds of freedom of speech and torture by Federal Marshals and local police. I quit. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE.
          Examples of torture and harassment for ten years include;
          Have your period? Have the woman at the check out line in the grocery store carry some Midol to the counter.
          Your Kid sick? Have the lady at the gas station rip out a box of toilet paper and blow her nose.
          Driving to head out of town? Have the license plate on the back of the car in front of you read…007TRPU Spy Trip You
          Want to send a letter as your walking to your mailbox? Have the man across the street that wants to sue you take a letter to his mailbox the same time.
          Your kid get a report card? Have the teacher write he is good on his bicycle. That will fuck with your mind as they are fucking with your kid at school.
          Letter get returned with a wrong address? That’s because you didn’t sent one to the legislature.
          Did you write the local newspaper too? Have them call you every night.
          Start loosing your mind as people talk out loud all around you mentioning things you did today? Get some medical help and they ask you to get GENOTESTED. Thats for a disorder because your going fucking crazy now.
          Why didn’t you say something years ago? BECAUSE FEAR WILL FUCK YOU UP!
          What did they tell your mother about so that she will be in on the deal? That you’ll get two years of prison felony charges for every year. She’ll whisper that in the kitchen because she too thinks they are LISTENING.
          Watch your husband die while still being tortured? Why didn’t you say something? BECAUSE IF HE DIES THEY WILL SUE YOU AND LEAVE YOU AND YOUR THREE KIDS PENNILESS.
          Need an attorney and they know it? Spread shit about you all over town to frame your husband.
          Need a doctor for your sick husband? Tell them you are a doctor hater.
          Going to the bank? Have the lady that’s kid is mean to your son drive up to the bank the same time you do so she knows that you are being fucked with and she can fuck with you.
          Getting fat? Put on a weight commercial.
          Had sex with your husband? Send out some Victoria Secret pantie discount coupons.
          Want to go live and global with the whole world and get on the Ellen show if they fuck with you anymore?
          TELL EVERYONE ON THE INTERCEPT BEFORE THEY SHUT YOU UP IN LEGAL DISPUTES.

    • You have to admit, Duce, their criteria for inclusion are getting more sophisticated. “No Recognized Terrorist Group Affiliation” pretty much takes in everybody this side of the Rotary Club. And the fact that the names are secret means that anybody can get the creepy feeling that they are on the list, or could be.

      It’s not the first time the US gov’t has used vague and inclusive language to snare suspects. Some key excerpts, and later annotations by Justice Frank Murphy, from the War Department’s report on the deportation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast:
      - “American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty …”
      - “While it was believed that some were loyal, it was known that many were not … ”
      - “… the main geographic pattern of Japanese population was fixed many years ago with reference to economic, social and soil conditions. Limited occupational outlets and social pressures encouraged their concentration near their initial points of entry on the Pacific Coast. That these points may now be near certain strategic military and industrial areas …”
      - [Murphy, J.] The need for protective custody is also asserted. The report refers, without identity, to “numerous incidents of violence,” as well as to other admittedly unverified or cumulative incidents. From this, plus certain other events not shown to have been connected with the Japanese Americans, it is concluded that the “situation was fraught with danger to the Japanese population itself,” and that the general public “was ready to take matters into its own hands.”
      - … “the loyalties of this group ‘were unknown and time was of the essence.’”
      - “The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”

      Orwell, Kafka and Philip K. Dick certainly grasped how ready-made and power-enabling such language could be.

      • Good points. I’m sure the NCC will follow up on this. Having people swear loyalty oaths to prove they aren’t terrorists is an excellent idea.

        Another promising approach is to offer financial rewards for anyone tipping off DTI to potential terrorists. This may seem a bit tacky, but would probably lead to a surge in the size of the database. The goal of course, when another terrorist incident occurs, is to save the NCC the embarrassment of having to admit the person wasn’t even in their database. Once everyone is in the database, that can’t possibly happen.

  7. “Snowden Said to Be Allowed 3 More Years in Russia”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/world/europe/edward-snowden-russia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1

    “Edward J. Snowden, the American intelligence contractor who published a raft of secret documents and then fled to Russia, has been granted a three-year residence permit, his lawyer announced Thursday.

    “Anatoly G. Kucherena, the lawyer, told a news conference that Mr. Snowden had not been given asylum in Russia, but rather had been granted permission to live here until 2017, Russian news media reported.

    “His new status includes the right to leave Russia for up to three months, Mr. Kucherena said. Mr. Snowden, 31, had originally planned to head to Latin America for asylum. Anger in Germany at American surveillance has also prompted some discussion there about whether Mr. Snowden should be allowed to live in Germany. But he has so far avoided setting foot outside Russia lest the United States find a way to arrest and prosecute him.”

  8. Cindy,

    In reply to your posts below: I perceive most of the posts here are submitted by salaried Stasi sock-puppets and mission statement generators. R1B’s post looks like Stasi Shit Swirling to me, and he’s got this thing about West European DNA. Can’t be sure, so I can’t give the benefit of the doubt. Then there’s Lauren, and you post frequently and equivocally enough to make me wonder if the Stasi puts food on your table too. However (as devil’s advocate and veteran target), spinning cycles on polite efforts to inform those who do not want to be informed can be a waste of time. Explaining things in a polite, expository, measured way to those who have enthusiastically supported the Stasi throughout their entire adult lives is absurd. Being civil towards disinfo oozing scum is not going to happen. Most American consumers will never know about their own Stasi industry for one single reason: they do not want to know. And in 2016, they will elect another Stasi ass-licker to the WH. Therefore, they forfeit the right to civil discourse on this particular subject.

    Finally, to the point… in defense of the actual targets you are politely admonishing: surveillance is one of the most trivial annoyances the Stasi dish out. When the game is personal vendetta — not just business, nothing personal [sic] — the ugly turn pro, and that means private sector ugly too. If everything you know about the US’ Stasi complex is from the FGS site, that’s great; if you’re Stasi, not so great. It is an excellent (maybe the best) source on the subject, accurately describing baseline domestic stasi-rodent behaviors. But, it overtly and self-consciously omits details regarding some extremely evil Stasi Shit, to err on the measured side. (Not a criticism.)

    Your admonishment can easily be construed as coming from someone who has never been physically targeted, not just digitally. One can assume the Stasi never delivered death threats to you, never attempted to murder your spouse, never tried to steal money from you, and never recruited a doctor and lab technician between the time you made an appointment, and the moment you laid down on that table. It makes your opinion on the subject weigh a little less. And if you were to respond by asking me to ask the Stasi to “please give me the evidence?”, then you are outed. “Prove it!”, is the most ignorant, mendacious demand ever made of a Stasi target in the rapidly undeveloping US and the completely undeveloped DDR. Out yourself if you wish, but once marked, that Stasi taint doesn’t come off the skin, and targets know. And sometimes, targets get to turn the tables, as happened to Stasi 0.20 .

    Frankly, only a fool would trust any indoctrinated — very easy to spot — American to be stasi-proof, i.e., unrecruitable by those grubby, always-hiding, surveillance role player coordinators.

    That’s not paranoia; it’s knowing what year it is, and what your current latitude and longitude coordinates are.

    Best Regards,
    Stan Burnitt
    San Jose, CA
    Stasi Rat Nation

    • If someone forfiets the write to speak out against anyone then you are bashing any idea of free speech which makes your comments here a complete waste of time.

      • Hey Lauren, if I come to your house and yell outside of your door or window all day and all night, day after day, about some grievance that I’ve gotten all puffed up about, which incidentally has nothing to do with you or anything that you’ve done to me, will you chase me off? And if so, will that be you “bashing” my “free speech?” Oh, by the way, quashing free speech is about government overreach, not comment boards that someone has established for whatever purpose they have established it for. Are you really so ignorant that you don’t know that?

      • No, that’s no my reasoning. First, there is absolutely no such thing as “free speech” in the US. What an absurd slogan. Speech in the US is extremely costly, and the Stasi keep jacking up the price. Second, I said they forfeit the right to be treated with civility and respect, at least by this target. The “people” who serve as willing cover for the Stasi, can say whatever they want, whenever they want, but they shouldn’t expect their opinions to be valued. (I’m sure mine are not, by most reading me, but that does not matter — they’re Stasi or Stasi’s little helpers..) This is a seriously compromised society; it will be treated as such.

    • It shows they stalked me with 15 people a day and say’s “terrorist watch list” on the federal evidence discs.

    • It sounds like you suspect potentially everyone of being ‘stasi.’ I don’t know how to respond to that. I’ve worked with people with persecution complexes, however, and I thought this phenomena deserved a mention. As for my encouraging people to gather as much evidence as possible of the abuse suffered, it was not meant to sound as inconsiderate as it obviously did to you. It’s just the first thing to recommend, to remove diagnoses of paranoia, schizophrenia, etc from the outset., and is not actually an indication of mistrust. Whether it’s directly because of mental aberration due to abuse or independent of it, there are some telltale signs of psychological breakdown being expressed in these comment pages, and personally I think some if not all of the suffering ones are genuine about their perceptions and should seek other help – whether legal or psychiatric – as well as (or instead of) posting here.

      • Cindy, you reply in the role of therapist, seeking to identify personality defects in Stasi targets, while the country you identify with continues to display all the aberrant symptoms of yet another one of its long, violent, psychotic episodes. What’s up with that, doctor? The problem is not inside me; it is external. I have been attacked. This irritates me, and makes me feel hostile towards perpetrators and the willfully clueless who aid them with money and votes. It’s the healthy, normal, human response. And yes, I judge. Why? Because I watched too many Americans pass judgement on millions of human beings, then kill them. They acted like these offensive wars were sporting events, then they would lose, then ‘move on’ to the next psychotic episode. So, what’s a few insults compared to mass murder? And by the way, what part did you play in all that mayhem? Did you vote for Bush or Obama? Is Hillary next? And then?

        The paranoia insinuation is textbook Stasi Speak 101.

        When I am home, in S.A., I have infrequent physical — yet quite menacing — encounters with Stasi, though they intrude in every way, digitally that is, up to TV hacking. I don’t suspect my wife, her family, or our friends of being Stasi, even though at least two friends were recruited for a little surveillance role playing, by some non-domestic variety of Stasi Rodent (CIA maybe?). This, I must let slide. I have a home where I am surrounded by outstanding, trustworthy people. But when I am inside Stasiland, they interfere with many more aspects of life — insurance, health care, banking, driving tests, etc. — and they make their physical presence obvious, all the time. The difference is stark and intentional. To a domestic target, they are everywhere — that’s the game. Even when they’re not anywhere nearby, you have to assume they are. In this aspect, they win, but it will eventually lead to a total breakdown of trust in the society. This happened in East Germany. This is happening here. Maybe these matters are beyond the competence of a therapist. Go through it yourself, then diagnose. But to do that, you’ll first need to grow some civil courgage, otherwise, they won’t bite; they’ll just watch.

        The paranoia charge is another mark of the Stasi rodent. (If they are not your paymasters, you are doing their work on your own nickel.) Targets cannot seek legal help in Stasiland; it does not work that way. Stasiland therapists are just a nastier breed of Stasi agent. That’s how it works in a Stasi State. If your country ever decides to become a nation of laws, and I suddenly find myself with legal standing, I’ll lawyer up asap. But my head is just fine. Between you and I, and the lurking Stasi, I’m definately the well-adjusted one.

        Cheers

  9. That ANYONE is even considering Diane Feinstein as an ally in getting at the truth of the Torture Report is proof the American people are demonstrably stupid.

    The establishment is playing the populace, including oft-times intelligent journalists, like a fiddle.

    • <blockquoteThat ANYONE is even considering Diane Feinstein as an ally…—Cindy

      Agree 100% about Feinstein. If there were such a number as one million percent, then that would be the number that I would use.

    • “…….That ANYONE is even considering Diane Feinstein as an ally in getting at the truth of the Torture Report is proof the American people are demonstrably stupid…..”

      I think you need to just blame Californians for electing – repeatedly – Feinstein, Boxer and Pelosi. What a trio.

  10. Commenters on this site would do well to distinguish between being actually watched by the government and a persecution complex.

    • They gave me an evidence disc in court stating they had 8 federal agents plus an entire team of local agents watching me “per day”. Recording metadata and all content of all my calls, emails, text messages, every single turn I made in my car for months, description of me and what I was wearing every time I left the house. No mention of them repeatedly stealing my money, poisoning me, torturing me limitless repeatedly, or attempting to assassinate me.

      I wasn’t doing a single thing at all illegal, only they were. There was never a reason for them to allow every r1b agent in town and all their r1b buddies and r1b relatives access to all of my personal information completely unsupervised with the latest cia technology.

      • Do you still have this evidence disc? If you do, copy it and send it with a detailed description of your grievances to a journalist you respect. I am not doubting you personally, although it should be pointed out that your posts presume people know what ‘r1b’ means, which is, well, presumptuous on your part. Explain yourself better, and kindly don’t blame The Intercept for not digging deeper into a story you do not articulate reasonably.

        • Sent it to aclu, cair, a few places. Sent information to maybe 30 or 50 news agencies around the world, maybe 7 different languages. You try writing some stuff after they try to kill you and leave you with brain damage.

          To be honest I think people would be allot more interested in what they did to my company and why. 80,000,000.000usd and counting.

          • You are brain damaged? This is the first thing you should alert people to, as it will allow people to process the information more considerately and compassionately than otherwise. Also, please explain patiently with everyone what ‘r1b’ means rather than presuming your readers will know (I personally had to look it up, for example, and to be honest it’s still a bit vague). I don’t know that people would be more interested in the financial angle, particularly CAIR, ACLU and The Intercept – all of whom are outspokenly humanist. If it is just a communications problem, consider getting friends to help you articulate the problem so that you don’t sound so ‘out there’ that you are dismissed.

          • think ur more brain damaged than me. Unreasonable to explain a list of things for a single post that I already went over previously, that’s why its in the screenname.
            Ya’ll are off in left field not me.

          • Now you are exhibiting hostile frustration and petulance. Is this really what you wish to convey?

          • It is clear that people who have actually been tortured by stalking and harassment have never experienced the kind of torture that would drive them to insanity. If however we took Cindy and manipulated all the people around her to do things and speak out loud as to intentionally irritate her for ten years she would find this kind of treatment excruciatingly difficult to bear. We would do it the minute she walks out her front door and not stop until she went back home. Even then we would make loud noises outside her home or call her endlessly. If speaking out on any subject is considered grounds for dismissal because you simply don’t agree with someone we have ALL lost our freedoms in the United States or elsewhere for that matter. A Watclist must be very concerning for an innocent individual. What if we tortured the hell out of them while we watched them. Good Idea?

        • So now the abused and tortured is to write a story or journal about the torture and hand it over to the journalist? This is reporting? What is a tip? Why do full documents get disclosed and then editorialized but an actual victim of the documents in proof has to write a bibliography before the journalist attempts to maybe report it. Where is the leg work? Who is author then? The journalist or the abused that wrote a summery for the journalist? And does one have to have the proof disc to show the journalist? It’s that investigative reporting?

          • Don’t expect people to understand you if you don’t make yourself clear to someone who gives a damn, and of course to whatever extent you can you must supply your own evidence of others’ wrongdoing. You are not entitled to being heard, and life isn’t fair.

      • Yes this is exactly what they did to a husband and wife in Oklahoma for disagreeing with workers compensation attorneys and aiming their arguments toward private hospitals. All for writing letters to legislatures and not using a return address. Calling it domestic terrorism. Call Mary Fallin in Oklahoma and tell her to quit the torture of people who are demonstrating their right to free speech. Terrorism is not writing a letter. Terrorism is the destruction of human life for purposes of war.

        • If you wish redress for your grievances, learn to communicate clearly, or get someone who can to do it for you.

          • I already stated myself very clearly in other posts. Obviously I can’t repeat myself with 20 paragraphs every time I want to post a sentence. It’s in the screenname, that’s all you need to know.

          • @overthrow-r1b

            You shouldn’t need 20 paragraphs if it is a concise point, and if it isn’t concise and requires the nuance of 20 paragraphs it isn’t something that can fit in a screen name. Since no one else here is really familiar with the term, it falls on you to explain it and not be cryptic about it. Just see the simple fact that communication needs a shared vocabulary, and see also that most people will write you off if you deviate from normal terminology and simply hint at ‘specialized knowledge.’

  11. Barry Eisler points out that Barack Obama’s ban on torture is nothing to cheer about, since it renders torture a ‘policy choice’ rather than leaving it the flat-out illegal and actionable behavior that it really is. Instead of prosecuting, the president has left the precedent firmly in place, which in my view makes him complicit. There is an awful tendency by people to take Obama at his word (for example, assuming his praising of net neutrality today actually means anything), when he is obviously 99% of the time just saying pleasing-sounding stuff and not backing it up with actions that count.

    *Don’t Cheer Obama’s ‘Ban’ on Torture *

    https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/08/dont-cheer-obamas-ban-torture

  12. I, – I, – I, I just don’t know what to say… “No Recognized Terrorist Group Affiliation” … It’s the first time I have ever been in a majority, in anything… I feel so – popular, or wanted, or something…

    • Didn’t Yossarian heavily censor and then add “I yearn for you tragically” at the end and sign the Chaplain’s name to out-going letters? One of my favorite books ever.

    • You know what a good reporter would do? They would call Governor Fallin in Oklahoma and ask her if her state has ever followed a suspect guilty of letter writing to legislatures because the letters didn’t have a return address. Then if legal issues ensue for the letter writing you will have her comment on weather or not Oklahoma would prosecute on the grounds of domestic terrorism for writing a letter.

    • John Kelly..if the chaplain were to write a letter I’m sure the Pope would find out about it. Suppose this letter ends up in the hands of Republicans in Oklahoma who realize its very bad for business then they hand it to their democrat friends who also agree its very bad for business so they in turn hand it over to lawyers who also agree its very bad for business lets put an end to letter writing and punish anyone who sends an anonymous letter to a legislature. Now you have censorship of free speech and you also have a threat of domestic terrorism charge at a average citizen who just happened to be privy of some very informative business news about private companies. Call the Oklahoma legislatures and ask them if they get an anonymous letter with no return address if they will call it TERRORISM

      • Dr. John prescribes vodka and marijuana for your reflexive verbal ticks. You spit out phrases like your brain went through somebody’s partner’s chipper, and then coagulated, re-formed and alien-like, you make vaguely human sounding sentences with keywords and phrases pulled from the ether.

        • What did your ether ass just spit out? Do you think a tortures victim cares that your comments are eloquently sounding syllables? Get to the point and make one while your at it.

      • From the article coram nobis cited:

        “The president should make sure that Mr. Brennan — who is, after all, his employee — spurns Mr. Tenet and accepts oversight.”

        We, the people, should make sure that our employees are held criminally accountable. And,

        “A failure of leadership took the country to the dark side. A strong presidential lead can ensure that we don’t go back.”

        And we, the people, should not hold our collective breath on this, as the President himself has given blanket immunity to all involved in torture.

        On hypocrisy:

        “We need honest, reasoned debate, and not fear-mongering. To those . . . who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

        John Ashcroft,
        Attorney General, 2001 – (While depriving millions of American residents due process to a fair trial)

  13. If one of the 700,000 Watchlisted people called you’d probably say you were busy taking down the CIA officials. You are what you loathe. You are for the big boys. You walked the fuck out of the average girl’s problem for BIG BOYS. Fuck you!

    • ‘Urine!’
      ‘Clinically sterile urine!’
      ‘Piping hot!’
      ‘Urine you’d be proud to take home and introduce to the folks!’
      Trevor Axford handles cash-flow. Pemulis dispenses little conical-tipped Visine bottles of juvenile urine, bottles easily rendered discreet in underarm, sock or panty.
      ‘Urine trouble? Urine luck!’

      • Your semen is leaking in your not so disturbed butt hole, but then again the Siemens Corporation who sells to hospitals that chase your ass if you don’t agree with them and write letters against them are another group of piss ass people because they claim you are a terrorist and have the local police follow your fucking leaky butt hole for ten years. How is that for freedom of speech? Also, I wouldn’t send them an email if you don’t like the millions they are making off people who don’t need surgeries. If you imply that money should actually be going to the elderly and children they will most assuredly assassinate you with their stalking twitter tools and ruin your already demoralized reputation and harass your entire family. So much for freedom lets kick some CIA ASS!

  14. Top story of the hour:

    “DOZENS OF GOVERNMENT WATCHDOGS are sounding the alarm that the Obama administration is stonewalling them, in what is being described as an unprecedented challenge to the government agencies they’re supposed to oversee.”

    http://www.foxnews.com/

    It’s time to get behind articles of impeachment of Maximum Leader Obama, then trial by Senate.

    • Fox? Of all the sources you could pick for information, it makes me wonder if you also wanted to impeach Bush for lying us into war, torture, illegal wiretapping etc…. in which case, I am with you. If not, you are simply another right wing troll with the moral compass of a salamander.

      • The same FOX News that repeatedly hosted and celebrated Glenn Greenwald, and ran reporting on prime time on Bluffdale, is derided by the Salonik airhead John Kelly.

        • Salonik? That’s rich. Fox “News” has hosted a few real people, but their main push is right wing propaganda, and doing what their corporate overlords demand. The only reason Greenwald gets on there is because he is critical of Obama…. so, you failed to answer the question: did you also want to impeach Bush?

          • You “wondered,” John. Why did I need to respond to that? Are you asking now? Not that I need to respond to that either.

            But as someone with pronounced paleocon libertarian views on this board, and as someone who consistently denounces neoconservatism (aka leftist Republicanism) and has linked Bush figures in my writing firmly to the neocon camp (and in some cases that of the dark occult), the question is, do you have enough brains to postulate whether I ever voted for a Bush.

          • The only reason Greenwald gets on there is because he is critical of Obama….

            But one would think Mitt or Jeb or Lindsey wouldn’t want an hour of critical prime-time reporting on Bluffdale, you irrational dumb-shit. Obama voter.

          • Did you push to have Bush impeached?

            If you get your news from Fox, it is not my brains that are in question. Might as well get your news from the recently departed Breitbart, or Alex Jones, or Glenn Beck. Fox is the worst of the terrible corporate news channels by far. More lies, more disinformation campaigns than any other network. They are so bad that they keep the weak and pathetic MSNBC news, and the great Jon Stewart in business pointing out how stupid they are. There are web sites devoted to revealing their lies and they never run out of crap to deride on Fox. A laughable source for anything but tasty propaganda for stupid white people. Do carry on.

          • “Obama voter” Well, you got me there. I did vote for him in 2008 like a fool as it turns out…but I learned a valuable lesson. I don’t trust Democrats to be more than 10% right, ever. A bunch of spineless weasels for the most part. Of course Republicans are hovering around ~1%. You, on the other hand cited Fox News as a source. HAH! Fucking hilarious. Mensa is calling.

          • You get your news from The View and from Joy Behar (and, apparently, from Jon Stewart, the brother of Larry Leibowitz, the former COO of NYSE Euronext. Easily digestible Comedy Central shows for politically informed John Kelly’s current events consumption.).

          • If you want to know where I get my news, just ask. Hints: I know who Amy Goodman is, who Glen Ford is, who Jeremy Scahill is, who Glenn Greenwald is, who Bill Moyers is, who Ali Abunimah is.. fuck it, let me just name a few of the people I get my news from for you… maybe you will answer my question in return: Spencer Ackermann, Matt Taibbi, Margaret Kimberley, Cenk Ugher, Max Blumenthal, David Cay Johnston, Dean Baker, Jane Hamsher, Alexis Goldstein, Jacob Applebaum, Bruce A Dixon, Dave Zirin, Wikileaks, Kevin Gosztola to name just a few.

            Your dismissal of Jon Stewart as a potential news source says a lot about you and nothing about him. He uses parody and satire to bring news stories into far better focus than Fox.

            Did you push to have Bush impeached?

          • John, your intellectual insecurity betrayed by that unsolicited name-dropping of news and opinion resources is sort of glaring.

          • Oh, that hurts. You did suggest that you knew where I got my news, just correcting your mushy little conjecture. Besides you might look some of them up and learn something interesting. It is never too late to get over the addiction to right wing claptrap.

      • …if you also wanted to impeach Bush for lying us into war, torture, illegal wiretapping etc…. in which case, I am with you.

        What a principled, mature decision.

        • Having a hard time with the question? I’m just asking if you are a hypocrite…. should be easy to answer.

          • What’s a Mensa belonger? I’m guessing you mean Mensa member? If I were smart enough to join, I would not… so there is the answer to that question. “We” do not have a “Mensa belonger” on the board.

  15. At the rate the “terrorism experts” are adding to the multiple lists, it won’t be long before they have to turn it around and, in the interests of simplicity, just list those who aren’t on the list. There is one reassuring characteristic of their “collect it all” mindset: trying to see everything makes them blind to any thing.

    The NSA should be defunded and eliminated. It’s been nearly worthless since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has failed to detect any terrorist plans, from the biggie of 9/11, to the amateurish Boston bombers. It is a ‘continuing criminal enterprise’ that should be brought to justice through prosecution under the RICO statutes.

    • Glenn should be fired too. He’s out there supporting big media he doesn’t even give a shit I the average person is accused of terrorist letter writing for opinionated letters the police union didn’t like. WATCHLIST. Really what the fuck are you dumb asses watching? Hollywood CIA specials! Ok. Lets go global and worry about global terrorism and forget that COUNTILPRO IS used by local law enforcement to harass the freedom of speech!!!

      • I was in a zoo. There were no animals or cages, but it was still a zoo. It was close to a nightmare and it woke me before O5OOh. Mario was still asleep, gently lit by the window’s view of tiny lights down the hill. He lay very still and soundless as always, his poor hands folded on his chest, as if awaiting a lily. I put in a plug of Kodiak.

        • if you were in a zoo then the CIA is in a fucking jungle. Pull your head out of Mario’s butt and think like an adult.

      • hi L–> be careful what you say (ha-ha) –early on, I began to suggest that above all, most government agencies simply want more of your money, so I supposed that since I have been seeking to cut taxes, I might be targeted long before ES showed up. Now, AS (after Snowden) I began to zero in on NSA++et.AL+ and supposed that they would say that people who attempt to cut NSA++ could be classified as aiding and abbetting terrorism and would end up on one of the lists (or sub-lists). But I was really shocked when I pointed out that the references to ‘disappearing’ Snowden (and GG) is really a crime but Glenn just let it go….I know for certain that my posts here and my emails to and from every where are monitored……if you want some other tidbits of info, feel free to ask

    • Inertia. How do we effectively begin a campaign to rapidly advertise and promote Leakers, Whistleblowers, and Moles? High level kamikaze truth tellers.

      And I ask as a direct result of severe government abuses as previously mentioned.

        • Underground railroad, now. Churches, Synagogues, Mosques, Temples. Civil/Human Rights organizations. Citizens arrest anyone making false locations as human rights violators.

    • That article is honestly insulting. It implies that anyone who would act as a whistleblower in a similar fashion as Snowden must be motivated by the notoriety and “celebrity” status that Snowden has received. Sure, who wouldn’t want to give up their entire life and career to flee their country while their government tries to track them down and incarcerate them in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives? You can argue about any individual’s motivations for doing such a thing but who the hell would want to put themselves in Snowden’s shoes? Maybe, just maybe they might be motivated by their own sense of morality and sincere beliefs about the sordid business they’ve found themselves a part of.

  16. There is no Sikh population in Dearbornistan. And there is no targeting of the Sikh community. Muslims are targeted because that is the community where the terrorists exist, are recruited from, provide support for terrorism, and refuse to cooperate with terrorist investigations.

  17. Just a little thought. After 9/11 america declared a war on terrorism. We began to fight said terrorists because of their efforts to widdle away at the free world and the rights this country has for its people. My friends, since that time rights in this country have only disappeared. The war on terror in order to protect our rights has only been a failure. This is proof of that. The enemy gained control, played games eith our minds and are winning the war. If you cant see that.. then you are just another example of how strong this enemy is, has become, and will be in due time. To all you true patriots out there. God bless and fuck those who repress.

    • I agree and repression starts with torture of an individual for writing letters that don’t have a return address to legislatures who then claim you are a terrorist so business is not disturbed.

  18. 6 years of finding out this administration has very little intelligence but very much stupid.

  19. After the army of private contractors & another army of new publicly funded security in triplicate by Cheney Bush they reintroduced PRISM in 2007 with updated software. I remember when Republicans refused to appoint a new chief of airport security in 09 knowing that Clinton & Bush & the country were attacked during their first year in office. They just refused to appoint b/c of unions. Then when the underwear bombing failed they attacked the Obama FBI handling of the suspect. Does anyone wonder why the terrorist list has doubled after that T-Party over country bit of hackery? Then rumors allege that Team Obama initiated the attack. Hah! Attack over privacy, attack over security, bounce back & forth & pretend to be “outraged” and “appalled” when “ah freedoms & liberties are…”(add the latest in fear & doom & pretend surprise with even the hasbara brigade joining in)

  20. The NSA mandate has always been what? To exceed its mandate…along with every publicly funded entity along with all privately funded security corporations. After hiring a private contractor army & another publicly funded army after 911 we act surprised that these guys are out of control even after Sequester cuts & furloughs. The terrorist list has what? Doubled under Obama? *I am shocked, shocked & appalled beyond measure*

  21. Call Mary Fallin in Oklahoma and tell her gang stalking is against the law. Tell her law enforcement officials are corrupt and they unions to harass people. Tell her to make it stop its unconstitutional. End the harassment list.

      • You’re right of course about “Lauren,” but it will be difficult to avoid having the Intercept’s comment threads become partly contaminated by the sort of comments being posted here under that name. It is extremely unlikely that someone with the apparent IQ of a fish would randomly take a big interest in a website such as the Intercept. Far more likely is that it’s a type of disinformation which aims to discredit all claims about a particular issue by posting comments that are intentionally idiotic.

        In this case, the issue is a form of extreme harassment which involves Cointelpro-type tactics associated with blacklisting (slander, black bag jobs, computer hacking, overt stalking, verbal abuse, etc.). For a full explanation of the whole dark business – including the disinformation aspect, you should visit a site called “Fight Gang Stalking.”

        Sometimes it’s easier to muddy the waters around something than it is to keep it a secret.

        • It may not even be a person but an algorithm that self-generates its name and makes random, ex cathedra and non-sequiteur comments. You can google “comment generator” or “silly comment generator” and see what comes up. My current favorite is the Guardian comment generator.

          http://www.tomforth.co.uk/guardiancomments/

          There’s also the postmodern essay generator, which is good in moderation.

          I will not buy this record, it is scratched. I will not buy this tobacconist, it is scratched. My hovercraft is full of eels.
          – Monty Python, Hungarian phrasebook sketch

    • Lauren,

      “Gang stalking” is likely a term that was dreamed up by the psychopaths who came up this program. In reality, it’s something akin to the FBI’s “old” COINTELPRO, which probably never stopped and, over time, has evolved/mutated into something with something even worse than the original program. There’s a lot of disinformation and “crazy talk” that helps to keep it all under wraps but, eventually, the truth will out. Best to keep one’s cool, in the meantime. It will all come to the fore. Give it time. Some good person will leak something about it and it will unravel.

      • It was leaked and they decided not to prosecute after framing a man but that doesn’t mean the workers union has left the scene of the crime. They have addresses and phone numbers they use twitter to dispense their stalkers they want to shut people up just like John Kelly. And yes, local law enforcement would know all about COINTELPRO which is where I’m assuming the private investigators and workers compensation advocates learned their trade. As I said in an ealier post, two wrongs don’t make a right. Call state legislatures in Oklahoma and ask about their cover up. This still fits into the hyper vigilante Bush era domestic terrorism charges. Call Oklahoma for your next story.

      • Consequently, the man framed died three years ago of a cholangialcarcinoma but the workers compensation employees still have her name and number and follow and harass her through gang stalking. Call the Oklahoma State legislatures and ask them about it they participated to keep the payouts coming to the state through Medicare. This is very real not fabricated. It all started with vigilante Bush era domestic terrorism charges when people actually wrote letters to be anonymous. Now you are concerned about the NSA following you without encrypted email. Suppose you sent a letter and the small town figured out who you were and they stalked you unsuccessfully for ten years until you quit because the death of your husband was enough. Would you call the local media in your home town? Would you call the Intercept who is writing about vigilante terrorist charges. It is unraveling. Call Oklahoma State legislatures and tell them to vindicate the family they tortured.

          • John Kelly,

            I’m not a fan of censorship or banning but, having read all of Lauren’s comments, I’d be hard pressed to disagree.

          • I rest my case.

            You shouldn’t do that in airports. To get back to today’s article’s subject matter, it could get you on the TIDE suspicious-persons list.

          • I don’t use airports since they started treating people like sheep…. so.. no worries!

          • You rest your case every night your looser butt sits here and talks about news stations. You cant even decipher the fucking news. This site is about torture. It’s about news stations that avoid actual coverage. Its about corruption and misuse of power. You sit and have competitions on who knows more commentators and then joke like you are meaningful? You are a fucking vegetable who gets his leaky news source from the tip of a garbage can.

        • the man framed died three years ago of a cholangialcarcinoma but the workers compensation employees still have her name and number

          They are, however, having difficulty sorting out his or her gender…

          and follow and harass her

          …which is rather easy to do, given that s/he’s dead and all, but the effectiveness of harassing a dead person is debatable.

          • They followed the whole fucking family dip shit. The husband and the wife. The wife wrote the letters they framed the husband because he had a job they could sue him for. Its business as usual in Oklahoma friends. You want to call a man’s wife a terrorist and plug her ass up you just call the local police and tell them a letter writing terrorist is on the loose. Anyone of your lazy asses could be tied up in a commenting lawsuit if you had anything worth listening to but unfortunately all you have to say is how you want to impeach the god damned president of the only free fucking world in the Universe. So here is to your lack of understanding. You don’t need to fuck up the USA as the legislature in Oklahoma is fucking it up for you.

          • The husband and wife were both stalked and harassed and tortured by the local police and their unions.

      • Exactly why your in religious ass has no idea what the hell is really happening in the country. The best you can do is say I suck? Really well integrated. Hope your having a good day while the NSA stalks your ass.

        • There is no reason to believe “gang stalking” as described on the internet actually exists. People will naturally be skeptical of your posts about it, especially with nonsense about unions thrown in, when it seems obvious that 99% of the people who believe they are victims of gang stalking are actually victims of paranoid delusions, schizophrenia, or reactions to medicines/substances. So while it’s certainly possible that an organized group is out to get some small number of people, referencing a bunch of people who falsely believe it is not particularly convincing.

          • I suppose I could encrypt messages through Tor but since the only media investigating the abuse of terrorism charges consider blogging about it is insane then it wouldn’t matter, right?

          • The nice thing is that no one needs to rely on garbage like yours posted in a comment thread to learn about modern Cointelpro stalking. The legwork has already been done by people who have aggregated the (mainstream published) well-sourced material on the subject. Anyone who visits “Fight Gang Stalking” can see what the most credible claims are, and evaluate them for himself/herself.

          • AnonOrwellFan, nice point about garbage being delivered by people like me who actually give EXAMPLES of how Cointelpro is being used by local police stations to torture people. Are you fucking serious? You think what I’ve said about being stalked is a fucking joke? That’s because you have NO IDEA WHAT ITS LIKE. You can’t imagine people harassing your stupid butt for tens years. If it happened to you then you would understand the mental toughness someone has to achieve to avoid the stalkers. You my friend are fucking clueless and you wouldn’t last five fucking minutes in the torture chair of the CIA. Your ass would divulge everything. You are going up against a big fucking world here sitting in your little seat and typing up cute responses to dumb asses who have never fought off a force of police officers bugging your goddamned house and fucking with your shit and following your damn family for ten years. You get a fucking clue buddy. This is the point of torture by Cointelpro to drive you to insanity and SHUT YOU UP! IF I wanted to get information from you I would pull your skin off with ice. FUCK YOU DUMB ASSES!

        • I’m waiting for the NSA to stalk me. Please, send a hot Megan Fox lookalike, I promise I’ll tell her everything I know.

      • @ anonymous:

        In addition to “WTF???” I would like add truly bizarre and purposeful crap-flooder to the character description.

          • Stunning that you can’t see how stalking and harassing for writing a letter could become a terrorist situation. Even more stunning your disregard for the situation that would lead someone to be placed on a watchlist. That’s like saying “Hey! There’s a really patriotic baseball game going on tonight want to go?” “Sure! Who is playing/” “I have no fucking clue! I’m just going to watch the ball get thrown around the field and yell and scream about it like everyone else! “YAY!” “Yell and scream like everyone else about a Watchlisted group of baseball players we know nothing about! FUN. Let’s all go!”

  22. meanwhile in Australia:

    NSA leaker Thomas Drake says Oz security reforms are ‘scary’
    Australians urged to oppose NatSec laws before they silence whistleblowers

    “I think it is really designed to deal with people like myself and others who would dare to bring to light those activities that are behind the shield of national security.

    “It will send an extraordinarily stark message; ‘even if you see something bad, just shut up’.”

    The Australian security reforms, spearheaded by Federal Attorney General George Brandis, would criminalise journalists and activists who would help whistleblowers leak information to the public.

    The laws would introduce enhanced abilities for clandestine targeted malware implantation to combat whistleblowing terrorism and impose strict penalties for those who leak sensitive state information.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/04/thomas_drake_scary_oz_security_reforms_will_stifle_whistleblowers/

    • I try to be tolerant of other cultures. Australia began as a penal colony, and should be permitted to finish that way. Many cultures, when under stress, seek to return to their roots.

      • That’s not really fair El Duce. Australia today is nothing like a penal colony. They still have in them a sort of “frontier” mentality. At least amongst some of them.

        Also, a lot of the original settlers weren’t criminals. A lot of the poor and the landless were forcefully shipped to populate the continent.

        Let’s face it. It’s the big bad wolf that making the little pups follow its command.

        • That’s not really fair

          Good. I never attempt to be fair.

          Australia today is nothing like a penal colony

          I wouldn’t be too concerned – by criminalizing journalism they’ll be well on their way. Penal colony does sound a little pejorative; perhaps the term ‘luxury lockup’ or ‘stylish stockade’ would be more politically correct.

          a lot of the original settlers weren’t criminals

          That’s only because the early legal system wasn’t very advanced. Journalists at the time weren’t considered to be criminals. It may be too late for lawmakers to go back in time and retroactively criminalize the activities of the early settlers, but at least the situation can be rectified for modern day Australians.

          • Ya know, for a while there, you really had me thinking you were a master of satire instead of a stinking authoritarian that grovels in the shitbed of human conditions while idolizing every evil on the face of the planet. My bad.
            Meanwhile, there’s nothing like the stench of a draining puss filled perineal abcess to bring one to his senses.

        • Your talking about puppies? What the hell? What happened the THE WATCHLIST!!!! I got my binoculars on OKLAHOMA trying to prosecute individuals for writing letters and your talking about puppies and settlements?

  23. The Canadian spies actually achieve the goal of making Obama’s NSA look transparent in comparison:

    -”CSEC won’t say how long it keeps Canadians’ private data

    CSEC came under fire this winter for violating privacy, after a leak showed that a “Canadian special source” – never described further – had helped the agency identify and track Internet-using devices that had passed through a Canadian airport.

    In February, CSEC chief John Forster responded to criticisms by telling a parliamentary committee that such activities are fully legal, and in keeping with the secret orders the agency gets from Minister of National Defence Rob Nicholson. “The data wouldn’t be retained any longer than we needed it for that exercise, and the ministerial directive has a firm end-of-retention date,” he said.

    No specific time periods were mentioned. And the Canadian agency’s closest ally is less secretive on such matters. “Inadvertently acquired communications of or concerning a United States person may be retained no longer than five years,” reads a declassified National Security Agency document.”

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/csec-wont-say-how-long-it-keeps-canadians-private-data/article19910556/

  24. More concrete evidence that the US constitution created a fascist state.

    How much more evidence do we need that “representative” democracy is a sham?

    Time for a direct approach. Representatives are not accountable. Elections exist only to hire the next bunch of un accountable liars.

    • Very good point. In order to testify or verify information the person who is targeted should know exactly what they are suspected of and should be allowed due process. So if workers compensation employees continue to harass and stalk individuals using twitter accounts it should be considered unconstitutional. I simply do not know who came up with this idea to follow and harass with media but weather it was the FBI, the CIA or the Unions it must STOP. Every suspected terrorist deserves a fair and just trial. Bring them all in and quit watching them.

    • Direct democracy is just as easily corrupted, if not moreso. You would require a well informed and wise electorate to make something like that work much better than our current system. Ideally our current system would work much better than direct democracy could, if we were ever able to reduce the role of money (and bribery) in politics.

  25. This is fun, you can now get a “GCHQ-approved Master’s degrees in cyber security”

    -”Cyber Security is a crucial part of this government’s long term plan for the British economy,” said Maude, speaking from GCHQ’s base. “We want to make the UK one of the safest places in the world to do business online….”

    -”It’s not the first time GCHQ has been part of a concerted effort to recruit more hackers. The fifth GCHQ and industry-backed Cyber Security Challenge UK took place earlier this year, in an effort to recruit talent from any and all backgrounds. ”

    http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-08/04/gchq-universities

    One thing, though, the Snowden docs show is that GCHQ and NSA don’t seem to spend as much effort securing the internet, as they do sabotaging the security of the internet.

  26. Part of the solution to Obama’s crappy government will have to be do-it-yourself:

    -”SAN FRANCISCO: Public concerns about the US government’s secretive surveillance programmes exposed by Edward Snowden have spawned a slew of encryption products and privacy services that aim to make electronic spying more difficult.

    Two products brought out in the past five weeks illustrate the rapid development of the new marketplace: Blackphone, a handset which started shipping on June 30 for $629, and Signal, a free app that appeared on the iPhone app store last week.”

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/NSA-leaks-spur-new-crop-of-secure-phones-communications/articleshow/39761393.cms

    • There goes another couple Billion shekels courtesy of the taxpayer. The deep pockets and shadow budgets just means more jobs for Obama’s employment stats. COINTEL and counter-electronic warfare is bonus time.

  27. Dear Stasi, I know you’re out there, I can see your disinfo!

    But seriously, I would like to apply for a Stasi Surveillance Role Player position. I know there are thousands of openings.

    Although your particular duties here at The Intercept’s comments section — as Stasi Internet Surveillance Role Players — do seem interesting and cushy, I want something a little more exciting, and I am willing to take a substantial pay cut to be given the impunity, plus bennies, to stalk and destroy anyone I suspect of having the tiniest smidgen of integrity.

    Stalk ‘Em All! Let God Sort ‘Em Out!

    I too want to be assigned this patriotic duty: stalk and destroy better people than I with absolute impunity, just like your Stasi street-thug buddies do. Where do I sign up? Admittedly, joining the band wagon this late in the game is overkill — there is absolutely no integrity or civil courage to be found here in Civil Coward Central Station (a.k.a. Silicon Valley), but as your bosses always say: no facts or evidence need apply when it comes to picking out targets. (One can never get enough target practice, eh?)

    You have the personal connections, and I will work on ditching any decency and civil courage I have earned over the years, in order to fit the Stasi Surveillance Role Player’s job requirements.

    What do ya say? Will ya help me get that job?

    Best Regards,
    Stan Burnitt
    San Jose, CA
    Stasi Rat Nation

  28. -”The US government fears that the US intelligence agencies have a second mole who is feeding top secret information to journalists, it has been reported.

    The existence of a second high-level leaker – separate from the former defence contractor Edward Snowden – has been mooted in intelligence and journalistic circles for some weeks, but was confirmed by US officials, according to a report by CNN. ”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11015058/After-Edward-Snowden-US-government-now-fears-it-has-new-mole.html

    More than one leaker???? presumably they mean more than one leaker with a conscience, because there seem to be a whole lot of leakers in the US government operating on the profit motive or who are trying to get their favourite Republican or Democrat reelected.

    I don’t know how Obama will stop it, maybe he will threaten them with death or life in prison, … but he’s done that already, hasn’t he?

  29. “officials don’t need “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to secretly place someone on the list—only a vague and elastic standard of “reasonable suspicion.”

    That includes 90% of the respondents to this site. Just keep pissin’ in the wind, O-man!

    • Try writing a letter to your legislature and not putting a return address on it. So much for the watch list they’ll harass you with their union workers til you go absolutely nuts. It’s apparently called gang stalking. Its the wave of the future anyone can participate in it and if you don’t like the person its probably a lot of fun.

  30. -”Asked by The Intercept editor John Cook if it was the government’s policy to feed one outlet’s scoop to a friendlier outlet, a silence ensued, followed by the explanation: “We had invested some quality time with Eileen,” referring to AP reporter Eileen Sullivan, who the official added had been out to visit the NCTC.”

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/05/terror-watch-list_n_5651757.html?1407262653

    That seems stupid and counterproductive, on so many levels. the government doing that rather proves the point that there wasn’t any valid reason to keep the documents secret in the first place, if they are so willing to leak the info themselves. Obviously Obama’s concern is the political spin that is put on the secrets. And by admitting that they were taking one news outlet’s story and feeding a more govenment friendly version to Eileen Sullivan, who took the dictation and published it, that obviously is going to lead to diminished journalist-government cooperation. I think people (outside the US government) understood that the reasons news outlets consult with the government about upcoming stories is to get the government’s input and in the case of national security reporting, to minimize the risk to innocent lives. In putting those laudable goals at risk, Obama has abused the consultation to further his political ends.

  31. Obama looks as if he’s admiring a large, luminescent body of blood. From a very safe, long distance, of course.

  32. Names of those who have no affiliation? When you think about the oath that our Reps take to protect the constitution etc from enemies within our country and without one wonders can the CIA legally wiretap our Reps etc? Always think about how the federal investigation into former Rep Jane Harman’s direct and successful effort to undermine the Aipac espionage investigation was dropped.

  33. Say a powerful conscious NO to all those watch list controllers and that whole band of merchant$ of endless doom, content destruction, 360 degree manipulation, dark propaganda, unbelievable deception, PSYCHOPATHIC control, and unrelenting inhumanity —- Right NOW!

    What is it that the controllers (NSA, Corporate Media, TV, Hollywood etc etc.) really don’t want you, the people of the world, to really understand? “What is that information? That YOU are the CREATOR OF THIS REALITY. That your consent and your not consenting, rules the world. FYI if you do not make a choice, that is considered a consent to what is happening or proposed.” (each and every one of us makes a real difference)

    For example What can we do about the very dark side of the media and entertainment industry that wants to jam your brain and screw up your emotions, and our belief in a beautiful future for ALL humanity?

    “If you are physically actively minded, write to the network and producers of these shows and (example given was about Ironman III and the explicit explanation of how to create false flags) to give your positive reinforcement on their covering the truth, and at the same time encouraging them to cover more information. Send the information that is accurately, albeit minimally, covered in mainstream media to all of your sleeping relatives and friends.

    If you are mystically minded, simply “look” at the mainstream media outlet energetic structure, and collective consent for its role in lowering our vibration. I do not consent to have the human collective’s vibration lowered, and therefore my vibration lowered, through the mainstream media.

    We humans are addicted to drama. If you think you are not, think about this for a minute, all futuristic movies that have made it to the box office have a really negative, cabal ruled planet Earth, where enslavement, disempowerment and little value to human life are rampant. Now imagine a movie that shows planet earth that is beautiful, clean, where everyone here is actively consciously and powerfully manifesting their perfect life on this Earth. Where there is no power over others. No dark motives. No threat and no fear. Any first reactions of thought? Don’t censure yourself or make yourself “right” right away. What comes when looking at it honestly? Perhaps it is a thought of “it’s not going to happen in my lifetime”, or “it’s boring”, or “we need darkness in order to see the light”, or “we can’t do it”. Take a look at any barriers to it happening. Both that future Earth, and the present day movie being created for us to see, and be excited about seeing it.

    What possible plots in that world would inspire millions of people to pay to watch it in the cinema or buy the DVD? What plots would send you to the cinema to watch it?

    Sit with it. Let’s think of plots that would do just that, that don’t require an opposing faction to try and destroy the Earth, or enslave humanity, or have a hidden evil reason that allows the planet to exist and are exciting and stimulating to watch.” From: the joylightlove, of Inelia Benz

    Say NO. Refuse to be sucked into their dark evil and transhuman future they have planned for us and our grand children. Say NO with all your mind, heart and soul!

  34. Paranoia run amok or desire to have control over everything? Both, I suppose. I’ve come to believe that Obama is merely a patsy for these MIC monsters. I don’t think that he really has much say in the matter. He’s too much of a coward to even attempt to rein them in.

    I find it kind of amusing that the CIA uses the code name Hydra for one of its programs. Isn’t Hydra one of the archenemies, the baddest of the bad guys, in the Avengers universe? Seems fitting.

  35. Message to the President

    Hello Mr. President,
    Glad to got the opportunity to explain my position to you. As you surely know: The original Internet paradigm was: free and borderless communication. Thanks to Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers we know that this paradigm is no longer valid. Instead, all technological possibilities are exhausted – beyond of legality and morality – to spy out people and organisations. But did that new knowledge change the behavior of people and organisations including e.g. you and Merkel with regard to electronic communication? By far too less. But it should as long as privacy is handled as poor as today, especially in the U.S. Therefore you should look at Europe, where the European Supreme Court reported a verdict that bans the today’s surveillance practice some weeks ago.
    Especially for the international surveillance practice we are still lacking agreed and binding rules which are still in accordance with the human rights.
    For understanding the old Europe’s* approach for privacy you should look for a true representant of human rights. Merkel would not be the best choice. My recommandation would be to read 1984 from George Orwell, to install a Committee of the Senate similar to the Church Committee in the 70′s with similar tasks and to listen to the Singer Song Writer Sigismund Ruestig on YouTube:

    http://youtu.be/v1kEKFu6PkY
    http://youtu.be/pcc6MbYyoM4
    http://youtu.be/_a_hz2Uw34Y

    In very short:
    We believe in the human rights. And that not only since 1776 but since more than 2500 years.
    We have the culture, the US only the technics. This gap will generate a wave that firstly swallows then spits out: pure freedom.
    To make pressure for agreeing on international binding rules Germany should
    - reduce online shopping and using credit cards,
    - ban IT-products and IT-Services from American Companies
    - use more the German Language or still better: local dialects for communication
    - Switch Off American surveillance locations within Germany.

    By the way, did you already have a look into your personal NSA file? If not you should. Interesting to know what your position with regard to whistleblowers was as representant of the Senate.
    BR,
    Sigismund Ruestig

    PS*: To be more precise I would exclude Great Britain from the old Europe definition because of the Common Law History of the US and GB

  36. @ Death To Traitors : some even say his father was spotted in a NY sushi restaurant talking to a Japanese fella weeks before Pearl Harbor, others he has a watchlist of his own with all the names of CockyBoys escorts’ clients… Nasty business, I’m tellin’ ya…

    • Nothing in Marcy’s writing indicates that they will “continue to get scooped.” For one thing, Cook informed them that they would now have a maximum of a half an hour after being notified of upcoming publication to respond or have any input at all before the publication is actually published. “In the future, all government agencies will get less time to comment on the Intercept’s upcoming stories, which — given how much classified information they’re sitting on — could really hurt their interests.” Marcy’s post points out that it was stupid move for them to “scoop” the story, and that having done so is sure not going to give them any ability to scoop any stories in the future, in spite of your repeated demand in her comments to “release all of the document/names and whatever.

      • ““release all of the document/names and whatever” Take the name ‘Bullshit Kitt’ for self-awareness. I’m asking for the names and biometrics, Now go fishing for some more carp.

        • Could you clarify whatever the hell you wrote? There is a “bullshit” difference between all of of “the names and biometrics” as opposed to “the documents/names and whatever?”

          • Could you explain your ankle-biting? As a cocker-spaniel you seem rather overweaning in your protective instincts. Woof ! Woof !

          • That’s an impressive response; If you’re in the boy’s locker room or the elementary school playground.

      • “could really hurt their interests”
        i.e. Could get Americans killed because the Intercept is more worried about being scooped.

        • “Could get Americans killed” This phrase is used a lot by delusional paranoid nationalistic fascist little tools, and also, on occasion, by people who realize that there may well be blow-back from our freedom-bombs.

    • Formal treaties the USG has blatantly broken, false flagged or proxied to be broken through covert agencies / puppets – are almost endless.
      History clearly now shows despite all their flowery rhetoric it’s what they do.
      TI had to know any integrity and consideration displayed wouldn’t be returned for very long, if it ever actually existed.
      Obviously, somebody decided exploiting this “weakness,” at this particular time, just outweighed those – other things…

      • I’m not sure I agree with Marcy that the leak was stupid. If they can get ahead of the disclosure curve, they come off as more ‘transparent’ as their poodle Obama rhetorically imbibed.. Their idea of a truce or treaty is one that gives them a time advantage to work feverishly behind the curtain to create some doubt as to their malevolence.

          • There was some disparate hope that Snowden’s courageous act would inspire more persons of conscience to come forward. Unless we are being punked by overlords, it seems a momentum is gaining speed.

      • Ben, when they come forward what do you propose we do with them. Sit on this website and tell them to shit their pants?

    • Petty of The Intercept and Marcy Wheeler to get upset about this. It happens to all reporters, at all levels, who are working hard doing their job. What’s the important objective here? To get a scoop? Or to get wide exposure for the information? The Intercept gets mentioned in every re-publishing of the CNN US-gov-warns-another-leaker-is-on-the-loose” brief. The Intercept can preen about all its scoops that fifty dedicated readers see, or it can have hundreds of thousands of readers funneled to its extensive story by all the news briefs running in every other web outlet. Don’t worry, Intercept. The folks who give out the journalism prizes know who got the story first. If CNN or the NYT or whoever is funneling Mr. and Mrs. Average to your site, you benefit.

      • What’s the important objective here? To get a scoop?–tortoiseshell

        You’ve missed the point. It’s not about the “scoop.” It is about the government’s re-framing the article ; which Marcy pointed out clearly in her post. Also, you honest to god believe that the Intercept has only “fifty” readers? And you honest to god hadn’t noticed that links to their articles and video commentaries to their articles are posted and aired all over the internet by many outlets? So all of that being the case, why would a “scoop” by any outlet that chooses to take info from the government in order to re-frame the content be in the interest of The Intercept or of the people of the planet Earth?

      • While the point *everyone* (including IT/Marcy) makes is correct, it’s not about “scoops” in a competitive journalistic sense – it’s about ostensibly adversarial journalism making itself a PR extension of a government agency. AP ran out three paragraphs of directly dictated propaganda because NSA officials asked for help getting in front of the story with their own spin.

        You comically understate the reach and impact of The Intercept, but the point is well-made that the AP has an exponentially greater reach and impact. In a vacuum, one would expect the AP story to travel the usual arc of local papers and aggregators that subscribe to the wire service and provide the government’s platitudes for the bulk of the nation. Had The Intercept published first, AP coverage would become derivative. A pure stenography piece ignoring the huge swaths of journalistic context in the real investigative article couldn’t have made the wire in the first place.

        Those who think legitimate journalism should be amplified over bullshit face a reality – bullshit has an overwhelming degree of institutional support. This *is* an important story. Important enough that agencies highlighted have enlisted a far more powerful institutional media actor and made a play to funnel as many eyes as possible away from it. Clearly, that would be a pretty successful tactic to amplify stenographic bullshit were the dynamic simply abandoned to a vacuum. Heck, we’ve seen it umpteen million times by now.

        In this case, the ham-fisted bozos at the agency overplayed their hand and left their asset (Eileen Sullivan) fully exposed and flapping in the wind to boot. The action set up a situation that created news about news – and the news made them and the AP look kind of crummy. It becomes difficult to discern if Sullivan’s contacts in the NCC are more correctly described as sources or handlers. That is, arguably, a bigger revelation with concrete proof than a precise numeric breakdown of the long-suspected secret watch list absurdity.

        Simple fact is that the media loves controversy … and they love themselves. A media cat-fight engenders a Pavlovian reaction outlets like the NYT and CNN can not resist. Any time the news is finally all about them, if someone holding facts around which to base reporting makes it an issue, they are GOING to cover it. And cover it they did … driving hundreds of thousands of eyes to The Intercept’s page – specifically to read information the government tried to suppress. Had TI not raised the issue publicly and had national security bloggers not amplified the issue, this certainly would not have been the case.

        Interestingly enough, as the AP has scrambled to flesh out the original stenography to become a full fledged article, most of the “controversy” coverage highlights this page and AP’s archived original three paragraph version rather than linking to the long-since edited AP content now at the URL. This is usually done with a note that the AP has significantly edited the article since releasing their “scoop”. Had the controversy not been raised, the AP would have put their marker down with that half-assed bullshit and then silently created legitimate looking content after the fact while pushing the headline out on their wire service. A sort of journalistic parallel construction.

        Now the post-constructed story is all but buried – while the local papers and aggregators forced to address the journalistic integrity of running a potentially compromised story without context. If I understand correctly, Sullivan had been working for months on a story that touched on the watch list – with reasonably solid support from the NSA. The post-construction is likely a hurried cock-up of the story she was planning to do at her leisure (or to release at a point of policy debate over NSA authorities). I think it’s hilarious that an unintended upshot of Greenwald’s source leading him to this story was to expose another journalist in the process of engaging a well-planned NSA Psyop. And I love that it had the inverse impact from the NCC’s intent … blowing the full article Sullivan was working on right out of the water. Now it is impossible to deploy for it’s intended use. Haha.

        • NOTE: I, like many, have gotten into the lazy habit of typing “NSA” for any cryptically-lettered agency. Pretty sure NCC should be the correct agency here in places the NSA is referenced.

          • You seem to assume the NNC did not intend to publicize this story. However, the other TLAs must be more than a bit jealous of all the attention the NSA has received. After all, the NSA is just a bunch of IT drudges, who follow instructions but don’t make any actual decisions. But a lot of people now assume they are running the whole show.

            I suspect we’ll see a lot more leaking from the other agencies until this situation has been redressed.

        • “In this case, the ham-fisted bozos at the agency overplayed their hand and left their asset (Eileen Sullivan) fully exposed and flapping in the wind to boot. The action set up a situation that created news about news”

          All journalists should have the sense to question the source. Sullivan has a pretty good rep and this lesson leading to the woodshed might temper the rush to publish.

  37. please publish the names, or at least the complete unredacted FISA email monitoring database you have referred to previously.

  38. I wonder how US citizens are able to get visa to any other country in the world. Obviously half of them are terrorists – and who would want to let such dangerous individuals cross their borders?

  39. When you read Alex Very Pareene, don’t forget to keep the browser word search open on “very.”

  40. … you (USA) have a serious problem. And it’s not terrorism … it’s a collective paranoia because your a nation of scaredy pants. You’re killing countless women and children all over the world from a safe office miles away to get a few so called terrorists. What a nation of cowards! The world would be a much better and safer place without you. When I was young me and my friends didn’t want to become a pilot or an astronaut … we just wanted to be “Americans”. Today we just have pity on you.

    Greetings from Switzerland & get well soon!

  41. The body of the article addresses profiling. The misleading title implies that a real terrorist should be a card-carrying mamber of an officially recognized terrorist club in order to qualify as a real terrorist. By that logic, Tim McVay was not a terrorist. (Yet somehow anyone with an Arabic sounding name just might be.)

  42. “Seeking to file a complaint about the Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter, Steve Wronko visited the Helmetta Police Department to air his grievances about the shelter falling prey to nepotism and corruption as a result of Helmetta Mayor Nancy Martin appointing her son Brandon Metz to head up the facility.

    “’I’ve made objections about what’s going on at the shelter over there,’ Wronko tells the police officer, adding, ‘My first and fourth amendment rights were violated, my civil rights were violated.’

    “’Obama just decimated the freakin’ Constitution, so I don’t give a damn. If he doesn’t follow the Constitution, we don’t have to,’ responds the cop, brazenly violating the oath he swore to uphold the Constitution.”

    http://www.infowars.com/cop-if-obama-doesnt-follow-the-constitution-we-dont-have-to/

    [VIDEO]

    • The constitution was decimated when he didn’t incarcerate workers compensation emplyoees who gang stalk and harass Americans. He should have stopped over in Oklahoma to discuss their imprisonment with Governor Fallin.

  43. While the database administrators see achieving a 1M benchmark as a cause for celebration, on another level it represents a failure. Drone operators are obviously lagging far behind, and as long as that happens, the database will continue to grow. I’m aware that deploying drones takes more time and effort than picking Arabic sounding names out of a phone book, but we should not shirk from analyzing the problem in more depth.

    When that assessment is made, it is almost impossible to escape the conclusion that killer drones need to be deployed within the continental USA. It was wishful thinking to believe the US could deal with terrorism by unleashing drones in Pakistan. The result was that the terrorists simply moved to the USA, where they and their families could live their lives in complete safety. The 5 top KST hotspots, according to the documents, are New York, Dearborn, Houston, San Diego and Chicago. So while a policy that permitted unlimited drones within the US would probably be too politically unpopular at present, I think there would be wide agreement amongst US citizens who don’t live in those 5 cities, to deploy drones in just those selected metropolitan areas.

    Some people feel that Americans are too squeamish and would reject the policy because of the collateral damage to innocent civilians. But I think this is a misjudgment. The reaction of the US Senate, the representatives of the American people, to images of children in Gaza, killed using US supplied armaments, was to unanimously vote to send more free armaments to Israel. So I think Americans have a higher tolerance level for civilian casualties than is generally supposed, at least if it supports their desired political objectives.

    So the question is whether the majority of Americans will allow the numbers in the databases to swell until they find themselves in the minority – or will they do something about it? This President continues to do nothing, when he has the world’s largest fleet of unmanned drones and contractors who are clamoring to build more.

    • If we release those names in a database then we can send the workers comp employees from Oklahoma who torture people by gang stalking to all the hot spots. Eventually some of the terrorists will be murdered or go insane. So your database of names is going to be a benefit for red necks who love America and their lazy payouts.

      • What the heck is a “worker’s comp employee.” Are you being denied Workman’s Comp, is that it?

    • Well, Benito, you’d be the go to man on aircraft and mustard gas, so why not mix us a personal cocktail? How about a drone equipped with a directional gas dispenser? First use of aircraft in warfare, Battle of Zanzur, 1912. Mustard gas murders of a half million Ethiopians, 1935. So it’s only natural you’d come to this conclusion. Aren’t you glad an idiot could beat you there?

    • I love you, Benito. Should we in the current majority try to get our names on the list so we’ll be part of tomorrow’s majority?

    • Good points as usual, Neeto! I think the Feds should start with Houston. It has lots of flat, easy-flying terrain and plenty of brown-skinned people who make nice Americans nervous.

      • Any member of a Union is pretty scary no matter what color they are. Even more so, their wives are brutal. When they stalk you they get insanely jealous if your better looking than they are and the torture gets worse.

        • Yes, and my cat is a secret government agent who wants to find out how much coffee I snort so that Google can use the information to frame me for murder because workers compensation lawyers wrote bad checks for garbage pickup and destroyed a whole city. This is fun.

          • Many workers comp claims come from packaging jobs and construction or trucking or oil rigs. When they get choices for Time off one is surgery and back at work in a couple weeks and one is 6 months rest. The hospital and the surgeon make money in fees so they like surgery. Employers like twio weeks because they are back at work. Workers comp like surgeries for bigger payouts. Tax payers don’t see benefit as the surgeries don’t normally work and the patient ends up back in hospital crippled and addicted to Meds. So thousand for procedures done multiple times and serious health risks to workers com employee who will feel the results of the failed surgery too late as the surgeon doesn’t do follow up they just operate on new cases.the workers comp ends up In hospital charging thousands at tax payer expense.

  44. Well, let me tell you what happens when you are added to this list: you get pulled for extra searches at all US airports under the guise of random searches, your luggage everywhere you travels gets mysteriously delayed for a night. By the time the luggage gets back to you, everything inside it has been better organized than you packed it. Your phone gets a mysterious conditional forward to an unlisted number that you do not recognize and your phone company would not tell you how or who come your phone is forwarded. Your anti virus acts quite funny, similarly, your anti virus software company would ‘inexplicably’ be unable to fix it. Strange things happen to your computer and phone, you lose data. People you are in contact with get asked specific questions about you and/ or You keep seeing the same people mainly next to you in a bar or a public, who engage you in conversation. They mostly ask very ‘generalised yet specific’ questions about your movements or aspects of private conversation, etc. In particular, the person would usually have quite a lot of commonality with you and lead the conversation, into specific questions about what you are up to. Another one, would be a friend suggesting a friendly meeting with a 3rd party. So, Voila, these are some of the things that happen when you are on the list.

    • Let me tell you what happens when you are not added to this list: you live a happy and peaceful life and after death angels guide you to heaven and paradise is forever yours.

    • Couldn’t agree more TomCat, but you forgot to add, the “long drives” for no reason with “friends”, the random iris scan at Lens Crafters, strangers who seem to know so much about you, direct answered questions when you make a phone call, the dropped calls right when your on to something, or the fact that you catch every single venerability but you are watched instead of asked. The US does not care a your right to freedom, they only care about if they are “right” in which case of course they are, because no one is there to tell them they are not.

    • When I travel across borders my Android smartphone is ‘blanked’ with no data and NO SIM. The SIM is the Achilles heel in privacy protection and it’s absence frustrates security checks. I have an App that allows me to re-program my IMEI which is THE KEY identifier. And avoid the preloaded programs such as Contact List. All my data is held in a database stored on the micro-SD card and, naturally, this is removed during travel. My main communications device, when roaming, is an 11-year old Mitsubishi Trium Mars cell. I only use SIMs purchased in countries I visit.
      Might be a pain, but at least I have maximised the pain of tracking my use and maximised my privacy.

    • By the time the luggage gets back to you, everything inside it has been better organized than you packed it.

      Dang, I’m missing out. Where can I sign up for this service? We’re having to pay TSA fees as part of our ticket prices anyway, so I want to get value for my money.

    • Sen. Feinstein rejects redactions to torture report … and will withhold release of the report.

      *That will show them who is boss.

      • I never believed in redactions either – they just pique people’s curiosity. It’s much better to simply withhold the information en masse. The problem is that people are now aware there is a report. So they have to release something. Perhaps if they hold a screening of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ everybody will be satisfied.

        • >”Perhaps if they hold a screening of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ everybody will be satisfied.”

          It was nominated for Academy Awards, dingo! I read somewhere ‘a first’ for ‘a CIA funded’ film … I kid you not.

          *I saw the thing, but was disappointed. While the film clearly implanted the notion ‘we tortured some folks’ to get the Intell necessary for the assassination of the most wanted man on the planet, OBL the ‘Mastermind’ … it did not show the disposal of the body from a submarine (presumably out of the torpedo tubes?) somewhere out in the deep blue Indian Ocean.

    • Sen. Feinstein has no moral, or ethical standing to accept or reject anything. How can one take her seriously when she has defended the NSA’s criminal spying on every American’s computers but suddenly feigns “outrage” when the CIA spies on hers?

  45. Why would a gay atheist Jew support Islamic Jihadists?

    http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071514-708936-snowden-mouthpiece-shills-for-islamist-terror-targets-of-fbi.htm
    Greenwald has pocketed thousands of dollars speaking at CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) fundraising banquets.
    “There really is no organization with which I’d rather be spending my time, or with which I feel more at home than CAIR,” Greenwald told CAIR’s San Francisco chapter in 2012, though a year earlier the same office issued a poster advising Muslims to slam the door in the face of FBI agents asking for help finding terrorists to prevent another 9/11.
    “I’m really glad to be a part of anything that CAIR does,” he added, “and to support the organization in any way that I can.”
    His support includes interfering in federal investigations. After CAIR lawyers contacted him, Greenwald took classified investigative information Snowden stole and fed it to Awad, knowing the CAIR leader was the subject of a major terrorism probe.
    Greenwald’s role in the Snowden saga goes far beyond journalism. He’s a paid shill for a terrorist front group. No wonder he and his co-conspirator hide overseas.

    • In your twisted mind every Muslim is a terrorist. Nothing you say on the subject can be taken seriously. In your world a group of ten year old Muslim girls having a pajama party would be considered a terrorist front.

      • Not every Muslim, but the director of CAIR, which the FBI has called a Hamas front, and the demonstrators at a CAIR rally in Florida last month, who cried, “We are Hamas!” “We are Jihad!” “Hamas kicked your ass.”

        • If Hamas had as much support as you seem to think, they’d be ruling the world. Have you ever heard of the paranoid style in American politics?

        • For the record I will insert a segment of reality into your serial self-deceptions: Internet Disinformation #5: CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad publicly declared support for Hamas at Barry University in Florida in 1994, saying: “I’m in support of the Hamas movement.”

          CAIR detractors — such as Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes — selectively recycle this and other incomplete statements to assert their pre-fabricated conclusions.
          ~
          In response to a direct question from an audience member about social programs in the occupied territories, Awad said, “I’m in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.” This excerpt was lifted from a longer answer in which Awad also stated: “There are some radicals. We are not interested in those people.”
          ~
          This statement was made in March 1994, before CAIR was formed. Hamas did not commit its first suicide bombing until October 1994. The United States subsequently identified Hamas as a specially designated terrorist in January 1995.
          ~
          Thus, Awad’s remarks came seven months prior to Hamas’ first suicide bombings and nine months before the organization received the specially designated terrorist label from the government.
          ~
          Our detractors always fail to add that in 2006 Awad said, “I don’t support Hamas today. My position and CAIR’s position is extremely clear: we condemn suicide bombings. We are mainstream American Muslims.” (Associated Press, 11/22/2006)
          ~
          Awad and CAIR have consistently denounced violence by Hamas, Israel and other groups and advocated peaceful and negotiated resolutions to conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.

          Traitors like you, destroy the meaning of the constitution and create injustice so to rot the freedom of all people. Honest patriots, like Greenwald and Awad, handle the truth with care and devotion.

          • For the record, you inserted CAIR’s disinformation from CAIR’s website. Have a seat, because you’re about to be schooled.

            Let’s start with the overt lie: “This statement was made in March 1994, before CAIR was formed. Hamas did not commit its first suicide bombing until October 1994. ”

            Hamas took credit for a suicide bombing a year earlier, the Mehola Junction bombing on April 16, 1993.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
            And before October 1994, there were the Afula Bus suicide bombing and the Hadera bus station suicide bombing in April 1994.

            Since its founding in 1987, Hamas has stood for nothing short of the obliteration of Israel.
            But I’ll let the the Investigative Project on Terrorism elaborate.

            IPT Fact-Check: CAIR is fond of emphasizing the 1995 designation of Hamas as a terrorist group, hinting that any indication of support prior to that point should not be objectionable. That’s a little ironic, since CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper denounced President Clinton’s order, telling the Washington Post on the day it was issued:
            “We’ve been fearing something like this for a long time because there have been elements in the pro-Israeli lobby accusing Muslim groups of raising money for these kinds of purposes, with no evidence whatsoever of diversion of funds.”

            The Hamas charter was issued in 1988 and distributed by the Islamic Association for Palestine while Awad was an IAP officer. Among its tenets:
            “Article 13: [Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”
            “Article 15: When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims. In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad.”

            It is important to note that when Awad made his comments “in support of the Hamas movement” in 1994, the PLO was pursuing a negotiated peace initiative which Hamas rejected in total. And that is what makes the Philadelphia meeting significant. Awad participated in that meeting, which focused on the group’s opposition to the U.S.-led Oslo Accords.

            His claim that his statement should not be seen as a Hamas endorsement might be more persuasive if he hadn’t spent a weekend holed up with two dozen Hamas members and supporters in Philadelphia just six months earlier. Transcripts of FBI recordings from that meeting show that Awad even referenced “Samah” (Hamas backwards), the simple code that meeting participants tried to follow instead of saying Hamas. In the same transcript, fellow CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad, who just left CAIR after years as its chairman emeritus, offered one of many examples in which he discussed sugar-coating the group’s message to avoid spooking Americans:
            “But when I stand up and tell him that Sharia [Islamic law] says so and so, the Jews are God’s enemy for instance … I won’t say ‘God’s enemy.’ I will say it in a way … citing the Islamic aspect, that the Islamic aspect prohibits that.”

            Hamas, meanwhile, had a well-established record of violence and terrorism before the order was signed and before Awad made his contested remarks at Barry University. Among them:
            • On May 3, 1989, a Hamas member stabbed five people, killing two of them, in a Jerusalem market.
            • On October 16, 1992, Hamas stabbed an orthodox Jewish seminary student.
            • On January 3, 1993, Hamas bombed a bus.
            • On April 6, 1994, a Hamas suicide bomber blew up a bus in northern Israel, killing nine and wounding 44.
            • Days later, on April 13, 1994, another Hamas suicide bomber blew up a bus, killing five and injuring 30.
            • On October 9, 1994, two Hamas terrorists ran down a busy street firing AK-47s indiscriminately. Two people were killed – one Israeli and one Palestinian. Thirteen were injured including an American diplomat.

          • Yes, and during that same time period how many did the IDF kill? The U.S military? How many policeman killed black men for no fucking reason? How many died in jails around the world from the neglect of serious medical conditions, or other abuse? Or go back a little further and explain why the US supported the genocidal Suharto in Indonesia, and actively and murderously overthrew multiple left-leaning governments in Central and South America, supporting those who bury villagers in mass graves? If that was not terrorism, the word has no meaning at all. The murderous invasion of Panama? The use of two nuclear weapons on two different cities? The massive war crime that was the destruction of Vietnam? The list is long and painful… but your primitive little lizard brain screams Hamas! Hamas has a lot to learn about how to be really violent in an effective way numbers wise, but they have some very good teachers.

            Very handy to name a group you hate terrorists, as it highlights one particular form of violence by that group only… attempting to absolve the accuser of any such culpability. Violence is a horrible way to get what you want or to seek revenge, but Hamas has not been alone in this, nor particularly effective. They just have a label that makes people like you care about their violence more than that of others. This shit works with stupid people, or extremely biased people, but not with rational people.

          • John, it doesn’t strike you as odd that former gay porn distributor Glenn Greenwald said, “There really is no organization with which I’d rather be spending my time, or with which I feel more at home than CAIR”? Not ACLU, not EFF, but CAIR. Ask them how they feel about distributing gay porn.

          • You are a clown. My following response to you is in direct proportion to your significance in this debate. BLAH! I thought you might have had something serious in a retort, but just another clown with verbal ejaculate response syndrome. Disappointed!

          • About the gay porn innuendo… methinks thou doth protest too much. Got something against gay porn, or are you secretly and personally shamed to be drawn to it? Whatever floats your boat, but yours was a lame smear attempt. Surely you can do better than that?

          • What innuendo? I think it’s weird for a progressive, gay, atheist, Jew who said he’d be proud to produce gay porn to say that there’s no organization with which he’d feel more at home than the Jihad-supporting, Shariah-pushing Hamas front group CAIR.
            You’re the one responding with juvenile gay innuendo.

          • It’s “weird”. Really. Thanks. Very enlightening. What a sad and desperate little smear merchant you are. Carry on. I’m sure there are more dull and crooked arrows in futile search of a target dancing in that pathetic little quiver you call a brain. Unleash them!

    • Greenwald has pocketed thousands of dollars…

      Dear God, are you implying that he does not pay taxes? The horror of it all: pocketing money!

    • No wonder he and his co-conspirator hide overseas.–Some super sleuth guy or gal on the interwebs

      I wish you had become aware enough to alert the FBI and the CIA in time to tell them about Greenwald being in the USA for a couple of months or so in May and June of 2014. He had been hiding in venues in large cities such as San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, speaking to large crowds of people and signing a book he had written in secret afterwards. But somehow he and all of those people and the organizers at each city venue managed to keep this secret from the FBI … and apparently from you, too. Darn it! But you keep on writing your fabulous Private Eye novellas.

      • All those hot spots of terrorist he was speaking at are going to be excited the search list of database names are released. It will be like stalking child molesters. So you see whats good for you to feel free is not what is good for those people you feel on the database need blasted to the world. Your idea of freedom is far different than most people assume is free of paparazzi killers. But who am i to call you selfish?

          • Ten years of torture by the workers compensation employees for writing letters of protest against them are not the kinds of acts against humanity that call for a rest. I heard fire workers go off behind my house yesterday for posting here. So your idea of stalking and sying is happening right here in Oklahoma. Send some investigators to stop them.

          • Lauren, go soil your pants elsewhere then. You’re tiresome, and your constant pissing yourself could be done on a street corner or alley or subway of your choosing rather than here. That way you could confront your combatants head on. Wouldn’t that be more fun for you?

          • Fire workers went off? There’s an exploding fireman problem in Oklahoma? And they went off because you posted on The Intercept? How do you know that?

            One imagines a group of burly firemen clomping down an alley somewhere in Oklahoma. They stop behind Lauren’s house, face her sliding glass door and shout in unison: “We are representatives of the Oklahoma Firemen! We rebuke you for posting on Glenn Greenwald’s new blog, The Intercept! Now witness the price you must pay for your actions!” They open their fire-fighting suits to reveal vests covered with strings of Black Cat firecrackers; each fireman pulls out a lighter, lights the fuse, and soon there is a burst of little popping noises as the the firecrackers go off. The firemen then close their suits, face-right and march off whence they came. The horror!

        • I have spoke out several times in public about reading the Intercept. As I said they follow, contact friends and investigate all that you are doing. They hack and do all the things you say the NSA does. They are mirror images of one another. And if you might recall there are serious issues with fireman’s unions all over the country. They have gone on strike and protested governments in mass. If you speak out against the way their doctors do the work on them then you are considered a terrorist to them. They will participate in any venture to bring down someone who is speaking out against the attorney’s that help them with workers compensation payouts just like the police do. As I said earlier these letters were meant to expose the way the doctors exploit the worker. Is it in their best interest to be crippled in their old age because a surgeon said it would be fine so that the entire hospital and doctors can make a killing of you and sit in million dollar houses? Wake up. Corruption starts in ominous places.

      • “But somehow he and all of those people and the organizers at each city venue managed to keep this secret from the FBI … and apparently from you, too. ”

        You can not possibly know that this assertion is true.

        • You can not possibly know that this assertion is true.–Wilhelmina

          Really? You think the FBI and CIA and that commenter actually knew that Glenn Greenwald was touring in large cities in the United States for a couple of months or so?

          • Really? You think the FBI and CIA … knew that Glenn Greenwald was touring in large cities in the United States for a couple of months or so?

            I do not know the answer to this question and neither do you. US intelligence agencies often secretly surveil the activities of targets (persons of interest) for years without making direct contact. There are numerous ways that the activities on an individual can be tracked:

            1. Entry Visas
            2. Cell Phone possession/use
            3. Credit Card Use
            4. Secret placement of tracking devices on a person, in his clothing, or in travel gear.
            5. Direct non-stop monitoring of a target; usually requires a team
            6. Direct monitoring of known associates
            7. Human intelligence gathered from inside sources.
            8. Monitoring of known Email accounts
            9. An IPAD, notebook, or laptop with inbuilt GPS can often be remotely activated and secretly monitored
            10. All new cars are fitted with GPS tracking. All rental cars are fitted with remote tracking devices.
            11. Use of biometric data to locate and track targets incl. facial and voice recognition
            12. Library cards are are subject to passive reader detection and monitoring.

            Glenn Greenwald complained that his house was broken into and that a laptop was stolen. Intelligence agencies can conduct break-ins and not leave a trace. Nanotechnology has allowed for the development of passive tagging devices that are so small that they are virtually undetectable. Anything that Glenn Greenwald carries with him could contain a passive tagging or tracking device. Hell, there are even edible RFID tracking devices that can be hidden in a person’s medication of favorite cereal. Passing through any travel hub can lead to the detection of a passive tracking tag or RFID device.

          • I do not know the answer to this question and neither do you.–Wilhelmina

            Are you telling a really long drawn out joke, or are you being astoundingly obtuse?

          • Obtuse? Really? Why don’t you elaborate and astound us with your brilliance instead of masking your ignorance behind cryptic phrases.

          • Why don’t you elaborate and astound us with your brilliance instead of masking your ignorance behind cryptic phrases.–Wilhelmina

            I still am finding it hard to believe you are that obtuse about how that conversation evolved, but apparently you’re serious.

            The ridiculous commenter calling itself “Death to Traitors” wrote that Glenn is hiding overseas. I joked about the fact that he spent at least three months in the United States appearing at award ceremonies, on news programs such as Democracy Now, and appearing and speaking at venues around the United States in large cities as a part of his book tour. So, yes, I think I can safely “know” that the FBI and etc are and were aware of his whereabouts. There is no “brilliance” needed in order for me — or for you or for “Death to Traitors” — to recognize that.

        • “The ridiculous commenter calling itself “Death to Traitors” wrote that Glenn is hiding overseas.”

          Yes, he is ridiculously obvious, isn’t he? As are all the shadow puppets in play on this website. In fact, Death to Traitors is the perfect foil for you brand of commentary, is he/she not? Almost made to order, wouldn’t you agree?

      • Let me ref-raise this for you Kit since you perhaps have not followed my posts. A letter written ten years ago is considered domestic terrorism. The police department decides to investigate you for it because you did not put a return address on the letters and the anthrax scare was enough
        to send everyone into a panic. This person is followed and harassed and tortured by Unions the police department supports. Is this not what your website the intercept is trying to prove? That hyper vigilante Bush era terrorism is in fact impeding on American writes of free speech? Is this website about taking out officers in the United States secret service or is it about helping those individuals that are protesters who want to speak out about issues but are trapped and condemned and tortured?

          • Call Governor Fallin in Oklahoma and tell her to tell her police department to call the Union and have them quit the harassment of individuals who speak out against their lazy payouts and back surgeries that will eventually leave them crippled and addicted to pain medication. Its the humanitarian thing to do. It also serves the purpose of this website and what Edward Snowden intended to do which is protect the speech and Fourth Amendment rights. Call her today.

          • I think I get it now. Lauren is half-blitzed on pain meds following back surgery. That explains a lot.

        • I would never have a back surgery I’m far to privileged with information about how it will eventually cripple you and land you in a nursing home unable to take care of yourself while the doctors who do the surgery are long gone by then. SHHHHH don’t speak up to loud Lauren or they will hire private security companies and contact police unions to follow and harass you. Then they will call legislatures and tell them they have captured the terrorist that wrote letters without return address’s lets prosecute her for TERRORISM.

  46. If everything is terrorism, nothing is terrorism … The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system.

    Maybe so … but at least his Insider Threat Program is starting to bear fruit.

    #Shelia’sSheeva

    • Yes, and We The People are the insider threat. If everybody is a potential terrorist, then it is so.

      • He did not know their songs, and only listened and was borne along on the music, until from up front there came sweeping back wave by wave down the great slow-moving river of people a tune he knew. He lifted his head high and sang it with them, in his own language as he had learnt it: the Hymn of the Insurrection. It had been sung in these streets, in this same street, two hundred years ago, by these people, his people.
      O eastern light, awaken
      Those who have slept!
      The darkness will be broken,
      The promise kept.

      They fell silent in the ranks around Shevek to hear him, and he sang aloud, smiling, walking forward with them.
      – Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

  47. Dear People and Glenn (Greenwald) and why the cia is not included in the usa-government list of terrorist? and at this rate why are the abetters that call the extermination of children, fathers and mothers “heartbreaking” as if it was natural disaster along with the the jewish-zionist regime deeming it as “violence”, rather than DELIBERATE GENOCIDE! – Alejandro Grace Ararat

    • About a thousand Gazan civilians killed after striking more than 4700 targets? DELIBERATE GENOCIDE!
      Warning Gazans to evacuate before striking targets? DELIBERATE GENOCIDE!
      Agreeing to six or seven humanitarian ceasefires? DELIBERATE GENOCIDE!
      Sending over 1800 trucks of humanitarian aid to Gaza? DELIBERATE GENOCIDE!
      Wouldn’t it be easier to bomb the UN school that was sheltering 3000 Gazans? Kill 3000 civilians in a couple of strikes? No, wait, that was 9/11.

      • after striking more than 4700 targets

        If a target is anywhere a rocket or shell lands…

        Both sides in this conflict shamelessly manipulate the statistics.

        “The evil in my enemy justifies the evil in me.” Funny how often this justification comes from religious folks.

        Agreeing to six or seven humanitarian ceasefires?

        “A ceasefire is a place in the 4 dimensional space time continuum where we are not currently firing, yet.”

        Did residents of Gaza plan and carry out 911? I thought it was mostly citizens of one of our best allies in the mid east.

        • “If a target is anywhere a rocket or shell lands…”
          So obviously the targets weren’t civilians, since 4700 bombs and shells could kill a lot more than a thousand civilians if that were the goal. How many Israeli civilians do you think Hamas would kill if it had the means to bomb any place in Israel?

          “Did residents of Gaza plan and carry out 911? ”
          No, they celebrated and passed out candy. They wish they could kill that many Israelis and Americans, and that each of the thousands of rockets they launched kills someone.

      • “About a thousand Gazan civilians killed” Where did you get such a small number? Do you seek to diminish the war crimes of Israel by suggesting that there are a bunch of dead people who simply do not count? How convenient for your narrative. You are a liar… either that or you are extremely sloppy. Oh… I get it, you think that anyone who shook their fist in Israel’s direction is a terrorist so they do not count. They should just roll over and die in the face of these cowardly attacks.

        • Thanks for asking. By the time Israel struck over 4700 targets, some 1800 Gazans, mostly civilians, were killed according to Hamas-controlled Gazan authorities, who are not the most unbiased source here. This surely counts Gazans killed by the 500 terrorist rockets that fell short in Gaza. The fatalities were disproportionately men between ages 20 and 29, accounting for 55% of fatalities even though this group makes up only about 10% of Gaza. Israel said it targeted 700-1000 fighters.
          You can read about this here
          http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/world/middleeast/civilian-or-not-new-fight-in-tallying-the-dead-from-the-gaza-conflict.html

          But you know what, even if every single one of the 1800 Gazans killed was a civilian, that still means that strikes on over 60% of the 4700 targets didn’t kill anybody, which is an awfully inefficient way to commit deliberate genocide when Israel has the means to carpet bomb or nuke Gaza, and building a field hospital for injured Gazans doesn’t help with the deliberate genocide either.

    • Over 160,000 dead in Syria, including over 50,000 civilians and 8600 children?
      Mosul’s 2000-year-old Christian community gone after ISIS demands conversion to Islam, tribute (jizya), or death as instructed in the Koran?
      Meh, ethnic violence.

      • I can’t help but imagine you screaming everything you write at the top of your lungs, whilst running around in circles in a small room, arms flailing. Anyone else getting this feeling?

  48. Wow, who qualifies to be dropped from the list, and how do they get that qualification? Is Jamie Dimon on the list? If not, why not?

    How about Lloyd Blankfein? If not, why not? And Bill Gates? If not, why not? Warren Buffett? Koch Bros.? Murdoch? Why not?

    Because they are the dictators of those paranoia, psychopathic, sociopathic, insecurity cults making all their lists.

    And they are the dictators of those paranoia-cultivating, insecurity-cultivating, sociopathic talking heads who see ebola on
    everyone they do not like because they have the wrong color of skin or wear the wrong clothes or speak with the wrong
    accent and aren’t white, male, wearing a tie, and working mindlessly for a stupid corporation that is devoted to stealing
    from anybody and everybody from whom they can imagine how what to steal & how.

  49. With news just in of a an American general being killed in Afghanistan today, the highest ranking office to die there in thirteen years, it will be interesting to see how the terror network kicks in.

  50. Our enemies no longer need worry about destroying us, we’re doing it to ourselves. All the high technology and massive weapons of war can’t stop the retribution that will turn America into a third world county–and sooner than you think. We’re like an advanced fighter plane at the moment before it goes into an uncontrollable flat span. All the technology and power in the jet is useless against the grip of gravity as it plunges to the earth. The pilot has pushed the jet beyond its limits and it might be too late to eject.

  51. To all those people who work for the US administration, NSA, CIA etc: ‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’ – if you dont know what that means then look it up.

    • What the hell? Bells ringing in the 21st century? Is this the Cold War or the age of technology? What planet are you ringing bells on? Need some medication?

  52. we live in a paradigm of fear and separation–a hologram of deception. it is a fractal energy that infects every layer of what we have been conditioned to believe is “life.”
    the hierarchy’s agenda is and always has been control and power. they create division and chaos and fear and then profess to us on their platforms to entrust them to protect us. we have been asleep far too long. the hierarchy encourages our collective fighting and railing against the paradigm of fear and separation: it fuels conflict and more division and more separation and the continual erosion of liberties. it reinforces the prison in which we live and have lived for thousands of years.
    I Am We Are. . . .
    post is paraphrase of WingMaker material

    “Behind the overgrown weeds
    the song leads to
    I am we are.
    It may seem unlikely
    that what is small
    and commonly ignored
    is powerful,
    but
    root
    feeds
    leaf.
    True power waits in the whisper.
    Beneath the ground state.
    It is rested.
    It does not flex,
    pounce,
    grip,
    or grab,
    for it is not of muscle.
    Or bone.
    Or mind.
    Or even humanness.
    Remember that.
    Power is not
    what you have
    been taught.
    Power is
    the internal gaze
    that discerns
    I am we are,
    and then dresses our every deed
    in that finery
    and nothing more.
    In the same way that white light
    is nothing more than
    all colors.” WM
    ?
    extending heart energy to all

    • Beautiful. Now spit on the fucking weeds and rip her little seeds out of the ground and kill them. This is what socialism is about. The closest weed they come to is the one their kids sold them. They got it it in pill form from the kids dad who is a doctor and sells his drug to the patients his other friends dad did because he is a surgeon. So now the workers compensation lazy ass, the drug doctor and the surgeon are all in it together. Then they call the hospital they work for and say lets fuck this guy over some more for speaking out against us. They do and so now they are stalking and harassing the hell out of him. Then the police decide to investigate and decide they want a piece of the action. They investigate his wife for writing a protest letter. So now two people have been beat the fuck up so the workers compensation asshole can get his payouts. Welcome to America. Our lazy asses are ready to fuck you over. Beautiful poetry can the workers comp guy read that after Duck Dynasty airs?

    • I’m sorry your beautiful message had to be treated to this useless and hateful wretching. Seriously, the people who manage this silo must be drunk.

    • “Yes, and we the gov’t will protect you from those evil doing Muslim extremists in Detroit–we just need a trillion in pork fried military spending to do it. And in order to be effective, we’ll have to strip search you at airports and read your email–but it’s all for a good cause. You go on about your business and be a good citizen now, and be careful what you say and write. You don’t need to bring any attention to yourself. We’ll take care of everything, you can trust us. Oh, and here’s a coupon for a tall latte with a double shot of ‘shut-the-fuck-up.’”

      • I’m sorry small town I still don’t think you get it. The corporations and hospitals that make the kind of pork barrel money you are talking about are these very people. And by the way they consider themselves very patriotic and you are just Intercept scum to them. So my informing you is essentially wasted and that’s why speaking out is no longer a good cause. Do not speak out. Live like robot. Watch TV. Shut the fuck up or the military police will harass, torture and follow you forever.

  53. Every 3-letter agency, keeps adding to their budget and products,
    simply to increase the profits of the people they contract with.

    “You might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that it works,” says former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “These agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the national security umbrella.”

  54. After having my computer broken into on numerous times to harass and trade secrets stolen by the U.S. government which was given to the Federal Reserve, banks, and shared with other countries.

    You should not feel bad for people leaking this type of information. I sure as hell don’t now. I would not do it, but people should not feel bad, since they also do it to citizens through illegal surveillance.

      • Let’s all do what? Refuse to allow this criminal government to continually erode individual rights? To refuse to allow Total Survelliance by god knows who, from where, for what purpose? Funny, that doesn’t make me feel the least bit “safer.” The FBI was instituted to investigate pornagraphy. Hopefully, the agents don’t trip over the newsracks full of porn on their way for morning coffee. So they can go. The CIA just got caught spying on the US Senate: is that anarchy? Thing is: I usually wouldn’t take the time to respond to paid troll…but you are so inept, I had to take one swing.

        This entire matter will not end peacefully, I’m afraid. These government Peeping Toms will continue to multiple like maggots to flies. Everyone will be “suspect” at all times.

        • Farfang let me get this straight. The workers compensation employees that stalk and steel naked photos, hack and rob your house are all to be let free from the FBI because you think they look at naked pictures because Edward Snowden told you they do. Sounds like enough facts to lock them all up and throw the key away. Then we can have those macho police running around and they can stalk, steel naked pictures and beat the shit out of you. Who needs the FBI?

  55. We need a third leaker, someone who can provide evidence of the secret lists, not just the official lists, of the slow kill teams. Could be private Billionaires, could be black budgets within NSA, DIA, DARPA, military defense contractors, could be a foreign country that has free reign in the U.S., especially New York. Could be all of the above.

    One of you guys must feel really really guilty about all of the innocent American citizens, you stalked, harassed and tortured to death with experimental military weapons. Why don’t you send the Intercept an e-mail…it’s better than rotting in hell.

    • I think he’ll is where the workers compensation addicts are going. Do you have a computer? Do you have a bank account? Do you have a family? Because if you do they want it and they want you to give it to them free of charge.

    • I was fired from work today. I guess whoever is running this harassment/torture program doesn’t like my comments. I stayed at my low level “blue chip” job, despite being stalked and harassed all day long, because I needed the money and health insurance. The official reason was that I had “hit someone in the elevator”…how likely is that, from a middle age woman. But these terrorist stalkers all corroborate each other lies and you stand no chance. That made it absolute hell to get to work each day, on the Long Island Railroad, the walk to work and then the torture would commence at the job. When I asked a friend with a psychology degree why there was so much effort placed into preventing me from going to work she said ” It’s very difficult to institutionalize someone who has a job and shows up for work each day. I did a great job despite the torture, but that doesn’t matter. The psychopath shadow government that runs this country will get their way.

  56. “No meaningful process for challenging one’s inclusion on these lists exists for US citizens. The Obama administration also refuses to recognize that Americans have ‘constitutionally-protected liberty interests in traveling internationally by air,’ which are especially affected if one is on the No Fly List. The administration maintains this position in spite of the fact that a federal judge in Oregon ruled in June that the No Fly List violates procedural due process rights.” (Kevin Gosztola)

    http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/08/05/hundreds-of-thousands-of-individuals-not-associated-with-terrorist-group-on-us-governments-watchlist/

  57. In the year 2014 who are the heroes, the villains, the oppressed, the slaves, the corrupt, the brave hearts, the martyrs, the epitome of evil, who are the men and women of real goodness, and why is it so hard to tell one from the other?

    Our phony culture makes foolish children Celebrities, actors pretend heroes, sports figures min-gods, and the rich and famous are who our foolish youth want-to-be. Our children act out in their lives what they see on TV and the movies and none of this real. The media promotes the illusions, the unreal, the phony, the deceptive, the immoral and unethical. We see more corruption on TV than in real life and our youth are encouraged unconsciously to follow the examples they see on the mind warped and mind controlled TV and movies. So controlled and deceptive that the average person is mesmerized and begins to forget what it is like to think for yourself.

    SO – who are the heroes of 2014? The media wants you to think about imaginary super-heroes on TV and the movies. How about the video games where the sniper who kills the most human beings is the “real hero”. Or maybe the media tells us about our “elected representatives” the repub or demo “heroes” who are nothing but paid for corrupt little puppets.

    The real heroes are those who stand up for real justice, ethics, morals, human rights, and who see all humanity as one big family.

    The Intercept is one of those real heroes of 2014.

    “There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul!”
    ? Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

    “Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
    ? Garrison Keillor

    “Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.”
    ? John Wayne

    Have the COURAGE to find the HERO in yourself.

  58. My thanks to the authors and THE//INTERCEPT for this update, and to the commenters who have made thoughtful germane replies. I would like to also commend the work being done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ask all of you to give serious consideration and support to their latest communique regarding current pending legislation. See https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/147a3f7bd8f8cbf1
    “Work is love made visible.” KG
    As Usual,
    EA

        • I’d be careful about supporting that bill. Read this from emptywheel first -
          USA Freedom Does Not Rein in the Spies

          the bill does not address Section 702; he doesn’t mention EO 12333 at all, even though both the HRW and NAF reports did.
          ~
          Senator Leahy’s bill is not a cure-all. It is primarily addressed to the collection of data within the United States, and does little to reform Section 702, the statute that authorizes the PRISM program and allows the government to collect the content of electronic communications of noncitizens abroad, even if they are communicating with US citizens here. And it says nothing about the NSA’s deeply troubling practice of inserting vulnerabilities into encryption programs that can be exploited by any hacker. It won’t, therefore, solve all the problems that the HRW and New American Foundation reports identify. But it would mark an important and consequential first step.
          ~
          But he doesn’t admit the bill does little to address the specific sources of the costs identified in the two reports. It’s not a minute too soon to address these costs, he says, but then embraces a bill that doesn’t really address the actual sources of the costs identified in the reports.
          ~
          That is mostly besides the point of whether Leahy’s bill is a fair apples-to-oranges trade-off with the status quo as to represent an improvement – an answer to which I can’t yet give, given some of the obvious unanswered questions about the bill. It is, however, a testament to how some of its supporters are overselling this bill and with it anyone’s ability to rein in the intelligence community.

          http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/08/03/usa-freedom-does-not-rein-in-the-spies/

          • @seer 05 Aug 2014 at 11:17 pm

            Instead of petulantly rejecting “the good in the name of the perfect”, why not let the few legislators that are addressing these issues know that there is a community of informed citizens that are willing to do more than sit on the sidelines and complain.
            The EFF petition allows for any supplementary comment anyone wants to add.
            “Work is love made visible.” KG
            As Usual,
            EA

  59. @ The Intercept Internet Tech Team:

    Your link to the “Classified Documents” noted in this article appears to be down. It could be my equipment but I don’t think so.

  60. New leaker disclosing U.S. secrets, government concludes

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/politics/u-s-new-leaker/index.html

    The federal government has concluded there’s a new leaker exposing national security documents in the aftermath of surveillance disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, U.S. officials tell CNN.
     
    Proof of the newest leak comes from national security documents that formed the basis of a news story published Tuesday by the Intercept, the news site launched by Glenn Greenwald, who also published Snowden’s leaks.

    • The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges.

      I think the hint was in the third paragraph above:

      The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system.

      All the other articles have made some sort of “from Snowden” reference. That was pointedly missing here.

    • This is great news, Pedinska; Snowden needs more company. Each new leaker confirms that others see the criminality and refuse to stand with or for it.

  61. It is so typical macho. Almost all terrorists are male! This is really discriminating for all women!!! Let´s fight for our right to not be discriminated! We do not want to be the tiny red field but part of the big blue area!

    • @ keller:

      Under ordinary circumstances, I am a proponent for equal rights for all races, religions, nationalities, and genders but in this case…..I really don’t mind taking a back seat.

  62. Are there any known cases where CIA personnel are known to praise their program with the shout “Hail Hydra”?

  63. So where do all the neo-Nazi groups, the Cliven Bundys of the world who were openly threatening to shoot federal officials in the performance of their official duties, and other far-right misfits belong in this scenario?

    • Well goat-face, first you’d have to understand that, inconveniently for you, Nazis were sozialisten–it was on the doorbell there to attract progressives. Tee-partei types don’t swing to “Sozialisten.” But progressives did, including Margaret Sanger. Do you not get that right wingers are revolted by “Socialist” anything?

      Open carry means firearms are not the contraband the authoritarian progressive left wants to propagandize. Nobody threatened anyone.

      1000 people staring down federal BLM the latter intent on stealing property of a rancher who’d (and whose family had) been paying grazing fees to Nevada for decades, and using land –and infrastructure–passed down through the family since the 1800s.

      All over Drudge–top story for several days in a row. Even MSNBC, and CNN couldn’t ignore the import of the story.

      The feds back down–hours after Sen. Reid’s involvement is revealed as well as the existence of a Sept. 2012 New American article entitled _”Harry Reid Bolsters Son’s Interests in Chinese Solar Plant Deal”_. Cliven Bundy was the last remaining rancher in a region that saw 80 others driven away in recent years from land to be used either as infrastucture for a solar deal or for remediation lands; his was intended for the latter.

      You’d think Bundy was a story: well, not the New York Times. Like Brezhnev era Soviet media, it didn’t exist. One only need look up “Bundy” in the Search field on the top page of nytimes.com to discover not a trace, anywhere, in Newest, Oldest or Relevance until over a full week had passed after the climactic showdown where a newly militarized BLM retreated, and an opinion piece by Timothy Egan appeared.

      So if the NYT didn’t think the Bundy scene was important enough to report on, at all, during the impasse–and even in the subsequent week–why do you think it’s so important?

      • You’re either a liar or an awful searcher. The Times published a number of stories, including here, here, and here. It also published opinion columns on him by Timothy Egan 4/17/14, Paul Krugman on 4/27/14, Maureen Dowd, 4/26/14, Gail Collins on 4/25/14, and Charles M. Blow on 4/25/14. And that’s just the first page of results — for CLIVEN Bundy. If all you searched was Bundy, you did it wrong.

        • Your problem is that none of the NY Times reportage you cite appears prior to the April 12, 2014 BLM standdown–or even several days after. In fact none was done during the standoff by NYT, and you can’t find an example that does.

          (Aside from the curious results that appear from datelines 2006 (!) through present in NYT search that each contain the phrase “The guns brandished by Clive Bundy’s supporters at the standoff in Bunkerville, Nev., blurred the line between expressing ideas and making….” Does NYT have a time machine?)

      • Not sure why my first post didn’t appear — maybe all the links to NYTimes search results got mistaken for spam — but I’ll try again: Try searching “Cliven Bundy” instead of just Bundy. You’ll get a page-plus of hits.

        Also, fun fact: The official name of the Nazi Party contained the word “socialist,” but it did not stand for socialism. It was fascist, and your calling it socialist does not make it so. Words have meaning.

        • Socialist stands for socialism, Lex. The movement is that old and older–back in fact to 1848 and beyond.

          Movement swag with “Nationalsozialismus” on it is designed to attract socialists––and did. Progressives are the ones who press those doorbells.

          It must pain you to have to deal with that, but you need to approach it honestly. And that means understanding and finally admitting to yourself that conservatives don’t show up for “Socialist” functions, and don’t like “Sozialisten” printed on their napkins–it’s revolting to them.

        • A genuine fact for you: socialism historically fits fascism like hand in glove. In fact the most notorious fascist of the 20th century edited Italy’s premier socialist newspaper of the time, Avanti! (“Forward!”).

    • Don’t assume that those groups would have the same standard.

      Alert legal experts recognized at the time just how far the Supreme Court had gone in perverting justice with its fatal message that the (presumed) interest of the state stood above the law. By implication, even the most heinous crimes were not punishable if they were committed in the interest of the state, while legal actions were punishable if they ran counter to it.
      – Ingo Müller,

      • Don’t assume that those groups would have the same standard. They might very well be the Black Hundreds of the Tsardom of our day, a lawless servant of the lawless governance. Break the rule of law and the lawless will govern.

        Alert legal experts recognized at the time just how far the [German] Supreme Court had gone in perverting justice with its fatal message that the (presumed) interest of the state stood above the law. By implication, even the most heinous crimes were not punishable if they were committed in the interest of the state, while legal actions were punishable if they ran counter to it.
        – Ingo Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich

  64. it means that we are all black now. You don’t have to have done anything wrong to be considered suspect.

    • I think your right and they do spy on the commander in chief who is black. If they didn’t spy on him a workers compensation advocate might follow him and threaten his life. In which case the secret service would have to do some paper work for you so that you would know the workers compensation employee is attempting to take down the president. When you are fully aware the life of the president is then saved. Should we add some workers comp people to our terrorists list?

  65. So, there are 680,000 terrorists already inside the United States. Incredible. It’s as though the equivalent of half of China’s army has snuck in. Are they waiting for a go-word or signal to strike in terrifying unison? We better give up some more fundamental human rights in exchange for safety from this murderous legion of terror.

    • @ Tom Czerniawski:

      So far….the only terrorists that I can identify are the ones acting under The Office of The Director of National Intelligence listed at the following link:

      http://www.dni.gov/index.php

      They have everyone running with “No Place To Hide”.

      • I want every stalker and every peeping tom and every person who committed theft for workers compensation to be put on a database so the average American can know that the person that lives next door is a traitor to American freedoms. You condemnation of security offices is a front for litigation and news stories. You don’t want the news. You want blood shed. You don’t want personal freedoms you want anarchy. Spy? That’s for workers compensation employees who are so lazy they cant work and need easy payouts from doctors who say they are sick so they can make easy money. It’s been clearly wrote out for you here in the pages of the intercept that I have blogged to several times. Where is the news station? Where are the investigators? This is a crime against humanity to gang stalk and drive a person to insanity over lazy payouts. Who should the insane call? The FBI? The CIA? or the police union that started the stalking in the first place? Where is your order and freedom from tyranny? Does that happen when all the lazy payouts are gone? Then the lawyers who support these acts of violence against citizens who protest against workers compensation can have all the money and they can sit around smoking cigars with you until the terrorist gets a hold of them and take their money to Hamas so they can terrorize people.

  66. I imagine the government can get a lot of biometric data about all of us from the EMRs, the Electronic Medical Records that they spent billions to promote and give away to the medical community through grants, some of which I believe came from Homeland Security funding. And now that they are forcing us to buy health insurance, they are also forcing us into their health care system with EMRs and connected databases.

    Someone should investigate the whole EMR deal. Many doctors offices now take photos of us as well as recording the usual vital statistics, medications, health problems, religion, etc. Probably tattoos and birthmarks too. Are there any intimate details that aren’t recorded and available to the government electronically? We’ll never know. It’ll be classified.

    • EMR’s were all about wired-in and dirt. That wasn’t obvious to very many people when the Bushes were pushing it, and still isn’t. The left thought the Bushes had a soft spot of altruism for health care.

  67. Americans are a paranoid lot. This article will make them a lot more paranoid.

    However, there is small chance of being a selectee target on a list, something like 0.0004%. (1200 out of 300,000,000)

    • there is small chance of being a selectee target–doug wood

      There’s only a small chance that I might be bombed or shot to death in Gaza, too, but I am nonetheless effected and concerned. The world doesn’t revolve around you or around me, but we are all connected. I don’t gauge my how much I should be concerned about what the global powers are getting up to based on how likely it is that I might be directly targeted or effected by their — in this instance — spying and harassing.

    • How about you let me come to your place, take your picture, copy your personal information and then go through your shit?

      What’s wrong — paranoid and got something to hide?

    • Oh really! I guess you never heard about Bill Binney informing the people that the NSA is building dossiers on all of us.

      A former NSA official has accused the NSA’s director of deception during a speech he gave at the DefCon hacker conference on Friday when he asserted that the agency does not collect files on Americans.
      ~
      William Binney, a former technical director at the NSA, said during a panel discussion that NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was playing a “word game” and that the NSA was indeed collecting e-mails, Twitter writings, internet searches and other data belonging to Americans and indexing it.
      ~
      “Unfortunately, once the software takes in data, it will build profiles on everyone in that data,” he said. “You can simply call it up by the attributes of anyone you want and it’s in place for people to look at.”
      ~
      [snip]
      ~
      Binney was contradicting statements made on Friday by Alexander, who told the crowd of hackers and security professionals that his agency “absolutely” does not maintain files on Americans.
      ~
      “And anybody who would tell you that we’re keeping files or dossiers on the American people,” Alexander continued, “knows that’s not true.”

      FYI, Bill Binney designed the software the NSA is using to create these dossiers, and of all people he knows that software’s capabilities.

      http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/09/28/bill-binney-told-you-so/

    • People use the term “paranoid” much too casually. A better term, perhaps, is “heightened awareness”, which is a good thing.

      Let’s subject you to the tactics that are being employed in going after some of these targets. In a few months, we’ll revisit your thoughts about “paranoia” and how it feels to be targeted. I can guarantee that you’ll be singin’ a new tune.

    • What you don’t know is that by posting here, your odds are not known, but certainly not what you estimated.

    • On this list. The odds are far greater that the average American:
      1. is listed at the three major credit bureaux, Equifax, TransUnion, Experian, with all his/her credit and financial history, and more,
      2. has all their retail data listed at whatever bank holds their debit and/or credit cards
      3. has their calling history and probably movements on a telecomms company’s database, if they have a cell phone,
      4. has much of this history filed with the IRS as well, and almost everybody files a tax return,
      5. has most of their personal history on public view, if you’re silly enough to keep updating it on Facebook, Instagram or whatever. (Why would you take and upload pictures of your damn dinner, f’Chrissake?)
      6. has your purchasing history stored at various retail stores, if you use loyalty cards even if you’re using cash.

      NSA has but to ask for it, but in the meantime these businesses are the ones that decide much of your activity, plus reveal this stuff to your current or prospective employer on demand. Also, if you ever had a brush with the law that’s probably on file at your state Dept of Justice, or mostly likely at the FBI.

      They’ve got a little list, a lot of cross-indexed data, my fellow citizens, and you’re already on it.

      Operator, could you help me place this call?
      You see, the number on the matchbook is old and faded,
      She’s living in LA, with my best old ex-friend Ray,
      Someone that she knew and sometimes hated …
      – Jim Croce, using pre-1973 technology

      • I had some sort of reason for sending for credit report, about 10 years ago.
        When I looked at it, they had right name and address, but my credit history
        was entirely fictitious.Every line on that credit report was 100% false.

        • That’s because the workers compensation employees snuck into your bank account so they could see how much you were worth. When they did they started a new account with your name in it. Then they made a bunch of unnecessary charges and left you with the bill. Who can you call? Do you think Glenn could take some time off and help you with your credit legal problems? He’s a lawyer. Maybe you could call the police department. No. their friends are the workers compensation attorneys they won’t like you. Should you call the president and tell him about your credit issue? No. He’s busy fighting Leaks that your credit information has been hacked. Who do you call? How about Wonder Woman? She is sexy, smart, tough, and ready to kick some workers compensation ass for you. When she finished she’ll send you a bill. Because she is such a good citizen she will use that money to raise three kids who will kick some more workers compensation ass. Then the whole freakin world can see what the Unions are really about. Snooping, stalking, and getting surgeries they didn’t need so they can sit on their asses and hack into your credit accounts.

        • True or false, that’s what they’ll believe of you. To borrow from a Hollywood film, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Your credit level is 23 on a scale of 100, it may be.

          • No Hollywood film would go against the Unions who would fuck you up your ass. Nice try though.

  68. Sometimes there are generic national security issues that are so incredibly obvious (such as the modern equivalent of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater). They can’t even be addressed by the govt. because it would invoke notions of plausible deniability. http://agsaf.org

    • Huh!

      “We are getting word that there is a new government MOLE leaking government documents…..”

      Give me a minute….I’ll go out and dig the little, furry, fellow a nice hole that he can call home. In fact, I’ll dig a few holes for his relatives too.

    • Good news. We could use a whole boatload of new leakers.

      Agree.

      Did not see that you’d already noted this article before posting mine above.

      • No worries, Pedinska. Whatever it takes to try to turn this crazy world around…

        Always appreciate your comments.

        -anon

  69. “the Colombia-based FARC (11,275)”

    Interesting thing with this is, Eric Holder has protected American corporate personalities who’ve done business with FARC, including providing FARC millions in cash and machine guns. The guilty parties? Unnamed Chiquita executives. A sort of one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter .. that is, where freedom is pegged to the bottom line (profit)

    http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/04/22/this-particular-article-has-been-suffering-visibility-problems/

    ^ There is an outline of the organized crime business plan, Holder’s actions included. It’s a bit like the paradox in the previous article where Israel is the threat we support, only here it is example undermining Latin America to underscore criminal competitive edge. What’s actually happening is, the ‘terrorists’ we do business with have to be listed to keep the troops believing the system they work for is on the up & up. Meanwhile the people at the top give cover to those ‘terrorists’ they happen to be in business/bed with. It’s clearly why Holder doesn’t bring prosecutions-

  70. ‘A’ for effort but still incomplete. If you could just give a guestimate of when we can satisfy our own curiosity. I would like to see names and biometrics, asap.

  71. If this revelation does not strike fear into the minds and hearts of Americans nothing will.

    Are we just to sit and wait until appropriately “rounded-up” for further interrogation in a prison camp; or should we just hope for a drone strike?
    Of course there is always the possibility that one could die prior to capture and/or detention from the assortment of chemical poisons being administered in our food, water, and air.

    What is the plan to stop this mass terror attack upon the citizens of the United States of America by the totalitarian, monster, security state created by Washington DC?

    What if the US Government lost their infinite supply of fiat currency? Think that that would would help?
    Then, of course there is always that Constitution that we could fall back on. Last I checked all the Amendments are still intact. Even if they are not being upheld in courts of law.
    One thing is for sure….The “land of the free and the home of brave” has become a hostile environment.

    Many thanks for this article Mr. Scahill and Mr. Devereaux.

  72. The chastened, embarrassed, progressive left would have you believe that if you elected a Justin Amash, or Rand Paul, or Ron Paul, or Mike Lee, or Ted Cruz, or Walter Jones–people who believe in limited gov’t and liberty (Ted Cruz was one of only 15 U.S. Senators in the last vote to cast no on NDAA)–that you would be electing a body politic no different from that of the left’s natural choices.

    And they want you to believe that because they can’t admit to you, or to themselves, that their political judgment (not to mention socioeconomic philosophy) is piss poor. Obama’s Sen. voting record (not to mention other red flags) was there for everyone to see.

    • The problem is those you mentioned ( a couple of whom seem dubious to me already) might suddenly ‘become’ neoconservatives upon election, which seemed to happen to both Bush and Obama.

      George W. Bush, before attaining the presidency, had proposed a ‘humble foreign policy’ praised by Ron Paul. Once elected, Bush turned right around and earned Paul’s scorn.

      Obama pretended at least to be a civil libertarian opposed to unnecessary violence – even as he promised to expand the Afghanistan war – but became suspiciously neoconservative pretty much full-on after the election.

      So what people say about non-interventionism and civil liberties before they become president may not amount to a hill of beans, really.

      • Obama never needed to become neoconservative (aka leftist Republican) because he was already leftist Democrat–that’s the intersection in the set where you see no difference between the parties.

        W? Nobody ever thought W’s politics varied from that of his neocon, socially progressive dad, H.W. (or in the gematria “H” the emperor and “VV” or 66, the qliphoth).

        • I can’t say I follow the details of what you’re saying (I don’t know what a ‘qliphoth’ is, and I’m not sure I want to) but this is what I meant about G.W. Bush -

          Ron Paul: “For some radicals on each side that want to impose our will with force. Not the American people–I’m talking the people who have hijacked our foreign policy, the people who took George Bush’s humble foreign policy and turned it into one of nation-building.”

          Q: “The president himself?”

          Ron Paul: “The president himself has changed the policy. I liked the program he ran on. That’s what I defend. It changed at the first meeting of the Cabinet, [when they discussed] when were we going to attack Iraq?”

          http://www.ontheissues.org/2012/Ron_Paul_Foreign_Policy.htm

        • And my point about Obama is that he was not at all what he pretended to be, and appeared to many (not to you, obviously) to change.

          This insight I extrapolated to include your list of candidates, who could be and probably are equal liars.

          • Obama was introduced by the globalist elite in much the same way this puppet was, with an obscured provenance. His brief record in Congress from IL informed you exactly how he’d govern as president. He showed you with retroactive immunity for telecoms how, as a busybody leftist, he’d regard your privacy. And if you didn’t care to know where he was when a campaign plane loaded with press had the door shut on them after Barack eloped from it (and the MSM all ventured Hillary and Barack were with each other (but where? At her house?)), didn’t care to learn from authentic media he and Hillary visited the 2008 Bilderberg conference at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, VA on that Thursday June 5, then you keep pouting that they’re all alike. You didn’t seem too concerned about the official family history that didn’t add up, or the BIC job with Kissinger straight out of Columbia.

            Cindy says they’re all alike because she didn’t see it coming, and when the progressive left rears the collectivist, authoritarian head that always publicly embarrasses its practioners so, just confoundedly blame it again on a right wing that embraces individual liberties as a consistent, defining attribute.

          • I didn’t say I was fooled by Obama (or Bush), so kindly don’t assume I was. Both parties (Republican and Democrat) are quite evidently corrupted by corporatism and militarism.

          • And I’m not blaming the “right wing” (or “pouting” for that matter, you insulting person) alone, for both “wings” belong to a flightless fiasco of frustration. I’m blaming corporatism (crony capitalism) and militarism, and reactionary and statist corruption, as you well know.

    • On what basis did you derive your apparent certainty of such claptrap?

      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.”

      Oh yeah, that’s some kind of righteous, Tea Party, libertarian-style habeus corpus right there.

    • “…you would be electing a body politic no different from that of the left’s natural choices.”

      How, exactly, does one elect a body politic?

        • “A body politic is a metaphor in which a nation is considered to be a corporate entity,[2] being likened to a human body. The word ‘politic’ in this phrase is a postpositive adjective; so it is ‘a body of a politic nature’ rather than ‘a politic of a bodily nature’. A body politic comprises all the people in a particular country considered as a single group.”

          Again, How does one elect a “body politic” (“…all the people in a particular country…”)?

  73. So, the DTI manages the TIDE database, while the CIA manages the CINEMA database and the NCC manages the NMEC database. Database administrators unanimously agree this makes us all very much safer, as they compete to see who can create the biggest database. By far the largest group of terr*rists, are the fearsomely strong No’Recogniz’d in America (NRA), numbering over a quarter million highly trained covert operatives.

  74. From the linked article recently tweeted by Glenn Greenwald:

    Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP

    Posted: 08/05/2014 2:16 pm EDT Updated: 8 minutes ago

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/05/terror-watch-list_n_5651757.html?1407262653

    “A few minutes after the AP story posted at 12:32, consisting of three paragraphs, First Look Media published a much more comprehensive piece.

    The government, it turned out, had “spoiled the scoop,” an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism. To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have gotten. Tuesday’s AP story was much friendlier to the government’s position, explaining the surge of people added to the watch list on a foiled terror plot.

    After the AP story ran, First Look requested a conference call with the National Counterterrorism Center. A source with knowledge of the call said that the government agency admitted having fed the story to the AP, but didn’t think the reporter would publish before First Look. “That was our bad,” the official said.

    Asked by editor John Cook if it was the government’s policy to feed one outlet’s scoop to a friendlier outlet, a silence ensued, followed by the explanation: “We had invested some quality time with Eileen,” referring to AP reporter Eileen Sullivan, whom the official added had been out to visit the NCTC.

    Cook told the official that in the future the agency would have only 30 minutes to respond to questions before publication. Cook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Sullivan did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment.”

    • Oh, they think they’re slick, don’t they? Glad they are getting called out on this! Good for giving them a very limited window for response in the future, Mr. Cook. Be sure to hold to that!

      Kudos to Jeremy, Ryan and Josh.

  75. We have the right to know every single person who’s made any statement at all on our records, their full name, address, all their email’s passwords, family member, friends, naked pictures ETC ETC, just like they’re doing.
    If the british 5-eyes government is arming a bunch of british related r1b’s with all this high-tech equipment and high-tech weapons we have all the same rights to access it. It’s our property not theirs. They’re stealing it like they always do everywhere they’ve ever went.

    • the world belongs to everyone, anyone has a right to be on this land; They’re the only people who’ve committed this exact systematic persecution on every people on earth, if there’s a single people that don’t have the right to be here it’s them.

      • Obama, if ur president, not some queens bitch and u represent “the people” only, then why don’t u show everyone what primary chromosomes they have, what these retarded clowns are doing to women and what they’re doing to everyone’s genetics. We easily outnumber them.
        Give everyone their information these fucking clowns have, then let’s “vote” on some things.
        or u too busy using the apparatus to steal people’s $80billion and tech assassinate everyone like a coward?

    • Reprehensible government behavior — no surprises there. But this sort of event demonstrates The Intercept is a different kind of media outlet, deserving lots of attention and praise.

    • “Read how the US Government tried to feed (i.e. steal) the scoop of @jeremyscahill & @rdevro to AP & @esullivanap”

      There is nothing in the constitution that requires you to submit your stories to the government for vetting prior to publication.

    • from the article you linked to:

      “The practice of spoiling a scoop is frowned upon because it destroys trust between the journalist and the subject. ”

      Could this be the reason the government actually spoiled the scoop? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

    • I think ALL the government TERRORISTS should be prosecuted, including the lily-white Christian ones.

      Now, take your hatred for Jews back to the hell-hole it belongs in.

  76. I hope they put workers compensation addicts who misuse the system on their list and prosecute them for torturing innocent Americans protesting against them.

  77. I hope they put workers compensation addicts on the list. I’m sick of their misuse of the system and their torture against innocent civilians who only want to protest.

  78. Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux:

    Many thanks for your continuing work on this topic. I’m extraordinarily grateful for your efforts.

  79. This is absolutely, totally, over-the-top INSANE.

    Not the “America” being taught in schools. Not the actions of a Government that stands behind “Let Freedom Ring”. And certainly not the behaviors of a Government that defends the United States Constitution.

    Sad.

  80. Well, you guys are just full of good news.

    Keep up the good work Ryan and Jeffery. You guys are appreciated.

  81. “Lacks legal standing” is a convenient mechanism for preventing redress.

    “It’s secret” ipso facto you can’t know it, prove it, or disclose it.

    Hermetics 101

      • A searchable database is exactly what we need. Those who have been unfairly targeted are in need of relief.

    • A list of the names would be a great gift to the innocent among us who have been unfairly targeted. There are terrible things going on in our communities related to this endless “war on terror” and they need to be stopped.

    • Not all the names will do your public service for you. Some of those names will put in innocent civilians in harms way and you know that. It will be lethal for children.

      • “Innocent civilians” are already in harm’s way. We’re supposed to be a nation of laws, Lauren. There’s this not-so-little thing called “due process.” Ever hear of it?

        “The universal guarantee of due process is in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and is applied to all states by the 14th Amendment. From this basic principle flows many legal decisions determining both procedural and substantive rights.”

        We’ve chosen instead to become a nation of law-breaking predators. (Those who know what’s transpiring from coast to coast in the U.S. will understand my use of the word “predators.”)

        • This nation of laws you are so eagerly addressing is being broken on a routine basis by legal teams and private security companies who represent workers compensation claims. Where is the due process when thugs hire private investigators to follow and harass them using twitter to notify their unions about where the individual is and where they are going?They stalk people and they stalk families. Your due process is in thug county. Your public awareness program is to mask the workers compensation employees who want to follow not work. It in humane. Do not tell me this is irrelevant to torture by the USG it is exactly what you are accusing the NSA of doing. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

  82. Congrats to the TI staff on an important story.

    One caveat. “If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” he says. Logically, yes, it might dissipate their efforts. However, if everybody is a suspected terrorist, then you have achieved total Orwellian control, and of course, as the story says, the agencies engaged in it will have more resources indeed.

    Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed— would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper— the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
    – Orwell, “1984″

    • Thats exactly the point I made in my comment, the resources will keep pouring in if they keep adding names to the database, next year it will have 5 million! Whats to say we all arent suspected terrorists! I mean cmon when does it stop. They are manipulating and seizing on the fact that like the article said, they wave the terrorist card in front of anyone and it justifies their actions. When I see behavior like that it almost confirms the suspicions of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who say that attack was planned and executed by some rogue government agency in order to get endless budgets and unrestricted access to peoples information, it almost sounds plausible when you see what these agencies are doing.

      • The same wise man that I quoted below also told me that there is no such thing as a “conspiracy theory”; just theories regarding how the conspiracy was accomplished.

    • A wise man once told me that there is no such thing as science fiction because the “fiction” always manifested years later.
      He was right.

    • Thanks, corm, for remarking on that. You are absolutely right. And Terrorism™ is just the excuse for constructing the Panopticon. It *is* Orwellian, and it is to be used to exercise absolute control over every individual in every country on the planet. Oh, it will take some time for the Elite to achieve their goals, but they’ve been at it for a very long time now, and if they have no other redeeming qualities, they do have patience, tons of it.

      Besides Terrorism™ is desirable – it means plenty of work and profits for the PWI – Perpetual War Industry.

  83. If we had additional information about how many whistleblowers and reporters with articles/positions against US policies were stopped by CBP (DHS/FBI/affiliates) for “…enhanced screenings at airports and border crossings” you can pretty much determine if there is a correlation of retaliation by CBP/intelligence against. So for example … I know of ten (10) or so whistleblowers/reporters stopped at the border for enhanced screening out of 1200 people flagged for enhanced. If we gather so more information we might be able to generate enough statistical evidence for cause for a congressional investigation of why certain reporters are stopped.

    Or in other words … think of reporters/whistleblowers against US policies as ‘darker skinned’ and we are trying to show probable cause for further investigation they are being disproportiantely ”stopped and frisked.’

    • Obama is a failure to anyone who considers themselves leftist. Regardless, the surveillance state mega isms were put in place by the neocons in the Bush administration.

    • Not to toot Obama’s horn or anything, because I hate the man, but Republicans and Dems are both the exact same. Republican presidency would be just as shitty. Right-wingers elect the same BS as the liberals do.

      • Maybe, but ponder this irony: the article brings out that the suspect list seems to show that Arabs and Muslims in the US, for instance, Dearborn, Michigan, “has been disproportionately targeted for watchlisting.” You’d think that, of all people, Barack Obama and Eric Holder would have some sensitivity about racial profiling, but maybe that’s the true power of it.

        Trouble is, shaping your intelligence to your preconceptions can warp it, and make collateral damage out of any notion of a constitutional Republic in the bargain.

        In support of this blanket condemnation of all persons of Japanese descent, however, no reliable evidence is cited to show that such individuals were generally disloyal, [n3] or had generally so conducted themselves in this area as to constitute a special menace to defense installations or war industries, or had otherwise, by their behavior, furnished reasonable ground for their exclusion as a group. [footnote 3 -- The Final Report, p. 9, casts a cloud of suspicion over the entire group by saying that, "while it was believed that some were loyal, it was known that many were not."]
        – Murphy, J., dissent, Korematsu v. US, 323 U.S. 214 (1944)

      • Jaycep,

        Actually no. Neocons are leftist Republicans, and their philosophy can be traced to the Troskyites who introduced it to the US by way of Mexico City (see “Irving Kristol”).

        If you were to elect a right winger, you would get someone like Justin Amash, or Rand Paul, or Ron Paul, or Mike Lee, or Ted Cruz, or Walter Jones, people who believe in limited gov’t and liberty. Ted Cruz was one of only 15 Senators to vote no on NDAA a few months ago–where were yours?

        • The problem with your argument is that Libertarianism doesn’t belong on a left-to-right scale. You can be far right and libertarian. You can be far left and libertarian. They’re not directly related.

          Left and right refers to economic policy: left skews toward the state handling the economy, right skews toward capitalism and free markets. Libertarianism and Authoritarianism reflect social policy: Libertarianism skews towards social freedom, Authoritarianism reflects following authority. The confusion of “Liberal” and “[American] Liberal” is probably what makes you think that Liberals are “left” when really it’s [American] Liberals that are leftist (the rest of the world uses different terms). Recap — Liberals = Libertarian. [American Liberals] = Leftist, Libertarian. Naturally you may think that left skews liberal and right authoritarian, which is not true. Look no further than socialist fascism (Nazis are the easiest example: highly authoritarian, socialist (left))

          End point: None of those you mention are actually Left; If anything, they’re liberals (which is HIGHLY debatable given some of their social policy leanings). As for Ted Cruz being one of the few to vote no on the NDAA: he’s notorious for trying to block budgets regardless if they’re bloated or not in attempts to shut the government down. That is no surprise.

          • *CORRECTION: Republican neocons aren’t actually left at all. (Since you never called the ones you listed leftist–though I still refute the claim that their true-blue libertarians)

          • Nazis were not Socialists. Hitler purged all of the Socialist Elements out of the party, including both Strasser Brothers. He made clear to Gregor what the Nazis thought of Socialism and this can be googled. Yours is a revisionist history.

          • Brad here’s Gregor speaking as a socialist rival to a socialist Hitler:

            “The rise of National Socialism is the protest of a people against a State that denies the right to work. If the machinery for distribution in the present economic system of the world is incapable of properly distributing the productive wealth of nations, then that system is false and must be altered. The important part of the present development is the anti-capitalist sentiment that is permeating our people.” –Gregor, 1934

            You’re being told right there they are a socialist outfit–of which Hitler was a member. That socialist party was the successor to the German Workers Party of which Hitler was also a member. Conservatives don’t join “Workers” anything.

            Socialists rivalries are notorious throughout the 20th century, as has been illustrated to you in prior threads. You’re now ignoring that the embarrassed left is playing the same distancing games from the equally leftist Obama now that he’s unpopular with an awakening public.

    • Tin pot? Not exactly. Perón, Noriega and Chávez were tin pot. As for this fellow, “pernicious” may be a better adjective.

      The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient.
      – “1984″

    • Not all of us voted for Obama. Some of us saw through his con and voted for other candidates, such as Jill Stein.

  84. Its a scary thought, the direction our country is going in I mean, security wise. These government agencies have been let loose on the population with little or no oversight, bloated budgets and looking for targets. You know what happens when they cant find targets, they make the targets. Guess who those people will be? Innocent americans. Think about it for a second. Put yourself in one of these agencies, on security steroids, tell me what you would do if you were assigned a huge budget to go identify terrorists, but you couldnt really find too many terrorists, they just didnt exist. If you wanted that nice budget to continue next year what is most likely the remedy if you arent finding a ton of people to add to this database? You want to keep that agency car, laptop, phone, expense credit card; your boss is pushing you to find people; on your back 24/7, what is most likely to be the remedy? Fabricating and exaggerating threats and targeting people who arent really terrorists thats what the remedy would be. We need to change the atmosphere here, this is our country, we cannot be driven by fear and let it take away our rights, cannot let that happen. I will never sacrifice my rights for security, they are unalienable rights!

      • Yeah I never really thought about it like that but that makes perfect sense, its so fucking obvious to me now.

      • This is EXACTLY WHAT IM FUCKING TALKING ABOUT! This is what PRIVATE security companies do to ordinary people who don’t think the way the private company wants them to. It does not have to be a corporation it can be a hospital that doesn’t like your point of view in health care in America. They stalk you until you shut the fuck up! This is the world we live in. Who will protect you from this loss of freedom? Glenn? You up for a trial after the book ordeal is over?

  85. Everyone on the list is probably there because western Europeans tortured them. See, they spy on everyone, and anyone they find who makes them “real jealous” they then torture them and sit there and record their immediate reaction. Then they document their reaction on permanent record of course without mentioning that they just tortured them 2 seconds before. So the main criteria is how jealous their initial stalkers where and how much they’ve been tortured.

  86. Another thing to notice is to what extent Muslims are targeted. Hizbullah and Hamas are resistance armies much different from what Al Qaedeh is right now.Taliban in an extreme minority but they do support Al Qaedeh both a creation of CIA’s adventure in Afganistan fighting the Russians.. The biggest damage here is to Hizbulah and Hamas since both are fighting Israeli occupation. Hizbullah succeeded in driving Israel out of Southern Lebenon.

  87. It’s obvious that the u.s.government considers all who criticize them are the enemy. Homeland insecurity bought 2.2 billion rounds of ammunition while trying to disarm our citizens and arming cartels in Mexico. It’s not by accident. They’re planning and training for massive civil unrest.

  88. Good, that means they’re doing their job.

    Security is one of those things that people hate, but when shtf they cry about not having enough. Deal with it.

    • uh-huh. “You want me on that wall, You NEED me on that wall….” You seem to be like one of those latent fascists who won’t know tyranny until it crawls up and rips out your throat. Obsta Principiis, man. Resist the beginnings…..

    • Good it means they are doing their job? Really, this report shows that they are really stretching and drumming up these suspected terrorist databases to include innocent people and you say good? Take a look at yourself, are you really that afraid of the “terrorists” to think we need these government agencies running around making secret lists of people who are terrorists at the cost of millions of dollars and peoples rights getting squashed in the process? I sure dont

    • True leadership is shown by not flying into a panic when “shtf,” instead keeping cool, assessing the threat and responding to it rationally. Of course people will demand answers when they are not protected, that’s natural; and it’s also natural to want revenge on the perpetrators and defense against it happening again. Those demands can be addressed without going to the outrageous lengths the response to 9/11 has gone, however. Most of the response has been theater designed to provide the illusion of security and to serve as CYA for government agencies so they can point their fingers elsewhere if there is another incident. Little apparent thought has been given as to how the information collected might be misused in the future; but we know from history that it’s only a matter of time. Already there are calls to use the information collected to keep us safe from terrorists for more mundane purposes such as catching drug traffickers and other common criminals. Once that is commonplace, we’ll be off to the races and 10 or 20 years from now we’ll be wondering how we wound up with a surveillance and ideological monitoring apparatus that 20th-century autocrats could not have dreamed of having.

      • Dude you just made some crazy good points, I didnt even think of half that shit, your completely right, that shit is not to far away if this is becoming the norm. We are screwed.

  89. “In the summer of 2013, officials celebrated what one classified document prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center refers to as “a milestone”—boosting the number of people in the TIDE database to a total of one million, up from half a million four years earlier.”

    Yes, that’s how program effectiveness should be judged: by the rise in number of citizens “collected and collated.” Much like the Japanese internment camps during world War II.

    “The document credits that historic achievement to the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI), a secretive and virtually unknown U.S. counterterrorism unit responsible for maintaining TIDE. “This number is a testament to DTI’s hard work and dedication over the past 2.5 years,” the document declares.”

    “Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI)” – Am I having a nightmare, or is the nomenclature America is using sounding more and more like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany?

    ““No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

    George Orwell, Animal Farm

    • Program effectiveness comes from totality: not only is everybody a suspect, but the absence of proof is total proof. It’s not just Orwell. You mention the WWII internment. From Justice Murphy’s dissent in Korematsu v. U.S., 1944:

      Moreover, there was no adequate proof that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military and naval intelligence services did not have the espionage and sabotage situation well in hand during this long period. Nor is there any denial of the fact that not one person of Japanese ancestry was accused or convicted of espionage or sabotage after Pearl Harbor while they were still free — [footnote 15 -- The Final Report, p. 34, makes the amazing statement that, as of February 14, 1942, "The very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken."]

    • @ Sillyputty:

      ” Am I having a nightmare, or is the nomenclature America is using sounding more and more like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany?”

      No, all of here in the United States are having the same nightmare from the same totalitarian regime.

    • Yes, that’s how program effectiveness should be judged: by the rise in number of citizens “collected and collated.”

      Well, it worked for the Nazi death camps…to be pedantic, it’s not just the number of citizens. They are touting the number of “people” in the database.

      Body counts were also used in Vietnam as a measure of how effective operations were. And they’ve used them again in this “War on Terror.” Look at how many “militants” we’ve killed, see how effective we are, so give us more money. For some reason leaders seem to think that if we just slaughter enough of the enemy du jour, they’ll give up. They seem to forget that the death tolls in the wars where that worked were in the tens of millions, the countries that were thus subjugated were virtually leveled, and in the aftermath there were massive reconstruction costs to be borne.

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