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sailingaway
12-16-2012, 02:02 PM
When a former senior White House official describes a nationwide surveillance effort as “breathtaking,” you know civil liberties activists are preparing for a fight.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the little-known National Counterterrorism Center, based in an unmarked building in McLean, Va., has been granted sweeping new authority to store and monitor massive datasets about innocent Americans.

After internal wrangling over privacy and civil liberties issues, the Justice Department reportedly signed off on controversial new guidelines earlier this year. The guidelines allow the NCTC, for the first time, to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, using “predictive pattern-matching,” to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. The data the counterterrorism center has access to, according to the Journal, includes “entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others.”

Notably, the Journal reports that these changes also allow databases about U.S. civilians to be handed over to foreign governments for analysis, presumably so that they too can attempt to determine future criminal actions. The Department of Homeland Security’s former chief privacy officer said that it represents a “sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.”

The snooping effort, which officials say is subject to “rigorous oversight,” is reminiscent of the so-called Total Information Awareness initiative, dreamt up in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Pentagon’s research unit DARPA. The aim of the TIA initiative was essentially to create a kind of ubiquitous pre-crime surveillance regime monitoring public and private databases. It was largely defunded in 2003, after civil liberties concerns. However, other similar efforts have continued, such as through the work of the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence-gathering “Fusion Centers.” Most recently, Fusion Centers were subjected to scathing criticism from congressional investigators, who found that they were accumulating masses of data about “suspicious” activity that was not of any use. The intelligence being swept up, the investigators found, was “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.”

more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/national_counterterrorism_center_s_massive_new_sur veillance_program_uncovered.html

Aratus
12-16-2012, 03:49 PM
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

Anti Federalist
12-16-2012, 03:57 PM
"You're paranoid!"

"Government isn't watching you."

Anti Federalist
12-16-2012, 04:00 PM
Fuck it all.

Kill it with fire.

I'm tired of being right all the time about this shit.

kathy88
12-16-2012, 04:07 PM
"You're paranoid!"

"Government isn't watching you."nothing to worry about here.

Anti Federalist
12-16-2012, 04:19 PM
Such sweeping surveillance efforts pose difficulties for the authorities because they can end up drowning in data, attempting to find a needle in a haystack, in the process deeming innocent people suspicious

No worries.

Didn't slow these guys down:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R96954%2C_Berlin%2C_Hermann_G%C3%B6ring_ernennt_Hi mmler_zum_Leiter_der_Gestapo.jpg/200px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R96954%2C_Berlin%2C_Hermann_G%C3%B6ring_ernennt_Hi mmler_zum_Leiter_der_Gestapo.jpg


According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was—for the most part—made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.[35] Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism.[36] Indeed, the Gestapo—at times—was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations.[37] Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.[38] Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".[39]

No, to detect threats against the USG.


The U.S. government clearly feels far-reaching surveillance initiatives are necessary to help detect potential future terror attacks.


But ultimately, in a democracy, the decision should surely rest in the hands of the American public.

So, when 51% vote to exterminate the other 48%, that's all good, right.

It's precisely because presstitutes like you, miserable cum drunk slut that you are, continue to propagandize this "democracy" word, that we are in the mess we are in.


It is a question of balance: How much liberty should be sacrificed in the name of security?

It has all been sacrificed.

When government claims the power to execute you by executive fiat, when government opens massive spy centers that are keeping "pre crime" dossiers on every single citizen, there is no liberty.

And of course, as CT points out, there is no security either.

This should be the biggest story in the news cycle for MONTHS to come.

Of course it won't, and not a fuck will be given.

Can we please leave now?

If there is not a serious move toward secession in the next year, I am seriously going to start planning to get me and the family the fuck out of here.

We are just two degrees of separation right now from this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_EU1pq6GZ8ps/TGlU0AbllMI/AAAAAAAADE0/ExAOB6UejzU/s1600/china+execution.jpg

Anti Federalist
12-16-2012, 04:19 PM
Or this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Rows_of_bodies_of_dead_inmates_fill_the_yard_of_La ger_Nordhausen%2C_a_Gestapo_concentration_camp.jpg/250px-Rows_of_bodies_of_dead_inmates_fill_the_yard_of_La ger_Nordhausen%2C_a_Gestapo_concentration_camp.jpg

FrankRep
12-16-2012, 04:26 PM
Counterterrorism Agency: Every Citizen a Suspect (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/13934-counterterrorism-agency-every-citizen-a-suspect)
15 December 2012 - The New American



The National Counterterrorism Center will now keep records on every American indefinitely so as to predict future criminal behavior.

pcosmar
12-16-2012, 04:27 PM
I'm tired of being right all the time about this shit.

My wife asks me all the time,, "why do you always have to be right?"

I tell her, I don't like to be.
I really don't.

sailingaway
12-16-2012, 06:05 PM
There's no discussion of this anywhere, that I'm seeing.

Anti Federalist
12-16-2012, 06:17 PM
There's no discussion of this anywhere, that I'm seeing.

Of course there isn't.

Did you expect there to be?

angelatc
12-16-2012, 06:29 PM
Well, if you're not doing anything wrong.....

/snark

That's my personal unfavorite.

idiom
12-16-2012, 06:31 PM
I just try to make sure that if they aren't watching me, then they are missing out on a hell of a good time.

Oh and "National Counterterrorism Center" is the first one I have heard that is more Orwellian than "Homeland Security".

pcosmar
12-16-2012, 06:51 PM
Oh and "National Counterterrorism Center" is the first one I have heard that is more Orwellian than "Homeland Security".

I tried to tell folks that when news of the MIAC report broke.
IT AIN'T JUST MISSOURI

and it ain't done yet.

oyarde
12-16-2012, 07:13 PM
There's no discussion of this anywhere, that I'm seeing. From my experiences over the years , things from around McLean are not going to get much coverage.

Anti Federalist
12-17-2012, 12:38 AM
////

Pauls' Revere
12-17-2012, 01:04 AM
NCTC "Kids Zone"

YIPPIE !!!

http://www.nctc.gov/site/kids/index.html

Pauls' Revere
12-17-2012, 01:26 AM
2 + 2 = 5