NOVANEWS
By Tom Burghardt
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Global Research | |
What most Americans are blissfully unaware of is the fact that they carry in their pockets what have been described as near-perfect spy devices: their cellphones.
But what most Americans are blissfully unaware of is the fact that they carry in their pockets what have been described as near-perfect spy devices: their cellphones.
Markey told the Times that the prevalence of cellphone surveillance by law enforcement agencies raised the specter of “digital dragnets” that threaten the privacy of most customers.
In fact, the opposite is the case.
As readers recall, Manning is the Army private accused by the government of releasing hundreds of thousands of secret files to WikiLeaks. He currently faces charges that could lead to decades of incarceration.
In a statement published on his web site Wyden explained why he was blocking unanimous consent requests to pass FAA’s five-year extension.
Drake, who pled guilty last year to a misdemeanor after the Justice Department’s Espionage Act charges collapsed, was initially prosecuted by the administration–as a spy no less–for providing evidence to The Baltimore Sun of massive waste, fraud and corruption in NSA’s Trailblazer program. The $1.2 billion corporate boondoggle, overseen by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and project partners Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton was eventually shut down in 2006.
As EFF averred, “Jewel v. NSA is back in district court after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in late 2011. In the motion for partial summary judgment filed today, EFF asked the court to reject the stale state secrets arguments that the government has been using in its attempts to sidetrack this important litigation and instead apply the processes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that require the court to determine whether electronic surveillance was conducted legally.”
The proposed five-year extension of the FISA Amendments Act, coupled with indefinite detention provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the president’s “kill list” and now, a new Executive Order granting DHS the power to “seize” private communications’ facilities in the wake of a “national emergency” have accelerated these dictatorial trends. |