Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Declassified court documents highlight NSA violations

Declassified court documents highlight NSA violations

The National Security Agency for almost three years searched a massive database of Americans’ phone call records in violation of court-approved privacy rules, and the problem went unfixed because no one at the agency had a full technical understanding of how the system worked, according to new documents and senior government officials.
The improper activity went on from May 2006 to January 2009, according to a scathing March 2009 opinion by Judge Reggie B. Walton, a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Read the documents
IG report

Court records detail NSA violations

The Obama administration declassified documents about intelligence collection under Section 501 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Sept. 10.

Fine Print: White House was unprepared on Syria

Fine Print: White House was unprepared on Syria
A lesson for the White House: Handling Syria required early preparation for any action.

Ukrainian port eyed as analysts seek Syria’s arms source

Ukrainian port eyed as analysts seek Syria’s arms source
As civil war rages, traffic picks up between Syria and a little-known Ukrainian port linked to arms trade.

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed
Move allowed agency to search for Americans’ communications.
It was one of more than a dozen documents declassified and released Tuesday in response to lawsuits by civil liberties groups, and at the direction of President Obama in the wake of the June disclosure of the massive phone records collection by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden.
At issue was the NSA’s use of an “alert list” of numbers linked to terrorist suspects to see whether there had been any contact between those numbers and any numbers in the database, officials said. NSA was using that tool to see whether any numbers in the database should be followed up on for further analysis.
In fact, only numbers in which analysts could prove there was “reasonable articulable suspicion” of a link to foreign terrorists could be queried against the database, according to court-approved rules.
Walton said NSA’s explanation for its violation of the court order — that some NSA personnel thought the querying rules applied only to archived data — “strains credulity.” He also expressed consternation at NSA’s inaccurate description of the process it was using to query the database.
“The court finds that the government’s failure to ensure that responsible officials adequately understood the NSA’s alert list process, and to accurately report its implementation to the court, has prevented for more than two years both the government and the FISC from taking steps to remedy daily violations,” Walton wrote.
The secret program began without any court or congressional approval in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but was put under court authorization in May 2006 when some phone companies balked at providing the data solely at the request of the executive branch.
Under the “bulk records” collection, the NSA receives daily transfers of all customer records from the nation’s major phone companies. Those records include phone numbers called and received, their time and duration, but no customer name or call content.


Obama Delays Senate Vote on Syrian Force to Give Diplomacy 'A Chance' 10 0 12 Email Article Print Article Send a Tip by Breitbart News 10 Sep 2013, 11:27 AM PDT 101 post a comment On Tuesday, Politico reported that President Obama will now delay a vote to authorize use of force in Syria until “a diplomatic solution has a chance to play out.” The Russian proposal upon which Obama relies, which would supposedly transition Syrian chemical weapons to international control, has been stonewalled at the United Nations by the Russians and Chinese.

Obama Delays Senate Vote on Syrian Force to Give Diplomacy 'A Chance'

 10
 0
 12
 

Print Article Send a Tip

On Tuesday, Politico reported that President Obama will now delay a vote to authorize use of force in Syria until “a diplomatic solution has a chance to play out.” The Russian proposal upon which Obama relies, which would supposedly transition Syrian chemical weapons to international control, has been stonewalled at the United Nations by the Russians and Chinese.

Krauthammer: Russia playing chess with rank amateurs

Krauthammer: Russia playing chess with rank amateurs

In commenting on what many are calling a gaffe by Secretary of State John Kerry that may have played into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer said “Russia is playing chess with a set of rank amateurs.”
In a passing remark, Kerry said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could avoid a U.S.-led strike if he handed over his chemical weapons. Putin quickly proposed just such an arrangement that Syria was only too eager to accept.
Bret Baier, host of “Special Report” on Fox News, set Kauthammer up when he said Kerry “was speaking rhetorically about a situation we thought had very low probability of happening and suddenly it may be U.S. policy.”
“Because I think the Russians were playing chess here with a set of rank amateurs and understood that that gaffe gave them the opening they wanted,” Krauthammer said. “There are two issues here: chemicals and the retaining in power of Assad and of the Iran/Hezbollah/Assad/Russian axis dominating the region.”
Krauthammer continued:
“The Russians clearly, immediately saw that this enabled them to achieve their two objectives. Keep Assad in power. After all, if we’re going to have negotiations, we have to essentially recognize Assad. It’s not that Assad has to go, he’s the guy that’s going to have to provide the protection for any inspectors, locate the sites, he’s going to have to be in there. He’s going to be a negotiating element in this. He will remain in power and the Russians are going to have their air base, the naval base, everything that they have.”
“[President] Obama has seized on this because it’s the only way he saves face,” he added. “That’s a high price to pay, but I assure you he will seize that. It will be his policy as of now and as of his speech tomorrow [Tuesday] night.”

Airship hovers outside former SoCal air base; wind cuts test short

Airship hovers outside former SoCal air base; wind cuts test short



  • Email



    Share

    77


A massive experimental airship briefly lumbered into the skies in front of the former military base in Tustin, where shifting winds kept it from making its first untethered flight.
The 266-foot-long Aeroscraft was built by Worldwide Aeros Corp. with more than $50 million in funding from the Pentagon and NASA to demonstrate a novel buoyancy system that enables the airship to carry heavy loads -- and to move vertically with the precision of a helicopter.
The helium-filled airship’s only cargo Tuesday was two passengers, test pilot Corky Belanger and Aeroscraft inventor Igor Pasternak.
VIDEO: Test pilot tours the Aeroscraft
Not long after sunrise, the airship slowly climbed to about 20 feet, kicking up clouds of dust and debris in front of one of the two 17-story wooden blimp hangars in Tustin, where the silver airship was built.
The Aeroscraft tested for about two hours, creating a stir in the nearby community with neighbors coming out for a look, cars pulling over along Armstrong Avenue, and a school bus stopping for a short while.
In the end, company officials decided that shifting winds were too strong to allow for a more ambitious flight. Flight testing at Tustin will continue for the next several months, as the company aims to go higher and longer each time out.
INTERACTIVE: See how the Aeroscraft works
The Aeroscraft is a new type of hybrid aircraft that combines airplane and airship technologies and doesn't need a long runway to take off or land.  That’s because the buoyancy system uses air just as a submarine uses water to submerge and surface at will.
Design work on the Aeroscraft began in 2005 when Worldwide Aeros won a $3-million contract from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
ALSO:
Upgrades aim to extend B-52 bombers' already long lives
Entrepreneur is ready to prove his zeppelin idea is more than hot air
Space ship blasts through sound barrier, reaches new heights in test

Why did John Kerry, 70, mutilate his face?

Why did John Kerry, 70, mutilate his face?

Sen. John Kerry addresses the audience at the DNC: http://youtu.be/meiyldvHhqA via @youtube  SORRY HE DID NOT IT IS THE EVIL DEMON COMEING THOUGH KERRY IS NOT IN THIS BODY ANY MORE HE SOLD HIS SOUL TO SATAN AND NOW THE DEMON LIVES IN HIM 
Kerry on 9.4.13Kerry at last Wednesday’s Senate hearing on Syria, Sept. 4, 2013.
Finally, other people are noticing and whispering:

John Kerry looks weird.

John Kerry doesn’t look like John Kerry.

Even the Washington Post is asking:
In the midst of the intense congressional hearings on Syria, many longtime observers had questions that had nothing to do with a possible military strike: Why did Secretary of State John Kerry look so different? His eyes seemed less droopy than usual, his entire face seemed somehow wider.
Compare these two after and before close-ups of Kerry:
John Kerry
Born in 1943, Kerry will be 70 years old in 3 months, on December 11.
Ask yourself this question:
What could possibly motivate a 70 -year-old man to go under the knife for plastic surgery on his face?
He denies it of course. Trust your own eyes!
The fearless Ann Barnhardt puts it best ( via Western Rifle Shooters Association).
~Eowyn

On Psychopaths Who Mutilate Their Faces

Posted by Ann Barnhardt – September 29, AD 2012
Specifically in this essay, John Kerry.
[...] I hadn’t seen John Kerry in a long time because I typically will go out of my way to avoid him because he is such a repellant human being. But I did catch a glimpse of him on a YouTube clip yesterday and was shocked at what I saw and heard. The man has mutilated his face to such an extent with “cosmetic” surgery that he both looks and sounds like a grotesque.
Last year Kerry showed up at some White House ceremony with two HUGE black eyes and a broken nose and told Obama, and had his press office tell Pravda, that he fell on his face playing ice hockey.
Riiiiight. We all believe that.
John Kerry had two black eyes and a broken nose because he had recently had massive plastic surgery. That is why John Kerry today looks like a grotesque freak with his forehead, face, and undereye area pulled completely taut. If you ever watched Star Trek: Deep Space 9back in the early 1990s, John Kerry looks like the alien character Odo.
But I also noticed something while listening to Kerry speak: he has a distinct speech impediment now that he did not have before. I figured out what has caused the speech defect. Kerry had his lower jaw surgically moved forward in order to strengthen his chin.
Here is a photo montage.
Top-left is Kerry in 2004. Note the crow’s feet, bags under the eyes, wrinkled forehead and the slight, natural overbite. Top-right is Kerry at the White House sporting his post-surgery bruising. Bottom left is Kerry at the same White House event, with Obama in the background. Note the chin. That is not natural. Bottom right is Kerry speaking earlier this month at the DNC convention. Video of that speech below.
Note the bizarrely smooth facial skin, especially around the eyes and on the forehead. Also note in the video clip the strange appearance of Kerry’s mouth and the strange new lisping breathiness with his “s” and “sh” sounds.
Fun experiment. Say the following sentence aloud normally:
“Can I ask your advice?”
Now, shift your lower jaw forward so that your bottom teeth are even with your top teeth. Repeat the sentence. Do you hear how your “s” sounds turn into “sh”? Can I ASHK your ADVISHE?
Now go back and watch Kerry.
Okay, okay. So Kerry had a total facelift and had his jaw moved. Isn’t this trivia? Why are we wasting time worrying about this?
Because John Kerry, along with many of the people running the government, is totally, completely batshit insane, and we need to talk about this, acknowledge it, and parse it so that you guys can disqualify people like John Kerry from any position of governance after the war.
We have been conditioned by the media to shrug off these cosmetic surgeries as no big deal, but they are a big deal. First, let’s just think about how John Kerry views himself. This is a man who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, who ran for POTUS, who has been in the Senate for decades, who is almost 70 years old, who SHOULD have a fairly good grasp of reality.
But he doesn’t. John Kerry is a man who looks in the mirror and thinks to himself, “I need to have my face cut and altered.”
Just stop for a moment and think about that. I would think that if we ranked the most sacred parts of our body, those parts that we deem most important to our identities, those parts that we are most connected to, that our FACE would be at the top of that list. Our faces are the part of our body that most expresses who we are.
John Kerry had his own face mutilated.
Are we seeing the problem here? Guys, these people are insane. They are malignant narcissists who are driven by a core of self-loathing.
Next, let’s ponder what John Kerry’s objective is in having his face mutilated.John Kerry is almost 70 years old. John Kerry is married to Teresa Heinz Kerry. John Kerry’s political career has maxed out. He will never run for POTUS again. He will probably never face any real opposition in Massachusetts for his Senate seat.
So, why is John Kerry mutilating his face? What is the objective?
Simply put, John Kerry thinks that if he mutilates his face that he will look younger, and thus he will be able to have more sex with younger girls that he picks up in the halls of the Capitol and in Georgetown bars.
Don’t kid yourself. This is all about John Kerry getting laid.
Again, stop and think about this. This is a man who is so weak and emotionally needy that he will mutilate his own face and turn himself into a grotesque freak because he is convinced that by doing so he will be able to convince more 24 year old morally degenerated, slack-jawed, gold-digging beltway skanks to have meaningless sex with him – and this will make him feel BETTER about himself.
We have to start acknowledging the fact that these people are dangerously insane and are a massive risk to all of us. We have to start acknowledging the fact that when people do horrific things to their bodies, including self-mutilation AND sodomite abuse of the body, THAT MEANS SOMETHING. We have to start judging these people by their actions. God gave us brains. He wants us to use them, and that includes discerning and judging.
Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, Mitt Romney, Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, Cristina Kirchner, all of these people and many, many more have had their faces altered. Sane people don’t have their faces altered. Sane people age gracefully and accept the changes that happen to their bodies with the passage of time. The people listed above are all – every one – psychologically unfit to hold ANY position of power.
People who mutilate their own faces and bodies are not fit to hold public office or have any governing power. After the war, remember this. When you are rebuilding this nation and this culture, PLEASE use common sense and good judgment and never, ever allow these sorts of people to hold any power because it will all end in tears and death, as we are seeing now.
Dr. Eowyn is the Edior of Fellowship of the Minds and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.

Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter.

Kerry Gives Assad One Week to Surrender Chemical Weapons or Face Attack

Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Service
Photo Credit: Talk Radio News Service
The US secretary of state has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack. But John Kerry added that he had no expectation that the Syrian leader would comply.
Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence community was united in believing Assad was responsible.

Kerry was speaking on Monday alongside the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, who was forced to deny that he had been pushed to the sidelines by the House of Commons decision 10 days ago to reject the use of UK force in Syria.
The US Senate is due to vote this week on whether to approve an attack and Kerry was ambivalent over whether Barack Obama would use his powers to ignore the legislative chamber, if it were to reject an attack.
The US State Department stressed that Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the one-week deadline and unlikelihood of Assad turning over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. In a statement, the department added: “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That’s why the world faces this moment.”
Read more from this story HERE.

Read more: http://joemiller.us/2013/09/kerry-gives-assad-one-week-to-surrender-chemical-weapons-or-face-attack/#ixzz2eWw0qC3y

SEIU Thugs To Begin Knocking On Doors To Try And Sign Americans Up For Obamacare…

SEIU Thugs To Begin Knocking On Doors To Try And Sign Americans Up For Obamacare…


And if you don’t sign up they will knock your teeth out.
Via Washington Examiner:
The nation’s largest healthcare workers union announced Tuesday plans to help President Obama with the expansive rollout of his healthcare reform law.
The Service Employees International Union will knock on doors and host community events to help people understand the Affordable Care Act before Oct. 1, when uninsured Americans will be asked to sign onto exchanges to purchase health insurance. The Obama administration has actively recruited companies, celebrities, sports teams and unions to help prepare the country as key components of the law finally go into effect, dubbing the consortium the “Champions of Change.”
“Let there be no doubt, the new healthcare law is working for working people,” SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said. “We are not seeing the long-predicted ‘rate shock’ but we are seeing ‘Republican shock’ as extremists fail in attempts to repeal or obstruct the Affordable Care Act and its landmark protections and benefits for working Americans.”
Keep reading…