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The Obama administration which treats its own citizens as peons has finally arrived at the overreach pinnacle

From Verizon’s ‘Can you hear me now’ to NSA’s “Yes, every eavesdropped word”


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By —— Bio and Archives June 7, 2013

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When “Big Brother is Watching You” was the cold war mantra of the day, there were no cellphones, no iPads, no satellite communications of any kind in the hands of the unwashed masses.
Today Big Brother is not watching you, he’s stalking and harassing you--right in the place you call home. There’s nowhere to hide; nowhere to run to and no one to turn to in a world where a government that has learned how to slip being held accountable has all the tools on its side. Ask Canada Free Press (CFP) senior columnist Doug Hagmann of the Hagmann-Hagmann radio show, a private investigator with 30 years experience who’s been chasing down the truth for most of his adult life.
On May 30, Hagmann, who has since made a sworn affidavit, had a third-party listening in--and apparently recording--a telephone conversation he was having with a media colleague when he was started to see on his telephone caller ID screen: “UT NSA DATA REC CTR”. The “UT NSA DATA REC CTR” is, of course, the Utah Data Center, a $2-billion (and still counting), 1.5-million square-ft. facility on the outskirts of Salt Lake City in Bluffdale, Utah with software that eavesdrops on the unsuspecting world. CFP editors were hoping that other news sites would clue in to the story. Two days of stony silence followed. Then today came the story from a British newspaper: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily. This is one story that should have people up in arms worldwide, for it is not only the U.SA. where the out-of-control Obama administration is abusing private citizens’ privacy rights but that of the outside world. “While the NSA (National Security Agency) has offered no specifics about the Utah Data Center’s operations, a 2012 Wired magazine article, citing former intelligence and NSA officials said computers at the data center will collect electronic information--from emails to cellphone records to purchasing receipts--from all over the world--store it and look for threatening patterns.” (Emphasis CFP’s) So that there’s no mistaking who the bad guys are here, the Utah facility for the three-times-bigger-than-CIA National Security Agency went into construction shortly after Barack Obama’s first election in January of 2010. Here’s hoping that the Guardian, the British newspaper that broke today’s story will not make Verizon, which now has millions of U.S. customers with compromised privacy a household word, because it is NSA working round-the-clock at the Utah Center that should go down in infamy. Some news stories on the collection of the phone records of millions of U.S. Verizon customers are already dragging in the “protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the U.S.” theory “as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.” (Fox News June 6, 2013) But the entire emphasis of the DHS and its agencies since 9/11 has been branding American citizens including returning war vets as terrorists rather than radical jihadists. According to the Guardian, the Obama administration has been collecting the phone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order. “The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. (The Guardian, June 6, 2013) “The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. “The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. “The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself. "We decline comment," said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman. “The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls". “The order directs Verizon to "continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order". It specifies that the records to be produced include "session identifying information", such as "originating and terminating number", the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and "comprehensive communication routing information". The Obama administration, which treats its own citizens as peons, has finally arrived at the overreach pinnacle. Millions of people going about their daily business far away from Washington, DC would argue that Obama and his agencies have no right spying on the lives of private citizens no matter how self-important they perceive themselves. Perhaps Obama’s arrival at the pinnacle of overreach comes with a silver lining: American patriots fighting him for five years are no longer alone.



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Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

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