NSA Collecting Hundreds of Millions of Contact Lists from Personal E-mail & IM Accounts, Including Americans

The government may be shut down, but the NSA is not …

Nothing is off limits to the NSA and so much for anything personal privacy. According to the NSA and their collection techniques, we are guilty until proven innocent. According to the WAPO, “Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the inbox displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.”  But don’t worry, President Barack Obama previously stated that the NSA’s email collecting program “does not apply to U.S. citizens.” Of course this is the same individual who says that the Obamacare website is a success, it is just “glitchy”.

The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.

During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250?million a year.

From The Hill … Maybe some one might want to define and quantify what “required to minimize the ‘acquisition, use and dissemination’ of contacts of U.S. citizens” is!

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said the program is aimed at “valid foreign intelligence targets,” including terrorists, drug smugglers and human traffickers. He added that the NSA is required to minimize the “acquisition, use and dissemination” of contacts of U.S. citizens.

But of course because of media bias, we hear really nothing of this invasion of privacy. However, as the Lonely Conservative states, image if a Republican was in the White House?

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests … Spycraft Label: LOVEINT

Is this any over-sight on the NSA?

Even more scandals from the NSA … not only are they spying on “We the People,” they are using billion dollar equipment to spy on their girl friends? Unreal, through LOVEINT, intelligence was  gathered by NSA agents that targeted their sweethearts, would-be or actual. Glad we are using this high tech information for its intended purpose, protecting us from terrorists. So how much did this cost tax payers? Can some one just come out and admit that the NSA has been given far too much unsupervised power and it needs to be reined in now!

National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.

The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.

Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.

How is it that I can lose my job if I use company resources for personal use, but NSA officers can use government, tax payer spy equipment for their personal use to spy on girl friends and they get a slap on the write, at best?

Audit Shows NSA Broke Privacy Rules 1000′s of Times Since 2008 … Bulk of Infractions Are “Unauthorized Surveillance of Americans”

NAH, the NSA is not spying on us. Only if you count the thousands of times that an audit showed they actually did …

The WAPO reports, an NSA audit dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. As The Hill states, the report is based on an internal audit and other documents leaked to the news organization by Edward Snowden. In other words, had Snowden not spill the beans, “We the People” would have had no knowledge of any of the NSA’s spying on Americans.

But its just a phony scandal.

VIDEO – CNN – CNN mocks Obama’s “Independent” group to review the NSA

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. [...]

The Obama administration has provided almost no public information about the NSA’s compliance record. In June, after promising to explain the NSA’s record in “as transparent a way as we possibly can,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole described extensive safeguards and oversight that keep the agency in check. “Every now and then, there may be a mistake,” Cole said in congressional testimony.

The NSA audit obtained by The Post, dated May 2012, counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure. The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Every now and then they make a mistake? 2776 TIMES!!!

But wait … Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong. Or was he purposely lying? Looks like Obama just got caught again with his hand in the “lying” cookie jar.

At a news conference Friday, President Obama insisted that the threat of NSA abuses was mostly theoretical:

If you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.

What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court].

But as Weasel Zippers opines, this is just a phony scandal, even though the NSA actually did spy on Americans.

In the Wake Unprecedented Embassy Closings, Obama Goes on Tonight Show: Hey NSA … President Barack Obama Tells Comedian Jay Leno that “We don’t have a domestic spying program.”

More from the Comedian in Chief …

So let’s get this right, President Barack Obama’s first comments made following the unprecedented closing of dozens of Embassies and Consulates across the Middle East and North Africa are made on the Tonight Show? Seriously! More US Embassies were closed than were after the 9-11 terror attacks and this guy goes on the Tonight Show? This is how serious this man is as a president.

The jokes on you America … You reelected me

During last night’s appearance on ‘The Tonight Show,’ President Barack Obama told comedian Jay Leno that … “We don’t have a domestic spying program.”   Wow really, don’t tell the NSA that. I guess one needs to ask Obama what his definition is of a domestic spying program. Which is exactly the reason why this clown, the Comedian in Chief went onto the ‘Tonight Show’ in the first place. Obama knew he could get away with saying anything and would never get a tough follow up questioning calling him on his bullsh*t. Barack  Obama also said the U.S. is not overreacting by closing some U.S. embassies for a week.Nah, it is not over-reacting, but wasn’t it this same very president who was running for reelection in 2012 the man who said that Al-Qaeda was decimated and on the run? Yea, no over-reaction here Jay. Of course that was Jay’s turn to then ask, didn’t you say they were on the run, isn’t that what you ran on and told the American people? Instead, we got crickets.

Then President Barack Obama had the audacity to tell Leno the following, “The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.” Mr. President, maybe you would want to say that face to face to the family and loved ones of our heroes killed in Benghazi, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens,  Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Tyrone S. Woods.

Barack Obama Speech … Washington Took Its Eye Off Economy With “Distractions” and “Phony Scandals”

NO HE DIDN’T … BARACK OBAMA REFERRED TO DISTRACTIONS IN WASHINGTON AS PHONY SCANDALS!!!

Is Obama done speaking yet … Good grief this might have been one of the worst, rambling speeches I have ever heard. President Barack Obama’s speech on the economy was touted as being an important speech to help the economy and job growth. Instead, all we got from the “community agitator” was the same old tired economic agenda from Obama, blame Republicans and a new smear … calling the scandals that have plagued the Obama White House, “phoney scandals”. Even the WAPO had to print that Barack Obama’s new economic plan was the same as his old plan. One that has failed, provided more debt to the United States and has given us the worst economic post recession job growth period in history. What was the point of this speech? It certainly could not have been to bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve the problems of a floundering US economy. Phony scandals? Seriously, Barack Obama thinks the death of border agent Brina Terry as a result of Fast & Furious is a phony scandal? Obama thinks that the death of four Americans in Benghazi, including Ambassador Chris Stevens a phony scandal when it was the Obama WH that put forth a false and phony narrative that the terror attack was a result of a video? Who scrubbed the Benghazi talking points Mr. President? And the targeting of Conservative and Tea Party organizations by the IRS that was said to be only a couple of rogue agents and has now spread to many offices, Washington, DC and the White House counsel, that is a phony scandal as well? Wasn’t it President Obama who called this outrageous behavior? Now it is a phony scandal as it gets closer and closer to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What about the going after of AP reports and James Rosen of Fox News, those were phony scandals as well?

What Obama is counting on: Hey America, you bough my BS for 5 years and 2 elections … what’s another 1200 days?

You could be forgiven if you thought you had heard President Obama’s speech on the economy today before. Because you have.  For most of the 2012 campaign. (Don’t trust us, read Obama’s 2012 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.)

Things are getting better in areas like private sector job creation, home construction, energy independence and health care. But, the country isn’t all the way back yet. Republicans are looking out for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class. Times need to change.

“With an endless parade of distraction, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball,” Obama told a crowd at Knox College in Illinois this afternoon. “And I am here to say this needs to stop.” Later in the speech, Obama vowed: “I will not allow gridlock, inaction or willful indifferences to get in our way.”

That’s a nice rhetorical flourish and there are, without doubt, some things that Obama can make happen in regards the economy via executive order. But, to make any major progress — a grand bargain on debt and spending for example — President Obama needs Congress, including the House that remained in GOP hands in 2012 despite his stronger-than-expected victory on the same day.

From The Weekly Standard: Older, But Not Wiser – Obama’s first speech in a series is a predictable bust.

Speaker of the House John Boehner ripped the president for his speech, Obama speech ‘an Easter Egg with no candy’. Personally I thing my comparison would have been a bit more harsh than providing the illusions of a fluffy bunny. Americans are suffering and all people should be sick and tired of a class warfare president who is more intent on making political points than helping “We the People”. Obama’s agenda has failed and if we give this failure any more lip service, the USA will look like Detroit.

Just how bad was Obama’s speech … it had bipartisan support against it!

Who knew that the Democrats Obamamessiah would turn into Richard Nixon and call all the scandals that mired his administration false and phony. Welcome to Chicago-style politics. President Obama has no intentions of fixing anything. Obama is doubling down on his failed policies and looking to blame others for his actions and agenda. WAKE UP AMERICA … IF YOU ARE NOT CAREFUL THE USA IS GOING TO BE DETROIT.