While the Department of Homeland Security is already being sued by the Electronic privacy information center for spying, Yet Congress wants more surveillance!
(emphasis ours)
WASHINGTON |
(Reuters) - Leaders of a congressional subcommittee are urging the Department of Homeland Security to extensively monitor social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to detect "current or emerging threats."
The top Republican and Democrat on a House counter-terrorism subcommittee last month sent a letter to Homeland Security's intelligence chief encouraging department analysts to pore over huge streams of social media traffic.
Representatives Patrick Meehan and Jackie Speier said in the letter to Caryn Wagner, undersecretary of homeland security for intelligence and analysis, that they "believe it would be advantageous for DHS and the broader Intelligence Community to carefully parse the massive streams of data from various social media outlets to identify current or emerging threats to our homeland security."
Meehan, a Republican, is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's counter-terrorism and intelligence subcommittee. Speier is the panel's ranking Democrat.
The two lawmakers said such monitoring raises "privacy and civil liberties concerns" and suggested that the department issue guidelines which balance citizens' rights with the ability of analysts to identify threats.
Earlier this week, Homeland Security's National Operations Center published a long list of websites ( ed. note, for a partial list see here) which they monitor for "situational awareness."
Meehan added: "If terrorists are operating in Pakistan or communicating through social media sites like Facebook, we need to remain vigilant. Yet there are important civil liberties questions involving U.S. government monitoring of social media and Americans' Internet traffic. We are seeking answers on the Department's guidelines and procedures to ensure Americans' civil liberties are safeguarded."
Matthew Chandler, a Homeland Security spokesman, said the department's operations center monitors social media only "within the clearly defined parameters articulated" in published department privacy guildelines.
Among websites on the center's favorites list were social media like Twitter, Facebook and My Space; video and photo sharing sites like Hulu, YouTube and Flickr; news and gossip sites like Huffington Post and Drudge Report; and sites like Cryptome and WikiLeaks which publish leaked documents.
Maureen Keith, a spokeswoman for Meehan, said the lawmakers' letter, dated December 16, had not been previously released.
Our take:
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of both the secretive National Security Agency and the military’s new U.S. Cyber Command says, that of this date, the U.S. Defense Departments networks as currently configured are not defensible!
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of both the secretive National Security Agency and the military’s new U.S. Cyber Command, has tens of thousands of hackers, cryptologists, and system administrators serving under him. But at the moment, their ability to protect the Defense Department’s information infrastructure — let alone the broader civilian internet — is limited. The Pentagon’s patchwork quilt of 15,000 different networks is too haphazard to safeguard.
Before leaving the sunken dais in the law school auditorium, Alexander took a final question: How can you tell when you’re safe from network threats?
“Well,” he answered, “I don’t think we’re safe right now.”
And of course as we posted here in 2010 TOP SECRET AMERICA-no conspiracy theories here, our reliance on "Public" corporations to to keep us secure does little to accomplish that goal. However the Department of Homeland Security is not our only Nemesis. In February of 2011 we posted FBI wants increased surveillance containing, but not limited to the following links:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| FBI Going Dark Release Part 1 (GD1) | 772.45 KB |
| FBI Going Dark Release Part 2 (GD2) | 862.85 KB |
| FBI Going Dark Release Part 3 (GD3) | 1.6 MB |
| FBI Going Dark Release Part 4 (GD4) | 2.29 MB |
Plus the improvement of their CALEA program which makes it easier to listen in on various chat programs. Which again should come as no surprise if you had read our post of November 2007, AMERICA LOST .
Add to this the FBI's massive National Gang Intelligence Centers surveillance we posted on here, Big Brother tries to get bigger but................ and it's enormous potential for abuse and for failure.
The primary conclusions that can be arrived at when you monitor the activities of all the "many" security organizations from local to federal levels, to include, red light cameras, video monitoring, rfid tags, Sars, etc. is that overwhelmingly that target of the U.S. governments surveillance activities is U.S. citizens.
For the most part U.S. citizens do not fit the terrorist profile so why the need for American citizens to be the primary target?
As one of our links above indicates, we ourselves have been tracking, the evolution of these programs for awhile now. And although there are many tin hat sites we could use for more information, we have "attempted" to be fairly consistent in using mainstream, blurbs and respected sites as references.
Now we have been tracking these threats to constitutional violations, we have at the same time been tracking in paralel the corporate/government alliance pursuit of laws that further infringe on our, the U.S. citizens, not the terrorists, loss of rights and freedoms. As we have pointed out and even identified in some past posts there are innumerable unprotected targets within our country vulnerable to terrorists actions that would cripple us. Yet those soft targets "HAVE NOT" been hit. Which leads us to wonder, just who is the U.S. Government afraid of? We can only conclude that it is US. The American citizen.
Because as we have been chronicling the government and private sector machinations under the guise of security over civil rights we have also chronicles the widening gulf between the poor and the rich in this country and the resultant loss of the middle class.
History has long documented how greed of money and power destroys nations. That nations that follow that path eventually experience insurrection. Though much as been made of the American sheeples apathy we have to ask ourselves, as grass roots movements such as the tea party and the Occupy movement fail will the revolutionary spirit die with it, or will it appear in a more virulent form.
Because if you objectively sit back and review the evidence, although the al-Qaeda, the taliban and others may of be concern to ur government, it would appear that their biggest fear is us and they are using enemies, who admittedly can cause disruption, as an excuse to pass laws that will have more impact on the U.S. Citizens than the perceived enemies. That tells us something!
"All Along The Watchtower" by Bob Dylan"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief"There's too much confusion", I can't get no reliefBusinessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earthNone of them along the line know what any of it is worth."No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a jokeBut you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fateSo let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late".All along the watchtower, princes kept the viewWhile all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.Outside in the distance a wildcat did growlTwo riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Please my brother
do not open my eyes
for intentionally I have chosen to be blind
And deaf
and dumb
to that
that exist
to shame my inaction
I have been allowed barren lands on which to feed
And a semblance of structure within which to hide
from tides
I choose believe will not wash me away
Yes I know a storming is coming
suffer me my illusions-aka rcAdd to Technorati Favorites
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