Category Archives: NSA

Local television showed two damaged vehicles near a gate and emergency workers loading an injured uniformed man into an ambulance. (AP)

One person was killed and at least one other was injured Monday when shots were fired after two people in a vehicle tried to ram a gate at Fort Meade, a military installation in Anne Arundel County that houses the National Security Agency, according to officials with knowledge of the investigation.

Authorities did not release any details of exactly what happened, but law enforcement officials said police officers with the National Security Agency shot at the two people in the vehicle. One of them was killed, the officials said.

Just before 11 a.m., NSA officials said they had no further information.

In a statement, issued around 11:30 a.m., the FBI Baltimore office said they were investigating a shooting at a gate at Fort Meade.

The shooting scene is contained and we do not believe it is related to terrorism, said Amy J. Thoreson, a spokeswoman for the FBI. She said the incident is being investigated by the FBI with NSA Police and other law enforcement agencies.

FBI crews from its evidence response team are processing the scene and agents are doing interviews with witnesses, she said.

The military installation of Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County has about 11,000 military personnel on site and another 29,000 civilian employees, according to its Web site. The facility sits near the areas of Odenton and Laurel and is the third largest employer in Maryland. It houses other federal agencies in addition to the NSA.

At the Fort Meade police headquarters, a spokeswoman said preliminary information was that two people showed up injured at the gate of the facility. She gave no other information.

Local television cameras showed two vehicles that were damaged near a gate at the military base. One emergency personnel worker appeared to be loaded into an ambulance.

Follow this link:
Shooting at NSA headquarters leaves one dead

Debunkers Hackers of TRUTH CIA NSA Spooks Paid Liars Judas Iscariots
http://www.frederickwust.com/ http://frederickwust.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/frederickwust https://www.facebook.com/groups/chemtrailsla/ The Seven Plagues are raining down...

By: Frederick Wst Jr.

See original here:
Debunkers Hackers of TRUTH CIA NSA Spooks Paid Liars Judas Iscariots - Video

Obama Unveils Changes NSA to Intelligence Programs
Obama Unveils Changes NSA to Intelligence Programs Edward Snowden #39;s NSA leaks may have been directly responsible for the reforms President Barack Obama announced today to U.S. ...

By: Sebastian Voronof

More:
Obama Unveils Changes NSA to Intelligence Programs - Video

National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers testifies before a House (Select) Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington November 20, 2014. The NSA considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American call records before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, intelligence officials say. Photo by Joshua Roberts/Reuters

WASHINGTON The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the to and from information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shaped public opinion.

Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months.

Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is.

Alexander argued that the program was an essential tool because it allows the FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by searching American calling records against phone numbers associated with international terrorists. He and other NSA officials support Obamas plan to let the phone companies keep the data, as long as the government quickly can search it.

Read more here:
NSA considered scrapping phone program before Snowden leaks

FILE: June 9, 2013: Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, in a photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London.(AP)

WASHINGTON The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counter-terrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the "to and from" information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans' private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shaped public opinion.

Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months.

Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is.

Alexander argued that the program was an essential tool because it allows the FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by searching American calling records against phone numbers associated with international terrorists. He and other NSA officials support Obama's plan to let the phone companies keep the data, as long as the government quickly can search it.

View original post here:
Before leak, NSA mulled ending phone program

WASHINGTON The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the "to and from" information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans' private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shaped public opinion.

Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months.

Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is.

Alexander argued that the program was an essential tool because it allows the FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by searching American calling records against phone numbers associated with international terrorists. He and other NSA officials support Obama's plan to let the phone companies keep the data, as long as the government quickly can search it.

Civil liberties activists say it was never a good idea to allow a secret intelligence agency to store records of Americans' private phone calls, and some are not sure the government should search them in bulk. They say government can point to only a single domestic terrorism defendant who was implicated by a phone records search under the program, a San Diego taxi driver who was convicted of raising $15,000 for a Somali terrorist group.

Read the rest here:
AP Exclusive: Some at NSA thought costs of collecting US calling records exceeded the benefits

Edward Snowden is heralded as both a hero and villain. A privacy vigilante and a traitor. It just depends who you ask. The revelations he made about the NSA's surveillance programs have completely changed the face of online security, and changed the way everyone looks at the internet and privacy.

But just before the whistle was blown, it seems that the NSA was considering bringing its telephone data collection program to an end. Intelligence officials were, behind the scenes, questioning whether the benefits of gathering counter-terrorism information justified the colossal costs involved. Then Snowden went public and essentially forced the agency's hand.

With a massive public backlash against what the NSA had been doing, the agency was obviously keen to defend what it had been doing. Whatever attacks were thrown by privacy advocates, individuals and civil liberties campaigners, the NSA had a trump card. Fighting terrorism. The agency would, of course, never admit that perhaps it was going too far, or that its operations were costing too many millions of dollars; it had to vigorously defend what it had been doing.

The NSA became so wrapped up in defending what it had already been doing, that it managed to convince itself of the worth of continuing its work. After all, if the activities had been justifiable before, do they not continue to be justifiable? The 'threat' of terror attacks is something that has become part of the media and governmental narrative, seared into the public consciousness.

We havent been told that terrorist threats had vanished or even diminished; if anything, the threat -- if we're to believe what we're told -- is greater than ever. Throw 'defense of America' into the equation, and you can get away with just about anything. Chuck in a few instances of the word 'terror' for good measure, and you're good to go.

The Associated Press makes the surprising suggestions about the NSA's doubts about what it was doing. The timing is interesting as we are approaching the deadline by which the law authorizes the collection of phone data (June 2015). The NSA has managed to persuade itself of the value of various surveillance programs over the years, and Congress will take quite some convincing if the law is to be changed such that the programs are outlawed.

This is not the first time that it has been suggested that Snowden's revelations had an unexpected side-effect. A data sharing agreement between the NSA and the UK's GCHQ was, essentially, made legal because of the fact that Snowden had made it public. Up until that point it had been illegal for the two intelligence agencies to share information in the way they had been but once the cover was blown it was rather a different story.

It would be very surprising to see the NSA back down now. Even if we were told that phone, email, and other data collection was coming to an end, how many would believe it to be true? It was happening in the background before, who's to say that would not just continue?

Photo credit: Maren Wulf / Shutterstock

Read the rest here:
Snowden's leaks served only to strengthen the NSA's resolve

NSA Official: Conspiracy Theorists Are Dangerous Potentially Violent! Cass Sunstein #39;s Ne
NSA Official: Conspiracy Theorists Are Dangerous Potentially Violent! Cass Sunstein Writes New Book! *SUBSCRIBE* for more great videos! Mark Dice is a media analyst, political activist,....

By: JanetYellen

More here:
NSA Official: Conspiracy Theorists Are Dangerous & Potentially Violent! Cass Sunstein's Ne - Video

Tech leaders tell Obama to end NSA metadata program
Leaders of Apple, Google and Microsoft and others have formed a coaltiion aimed at revising or ending sections 214 and 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the NSA to collect phone call metadata.

By: Digital Trends

Read more:
Tech leaders tell Obama to end NSA metadata program - Video

Tele-Com Insider Reveals NSA Spygrid Blueprint
Alex Jones talks with James Knox about the NSA spygrid and what he learned working as a contractor. http://www.infowars.com/jade-helm-troops-to-operate-undetected-amongst-civilian-population/...

By: The Alex Jones Channel

See more here:
Tele-Com Insider Reveals NSA Spygrid Blueprint - Video