Obama's obsession with NSA spying costing US corporations contracts, profits, and jobs

Are we watching the sunset of the U.S. technology industry ?

RELATED Citing Security Concerns Amid U.S. Spying Disclosures, German Government Ends Verizon Contract (The Wall Street Journal)

FOLLOWING REPORTS THAT the U.S. technology giant and National Security Agency partner Verizon was providing Internet services to the German Parliament, the German public exploded in outrage at the possibly of having their government's national security and privacy rights further violated by the U.S. government and by its technology partners. After NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the corrupt and unconstitutional spying programs of the United States, including by U.S. technology partners such as Verizon, the German government was forced to terminate its technology contract with Verizon. It's not yet known the size of the financial loss to Verizon, or how many jobs will be lost as a result of the canceled German government technology contract. Many U.S. technology firms are having to privately grapple with the economic and political backlash to the on-going cooperation between U.S. technology firms and the U.S. spy agency. "Microsoft Corp. General Counsel Brad Smith said last week the business troubles stemming from the Snowden leaks were "getting worse, not better." Cisco Systems Inc. Chief Executive John Chambers has said the disclosures have hurt sales in China. AT&T Inc. executives have said some of their international customers were being urged by overseas competitors to use non-American service providers." -- WSJ Last winter, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg called President Barack Obama to complain about the NSA spying programs. Mr. Zuckerberg's leaked his displeasure to the public as a growing movement of activists are exposing Facebook for its corrupt ''like'' advertising programs and for the creepy cyberstalking policies it carries out against its members, in addition to Facebook's role in being a core source for NSA surveillance activities. Although the obstacles facing Facebook may be unique to its own troubled business premise, the reality is that many U.S. technology giants, including social media companies, are facing real political and economic blowback as a result of questions being raised by each of foreign governments and foreign businesses about the trustworthiness of U.S.-based sources for NSA spying and hacking, such as Verizon and Facebook. Not only are the NSA spying programs unconstitutional and are going to lead to serious costs to the U.S. legal system, as civil rights and civil liberties activists clog the system with their noble efforts to rightly restore basic Constitutional principles to the wayward American spying framework, but now the NSA spying programs are going to have a financial cost to the economy, too. And all, on President Obama's watch.

A decade later, the New York City Council is still going through the motions on activists' Constitutional rights

Councilmember Ydanis Rodriquez promised to question the District Attorneys of New York about the prosecutorial crackdown against activists. Why doesn't he ask them about complying with the twin City Council resolutions from 2004 ?

What about follow-up of two past @NYCCouncil resolutions ? 1st : http://t.co/rvCWbPQYNy 2nd : http://t.co/lP3JsufWx1 @ydanis

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) May 20, 2014

Before a joint hearing of the the New York City Council Public Safety and Finance committees met to discuss a proposed expansion of the NYPD force by 1,000 new officers, Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez tweeted that he would promise to call on the district attorneys of New York City to account for the prosecution of protesters. Councilmember Rodriguez, who was arrested when police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment in 2011, is upset with law enforcement's focus on arresting protesters, like himself and Cecily McMillan, even though such arrests -- and their subsequent prosecution -- violate the peaceful political activities of protesters, acts which are protected by guarantees under the Bill of Rights.

When The New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin wrote about Councilmember Rodriguez's complaints, Mr. Goodwin blamed law enforcement reform advocates for demonising the New York Police Department, but Mr. Goodwin failed to see how, left unchecked, the NYPD's pattern of misconduct and brutality leads to the police department's ruination of its own reputation. Reasonable people can see how the NYPD has had a long history of controversies and scandals, when it comes to failing to respect citizens' First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly. Police have gone so far as to make arrests of activists without probable cause, violating activists' Fourth Amendment rights. Police have also violated due process by denying activists' rights to parade permits and other approvals to facilitate peaceful political demonstrations. Based on the extreme abuses by the NYPD, the New York City Council passed a decade ago two resolutions, affirming activists' constitutional rights to peacefully demonstrate without fear of reprisal, arrest, or vindictive prosecution for expressing their political beliefs. These resolutions were enacted following controversies in police tactics following the large anti-war rally of February 15, 2003, but apparently nothing's changed since this, since the police continue to unlawfully target activists for arrest, and prosecutors unlawfully target activists for prosecution.

Councilmember Rodriguez has a checkered record for law enforcement reform. He talks the talk, but when reform activists objected to Mayor Bill de Blasio's appointment of William "broken windows theory" Bratton as police commissioner, Councilmember Rodriguez defended Commissioner Bratton. It's unclear from press reports if Councilmember Rodriquez questioned the city's district attorneys at yesterday's joint hearing about the pattern of oppressive prosecution of activists. Nevertheless, it bears repeating that the district attorneys are answerable to the pressures of their political supporters. But at the very least, the district attorneys should take guidance from the twin City Council resolutions enacted ten years ago.

Locally, it is supposed to be the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who is supposed to oversee the prosecution of crimes. Instead of focusing on major political and corporate corruption cases, which he rarely appears to prosecute, D.A. Vance rather chooses to obsess with the peaceful political activities of activists. D.A. Vance works for the New York State attorney general, Eric Schneiderman. Both D.A. Vance and Mr. Schneiderman have pretty much abdicated corruption prosecution to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. More so than the others, D.A. Vance is vulnerable to the political realities of how he can run for office. District attorneys in the five boroughs of New York run for office with the approval of the local county political organization. Since New York is overwhelmingly a Democratic Party enclave, the county Democratic Party chair of each borough must approve of each respective district attorney candidate running for office, meaning D.A. Vance would not dare sacrifice his political career by prosecuting political corruption of officials, operatives, or lobbyists loyal to the county political organization, chaired in his case by Assemblymember Keith Wright, which approves of his candidacy. That is to say, D.A. Vance will not prosecute candidates for public office, their political operatives, or big money donors, who may be engaged in corruption, otherwise D.A. Vance risks alienating himself from his own political supporters. Instead, D.A. Vance touts his prosecution record against activists, paralleling the DOJ's own suppression campaign against activists.

It remains to be seen if the scripted gestures of City Council hearings under Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito will have the same toothless effect on law enforcement reform as the twin City Council resolutions passed a decade ago under former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The twin resolutions appeared to have no impact on the offices of the city's district attorneys. So long as the government fails to guarantee that police won't use acts of misconduct or brutality against citizens peacefully organizing around their political beliefs, it's difficult to tell how long opponents of reform, like Mr. Goodwin, as well as the city's district attorneys and their political supporters, will be able to benefit from their own constitutional rights. The consequences of demagoguery by opponents of law enforcement reform are obvious : opponents spread fear by predicting spikes in crime to keep the larger citizenry scared of advocates pushing for a reshaping of police tactics. But once one reasons that some citizens have no protections for free speech, assembly, and probable cause, among other rights and civil liberties, one moves the entire citizenry down the slippery slope toward anarchy.

EXCERPT from : Vol. III, Chapter 7 of Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn by Louis Flores

After the February 15 anti-war rally, progressives, including supporters of the NYCLU’s efforts to keep the police in check, pushed the City Council to pass two resolutions. These resolutions came about because of the lingering sting of the anti-war rally’s failure to receive a march permit. That other demonstrations were subsequently denied permits, or were subjected to police actions to subvert demonstrations, added fuel to the fire. The first resolution, which was adopted on February 4, 2004, called upon federal, state, and local officials, including city agencies such as the NYPD, to affirm and uphold the civil rights and civil liberties of citizens wishing to hold political demonstrations in New York City. Christine was one of its sponsors. The second resolution, passed on June 28, 2004, called on all government officials to uphold the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and assembly. Again, Christine was one of its sponsors. These nonbinding resolutions were all that the City Council could muster. There was no more that New York City residents, be they activists or not, could expect in terms of oversight and accountability with regards to the NYPD’s record of violating the First and Fourth Amendments. While it is true that a resolution does lend the authority and influence of the City Council’s support to the cause of protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the City Council was capable of doing more, like withholding funding for controversial police tactics, subpoenaing records of police misconduct and brutality, or referring incidents for further investigation and possible prosecution. But the City Council did neither. In the hearings leading up to the adoption of the first resolution, it was clear that the NYPD was engaging in serious violations. A special report from the City Council Committee on Governmental Operations showed that, “In the aftermath of the numerous confrontations between demonstrators and police at the February 15th rally the Civilian Complaint Review Board (“CCRB”) investigated 54 complaints containing 114 allegations of misconduct by police officers.” Among the NYPD violations the report found was that the police department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit provided to CCRB heavily edited videos in a deliberate effort to disguise the police officers who committed violations. “Thus, many complaints were dropped where the officers went unidentified.” This is how the NYPD operated when it knew its actions were not going to be supervised or subjected to any accountability. How were the City Council resolutions going to address the underlying and ongoing violations of the NYPD ?

1,000 days in jail for Bradley Manning ; 1,000 days of silence from Christine Quinn

1,000 days in jail for Bradley Manning ; 1,000 days of silence from Christine Quinn

Today, LGBT Army PFC Bradley Manning marked his 1,000th day imprisoned without a trial, reported Raw Story. PFC Manning is "suspected" of being the source of making government transparency disclosures to WikiLeaks.

PFC Manning is an LGBT service member, and many groups and leaders have been advocating for justice for PFC Manning. But New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has been eerily silent.

"It has taken him from the desert of Iraq, where he was arrested at a military operating base outside Baghdad, to a prison tent in Kuwait. From there he endured his infamous harsh treatment at Quantico Marine base in Virginia, and for the last 14 months he has attended a series of pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade in Maryland, the latest of which begins next week," reported Raw Story.

Among the violations of due process, government transparency, torture, and other charges, the government's prosecution of PFC Manning includes blatant acts of censorship.

No statement of support from LGBT leader Christine Quinn, who has her own murky history of redacting government documents.

What kind of an LGBT leader is Speaker Quinn if she remains quiet about the government's violations of PFC Manning's constitutional rights ?

Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Testifies He Thought He Would "Die in Custody"

Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, has testified for the first time since he was arrested in May 2010. Speaking on Thursday, November 29, 2012, at a pretrial proceeding, PFC Manning revealed the emotional tumult he experienced while imprisoned in Kuwait after his arrest in 2010, saying, "I remember thinking, ’I’m going to die.’ I thought I was going to die in a cage."

Read more : Accused WikiLeaks Whistleblower Bradley Manning Testifies He Thought He Would "Die in Custody"

Eric Holder, Obama Administration Shred U.S. Constitution ; Say Assassination Of American Citizens Is O.K. Without Due Process

Twisted Interpretation Of U.S. Law May Allow Killings of American Citizens, Attorney General Eric Holder Says

From The New York Times :

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies. ...

National Due Process Deauthorisation Act

Dear brothers and sisters. Now is the time to open your eyes!

In a stunning move that has civil libertarians stuttering with disbelief, the U.S. Senate has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights in America.

The National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn't apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill, it essentially says it can apply to Americans "if we want it to.

Bill Summary & Status, 112th Congress (2011 -- 2012) | S.1867 | Latest Title: National Defense Authorization Act for.

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a "battleground" upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial

...the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn't limited to foreigners. It's confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas' Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — "U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority."

The passage of this law is nothing less than an outright declaration of WAR against the American People by the military-connected power elite. If this is signed into law, it will shred the remaining tenants of the Bill of Rights and unleash upon America a total military dictatorship, complete with secret arrests, secret prisons, unlawful interrogations, indefinite detainment without ever being charged with a crime, the torture of Americans and even the "legitimate assassination" of U.S. citizens right here on American soil!

If you have not yet woken up to the reality of the police state we've been warning you about, I hope you realize we are fast running out of time. Once this becomes law, you have no rights whatsoever in America. — no due process, no First Amendment speech rights, no right to remain silent, nothing.

The US senate does not want us to speak. I suspect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?

Cruelty and injustice...intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told...if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now President in command Barack Obama. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.

More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness. Justice, and freedom are more than words - they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek...then I ask you to stand beside one another, one year from November 5th, 2011, outside the gates of every court house of every city DEMANDING our rights!!

Together we stand against the injustice of our own Government.

We are anonymous.
We are Legion.
United as ONE.
Divided by zero.
We do not forgive Censorship.
We do not forget Oppression.
US SENATE...
Expect us!!

Music by: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Requiem
Category:
Education
Tags:
Anonymous Anonymous (group) Bill of rights suspended NWO oppression injustice US senate Congress illuminate war freedom justice peace love
License:
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Twitter WikiLeaks Legal and Subpoena Update

In violation of due process rights, U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan backs U.S. Department of Justice request for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's friends' online records.

The U.S. Magistrate with judicial power over the U.S. government investigation into WikiLeaks has issued a new court order, which affirms a previous secret court order demanding WikiLeaks-related discovery from user accounts on social media journalism sites, such as Twitter, which have no known connection to WikiLeaks other than for typical online social networking activities, such as ''following.''

The Hon. Buchanan denied legal challenges to her previous court order by prominent owners of Twitter accounts. The magistrate said that U.S. government prosecutors were not seeking the "content of the communications," according to Reuters.

Even though Twitter account owners may follow each other on the website, it does not mean that the account owners are, by association, automatically engaged in questionable online behaviour, some online privacy activists say. There is a freedom of assembly in the United States, whether it be in an assembly hall or over a social media website.

In a further worrisome development, the magistrate also invalidated legal arguments that if Twitter were to provide to prosecutors the Internet Protocol addresses of Twitter account owners, then the act of unreasonable disclosure would constitute a "violation of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure because it revealed their location," reported Reuters.

"Buchanan originally signed an order for prosecutors seeking about seven months of information from Twitter, including who they communicated with, who they followed, and who followed them. They also requested information about how they logged in, which could identify their location at the time," wrote the Reuters reporter Jeremy Pelofsky.

As reported before, what would the U.S. government be gaining from conducting a court-sanctioned surveillance for this kind of social media account information? Not for nothing, by focusing on subscribers and connection records, among other things, the U.S. government is casting a wide, indiscriminate net into cyberspace, and it is hoping to pull in something -- legal or otherwise, relevant or otherwise, applicable or otherwise. There is no focus to the court order ; its only objectives are to spy and to collect surveillance over both foreigners, over which the U.S. may have no jurisdiction, and citizens, who are being denied due process.

Secret FBI Subpoenas

The NYTimes doesn't believe that the U.S. Justice Department is conducting an illegal investigation of WikiLeaks. Oh, really ?

Running contrary to the characterisation of Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland’s Parliament, that U.S. prosecutors were using a court order to collect ''personal information from an elected official without having any case,'' The New York Times has reported that the scope of the court order was not unlawful.

''The news that federal prosecutors have demanded that the microblogging site Twitter provide the account details of people connected to the WikiLeaks case, including its founder, Julian Assange, isn’t noteworthy because the government’s request was unusual or intrusive. It is noteworthy because it became public.''

Let's examine just a couple of aspects of the court order :

(i) ''The order asks for subscriber names, user names, screen names, mailing addresses, residential addresses and connection records along with other information related to the accounts.''

(ii) ''Stating that information held by Twitter was "relevant and material" to the WikiLeaks investigation, the district court ordered the startup to hand over:

• session times and connection records
• telephone numbers
• credit card information
• e-mail and IP addresses
• correspondence and notes of record''

What would the U.S. government be gaining from conducting a court-sanctioned surveillance for this kind of social media account information? Not for nothing, by focusing on subscribers and connection records, among other things, the U.S. government is casting a wide, indiscriminate net into cyberspace, and it is hoping to pull in something -- legal or otherwise, relevant or otherwise, applicable or otherwise. There is no focus to the court order ; its only objectives are to spy and to collect surveillance over both foreigners, over which the U.S. may have no jurisdiction, and citizens, who are being denied due process.

On a blog of a WikiLeaks supporter, someone asked, ''Is this not the same type of action that you, DOJ, find reprehensible in other countries?''

(As an aside, I wonder if The Times even appreciates the fact that, after the U.S. government's secret investigation of WikiLeaks has become ''public,'' those being targeted by the court order can now reasonably fight the unreasonableness of the indiscriminate scope of the court order. The owners of the social media accounts, on Twitter, Facebook, and Google, have legal rights, according to the law. How would the owners of the social media accounts know to fight the government's court order, if the government doesn't even serve the court order on the account owners? Look at how wikipedia gives context to due process violation : ''When a government harms a person, without following the exact course of the law, then that is a due process violation which offends the rule of law.'')

WikiLeaks Twitter Subpoena Denies Subscribers Their Right To Due Process

The First item listed in the secret Order signed by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia demands that Twitter turn over ''subscriber names'' of the five individuals associated with WikiLeaks.

On Saturday night, the WikiLeaks Twitter feed included this ominous message : ''Too late to unfollow; trick used is to demand the lists, dates and IPs of all who received our twitter messages.''

Not only have U.S. Justice Department prosecutors cast the data mining aspect of their court order on Twitter to include foreigners, but now prosecutors are trying to ensnare mere subscribers (or, in Twitter jargon, ''followers'') of the five individuals associated with WikiLeaks.

Whereas, the three foreigners, who are targets of the prosecutors' surveillance, have the option to object to the court order served on Twitter, the fact that followers have no say in fighting the reasonableness of the U.S. government's court order call into question the true scope of the legal witch hunt.

Since there appears to be a weak legal underpinning to the court orders, then, more and more, the investigations by U.S. prosecutors appear to be mere acts of retaliation against foreign political dissidents and WikiLeaks.

And caught in the middle are the followers on Twitter. If the followers are foreigners, then a U.S. court may have no jurisdiction over the free speech activities of those foreigners. And if the followers are Americans, then the Americans should be given due process, namely, an opportunity to challenge the court order. Except for harassment or retaliation, what is the purpose for the U.S. government to know who are the Twitter followers ? Certainly, there is no legal reasoning for the U.S. government to know who are the Twitter followers.