Fake News Keep Perpetuating Snowden Lies

Mainstream media caught printing more ‘fake news’

Posted on March 31, 2017 by Bob Livingston

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When NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden left the U.S. with documents detailing the massive government intelligence apparatus spying operation on American citizens, the establishment political and nattering classes and the propaganda media called Snowden a traitor, citing a period of 11 “missing days” for his period in Hong Kong  as evidence he was a Russian or Chinese spy.

All the so-called “media of record” — the big newspapers and broadcast outlets — ran with the story, turning into what The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald describes as a “cottage industry of media conspiracists” that “devoted itself to accusing Edward Snowden of being a spy for either Russia and/or China.”

Based on reports from “a source familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Snowden affair,” proclaimed The Wall Street Journal’s Edward Jay Epstein  — the paper that advertises itself as “America’s most trusted news source” – U.S. investigative agencies were unable to find any hotel record or credit card charges indicating his whereabouts during those 11 days from May 20 until May 31. It also reported that “a U.S. official” claimed CCTV cameras showed Snowden entering the skyscraper that housed the Russian consulate on three occasions, but they were in June.

This has been the narrative since Snowden last walked out of the NSA almost four years ago.

But new documents released by the Mira Hotel to Snowden’s lawyers show that Snowden was exactly where he said he was the whole time. He checked into the Mira Hotel on May 21, 2014 under his own name and stayed there continuously until June 10.

The Intercept reported on the documents more than a week ago, but none of the so-called U.S. “media of record”  have bothered to update their articles or report the new information, least of all “America’s most trusted news source” (which saw Epstein, one of the originators of the Snowden-is-a-spy memes, publish a book on Snowden titled, “How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft”). This even though several Snowden supporters, including The New York Times’ Charlie Savage, have repeatedly tweeted at Epstein and The Journal about the new documents.

It would have taken little journalistic legwork from a multinational media company with assets in Hong Kong to establish whether Snowden was staying or had stayed where he claimed to be. But rather than expend the energy, the mainstream media parroted unnamed “official” sources within the Deep State.

A side note: Is it at all plausible that America’s vaunted intelligence agencies were so inept they weren’t able to determine whether Snowden stayed in the hotel he claimed even though he was there under his own name? If you believe that, then you probably believe the MSM/Deep State narratives on 9/11, Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Pulse nightclub, and the other bogus Deep State-enabled terrorist attacks.

These same media organizations – which are at least Deep State parrots if not outright Deep State propagandists – tell us today that Russia hacked the election and President Donald Trump is a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And the MSM wonder why thinking people don’t believe anything they report!

Snowden is not and never was a spy for Russia, China or anyone else. He is an American patriot who did more than anyone in decades to unmask the massive operation the U.S. government has to vacuum up all information on all Americans all the time.

He’s hero and a true patriot, not a traitor; and should be treated as such.

If You Are White, Mid 30's, Christian, You Might Be On Terrorist Watch List!

OBAMA QUIETLY EXPANDS GOVERNMENT'S 'WATCHLIST'

You don't have to be terror suspect to be chosen

Published: 11 hours ago

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The Obama administration has quietly rewritten the rules on how it goes about designating Americans as terrorists, according to a new report by Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept online investigations project.

The report details how Obama has expanded the terrorist watchlist system, “authorizing a secret process that requires neither ‘concrete facts’ nor ‘irrefutable evidence’ to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist,” according to a key government document obtained by the Intercept.

Instead of actual evidence, all the government need is the nebulous “reasonable suspicion,” which is considered one the lowest standards of proof in the American legal system. It’s less than “probable cause,” which is required to make an arrest.

Greenwald, a former investigative reporter for the U.K.-based Guardian who broke the Edward Snowden story about NSA spying on Americans, left the newspaper late last year to start the Intercept.

A 166-page document obtained by Intercept titled “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance” was issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center. It identifies for the first time the government’s secret rules for placing people on its main terrorist database, as well as the no-fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings.

The federal government shares its watchlist data with local law enforcement, foreign governments and “private entities,” Intercept reported.

WND reported in 2011 that the Department of Homeland Security issued a new public service announcement encouraging Americans to look at their neighbors with a wary eye and report them to authorities if they see any suspicious behaviors.

The DHS suggests a typical woman terrorist would be a Caucasian in her late 20s or early 30s, with brunette hair, stylish clothing, high heels and a shoulder bag. A man? About the same age, short hair, wearing a shirt and slacks and familiar with technology, as he’s wearing an earpiece cellphone. Also Caucasian. This despite the fact that nearly every major act of terrorism in the United States has been carried out by non-Christians from the Middle East or North Africa.

“If you see something silly, say something: Homeland Security video portrays all ‘terrorists’ as white, middle class males,” said a headline on the counter-terrorist website Jihad Watch recently.

But the new rules, exposed by the Intercept report, allow people to be designated as representatives of terror organizations “without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations.”  At the same time giving a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no-fly and selectee lists.

The report also broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.”

Both the Obama administration, and the Bush administration before it, have resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names into the databases, even though the guidelines are unclassified.

In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was put on the no-fly list. In an affidavit, Intercept reports that Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: “The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”

The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. The guidelines include destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is considered “dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation. Whether such a broad definition could include, for example, a person taking a picture of a government building, is unclear.

Increasing the scope of what the government considers a “terrorist” can also be counterproductive, as the Intercept report pointed out.

“When resources are devoted to tracking people who are not genuine risks to national security, the actual threats get fewer resources—and might go unnoticed,” the report stated.

“If reasonable suspicion is the only standard you need to label somebody, then it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down here, because then you can label anybody anything,” David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent with experience running high-profile terrorism investigations, told Intercept. “Because you appear on a telephone list of somebody doesn’t make you a terrorist. That’s the kind of information that gets put in there.”

The consequences for people who end up on the U.S. government watchlist can be severe.

“Once the government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one,” Intercept reports. “It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome — or impossible — to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals.”

Brit Makes Blatant, Outrageous And Most Likely Accurate Appraisal Of Hillary.

Journalist: Hillary Is ‘Banal, Corrupted, Drained Of Vibrancy’ And ‘A F*cking Hawk And Like A Neocon’

May 12, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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In a recent interview, Glenn Greenwald— the journalist instrumental in helping Edward Snowden leak classified national security documents last year— had some harsh words for Hillary Clinton and Americans likely to support her if she runs for President in 2016.

Greenwald told GQ that he hopes Clinton gets the Democratic nod so that Americans can learn from the mistake of blindly supporting candidates based on their race or sex and allowing the Nation to become a “de facto monarchy”:

The observations were made in response to a question about how he views all of the “early presidential jockeying” leading up to 2016:

Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion. I mean, she’s been around forever, the Clinton circle. She’s a fucking hawk and like a neocon, practically. She’s surrounded by all these sleazy money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she’s going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It’s going to be this completely symbolic messaging that’s going to overshadow the fact that she’ll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power. They’ll probably have a gay person after Hillary who’s just going to do the same thing.

I hope this happens so badly, because I think it’ll be so instructive in that regard. It’ll prove the point. Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.

More from GQ.

The interview was part of a series of media appearances the journalist has made in the run-up to the Tuesday release of his new book about the NSA, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State”.

If NSA Can Monitor Every Iraqi Phone Call, Text And Email In REAL Time, What Makes You Believe They Are Not Doing It Here?

NSA Officials Finally Admit To Spying On Americans As Propaganda Campaign Hits Full Speed

April 2, 2014 by Sam Rolley 

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For the first time since whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks, top intelligence officials have stated that the agency has used a “backdoor” in security laws to search the communications data of U.S. citizens without a warrant.

The revelation came in a letter Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent to Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

“There have been queries, using US person identifiers, of communications lawfully acquired to obtain foreign intelligence targeting non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” Clapper wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Guardian. 

“These queries were performed pursuant to minimization procedures approved by the Fisa court and consistent with the statute and the fourth amendment.”

Wyden had previously decried the agency’s use of a “backdoor loophole” that allowed the NSA access to Americans’ communications data. But even with all of the evidence presented in the Snowden leaks, intelligence officials didn’t, until now, acknowledge its existence.

While Clapper did not reveal to the Senator how many Americans have been spied on using the “backdoor,” the so-called loophole affects the NSA’s ability to spy on Americans through many of its controversial programs.

According to The Guardian, the NSA exploits procedures approved by the FISA court in 2011, which “allowed the agency to search for U.S. person data,” to search databases that include information on U.S. citizens that may have inadvertently been swept into the intelligence agency’s vast databases.

The newspaper reported: “The ruling appears to give the agency free access to search for information relating to US people within its vast databases, though not to specifically collect information against US citizens in the first place. However, until the DNI’s disclosure to Wyden, it was not clear whether the NSA had ever actually used these powers.”

Meanwhile, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA story, criticized intelligence officials this week for leaking information about NSA operations in foreign countries to the press in an effort to quell Americans’ outrage about its domestic operations.

“Over the last 40 years, the U.S. government has relied on extreme fear-mongering to demonize transparency,” Greenwald wrote on The Intercept.

The journalist then pointed to a recent FOX News headline that read “NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander says future Snowden leaks could lead to deaths.”

If that’s true, according to Greenwald, some top intelligence officials will likely have blood on their hands.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article a former top NSA official disclosed how the agency is “able to collect, sort and make available every Iraqi email, text message and phone-location signal in real time …”

“What is so extraordinary is that the NSA–at exactly the same time it is telling news organizations that disclosing its collect-it-all activities will endanger its personnel–runs to its favorite L.A. Times reporter and does exactly that, for no reason other than to make itself look good and to justify these activities,” Greenwald wrote.

NSA--The Definition Of An Agency Out Of Control! Will Obama And Congress Have The Guts To Rein It In? Doubtful, Most In Washington Agree With The Abuses Of The NSA.

Is The NSA Changing Bank Accounts?

January 3, 2014 by The Dollar Vigilante 

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Has the National Security Administration (NSA) been changing the amounts held in the financial accounts of people it targets?

The question would seem absurd if it were not for a 308-page report on the NSA that was released on Dec. 12 by an official White House panel. Recommendation 31, “Institutional Measures for Cyberspace,” on page 37 and repeated on page 221 reads:

(1) Governments should not use surveillance to steal industry secrets to advantage their domestic industry;

(2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.

Upon reading the panels’ report, Trevor Timm (a surveillance expert from the Electronic Frontier Foundation) sent a tweet; it was retweeted by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who originally leaked documents from Edward Snowden.

Does it imply that the NSA is or has been altering the financial data of targeted individuals or agencies?

The NSA certainly has the ability to do so, because it has the information to do so. The German news source Der Spiegel reported Sept. 15 on an internal NSA branch known as “Follow the Money” (FTM). The branch monitors “international payments, banking and credit card transactions.” In a responsive statement, the NSA admitted to tracking financial information but only as it related to terrorist financing and terror networks. It states, “This information is collected through regulatory, law enforcement, diplomatic, and intelligence channels, as well as through undertakings with cooperating foreign allies and partners.”

One “cooperating” ally is apparently the international bank messaging system Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT. The system promotes itself as a financial service “with speed, certainty and confidence.” More than 10,000 banking organizations in 212 countries use SWIFT. In a carefully worded statement, SWIFT’s chief information officer Mike Fish indicated that the agency had “no evidence to suggest” there had been “any unauthorized access.” The key word is, of course, “unauthorized.”

The NSA stores the financial information in a databank called Tracfin. (An identically named database was created in France in 1990 with the stated goal of tracking illegal financial transactions; it is not clear if the database used by the NSA is somehow connected.) According to Der Spiegel, Tracfin “in 2011 contained 180 million records. Some 84 percent of the data is from credit card transactions.”

If the NSA is monitoring transactions in the Mideast and Germany, then how likely is it to be tracking money within U.S. borders? This is especially likely given that leaked documents from Snowden indicate the NSA has been tracking the Visa credit card system. Visa offered a carefully worded response in which it claimed not to know of any “unauthorized” access to its database. As for other large U.S. financial institutions, it would be surprising if they refused to share information with a government responsible for their economic dominance.

The only assurance of financial privacy is the NSA’s claim that it is not monitoring American transactions. There are at least three reasons why the assurance is not credible:

1. The tracking of financial transactions within America has been documented for years. In 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported on “so-called ‘black programs’ whose existence is undisclosed.” Many of them “began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.” If one government agency has the data, then they all do.
2. In 2006, when NSA was discovered using SWIFT data, there was a political uproar in the EU; the U.S. agreed to safeguards and to limit its surveillance in exchange for access. Agreements from the NSA are apparently worthless, as the backdoor access continues.
3. What the NSA says varies from moment to moment, person to person. For example, the agency has repeatedly denied that its surveillance is conducted to commercially benefit American companies. Nevertheless, Bloomberg on Sept. 9 reported on the NSA surveillance of Brazil’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras. Documents released by Snowden included a 2012 NSA slide show presentation “that explained the agency’s capability to penetrate private networks of companies such as Petrobras. … One slide in the presentation listed “economic” as an intention for spying.”

In his recent “open letter to the people of Brazil,” Snowden asked that government for political asylum. Of the NSA surveillance, he stated: “These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.”

The foregoing is not surprising or even new, except for one detail. No government body has previously implied that the NSA might be now or in the future altering the information stored by financial institutions. No official has previously suggested that the NSA could bankrupt or lock up the finances of targeted individuals. It is a haunting question: Why would the panel explicitly tell the NSA, “Don’t do this!” if the agency weren’t doing it already or planning to do so?

The panels’ recommendations are heartening because they are overwhelmingly critical of the NSA; the panel went so far as to unanimously call for splitting up the agency and for safeguards such as transparency. This is another surprise because the panel was handpicked by Obama and included the die-hard loyalist Cass Sunstein and former CIA deputy director Michael J. Morell.

Obama quickly indicated his rejection of some of the panels’ recommendations. Watching him deal with the rest of them will make for entertaining popcorn moments.

Meanwhile, everyone should make sure they have a print copy and a screenshot of their latest financial statements on hand. People should consider holding assets in a less conventional place than large and “trusted” financial institutions. The advice sounds paranoid. But as paranoid as you get, it is difficult to keep up with the U.S. government.

–Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy is a renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist (not the kind of feminist you are used to) and now a staple at The Dollar Vigilante.