Oregon Senator Reveals Secret Government Surveillance Grid

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 26, 2011

In an interview with Wired, Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, adds yet more confirmation to what many of us have known for years – the government has built a secret surveillance structure far more portentous and dangerous than anything devised by the PATRIOT Act now up for renewal.

Wyden points to the so-called “business-records provision” of the PATRIOT Act which empowers the FBI to force businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a so-called security investigation.

“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden told Wired. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”

“Surveillance under the business-records provisions has recently spiked,” writes Spencer Ackerman. “The Justice Department’s official disclosure on its use of the Patriot Act, delivered to Congress in April, reported that the government asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to collect business records 96 times in 2010 — up from just 21 requests the year before. The court didn’t reject a single request. But it ‘modified’ those requests 43 times, indicating to some Patriot-watchers that a broadening of the provision is underway.”

During the Bush years, it was revealed that the NSA had engaged in a massive dragnet of electronic communications without court order in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. In 2006, Bush waved off criticism of NSA snooping and said the program was “necessary to win this war and to protect the American people” against terrorism.

In 2006, the NSA argued that it is above the law and the Constitution and said a courtroom challenge to its surveillance program would expose sensitive state secrets and demanded it be thrown out.

In a filing with the Detroit court, Justice Department lawyers pointed to history in defending the NSA surveillance program, noting President Woodrow Wilson’s authorization for government agencies to intercept telephone, telegraph and cable communications during World War I and President Franklin D., Roosevelt approving the interception of “all telecommunications traffic” after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Gail Gibson wrote for the Baltimore Sun.

The NSA was created by secret presidential directive in 1952. It soon grew into a vast intelligence-gathering machine – and super-state structure – which intruded into the private lives and communications of all Americans.

The NSA program Operation Shamrock intercepted millions of telegrams to and from the United States. The NSA placed the names of law-abiding American citizens on watch lists and then disseminated their private communications to other government agencies such as the FBI and CIA, explains the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

As revealed by the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, the FBI and CIA repeatedly violated the rights of Americans engaged in constitutionally protected political activity.

During the NSA controversy in 2006, William M. Arkin, writing for the Washington Post, noted that government organizations have developed hundreds of software programs and analytic tools to “harvest” intelligence, and they’ve created dozens of gigantic databases containing the names of countless Americans.

“These cutting edge tools — some highly classified because of their functions and capabilities — continually process hundreds of billions of what are called ‘structured’ data records, including telephone call records and e-mail headers contained in information ‘feeds’ that have been established to flow into the intelligence agencies,” Arkin wrote. “The multi-billion dollar program, which began before 9/11 but has been accelerated since then.”

Wyden and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall have offered an amendment on Tuesday to the PATRIOT Act reauthorization.

The amendment takes the Obama administration to task for “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes.” It would oblige the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.”

The bill mentions “intelligence-collection authorities” embedded in the PATRIOT Act that the Obama administration briefed the Senate about in February.

Sen. Ron Wyden neglected to provide more detail on the government’s massive surveillance program because it is highly classified. His measured comments, however, are a haunting reminder that the government has erected a huge and largely secret high-tech surveillance and control grid.

It was not designed to ferret out al-Qaeda bad guys who hate us for our freedoms. It was engineered and constructed at tax-payer expense to monitor the political activity of the American people in much the same way the Stasi was created by a communist state to monitor the political activities of the people in East Germany during the so-called Cold War.

Tim Shorrock: US Intelligence has been Contracted out to Private Companies

Tim Shorrock Asks Why It Took the Washington Post So Long to Investigate the US Intelligence System



Tim Shorrock says:

--->"70% of the US intelligence budget goes to private companies"

--->"We have to really wonder about the quality of the information we obtain from these companies"

--->Private companies are surveiling Americans within US borders contributing more and more to the creation of a police state (not exact word for word quote, hence absence of quotation marks)

"Top Secret America" Washington Post Investigation Reveals Massive, Unmanageable, Outsourced US Intelligence System



For more background information on this topic see the Washington Post series by Dana Preist and Bill Arkin HERE...

A Reader Asks: "When did Things Start Going South?"

This is not your Grandfather's America:

A motivated reader asked how things could have gotten to this point in the United States. Unfortunately, it largely dates to the end of WWII when Congress passed the National Security Act and in 1947 the former OSS was refashioned as the CIA. In the wake of Congressional action, the National Security Council was established which along with the CIA's clandestine services "branch" initiated a 60+ year slide into extra-constitutional government.

The heinous murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 by his own National Security State marks the beginning of rule by shadow government the so-called "MIMIC" which has presided over the creation of a global empire and the Pax Americana which JFK rejected in the interest of true Peace. His undeniable turn away from constant war marked him for Assassination. A trillion+ dollar/year military budget has been utilized to enforce/maintain American hegemony throughout the world. Readers will not hear of it in the "Elite Media" which has been completely co-opted by the MIMIC.

It is tragic that both political parties in the United States are controlled by the MIMIC. To a large extent it is immaterial which party controls Congress or the White House. Should any President or candidate for President begin to threaten the ruling oligarchy, the fate which befell President Kennedy likely awaits them. The implications are obvious.

For those readers who wish to learn more about the Shadow/silent government which began in 1947 see the slide show carousel of recommended reference works featured on this site.