We’re surrounded. And sooo screwed.

THE WIRE TAP ROOMS - The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in 8 U S Cities
June 25, 2018 7:00 am

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

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AT&T currently boasts 19,500 “points of presence” in 149 countries where internet traffic is exchanged. But only eight of the company’s facilities in the U.S. offer direct access to its “common backbone” – key data routes that carry vast amounts of emails, internet chats, social media updates, and internet browsing sessions. These eight locations are among the most important in AT&T’s global network. They are also highly valued by the NSA, documents indicate.

The data exchange between AT&T and other networks initially takes place outside AT&T’s control, sources said, at third-party data centers that are owned and operated by companies such as California’s Equinix. But the data is then routed – in whole or in part – through the eight AT&T buildings, where the NSA taps into it. By monitoring what it calls the “peering circuits” at the eight sites, the spy agency can collect “not only AT&T’s data, they get all the data that’s interchanged between AT&T’s network and other companies,” according to Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who worked with the company for 22 years. It is an efficient point to conduct internet surveillance, Klein said, “because the peering links, by the nature of the connections, are liable to carry everybody’s traffic at one point or another during the day, or the week, or the year.”

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/

It’s things like this that makes me want to punch anyone who says “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” right in the face. They’re the most USELESS specimens of life form on this planet.

Where the hell are the people who want to run for public office on this? Why is this not a ‘campaign’ issue? Who’s going to step up to the plate and defend us from people who are even more dishonest than the ‘bad guys’?

Last week the Supreme Court said...

Supreme Court: Police need warrant to search cell phones

https://www-m.cnn.com/2014/06/25/justice/supreme-court-cell-phones/index...

BFD. All that ruling does is makes LEO’s job a little harder. That info is still readily available to anyone who wants it.

N.S.A. Gets More Latitude to Share Intercepted Communications

Jan. 12, 2017

WASHINGTON — In its final days, the Obama administration has expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.

The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches.

The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch signed the new rules, permitting the N.S.A. to disseminate “raw signals intelligence information,” on Jan. 3, after the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., signed them on Dec. 15, according to a 23-page, largely declassified copy of the procedures.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude...

LINK TO PRESIDENT WEASEL SHIT’S DIRECTIVE:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3283349-Raw-12333-surveillance-s...

Our ‘Intelligence Community’ having direct access to this info:

There's more than the CIA and FBI: The 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-17-intelligence-agencies-20170112-st...

Local law enforcement can ‘ask’ (or simply be gifted) all the info they want, but that takes time.

Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism

By Radley Balko
March 10, 2016 at 11:49 AM

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A while back, we noted a report showing that the "sneak-and-peek" provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy. The ACLU of Massachusetts blog Privacy SOS explains why this is important:

What does this rule change mean for you? In short, domestic law enforcement officials now have access to huge troves of American communications, obtained without warrants, that they can use to put people in cages. FBI agents don't need to have any "national security" related reason to plug your name, email address, phone number, or other "selector" into the NSA's gargantuan data trove. They can simply poke around in your private information in the course of totally routine investigations. And if they find something that suggests, say, involvement in illegal drug activity, they can send that information to local or state police. That means information the NSA collects for purposes of so-called "national security" will be used by police to lock up ordinary Americans for routine crimes. And we don't have to guess who's going to suffer this unconstitutional indignity the most brutally. It'll be Black, Brown, poor, immigrant, Muslim, and dissident Americans: the same people who are always targeted by law enforcement for extra "special" attention.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/03/10/surprise-nsa...

Of course local law enforcement can go rogue:

STINGRAY TRACKING DEVICES: WHO'S GOT THEM?
[Updated March 2018]

https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies...

How U.S. police departments are using drones
Justin Bachman
Bloomberg
April 15, 2017 7:22 am

In small unmanned aerial drones, police and firefighters have discovered a useful new tool, with at least 347 agencies in 43 states now flying them.

Drone deployment by law enforcement and municipalities began more than a decade ago when it was just an emerging technology with extremely limited use. But those days are over: Last year, more public agencies acquired drones than in all previous years combined, with at least 167 departments fielding the flying robots in 2016, according to a study released April 6 by Bard College's Center for the Study of the Drone.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailyherald.com/amp-article/20170415/bu...

I want anyone running for political office to start addressing this situation. Especially our prospective ‘representatives’ in both the House and the Senate. Maybe Big Brother can’t be stopped. But I have no use for any politician who doesn’t think we should at least give it a damn good shot.

THIS is just part of the Empty Suit’s real legacy.