Good morning 99percenters!
Gulfgal98 is traveling today and is unavailable so I'm covering for her.

NSA Converting Our Spoken Words Into Searchable Text
Yes … They’re Collecting the Content of AMERICANS’ Phone Calls, Too

Dan Froomkin reports today at the Intercept:

Most people don’t realize that the words they speak are not so private anymore, either.

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored.

The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called “Google for Voice” nearly a decade ago.

The Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and “extract” the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

***

By leveraging advances in automated speech recognition, the NSA has entered the era of bulk listening.

And this has happened with no apparent public oversight, hearings or legislative action. Congress hasn’t shown signs of even knowing that it’s going on.

US Media Shields Saudi War on Yemen
The U.S. news media always seems to have an excuse for the actions of the Saudi-Israeli alliance, now trivializing Saudi Arabia’s open aggression against Yemen as simply one side of a “proxy war” with Iran, a misleading depiction, says Gareth Porter.

The term “proxy war” has experienced a new popularity in stories on the Middle East. Various news sources began using the term to describe the conflict in Yemen immediately, as if on cue, after Saudi Arabia launched its bombing campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen on March 25.

“The Yemen Conflict Devolves into Proxy War,” The Wall Street Journal headlined the following day. “Who’s fighting whom in Yemen’s proxy war?” a blogger for Reuters asked on March 27. And on the same day the Journal pronounced Yemen a proxy war, NBC News declared that the entire Middle East was now engulfed in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

It is certainly time to discuss the problem of proxy war in the Middle East, because a series of such wars are the heart of the destabilization and chaos engulfing the region. The problem with the recent stories featuring the term is that it is being used in a way that obscures some basic realities that some news media are apparently not comfortable acknowledging.

The real problem of proxy war must begin with the fact that the United States and its NATO allies opened the floodgates for regional proxy wars by the two major wars for regime change in Iraq and Libya. Those two profoundly destabilizing wars provided obvious opportunities and motives for Sunni states across the Middle East to pursue their own sectarian and political power objectives through proxy war.

Two Chinese Warships Enter The Black Sea

On Friday we reported that for the first time in history, Chinese and Russian navies will begin a significant joint naval exercise in The Mediterranean Sea in mid-May.

Citied by RT, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said that "The aim is to deepen both countries' friendly and practical cooperation, and increase our navies' ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats," but diplomatically added "these exercises are not aimed at any third party and have nothing to do with the regional situation."

Against a background of this week's "upgraded Japan-American military relationship" following Abe's visit to Obama, as one analyst notes, "the geopolitical significance of its exercising alongside Russia will not be lost on the U.S. and NATO."

While it was unclear if directly related to the upcoming "historic" drill, the Bosphorus Navy Blog reports that in what is a comparable "first" yesterday two warships from Peoples Republic of China were seen passing through the Bosphorus, and entering the Black Sea.

Wall Street Titans Who Crashed Global Economy in 2008 Go Big for TPP
As billionaire class and financial elites push corporate-friendly pact, new data shows empty promises and 'job-killing' reality of previous agreements

Even as millions and millions of Americans—represented by thousands of labor, environmental, family farm, consumer, faith, Internet freedom and other advocacy organizations—continue to stand firmly in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, those backing the TPP, including President Obama and a large majority of the Republican caucus, still have two dedicated demographic groups pledging their allegiance to the cause and arguing the so-called "free trade agreement (FTA)" would be good for average workers and the economy overall: billionaires and Wall Street titans.

As Zach Carter of the Huffington Post reports:

Last week, dozens of New York City's power elite signed a letter to the state's congressional delegation, urging lawmakers to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership now in negotiations. Democrats in Congress largely oppose the TPP, and Republican leaders have said they don't have the votes needed to pass it without Democratic support.

But while Obama has struggled to win over members of his own party -- he has been publicly feuding with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) -- wealthy CEOs probably aren't the ideal pitchmen to skeptical Democrats. Even if their letter hails the TPP as "a catalyst for creating new jobs in the United States" that will benefit "American workers in a broad range of industries."

Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch signed the letter. So did Steven Schwarzman, who once compared the prospect of raising taxes on private equity magnates like himself to Hitler's invasion of Poland. John Paulson, the Republican mega-donor who made a fortune betting against the housing market with Goldman Sachs, is also a signee. So is vulture investor Wilbur Ross, who spent six figures to support GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and has backed such conservative hardliners as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.).

Other signatories include real estate billionaire Jerry Speyer, who recently attended a $100,000-per-person fundraiser to bolster former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's White House hopes. The host of that event, private equity kingpin Henry Kravis, also signed.

Invasive 'French Patriot Act' Moves Forward, Spurring Privacy Concerns
'This bill would take France a step closer to a surveillance where nothing is secret except the surveillance itself.'

The lower house of the French Parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a measure authorizing expansive, unprecedented, and invasive surveillance of citizens and foreigners, with little judicial oversight. 

The new spying powers, developed over the course of the last year, gained momentum in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in January that killed 17 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery in Paris.

According to the Guardian, "despite opposition from green and hard-left MPs, the bill won the overwhelming backing of the majority of MPs from the Socialist and rightwing UMP parties, which said it was necessary to tackle the terrorist risk. The bill was passed in the national assembly by 438 votes to 86, with a handful of no votes from Socialist MPs."

The law, which will now be considered by the French senate, would allow authorities to spy on the digital and mobile phone communications of anyone linked, even incidentally, to a suspected "terrorist"—without having to obtain a warrant.

Despite Civil Liberties Uproar, Canada Set to Ram Through Mass Surveillance Bill
'This is about the soul of the country and a question of whether we understand what Canada stands for.'

Canada's House of Commons on Tuesday is poised to pass Bill C-51, a so-called "anti-terror" law, despite widespread outcry from civil liberties advocates who say the legislation would allow law enforcement to spy on civilians and violate Canadians' constitutional rights with little or no accountability.

The bill, introduced by the Conservative Party and backed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, would give up to 17 government agencies access to Canadian citizens' private information, including their financial status, medical history, and religious and political beliefs. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service would also be authorized to spy on Canadians and foreign nationals living in the country, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be granted increased power to make preventive arrests.

Opponents of the bill have rallied for months under the banners #StopC51 and #RejectFear. According to digital policy advocacy group OpenMedia, the bill "disproportionately targets Indigenous communities, environmental activists, dissidents, and Muslims, many of whom are already subjected to questionable and overreaching powers by security officials, [and] will make it easier and ostensibly lawful for government to continue infringing upon the rights of peaceful people."

OpenMedia communications director David Christopher wrote in an op-ed for Rabble published Monday, "This government has left Canadians with a stark privacy deficit, and we'll all need to work together to address it. We need a co-ordinated plan to roll back mass surveillance, and restore our traditional privacy and democratic rights."

Open thread -- Talk the talk.