A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of U.S. critical infrastructure organizations, from telecommunications to transportation hubs, Western intelligence agencies and Microsoft said on Wednesday.
While China and the United States routinely spy on each other, analysts say this is one of the largest known Chinese cyber-espionage campaigns against American critical infrastructure.
Read More: Newsmax
Security officials on Capitol Hill are taking a fresh look at their policies after a Maryland man was arrested on charges of secretly recording Republican senators during a private lunch this month.
Read More: Fox News
An FBI whistleblower warned that the bureau has been transformed from a law enforcement agency to an intelligence-gathering operation that spies on law-abiding Americans to help advance a political agenda and said thousands of agents and employees feel betrayed by the bureau’s leadership.
Read More: Daily Wire
The UK Guardian Newspaper published a story yesterday disclosing that US telephone communications giant VERIZON received a top secret court order dated 25th April, to collect the ‘metadata’ of its customers. The court order demands that “an electronic copy of the following tangible things” be made and handed over to the FBI.
The Court Order demanded that Verizon submit “All call detail records” or “telephony metadata” (i) Between the United States and abroad; or (ii) Wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”.
Metadata is classified as basically everything about the call except the contents of the call itself, including phone numbers of both parties involved, their location and call duration etc.
The Court Order is made under the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861 which refers to “business records” and states that the records should be obtained “on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration the order” which lasts for three months from April and will finish on 19th July, 2013.
The Order is deemed to be Top Secret and states: “It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this order.”
Two US Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have warned the American people ‘about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities,’ saying that the public would be ‘stunned’ by the methods of domestic spying. Their letter to Attorney General Eric Holder said “there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.”
Julia Sanchez who is a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute said “vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretense of constraint or particularized suspicion,” and yet this is exactly what the order is demanding.
Senator Charles Grassley is claiming that the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) conducted widespread surveillance on its own ‘whistleblower’ employees who brought forth concerns about some safety issues.
The extent of the surveillance was extremely broad.
It included placing monitoring software on the individuals desktop computers. The data harvested was screenshots “taken every five seconds,” of anything on the monitor screen, all emails sent and received, any network interactions, any informations stored on the computer or printed from the computer and any and all computer keystrokes.
According to the New York Times, the investigation started with only 5 ‘critics’. It grew into monitor 21 employees who were thought to be putting out anything ‘defamatory’.
For more on government ruling over man see prophet.tv. To see how people can call those who do good evil see prophet.tv’s Building the Warrior Teaching Series.
See source article for full story: Senator implicates top FDA office in agency spying program | Fox News.
It is common knowledge that governments scour the data sent over the internet on websites, social media, and email for potential threats. They do so by searching for the certain keywords, they believe highlight a potential threat. Unsurprisingly, the list includes words like: “bomb”, al Qaeda”, “terrorist”; however the list contains some more unlikely additions, like: “pork, “cloud”, “team” and “Mexico”.
As well as monitoring potential terrorist threats government agencies are also trying to find criminals, and identify health risks.
The Department of Homeland Security was forced to publish the list after a freedom of information request. So if you don’t want the government spying on you below is the words not to use online:
