Facebook Twitter YouTube SoundCloud RSS
 

New Report: NSA metadata has ‘NO impact’ on preventing terror

21st Century Wire says…

A report by a DC-based think tank has revealed that the National Security Agency’s  bulk collection of phone records has had little to ‘no impact’ on preventing terrorism…

At first glance this report seems promising in its effort to reform the NSA spy-apparatus and may actually be legitimate in its push to restrain the agency. However, one can’t help but think of the key players involved in this latest outing to dismantle the unconstitutional surveillance program.

The The Washington Post reveals some of the details in the New American Foundation report:

Analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”

While it’s important to expose the much-maligned metadata collection of United States citizens and citizens throughout the world as being a violation of individual rights, it’s also important to look at the various organizations and persons of interest surrounding this story.


IMAGE: Google Executive Eric Schmidt

The New American Foundation has listed Google’s Eric Schmidt as a chairman of the foundation’s board of directors. Schmidt of course is the Executive Chairman of Google and a known Bilderberg participant, the group who has been said to influence world events in secret. In 2010, Google was found to have been directly working with the NSA, shoring up digital data for the spy agency. In November of 2013, the well-known Google executive appeared to be outraged by NSA spying on Google data centers:

It’s really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that’s true. The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people’s privacy, it’s not OK.

Is the New American Foundation simply running counter-propaganda for the Establishment, to re-frame the national conversation in order to preserve an unpopular NSA?

Former CIA intelligence operative and Marine, Robert David Steele disclosed back in 2006 that Google had received CIA funding:

“(Google) has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele has also mentioned that the CIA has been involved in the funding other unspecified illegal activities.

Recently here at 21Wire we discussed the kind of clandestine corruption behind the funding of terror operations since the 80’s. Investigative researcher and author Dean Henderson has done some of the most extensive reporting on this topic, exposing the Black Network  connected to the long-since dissolved bank, The Bank of Credit & Commerce International (BCCI). The CIA, Israeli Mossad, Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi intelligence were all said to have had accounts at BCCI, a bank which was implicated by The United States Senate as trafficking arms, funding terror and being involved in prostitution.

A Stolen Future from Stolen Data

Obama is slated to specifically address NSA concerns this coming Friday, supposedly to “improve safeguards,” also suggesting, “we need to “build technologies that give people more assurance“.

With the public’s trust in Obama and the NSA at an all-time low, it remains to be seen what ‘technological assurances’ could be made.

Under Obama the NSA’s reach of power has expanded since the Bush Administration and his leadership has been put in question over a slew of scandals over the past year, perhaps most  notably, the Benghazi cover-up.

In 2007 during a speech, it was Senator Obama who lambasted Bush over civil liberties violations, stating:

This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance civil liberties. It is not,”  “There are no shortcuts to protecting America.”

As Obama tries to reassure the public about their lack of privacy, Edward Snowden is planning to reveal a ‘trove of disclosures‘ about Israel via his media team.

The Post’s report below…

NSA-Wikileaks

NSA phone record collection does little to prevent terror attacks, group says
.

Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post

An analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.”

In the majority of cases, traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case, according to the study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
The study, to be released Monday, corroborates the findings of a White House-appointed review group, which said last month that the NSA counterterrorism program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that much of the evidence it did turn up “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”Under the program, the NSA amasses the metadata — records of phone numbers dialed and call lengths and times — of virtually every American. Analysts may search the data only with reasonable suspicion that a number is linked to a terrorist group. The content of calls is not collected.

The new study comes as President Obama is deliberating over the future of the NSA’s bulk collection program. Since it was disclosed in June, the program has prompted intense debate over its legality, utility and privacy impact.

Read more at the Washington Post

READ MORE NSA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NSA Files

 

 

Get Your Copy of New Dawn Magazine #203 - Mar-Apr Issue
Get Your Copy of New Dawn Magazine #203 - Mar-Apr Issue