Monday, March 26, 2012

Global March to Jerusalem 2012


The Global March to Jerusalem, March 30, 2012

Global Research, March 30, 2012

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The Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ) is a groundbreaking new initiative that is organising non-violent civil resistance on 30th March 2012 in Palestine and the four neighbouring countries: Egypt, Lebanon Jordan and Syria. The GMJ is comprised of a diverse coalition of Palestinian, Arab and international activists who are united in the struggle to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem (the city of Peace) from illegal Zionist occupation.

The peaceful marchers will demand freedom for Jerusalem and its people. Our aim is to end the Zionist policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation, which all harm the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem. Judaisation has involved the unrestricted expansion and funding of illegal Israeli settlements, the continued dispossession and demolition of Palestinian property, and the construction of a Separation Wall surrounding the city, all of which have changed the demographics of the holy city from a Palestinian to a Jewish majority.

Global participation in the march will confirm to the world that these racist policies and practices of the state of Israel against Jerusalem and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.
The march will unite the efforts of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all citizens of conscience in the world to put an end to Israel’s disregard for international law through the continuing occupation of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestinian land.

While the GMJ is made up of grassroots movements in each participating country, the march is centralized through an International Central Committee, consisting of 42 elected regional delegates. Regional delegates will appoint 15 members for the International Executive Committee and recruit hundreds of dignitaries and luminaries for the International Advisory Board.

Our plan is to organize massive marches towards Jerusalem, or to the nearest point possible according to the circumstances of each country, in Palestine (the 1948 Zionist land seizures, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and the four neighbouring countries: Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Internationals will participate in land caravans or fly directly to one of the main sites for the march. In addition, mass protests will be organised in front of Israeli embassies in the capitals of different countries, or in the main public squares in the big cities of the world.

The recent successes of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions are a reminder that this inspirational movement for nonviolent civil resistance was actually born in Palestine with the first Intifada. By renewing the struggle to liberate Palestine through a peaceful national mass movement that is supported by the global community, we aim to change the nature of the confrontation by compelling the occupiers to face millions of demonstrators demanding Freedom for Palestine and its capital Jerusalem.

For US media enquiries please contact Henry Norr on +1 510 371-4465 or at media@gmj-na.org and for Canada contact Ali Mallah at alimallah@hotmail.com / www.gmj-na.org



Concept and objectives

The historic day 30th March marks Palestine Land Day* in Palestinian national memory. This year our aim is to mark it as an international event to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians and to protect Jerusalem. This will be achieved by organizing a Global March to Jerusalem or to the nearest point to it. The march will demand freedom for Jerusalem and its people and to put an end to the apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem.
By organising the March and its preceding and parallel activities we aim to highlight the cause of Jerusalem (the City of Peace) which is considered the key to peace and war in the region and the world. The march will confirm that the racist policies and practices of the Zionist state of Israel against Jerusalem and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.

The march will unite the efforts of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and all citizens of conscience in the world to put an end to Israel’s disregard for international law through the continuing occupation of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestinian land.

We aim to make this march a turning point in the nature of the confrontation, with the occupation having to face millions of protesters and demonstrators demanding freedom for Palestine and its capital Jerusalem. We will make a renewed true effort towards ending the occupation through peaceful national movements inspired firstly by our convictions, secondly by the justice of our cause, and thirdly by the spirit of the Arab spring revolutions and the determination of young people who were able to overthrow dictatorships. Especially now that the nations have realized the magical effect of the people’s will to make the impossible possible. The advancing slogan, “the people demand,” has proved to be more effective than armies and weapons.

What is the structure and who is behind this project?

To achieve all the above the idea was turned into action by forming an International Central Committee (ICC) responsible for this march. The committee consists of 42 members representing the five continents. An International Executive Committee (IEC) for the GMJ will emerge from the International Central Committee, and will consist of 15 members. National committees in most countries of the world will be formed to follow up and to coordinate the actions and events at the national level. These national committees will include representatives of all backgrounds and organisations working for Palestine and Jerusalem from media, religious, social, professional and human rights figures.
There are dozens of international figures worldwide adopting the idea, supporting and signing a document of principles governing the Global March to Jerusalem. This document was adopted at the founding meeting in Amman on 12th December, 2011. Among the prominent, well known figures who sign the document of principle an Advisory Board will be formed. The complete list of names on the Advisory Board along with all organisations supporting the GMJ will be announced shortly to emphasize the international support for the march.

* Palestine Land Day – a day celebrated by Palestinians on 30th March each year. The event marks the events of March, 1976, after the Israeli authorities confiscated thousands of dunums of private and public land in majority Palestinian areas, especially in the Galilee. Following these events the Arab masses inside Palestine declared a general strike, confronting the Israeli authorities for the first time since the occupation of Palestine in 1948. The Israeli response was militant and violent, as the Israeli troops, backed up by tanks, entered Palestinian villages and reoccupied them, causing a number of martyrs and many wounded and detainees among the civilians.
A call from Palestinians in Palestine to join the GMJ

Join us as we intensify our struggle against forced exile and the system of Israeli apartheid on Land Day 2012. We Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed and uprooted from our lands starting in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) which resulted in the creation of the millions of refugees who are now living in the Diaspora. Nineteen years later, in 1967, Israel illegally annexed East-Jerusalem and the West Bank in a move which marked the Naksa (Setback), and subjected the remaining Palestinians to a brutal military occupation.

We are now in 2012, and we are still living in exile or under the Israeli apartheid regime, the illegal construction of colonial settlements is confiscating the remaining parts of Palestine, the Separation Wall divides and separates villages and towns, and Palestinians in Jerusalem are threatened of being driven out of their homes and lands for the mere purpose of the Judaization of this sacred city.

But we will not leave. We will stand and be firm. We will not permit thousands of years of our attachment to our land and our Holy City to be broken. We therefore invite and call upon all persons of courage and good will around the world to stand up and walk, with your fellow human beings, regardless of religion, of political affiliation ñ to stand up as responsible human beings and walk peacefully towards Jerusalem on the 30th of March, 2012.

We therefore ask all our brothers and sisters throughout the world to join Palestinians on Land Day, 30 March, 2012 in challenging the barriers, borders and procedures that separate Palestinians from Jerusalem and from their homes and lands in all of historic Palestine.

Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Centre: www.alrowwad-acts.ps  
Al-Walaja Popular Resistance Committee
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights: www.badil.org  
Beit Ummar Popular Resistance Committee
Bil’in Popular Resistance Committee: www.bilin-village.org  
Friends of Freedom and Justice: Bil’in www.bilin-ffj.org  
Handala Center: www.handalla-center.org  
Holy Land Trust: www.holylandtrust.org  
International Solidarity Movement: www.palsolidarity.org  
Nebi Saleh Popular Resistance Committee
Ni’lin Popular Resistance Committee
Palestine Justice Network: www.palestinejn.org  
Palestine National Initiative: www.almubadara.org  
Palestine Solidarity Project: www.palestinesolidarityproject.org  
Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People: www.pcr.ps  
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: www.stopthewall.org  
Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee: www.popularstruggle.org  
Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies: www.sirajcenter.org  
The Alternative Information Center – AIC: www.alternativenews.org  
The International Solidarity Initiative: www.internationalsolidarity.org  
The Palestinian Cultural Englightenment Centre (Tanweer)
Youth Against Settlements (Hebron)
Youth Activity Center – Aida Camp: www.key1948.org  
How will the march towards Jerusalem take place?
1. Massive marches will be organised from Asia, Africa and Europe to and in neighbouring countries to Palestine (Jordan, Eygpt, Syria and Lebanon) and towards Jerusalem or to the nearest point possible according to the circumstances of each country and through coordination between all groups and institutions of civil society taking part in the march, in coordination with the official and national bodies concerned. These marches will be composed mainly of the people of each country and thousands of international solidarity participants traveling to these countries specifically to join the marches.

Massive marches will be organized in Palestine (the 1948 seizures, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) towards Jerusalem or to the nearest point to it. Palestinian people from all factions and institutions will participate alongside international solidarity activists who are able to enter Palestine.

Mass protests will be organised in front of Israeli embassies in the capitals of different countries.

Mass demonstrations and protests will be organised in the main public squares in the big cities of the world, including the Arab and Muslim capitals and large cities, which can be initiated from the main mosques and churches in each city, where appropriate.

Transcontinental rallies will be organised, from Europe, Africa and Asia, according to the conditions and possibilities of each region.

Destruction of the Holy City of Jerusalem

The Global March to Jerusalem is focusing on the particular issue of Jerusalem because the holy city embodies the terrible violence of an enduring occupation. Furthermore, the security of Jerusalem as a city for all of humanity is especially urgent today. Over the last several years Zionist efforts to “Judaise” the city have quickened pace in an attempt to erase Jerusalem’s physical, cultural and spiritual characteristics. This process of Judaisation includes the unrestricted expansion and funding of illegal Israeli settlements, the continued dispossession and demolition of Palestinian property, and the construction of a Separation Wall surrounding the city, all of which have changed the demographics of the holy city from a Palestinian to Jewish majority.

These apartheid policies target and exclude not only Muslims, but also Christians. Over the last twenty years government backed fundamentalist Jewish groups have taken Palestinian homes in both the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City. Recently Jewish Settlers attacked a Jerusalem monastery that was built on the site where tradition says the tree used in the making of Jesus’s cross once stood. The monastery was defaced with “death to Christians” graffiti in Hebrew. On the same day “death to Arabs” was also painted on the wall of a playground of a Jewish-Arab bilingual school in Jerusalem.

According to 2011 report by Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, “the continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with forcible eviction of long residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation that can only be described, in its cumulative impact, as a form of ethnic cleansing.” However the United Nations and other international bodies have done little to prevent this Zionist aggression. In response, Palestinians are calling upon the global community to secure the status of Jerusalem as a Holy City for all humans.
The document of principles “The Freedom Call”

The participants in the Global March to Jerusalem assert the following:

• We assert the importance of Jerusalem politically, culturally and religiously to the Palestinian people and humanity as a whole. We call for the protection of the Holy Places and all archaeological sites and consider all the efforts done to change its Arabic & cultural identity as a crime against humanity.

We call on all international institutions to do their duties towards the city.

• The defence of Jerusalem and its liberation are a duty of all free people around the world and we call on all institutions, organizations, and individuals to participate in this duty.

• We condemn the Zionist campaign of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine including all ongoing policies intended to change the demographic and geographic situation in the city and aimed at its Judaisation. We also condemn the continuation of the Zionist occupation forces in building the apartheid wall that aims to expropriate more Palestinian lands and convert the occupied areas into shrinking cantons isolated from each other.

• We support the right of the Palestinian People for self determination and to liberate their lands and to live on them in freedom and dignity like all other people on earth.

We support the non-negotiable & inalienable rights of the Palestinian People including their families to return to their homes and lands from which they were uprooted.

We reject all racist laws that distinguish between people based on ethnicity or religion and call for their cancellation and criminalization.

The Global March to Jerusalem does not represent any one faction or political party but we call for participation of all social forces, political factions, and ideologies.

The Global March to Jerusalem is a global peaceful movement which does not use violence to achieve its goals.
For more information visit the official  GMJ  web site: www.gm2j.com

Everything Is Spying On You




March 26, 2012

Forget 1984, the ‘Internet of things’ is the ubiquitous surveillance grid

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, March 26, 2012

George Orwell was merely scratching the surface with telescreens – the 21st century home as a surveillance hub will outstrip anything you read about in 1984. From dishwashers to light bulbs, so-called “smart homes” will allow industry and the government to spy ubiquitously on every aspect of your existence.
CIA chief David Petraeus has hailed [1] the “Internet of things” as a transformational boon for “clandestine tradecraft”. In other words, it will soon be easier than ever before to keep tabs on the population since everything they use will be connected to the web, with total disregard for privacy considerations. The spooks won’t have to plant a bug in your home, you will be doing it for them.
“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” said Petraeus.
Soon you will have to live like a reclusive luddite if you hope to escape the new panopticon of surveillance that will be gratefully lapped up by the masses as a necessary sacrifice for convenience and cutting edge technology.
- Google has announced [2] it will use the ambient background noise of a person’s environment, via their cell phone or computer microphone, to spy on their activities in order to direct targeted advertising at them.
- Microsoft X-Box Kinect games device has a video camera and a microphone that records speech. Microsoft has stated that users [3] “should not expect any level of privacy concerning your use of the live communication features,” and the company “may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications.”
- The latest range of digital televisions also have a built-in HD camera, microphones and facial and speech recognition, which are all connected to the Internet. Companies like Samsung [4] have failed to even craft a privacy policy that applies to the devices, meaning its open season on snooping and data harvesting.
- The modern LED “eco-friendly” light bulb is also a two-way communications device. Ceiling lights currently being installed in offices and government buildings [5] “transmit data to specially equipped computers on desks below by flickering faster than the eye can see.”
  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t

- Outside street lights are also being changed to new “smart” versions [6] so they can be used for “homeland security applications”. These devices are fitted with surveillance cameras, can broadcast government announcements, and also have the ability to record conversations [7].
- Smart meters, now set to become compulsory in many areas, wirelessly communicate with utility companies details about each home’s energy consumption, as well as emitting electromagnetic radiation. Health concerns have prompted some local authorities to allow residents to opt-out [8], but in other areas the meters are mandatory.
- Forget the government having to implant a chip in your forehead, the modern smart phone, owned by the vast majority of the population, does just as good a job. Five years ago we warned [9] that the first incarnation of the iPhone contained a backdoor spyware module that allowed hackers or the government to conduct secret surveillance of the user. Cell phone surveillance is now ubiquitous. Google was also recently caught [10] tracking the surfing habits of iPhone users via a code that disables the Safari browser’s privacy settings.
- Google’s attitude towards privacy also came under scrutiny when it was discovered that the company was spying on WiFi network data in violation of the Federal Wiretap Act as it gathered images for its Streetview program.
- The most obvious example of all is the Internet itself. ISPs have announced they will keep records of websites visited for at least 12 months, along with details of private communications. This figure is constantly increasing, with the FBI now pushing [11] for ISPs to retain such information for years.
Since the vast majority of people have already taken the decision to sacrifice their privacy for convenience, all of the technologies listed above will be used to spy on individuals and harvest data which will then be sold to big corporations. The vast majority simply do not care. They value the novelty of a fridge being able to tell you when you’re out of milk and automatically ordering more via the Internet more than they do their own privacy.
Whether they will begin to care about the fact that they are broadcasting everything about their private lives and allowing governments and corporations to harvest that data when it actually begins to blowback on them in negative ways remains to be seen. The fact that some employers are now demanding Facebook passwords[12] from their staff is perhaps the first sign of how this could all come crumbling down.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com [13]. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Article printed from Prison Planet.com: http://www.prisonplanet.com
URL to article: http://www.prisonplanet.com/everything-is-spying-on-you.html
URLs in this post:
[1] CIA chief David Petraeus has hailed: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/
[2] Google has announced: http://www.prisonplanet.com../you-read-it-here-first-googles-ambient-background-spy-tech.html
[3] Microsoft has stated that users: http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=194627.0
[4] Companies like Samsung: http://europeanphoenix.com/en/component/content/article/49-sci-tech/1144-new-samsung-tv-the-spy-you-receive-as-guest.html
[5] Ceiling lights currently being installed in offices and government buildings: http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-ceiling-minn-coded-internet.html
[6] Outside street lights are also being changed to new “smart” versions: http://www.infowars.com/new-street-lights-to-have-homeland-security-applications/
[7] also have the ability to record conversations: http://www.infowars.com/federally-funded-street-lights-capable-of-recording-conversations/
[8] Health concerns have prompted some local authorities to allow residents to opt-out: http://news.discovery.com/tech/smart-meter-120314.html
[9] Five years ago we warned: http://www.prisonplanet.com../articles/july2007/200707iphonesurveillance.htm
[10] Google was also recently caught: http://www.prisonplanet.com../google-caught-violating-browser-privacy-settings-to-track-users.html
[11] FBI now pushing: http://newworldorderreport.com/News/tabid/266/ID/1717/The-FBI-is-pushing-to-have-ISPs-keep-detailed-records-of-what-web-sites-customers-have-visited-for-up-to-two-years.aspx
[12] employers are now demanding Facebook passwords: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security/2012/03/26/facebook-tells-employers-to-lay-off-login-demands-40154881/
[13] Prison Planet.com: http://prisonplanet.com/

Friday, March 23, 2012

US WAR ON IRAN: "THE WORST MISTAKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY":


US WAR ON IRAN: "THE WORST MISTAKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY":
The Road to Disaster


Global Research, March 23, 2012
Cuba Debate - 2012-03-21

Fidel Castro ‘s latest reflections hints to the danger of a looming US Iran war. Fidel Castro warns that a war with Iran war would  be the worst mistake in US history.
This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away. At that time, a handful of leaders of the most powerful countries were in charge of the world. They applauded my words as a matter of mere courtesy and placidly continued to dig for the burial of our species.
It seemed that on our planet, common sense and order reigned. For a while, economic development, backed by technology and science appeared to be the Alpha and Omega of human society.
Today, everything is much clearer. Profound truths have been surfacing. Almost 200 States, supposedly independent, constitute the political organization which in theory has the job of governing the destiny of the world.

25, 000 nuclear weapons needed to defend the changing order ?

Approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of allied or enemy forces ready to defend the changing World order, by interest or necessity, virtually reduce to zero the rights of billions of people.
I shall not commit the naïveté of assigning the blame to Russia or China for the development of that kind of weaponry, after the monstrous massacre at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered by Truman in August 1945 after Roosevelt’s death [April 1945].
Nor shall I fall prey to the error of denying the Holocaust that signified the deaths of millions of children and adults, men or women, mainly Jews, gypsies, Russians or other nationalities, who were victims of Nazism. For that reason the odious policy of those who deny the Palestinian people their right to exist is repugnant.
Does anyone by chance think that the United States will be capable of acting with the independence that will keep it from the inevitable disaster awaiting it?
In a few weeks, the 40 million dollars President Obama promised to collect for his electoral campaign will only serve to show that the currency of his country has lost its value, and that the US, with its unusual growing public debt drawing close to 20 quadrillion, is living on the money it prints up and not on the money it produces. The rest of the world pays for what they waste.
Nor does anyone believe that the Democratic candidate would be any better or worse than his Republican foes: whether they are called Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum. Light years separate these three characters from Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King.

It is really unheard-of to observe such a technologically powerful nation and a government so bereft of both ideas and moral values.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. It is being accused of producing enriched uranium that serves as fuel energy or components for medical uses. Whatever one can say, its possession or production is not equivalent to the production of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries use enriched uranium as an energy source, but this cannot be used in the manufacture of a nuclear weapon without a prior complicated purification process.
However, Israel, with the aid and cooperation of the United States, has manufactured nuclear weaponry without informing or accounting for their actions to anybody. Not admitting their possession of these weapons, they have hundreds of them. To prevent the development of research in neighbouring Arab countries, they attacked and destroyed reactors in Iraq and Syria. They have also declared their objective of attacking and destroying the production centres for nuclear fuel in Iran.
International politics have been revolving around that crucial topic in that complex and dangerous part of the world, where most of the fuel that moves the world economy is produced and supplied.
The selective elimination of Iran’s most eminent scientists by Israel and their NATO allies has become a practice that motivates hatred and feelings of revenge.
The Israeli government has openly stated its objective to attack the plant manufacturing Iran’s enriched uranium, and the government of the United States has invested billions of dollars to manufacture a bomb for that purpose.
On March 16, 2012, Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham published an article revealing that “A top US Air Force General has described the largest conventional bomb – the re-invented bunkers of 13.6 tons – as ‘fantastic’ for a military attack on Iran.
“Such an eloquent comment on the massive killer-artefact took place in the same week that President Barack Obama appeared to warn against ‘easy words’ on the Persian Gulf War.”
“…Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for US Air Force operations […] added that probably the bomb would be used in any attack on Iran ordered by Washington.
“The MOP, also referred to as ‘The Mother of All Bombs’, is designed to drill through 60 metres of concrete before it detonates its massive bomb. It is believed to be the largest conventional weapon, non-nuclear, in the US arsenal.”
“The Pentagon is planning a process of wide destruction of Iran’s infrastructure and massive civilian victims through the combined use of tactical nuclear bombs and monstrous conventional bombs with mushroom-shaped clouds, including the MOABs and the larger GBU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) that exceeds the MOAB in destructive capacity.
“The MOP is described as ‘a powerful new bomb that aims straight at subterranean Iranian and North Korean nuclear facilities. The giant bomb –longer than 11 persons shoulder to shoulder, or more than 6 metres from end to end’.”

The Mother of all Bombs (MOAB)
I ask the reader to excuse me for this complicated military jargon.
As one can see, such calculations arise from the hypothesis that the Iranian combatants, numbering millions of men and women well-known for their religious zeal and their fighting traditions, surrender without firing a shot.
In recent days, the Iranians have seen how US soldiers occupying Afghanistan, in just three weeks, urinated on the corpses of killed Afghans, burned copies of the Koran and murdered more than 15 defenceless citizens.
Let us imagine US forces launching monstrous bombs on industrial institutions, capable of penetrating through 60 metres of concrete. Never has such an undertaking ever been conceived [and carried out].
Not one word more is needed to understand the gravity of such a policy. In that way, our species will be inexorably led towards disaster.

If we do not learn how to understand, we shall never learn how to survive.
As for me, I harbour not the slightest doubt that the United States is about to commit and lead the world towards the greatest mistake in its history.
Fidel Castro Ruz
March 21, 2012

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah

See the Democracy Now Video Stream at:


http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/21/exposed_inside_the_nsas_largest_and


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http://www.democracynow.org/images/story/44/21344/medium/nsa_sign.jpg
A new exposé in Wired Magazine reveals details about how the National Security Agency is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program codenamed "Stellar Wind." We speak with investigative reporter James Bamford, who says the NSA has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency. This includes the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases and other digital "pocket litter." "The NSANSA Director General Keith Alexander’s denial yesterday that U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails are being intercepted. "A few years ago, President Bush said before camera that the United States is not eavesdropping on anybody without a warrant, and then it turns out that we had this exposure to all the warrantless eavesdropping in the New York Times article. And so, you have this constant denial and parsing of words." [includes rush transcript] has constantly denied that they’re doing things, and then it turns out they are doing these things," Bamford says in response to
Guest:
James Bamford, investigative reporter who has covered the National Security Agency for the last three decades. His latest article for Wired Magazine is titled "The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)." Since his reporting helped expose the NSA’s existence in the 1980s, he has authored of a series of books on the agency including, most recently, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.
 

Israelis Say No To Iran War

Richard Silverstein [1]
March 21, 2012



Israelis have begun intensive social networking efforts to promote the notion that their country does not want war with Iran.  There will be a mass rally on Friday, March 24th at 7PM in HaBima Square in Tel Aviv.  There is also a Facebook event page, Israelis Against War with Iran [2].  It has 764 Going currently.  I wish it had more, much more.  There is a Facebook group, Israelis Against the War [3], with 2,800 Likes.  This is the statement that accompanies it:
It appears that as far as PM Netanyahu is concerned, everything’s prepared for an attack on Iran. Except for us – we’re neither prepared nor willing.
We will not agree to an irresponsible Israeli attack in Iran, leading to a war with an unknown end-date and casualty count. Polls show most of the Israeli public opposes the attack being planned by Netanyahu. Even the leading brass of the Israeli security establishment, past and present, opposes such an attack. U.S. intelligence agencies assert that Iran is not on the path attributed to it by Netanyahu (an assertion supported by the Mossad). Netanyahu, however, possibly fearing another “social summer”, appears eager to launch a war which might even give a boost to his election campaign.
Hardly anyone was surprised this week by the reports that Israel is not equipped to protect its citizens from missiles targeted at the cities. It is also not surprising that those least protected are the weaker populations of the Israeli periphery. This is exactly how much our leaders value us, when they don’t hesitate to take us on an unnecessary war that will inflame the region, supposedly for our protection. Not to worry – they’ll be safe and sound in their bunkers. The billions that this war will cost will be paid by us – in health, education, housing – and in blood.
But this week, we saw something amazing. The internet allowed us to convey messages to citizens on the other side and receive messages back from them. Messages of peace, solidarity and hope.
This exciting and refreshing dialogue leads to one clear conclusion:
We, the citizens of Israel and Iran, are not enemies. Our leaders are inciting a disastrous war – and we’re all trying to prevent it. Instead of being dragged into a regional war – we demand a solution of peace among all the region’s peoples.
This coming Saturday, March 24th, we will meet at 19:00 (7 PM) at HaBima Square in Tel Aviv – where the summer’s protests began – and march from there to Gan Meir. Together we will spell out for Netanyahu and the world: You have no mandate to take us to war with Iran.
Feel free to prepare signs such as:
“Iranians we love you”
“The people oppose war in Iran” or any other idea you might have.
There is also a blog, Israel Loves Iran [4], created by Israeli graphic designer Ronny Edry, which appears to be getting so much traffic it’s serving pages quite slowly.  But that’s a good thing.  It goes without saying the initiative has been covered by Haaretz [5].  But it’s even reached CNN [6], another good sign.  I hope you’ll do your part to help trend #israelovesiran on Twitter and promote it on any other social media platforms you frequent.  We’ve got to stop this damn war.  If the Occupy movement and Israel’s J14 Social Justice movement could move mountains, can’t we stop the F-16s?
There is one Israeli message to Iran I do not endorse.  Thamar Gindin, an Israeli-Iranian who is making a powerful effort to promote peace between the two peoples, is featuring this message [7] written by settler Rabbi Avraham Gisser of Ofra (considered a moderate figure in his community), who commends the Iranian people on Nowruz, the Iranian New Year.  Here are excerpts from his statement.  Reading it carefully will elicit the prejudices inherent in it:
Religious wholeness and pure belief are the lot of the free only. Enslavement and coercion are the opposite of the human spirit, and what are religious belief and observing the commandments worth if the human spirit is oppressed and humiliated?
The Jewish people are not the enemy of the honorable Iranian nation. The Iranian nation has a glorious tradition of respect for human values and struggle for freedom and equality. The common mission of the two nations is to continue striving for equality, peace, and respect for every person – man and woman, young and old. Women’s freedom is their honor. A woman’s freedom is the distinct sign of a society that chooses life and joy in life. The common enemy of both nations is any government or movement that enslaves the human spirit and humiliates the women, the weak and the different in the name of religion or in the name of any other fake ideology.
It’s more than obvious that Gisser seeks, like most pro-Israel figures trying to demonize Iran even unintentionally, to differentiate between the Iranian people and its government.  The people are good.  The Ayatollahs are bad.  They are the “enslavers” and represent a “fake ideology.”  Note there is absolutely no criticism offered of Israeli leaders or government.  I ask you? Is this the sort of “conciliatory” message we need in the current environment?  Compare this statement [8] to the one from Ayatollah Beheshti, which Tamar publicized last Rosh HaShana, which was a truly loving, non-judgmental and inspirational one.

Article printed from Prison Planet.com: http://www.prisonplanet.com
URL to article: http://www.prisonplanet.com/israelis-say-no-to-iran-war.html
URLs in this post:
[1] Richard Silverstein: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2012/03/20/israelis-say-no-to-iran-war/
[2] Israelis Against War with Iran: https://www.facebook.com/events/212817012159832/
[3] Israelis Against the War: https://www.facebook.com/israelis.against.the.war
[4] Israel Loves Iran: http://www.israelovesiran.com/
[5] covered by Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/iranians-respond-to-israeli-facebook-initiative-israel-we-love-you-too-1.419505
[6] reached CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/19/world/meast/israel-iran-social-media/?hpt=hp_bn5
[7] this message: http://room404.net/?p=50510
[8] this statement: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/09/29/dissident-ayatollah-offers-rosh-hashanah-blessings/

END the TSA- State of Hawaii

Senator Sam Slom-

Re: END the TSA

Thank you for standing up against the TSA at our airports.  I am a hawaiian resident currently unable to return home because of the TSA at the airports.  I am stranded on the mainland since i will NOT subject myself to harmful body radiation, nor will i submit to an ILLEGAL pat-down of my body (4th amendment violations).  Here is a website i now maintain on the DHS and TSA (until they 'cease and desist' from their crimes)
http://jackstraw7.tripod.com

Mahalo,

jp
hawaiian resident
(stranded on mainland)


CC: -Governor of Hawaii
       -The White House

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

NSA’s Spy Program: “Stellar Wind”

BOB ADELMANN
New American

March 20, 2012



The lead story in Wired magazine for April exposed the Stellar Wind program for its intended purpose: to spy on every jot and tittle of every American citizen’s life all the way down to his “pocket litter:” parking-lot stubs, receipts from McDonalds, tickets from his haircut at Cost Cutters, as well as all the way up to the content of his every e-mail, every Google search, every telephone or cellphone conversation.
Stellar Wind is the code name for an effort approved by President George W. Bush following the September 11, 2001 attacks to mine a large database of communications of American citizens but which was allegedly terminated when Congress pushed back against it.
However, the National Security Agency, awash with funds provided by Congress, is nearly finished constructing its Utah Data Center as the collection point for data provided from around the country and around the world. Its purpose: “to intercept, decipher, analyze and store vast swaths of the world’s communications … [including] all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Google searches.” In other words, according to James Bamford, author ofThe Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, when the $2 billion facility (consisting of four 25,000 square-foot buildings full of computer servers and their air conditioning units plus a 900,000 square-foot building to house its technical and administration people) is completed in September, 2013,
virtually everything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one’s existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will … become the property of the US government to deal with as its sees fit.
William Binney, a former NSA crypto-mathematician who quit NSA after he realized it was openly and deliberately ignoring privacy limitations built into the Constitution, said in an interview with Bamford, holding his thumb and forefinger close together: “We are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”
Binney headed up a team that built the infrastructure to spy on everyone all the time and, at the time, recommended that NSA install its “tapping gear” only at the nation’s “landing sites” — physical locations where fiber optic cables come ashore — to limit its eavesdropping to international communications only and preserving Americans’ right to privacy. But NSA ignored Binney’s recommendation and instead decided to build its spy center in Utah, connecting it with satellites and listening posts in Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Hawaii, and elsewhere, with direct links to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, NSA’s research facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and last but not least, the White House.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Obama Executive Order Removes ALL Rights - America Is Dead

see url:


http://teapartyorg.ning.com/profiles/blogs/obama-signed-a-new-exec-order-in-the-night-that-allows-him-to



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Democide: Government Killed Over 260 Million in the 20th Century, Poised to Kill Billions More in the 21st

Democide: Government Killed Over 260 Million in the 20th Century, Poised to Kill Billions More in the 21st
Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
March 17, 2012


URL of Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd9JBWdVg7U&feature=player_embedded

The above documentary from Alex Jones (Infowars.com) details the various aspects of the behind-the-scenes plans of what many have dubbed the New World Order. InBlueprint of Madmen Jones explores everything from anti-terror legislation in the United States to restrictive global food production and distribution by the elite as a means of controlling the populations of entire nations .
Most will ignore the message and attack the messenger, but it won’t change the evidence. There is a grand conspiracy afoot. Ignore it to your detriment.
Alex reveals a host of statistics from ordinary life that have proven much more deadly. In short, these statistics make clear that terrorism is a complete hoax. It was deliberately created as a false alarm to secure funds for national security contractors building a Stasi state built to control the population through the power of “fear itself.”
But what are the REAL threats our society faces?
Alex turns the tables on the constant propaganda about a projected enemy. He documents proven academic research in Democide, or Death by Government, demonstrating that the real killers throughout history have always been in government. From Mao in Communist China, Stalin in the U.S.S.R., Hitler in Nazi Germany, Pol Pot under the Khmer Rouge and so many others, governments have killed more than 260 million people in just the last one hundred years.
Through this important documentary, you will understand how history’s mega-killers are now poised to kill not millions but billions in a new age of dominance under world government. The elite psychopathic rulers, along with their technocratic Renfield minions, are pursuing a transhumanist vision where they seek to become gods while the masses of humanity are sacrificed in the name of saving the earth, all while risking our very planet in their destructive experimentation.
Watch the Full Length Documentary: Blueprint Of Madmen (40 minutes)
The documentary starts out with a humorous look at the state of affairs in America today, and then delves into the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves.


  1. Celente Solution: The 21st Century ‘Global Game Changer’
  2. Be Part Of The Spiritual Renaissance of the 21st Century
  3. First Great War of The 21st Century is Here! with Gerald Celente
  4. The Great Depression of the 21st Century: Collapse of the Real Economy
  5. Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers
  6. This Is What An Economic Depression Looks Like In The 21st Century
  7. The 21st Century Matrix: Technocracy and the Rise of the Machines
  8. The Final Solution: Bio Solutions for the 21st Century (Satire)
  9. 21st Century Traitors
  10. WHO declares first 21st century flu pandemic
  11. New World Order: Blueprint of Madmen (Full Film)
  12. Welcome To The 21st Century Police State

Google IS the NSA

Google Asks NSA to Help Secure Its Network

nsa-logo
Google is teaming up with the National Security Agency to investigate the recent hack attack against its network in a bid to prevent another assault, according to The Washington Post.
The internet search giant is working on an agreement with the controversial agency to determine the attacker’s methods and what Google can do to shore up its network.
Sources assured the Post that the deal does not mean the NSA will have access to users’ searches or e-mail communications and accounts. Nor will Google share proprietary data with the agency.
But the move is raising concerns among privacy and civil rights advocates.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Thursday, shortly after the agreement was made public, seeking more information about the arrangement (.pdf).
Executive Director Marc Rotenberg believes the agreement covers much more than the Google hack and that the search giant and intelligence agency were in talks prior to Google discovering that it had been hacked.
“What they’ve told you is that this is about an investigation of a hack involving China,” he told Threat Level in a phone interview. “I think and have good reason to believe that there’s a lot more going on.”
Google declined to comment.
“At the time [of the hack announcement], we said we are working with the relevant US authorities, but we don’t have any comment beyond that,” wrote spokesman Jay Nancarrow in an e-mail.
The FOIA request also seeks NSA communications with Google regarding Google’s failure to encrypt Gmail and cloud computing services. Rotenberg says EPIC wants to know what role the NSA has played in shaping privacy and security standards for Google’s services.
EPIC also filed a lawsuit against the NSA and the National Security Council, seeking a key document governing the government’s broader national cybersecurity policy, which has been shrouded in secrecy.
“We can’t afford to have secret cybersecurity policy that impacts the privacy rights of millions of internet users,” he said.
Google announced earlier this month that it had been the target of a “highly sophisticated” and coordinated hack attack, since dubbed Operation Aurora, against its network and other companies in the defense, technology and finance industries. Google said the hackers had stolen intellectual property — presumed to be its source code — and sought access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The attack originated from China, the company said.
Computer security firm iDefense has said that 34 companies were targeted by the attackers, who were primarily after source code.
A recent report has provided details into the nature of the persistent espionage attack that mirrored attacks on thousands of companies over the last few years, which have largely gone unpublicized.
The agreement between Google and the NSA, still being finalized, would allow Google to share critical information with the NSA about the attacks and its network — such as the malicious code that was used and its network configurations — without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of users’ communications, the sources say.
The NSA’s general counsel began drafting the cooperative research and development agreement the day that Google announced it had been hacked, according to The Wall Street Journal. The agreement was finalized within 24 hours, but the information sharing at that time was limited, and only allowed the NSA to examine some of the data related to the hack. Most of the data that was shared concerned the nature of the data that was stolen, the paper said. Both the FBI and NSA worked directly with Google on the investigation.
The agreement between Google and the NSA would reportedly be the first time Google entered into such a formal information-sharing relationship — apart from its general cooperation with subpoenas and national security letters.
Matthew Aid, NSA historian and author of The Secret Sentry, said the move troubled him.
“I’m a little uncomfortable with Google cooperating this closely with the nation’s largest intelligence agency, even if it’s strictly for defensive purposes,” he told the Post.
The NSA has been embroiled since 2005 in allegations that the agency violated federal laws in conducting illegal surveillance of Americans’ phone and internet communications. Giving the agency authority over coordination of the government’s cybersecurity plan — which would include working with telecoms and other critical companies in the private sector — could put the agency in the position of surreptitiously monitoring communications.
Last year Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair raised a ruckus when he told the House intelligence committee that the NSA, rather than the Department of Homeland Security which currently oversees cybersecurity for the government, should be in charge of securing cyberspace for government and critical infrastructures.
“The National Security Agency has the greatest repository of cybertalent,” Blair said. “[T]here are some wizards out there at Fort Meade who can do stuff.”
NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander later balked at claims that his agency wanted to control the government’s cybersecurity plan and said it wanted to partner with DHS and others in securing networks. Speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco, he told the audience of security professionals that the NSA does “not want to run cybersecurity for the United States government.”
This week Blair, commenting on the Google hack, said cyberspace could not be secured without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”
“As part of its information-assurance mission,” NSA spokeswoman Judi Emmel told the Post, “NSA works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associates to ensure the availability of secure tailored solutions for Department of Defense and national security systems customers.”

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center


Photo: Name Withheld; Digital Manipulation: Jesse Lenz
The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze. Bluffdale sits in a bowl-shaped valley in the shadow of Utah’s Wasatch Range to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. It’s the heart of Mormon country, where religious pioneers first arrived more than 160 years ago. They came to escape the rest of the world, to understand the mysterious words sent down from their god as revealed on buried golden plates, and to practice what has become known as “the principle,” marriage to multiple wives.
Magazine2004
Today Bluffdale is home to one of the nation’s largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The brethren’s complex includes a chapel, a school, a sports field, and an archive. Membership has doubled since 1978—and the number of plural marriages has tripled—so the sect has recently been looking for ways to purchase more land and expand throughout the town.
But new pioneers have quietly begun moving into the area, secretive outsiders who say little and keep to themselves. Like the pious polygamists, they are focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road, less than a mile from brethren headquarters, thousands of hard-hatted construction workers in sweat-soaked T-shirts are laying the groundwork for the newcomers’ own temple and archive, a massive complex so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
Rather than Bibles, prophets, and worshippers, this temple will be filled with servers, computer intelligence experts, and armed guards. And instead of listening for words flowing down from heaven, these newcomers will be secretly capturing, storing, and analyzing vast quantities of words and images hurtling through the world’s telecommunications networks. In the little town of Bluffdale, Big Love and Big Brother have become uneasy neighbors.
The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
For the NSA, overflowing with tens of billions of dollars in post-9/11 budget awards, the cryptanalysis breakthrough came at a time of explosive growth, in size as well as in power. Established as an arm of the Department of Defense following Pearl Harbor, with the primary purpose of preventing another surprise assault, the NSA suffered a series of humiliations in the post-Cold War years. Caught offguard by an escalating series of terrorist attacks—the first World Trade Center bombing, the blowing up of US embassies in East Africa, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and finally the devastation of 9/11—some began questioning the agency’s very reason for being. In response, the NSA has quietly been reborn. And while there is little indication that its actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010—there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever created.
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.

UTAH DATA CENTER

When construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility in Bluffdale will encompass 1 million square feet.
Utah Data Center

1 Visitor control center

A $9.7 million facility for ensuring that only cleared personnel gain access.

2 Administration

Designated space for technical support and administrative personnel.

3 Data halls

Four 25,000-square-foot facilities house rows and rows of servers.

4 Backup generators and fuel tanks

Can power the center for at least three days.

5 Water storage and pumping

Able to pump 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day.

6 Chiller plant

About 60,000 tons of cooling equipment to keep servers from overheating.

7 Power substation

An electrical substation to meet the center’s estimated 65-megawatt demand.

8 Security

Video surveillance, intrusion detection, and other protection will cost more than $10 million.
Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Conceptual Site plan
A swath of freezing fog blanketed Salt Lake City on the morning of January 6, 2011, mixing with a weeklong coating of heavy gray smog. Red air alerts, warning people to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary, had become almost daily occurrences, and the temperature was in the bone-chilling twenties. “What I smell and taste is like coal smoke,” complained one local blogger that day. At the city’s international airport, many inbound flights were delayed or diverted while outbound regional jets were grounded. But among those making it through the icy mist was a figure whose gray suit and tie made him almost disappear into the background. He was tall and thin, with the physique of an aging basketball player and dark caterpillar eyebrows beneath a shock of matching hair. Accompanied by a retinue of bodyguards, the man was NSA deputy director Chris Inglis, the agency’s highest-ranking civilian and the person who ran its worldwide day-to-day operations.
A short time later, Inglis arrived in Bluffdale at the site of the future data center, a flat, unpaved runway on a little-used part of Camp Williams, a National Guard training site. There, in a white tent set up for the occasion, Inglis joined Harvey Davis, the agency’s associate director for installations and logistics, and Utah senator Orrin Hatch, along with a few generals and politicians in a surreal ceremony. Standing in an odd wooden sandbox and holding gold-painted shovels, they made awkward jabs at the sand and thus officially broke ground on what the local media had simply dubbed “the spy center.” Hoping for some details on what was about to be built, reporters turned to one of the invited guests, Lane Beattie of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. Did he have any idea of the purpose behind the new facility in his backyard? “Absolutely not,” he said with a self-conscious half laugh. “Nor do I want them spying on me.”
For his part, Inglis simply engaged in a bit of double-talk, emphasizing the least threatening aspect of the center: “It’s a state-of-the-art facility designed to support the intelligence community in its mission to, in turn, enable and protect the nation’s cybersecurity.” While cybersecurity will certainly be among the areas focused on in Bluffdale, what is collected, how it’s collected, and what is done with the material are far more important issues. Battling hackers makes for a nice cover—it’s easy to explain, and who could be against it? Then the reporters turned to Hatch, who proudly described the center as “a great tribute to Utah,” then added, “I can’t tell you a lot about what they’re going to be doing, because it’s highly classified.”
And then there was this anomaly: Although this was supposedly the official ground-breaking for the nation’s largest and most expensive cybersecurity project, no one from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for protecting civilian networks from cyberattack, spoke from the lectern. In fact, the official who’d originally introduced the data center, at a press conference in Salt Lake City in October 2009, had nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was Glenn A. Gaffney, deputy director of national intelligence for collection, a man who had spent almost his entire career at the CIA. As head of collection for the intelligence community, he managed the country’s human and electronic spies.
Within days, the tent and sandbox and gold shovels would be gone and Inglis and the generals would be replaced by some 10,000 construction workers. “We’ve been asked not to talk about the project,” Rob Moore, president of Big-D Construction, one of the three major contractors working on the project, told a local reporter. The plans for the center show an extensive security system: an elaborate $10 million antiterrorism protection program, including a fence designed to stop a 15,000-pound vehicle traveling 50 miles per hour, closed-circuit cameras, a biometric identification system, a vehicle inspection facility, and a visitor-control center.
Inside, the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.
Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (1024 bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)
It needs that capacity because, according to a recent report by Cisco, global Internet traffic will quadruple from 2010 to 2015, reaching 966 exabytes per year. (A million exabytes equal a yottabyte.) In terms of scale, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once estimated that the total of all human knowledge created from the dawn of man to 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. And the data flow shows no sign of slowing. In 2011 more than 2 billion of the world’s 6.9 billion people were connected to the Internet. By 2015, market research firm IDC estimates, there will be 2.7 billion users. Thus, the NSA’s need for a 1-million-square-foot data storehouse. Should the agency ever fill the Utah center with a yottabyte of information, it would be equal to about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.
The data stored in Bluffdale will naturally go far beyond the world’s billions of public web pages. The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”

The NSA’S SPY NETWORK

Once it’s operational, the Utah Data Center will become, in effect, the NSA’s cloud. The center will be fed data collected by the agency’s eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US. All that data will then be accessible to the NSA’s code breakers, data-miners, China analysts, counterterrorism specialists, and others working at its Fort Meade headquarters and around the world. Here’s how the data center appears to fit into the NSA’s global puzzle.—J.B.
SPY NETWORK

1 Geostationary satellites

Four satellites positioned around the globe monitor frequencies carrying everything from walkie-talkies and cell phones in Libya to radar systems in North Korea. Onboard software acts as the first filter in the collection process, targeting only key regions, countries, cities, and phone numbers or email.

2 Aerospace Data Facility, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado

Intelligence collected from the geostationary satellites, as well as signals from other spacecraft and overseas listening posts, is relayed to this facility outside Denver. About 850 NSA employees track the satellites, transmit target information, and download the intelligence haul.

3 NSA Georgia, Fort Gordon, Augusta, Georgia

Focuses on intercepts from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Codenamed Sweet Tea, the facility has been massively expanded and now consists of a 604,000-square-foot operations building for up to 4,000 intercept operators, analysts, and other specialists.

4 NSA Texas, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio

Focuses on intercepts from Latin America and, since 9/11, the Middle East and Europe. Some 2,000 workers staff the operation. The NSA recently completed a $100 million renovation on a mega-data center here—a backup storage facility for the Utah Data Center.

5 NSA Hawaii, Oahu

Focuses on intercepts from Asia. Built to house an aircraft assembly plant during World War II, the 250,000-square-foot bunker is nicknamed the Hole. Like the other NSA operations centers, it has since been expanded: Its 2,700 employees now do their work aboveground from a new 234,000-square-foot facility.

6 Domestic listening posts

The NSA has long been free to eavesdrop on international satellite communications. But after 9/11, it installed taps in US telecom “switches,” gaining access to domestic traffic. An ex-NSA official says there are 10 to 20 such installations.

7 Overseas listening posts

According to a knowledgeable intelligence source, the NSA has installed taps on at least a dozen of the major overseas communications links, each capable of eavesdropping on information passing by at a high data rate.

8 Utah Data Center, Bluffdale, Utah

At a million square feet, this $2 billion digital storage facility outside Salt Lake City will be the centerpiece of the NSA’s cloud-based data strategy and essential in its plans for decrypting previously uncrackable documents.

9 Multiprogram Research Facility, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Some 300 scientists and computer engineers with top security clearance toil away here, building the world’s fastest supercomputers and working on cryptanalytic applications and other secret projects.

10 NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland

Analysts here will access material stored at Bluffdale to prepare reports and recommendations that are sent to policymakers. To handle the increased data load, the NSA is also building an $896 million supercomputer center here.
Before yottabytes of data from the deep web and elsewhere can begin piling up inside the servers of the NSA’s new center, they must be collected. To better accomplish that, the agency has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed—how the NSA secretly and illegally bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was supposed to oversee and authorize highly targeted domestic eavesdropping; how the program allowed wholesale monitoring of millions of American phone calls and email. In the wake of the program’s exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn’t revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program.
For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail. William Binney was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network. A tall man with strands of black hair across the front of his scalp and dark, determined eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, the 68-year-old spent nearly four decades breaking codes and finding new ways to channel billions of private phone calls and email messages from around the world into the NSA’s bulging databases. As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, Binney and his team designed much of the infrastructure that’s still likely used to intercept international and foreign communications.
He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation’s cable landing stations—the more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. “I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,” Binney says. “That’s not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.”
The eavesdropping on Americans doesn’t stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T’s powerful earth stations, satellite receivers in locations that include Roaring Creek and Salt Creek. Tucked away on a back road in rural Catawissa, Pennsylvania, Roaring Creek’s three 105-foot dishes handle much of the country’s communications to and from Europe and the Middle East. And on an isolated stretch of land in remote Arbuckle, California, three similar dishes at the company’s Salt Creek station service the Pacific Rim and Asia.
The former NSA official held his thumb and forefinger close together: “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”
Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts. The haul only grew from there. According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.
The software, created by a company called Narus that’s now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.
The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.
Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)
After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. “The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?” he says. “The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don’t want.” Instead, he adds, “they’re storing everything they gather.” And the agency is gathering as much as it can.
Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life.
The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.
In secret listening rooms nationwide, NSA software examines every email, phone call, and tweet as they zip by.
But there is, of course, reason for anyone to be distressed about the practice. Once the door is open for the government to spy on US citizens, there are often great temptations to abuse that power for political purposes, as when Richard Nixon eavesdropped on his political enemies during Watergate and ordered the NSA to spy on antiwar protesters. Those and other abuses prompted Congress to enact prohibitions in the mid-1970s against domestic spying.
Before he gave up and left the NSA, Binney tried to persuade officials to create a more targeted system that could be authorized by a court. At the time, the agency had 72 hours to obtain a legal warrant, and Binney devised a method to computerize the system. “I had proposed that we automate the process of requesting a warrant and automate approval so we could manage a couple of million intercepts a day, rather than subvert the whole process.” But such a system would have required close coordination with the courts, and NSA officials weren’t interested in that, Binney says. Instead they continued to haul in data on a grand scale. Asked how many communications—”transactions,” in NSA’s lingo—the agency has intercepted since 9/11, Binney estimates the number at “between 15 and 20 trillion, the aggregate over 11 years.”
When Barack Obama took office, Binney hoped the new administration might be open to reforming the program to address his constitutional concerns. He and another former senior NSA analyst, J. Kirk Wiebe, tried to bring the idea of an automated warrant-approval system to the attention of the Department of Justice’s inspector general. They were given the brush-off. “They said, oh, OK, we can’t comment,” Binney says.
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.
There is still one technology preventing untrammeled government access to private digital data: strong encryption. Anyone—from terrorists and weapons dealers to corporations, financial institutions, and ordinary email senders—can use it to seal their messages, plans, photos, and documents in hardened data shells. For years, one of the hardest shells has been the Advanced Encryption Standard, one of several algorithms used by much of the world to encrypt data. Available in three different strengths—128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits—it’s incorporated in most commercial email programs and web browsers and is considered so strong that the NSA has even approved its use for top-secret US government communications. Most experts say that a so-called brute-force computer attack on the algorithm—trying one combination after another to unlock the encryption—would likely take longer than the age of the universe. For a 128-bit cipher, the number of trial-and-error attempts would be 340 undecillion (1036).
Breaking into those complex mathematical shells like the AES is one of the key reasons for the construction going on in Bluffdale. That kind of cryptanalysis requires two major ingredients: super-fast computers to conduct brute-force attacks on encrypted messages and a massive number of those messages for the computers to analyze. The more messages from a given target, the more likely it is for the computers to detect telltale patterns, and Bluffdale will be able to hold a great many messages. “We questioned it one time,” says another source, a senior intelligence manager who was also involved with the planning. “Why were we building this NSA facility? And, boy, they rolled out all the old guys—the crypto guys.” According to the official, these experts told then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, “You’ve got to build this thing because we just don’t have the capability of doing the code-breaking.” It was a candid admission. In the long war between the code breakers and the code makers—the tens of thousands of cryptographers in the worldwide computer security industry—the code breakers were admitting defeat.
So the agency had one major ingredient—a massive data storage facility—under way. Meanwhile, across the country in Tennessee, the government was working in utmost secrecy on the other vital element: the most powerful computer the world has ever known.
The plan was launched in 2004 as a modern-day Manhattan Project. Dubbed the High Productivity Computing Systems program, its goal was to advance computer speed a thousandfold, creating a machine that could execute a quadrillion (1015) operations a second, known as a petaflop—the computer equivalent of breaking the land speed record. And as with the Manhattan Project, the venue chosen for the supercomputing program was the town of Oak Ridge in eastern Tennessee, a rural area where sharp ridges give way to low, scattered hills, and the southwestward-flowing Clinch River bends sharply to the southeast. About 25 miles from Knoxville, it is the “secret city” where uranium- 235 was extracted for the first atomic bomb. A sign near the exit read: what you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here. Today, not far from where that sign stood, Oak Ridge is home to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it’s engaged in a new secret war. But this time, instead of a bomb of almost unimaginable power, the weapon is a computer of almost unimaginable speed.
In 2004, as part of the supercomputing program, the Department of Energy established its Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility for multiple agencies to join forces on the project. But in reality there would be two tracks, one unclassified, in which all of the scientific work would be public, and another top-secret, in which the NSA could pursue its own computer covertly. “For our purposes, they had to create a separate facility,” says a former senior NSA computer expert who worked on the project and is still associated with the agency. (He is one of three sources who described the program.) It was an expensive undertaking, but one the NSA was desperate to launch.
Known as the Multiprogram Research Facility, or Building 5300, the $41 million, five-story, 214,000-square-foot structure was built on a plot of land on the lab’s East Campus and completed in 2006. Behind the brick walls and green-tinted windows, 318 scientists, computer engineers, and other staff work in secret on the cryptanalytic applications of high-speed computing and other classified projects. The supercomputer center was named in honor of George R. Cotter, the NSA’s now-retired chief scientist and head of its information technology program. Not that you’d know it. “There’s no sign on the door,” says the ex-NSA computer expert.
At the DOE’s unclassified center at Oak Ridge, work progressed at a furious pace, although it was a one-way street when it came to cooperation with the closemouthed people in Building 5300. Nevertheless, the unclassified team had its Cray XT4 supercomputer upgraded to a warehouse-sized XT5. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world’s fastest computer in 2009.
Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.
The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”
In addition to giving the NSA access to a tremendous amount of Americans’ personal data, such an advance would also open a window on a trove of foreign secrets. While today most sensitive communications use the strongest encryption, much of the older data stored by the NSA, including a great deal of what will be transferred to Bluffdale once the center is complete, is encrypted with more vulnerable ciphers. “Remember,” says the former intelligence official, “a lot of foreign government stuff we’ve never been able to break is 128 or less. Break all that and you’ll find out a lot more of what you didn’t know—stuff we’ve already stored—so there’s an enormous amount of information still in there.”
The NSA believes it’s on the verge of breaking a key encryption algorithm—opening up hoards of data.
That, he notes, is where the value of Bluffdale, and its mountains of long-stored data, will come in. What can’t be broken today may be broken tomorrow. “Then you can see what they were saying in the past,” he says. “By extrapolating the way they did business, it gives us an indication of how they may do things now.” The danger, the former official says, is that it’s not only foreign government information that is locked in weaker algorithms, it’s also a great deal of personal domestic communications, such as Americans’ email intercepted by the NSA in the past decade.
But first the supercomputer must break the encryption, and to do that, speed is everything. The faster the computer, the faster it can break codes. The Data Encryption Standard, the 56-bit predecessor to the AES, debuted in 1976 and lasted about 25 years. The AES made its first appearance in 2001 and is expected to remain strong and durable for at least a decade. But if the NSA has secretly built a computer that is considerably faster than machines in the unclassified arena, then the agency has a chance of breaking the AES in a much shorter time. And with Bluffdale in operation, the NSA will have the luxury of storing an ever-expanding archive of intercepts until that breakthrough comes along.
But despite its progress, the agency has not finished building at Oak Ridge, nor is it satisfied with breaking the petaflop barrier. Its next goal is to reach exaflop speed, one quintillion (1018) operations a second, and eventually zettaflop (1021) and yottaflop.
These goals have considerable support in Congress. Last November a bipartisan group of 24 senators sent a letter to President Obama urging him to approve continued funding through 2013 for the Department of Energy’s exascale computing initiative (the NSA’s budget requests are classified). They cited the necessity to keep up with and surpass China and Japan. “The race is on to develop exascale computing capabilities,” the senators noted. The reason was clear: By late 2011 the Jaguar (now with a peak speed of 2.33 petaflops) ranked third behind Japan’s “K Computer,” with an impressive 10.51 petaflops, and the Chinese Tianhe-1A system, with 2.57 petaflops.
But the real competition will take place in the classified realm. To secretly develop the new exaflop (or higher) machine by 2018, the NSA has proposed constructing two connecting buildings, totaling 260,000 square feet, near its current facility on the East Campus of Oak Ridge. Called the Multiprogram Computational Data Center, the buildings will be low and wide like giant warehouses, a design necessary for the dozens of computer cabinets that will compose an exaflop-scale machine, possibly arranged in a cluster to minimize the distance between circuits. According to a presentation delivered to DOE employees in 2009, it will be an “unassuming facility with limited view from roads,” in keeping with the NSA’s desire for secrecy. And it will have an extraordinary appetite for electricity, eventually using about 200 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 homes. The computer will also produce a gargantuan amount of heat, requiring 60,000 tons of cooling equipment, the same amount that was needed to serve both of the World Trade Center towers.
In the meantime Cray is working on the next step for the NSA, funded in part by a $250 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It’s a massively parallel supercomputer called Cascade, a prototype of which is due at the end of 2012. Its development will run largely in parallel with the unclassified effort for the DOE and other partner agencies. That project, due in 2013, will upgrade the Jaguar XT5 into an XK6, codenamed Titan, upping its speed to 10 to 20 petaflops.
Yottabytes and exaflops, septillions and undecillions—the race for computing speed and data storage goes on. In his 1941 story “The Library of Babel,” Jorge Luis Borges imagined a collection of information where the entire world’s knowledge is stored but barely a single word is understood. In Bluffdale the NSA is constructing a library on a scale that even Borges might not have contemplated. And to hear the masters of the agency tell it, it’s only a matter of time until every word is illuminated.
James Bamford (washwriter@gmail.com) is the author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America