NSA Spying Hurting the US Economically and National Security

US NSA Criminal Spying Angers Both Friend and Foe

Our enemies now have more reason to be our enemies and our friends now have more reasons not to be our freinds. Hopefully the Europe and Asia will develop search engines as operating systems that are impervious to the criminal spying of the NSA. I'll feel bad for the Americas who will lose their jobs to foreign competition but hopefully they will find employmet working for law abiding companies outside the US.

Below are links to news articles that explain in greater detail how the criminal spying by the NSA will hurt Americans economically and weaken our national security.

German minister: Stop using U.S. Web services to avoid NSA spying

Germany is one of the most privacy conscious nations in the world, with data and privacy laws stronger than any other in the EU. And amid the NSA spying scandal, the country's top security chief has warned users to simply avoid U.S. companies. Will that work?

Amid NSA spying scandal, the gloves are off for EU's justice chief

No longer is the EU standing for U.S. lobbying and policy pushing. The EU's Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding is back in the trenches. The gloves are off, and she's fighting back.

EU to vote to suspend U.S. data sharing agreements, passenger records amid NSA spying scandal

The European Parliament will vote — ironically of all days, on U.S. Independence Day on July 4 — whether existing data sharing agreements between the two continents should be suspended, following allegations that U.S. intelligence spied on EU citizens.

ZDNetGovWeek: Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the NSA isn't spying on you

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that there's been a whole lot of news about the NSA spying on regular Americans. It's a long and winding story, and our team has been covering it end-to-end.

June 10, 2013 by David Gewirtz

U.K. Parliament wedges head in the privacy sand, plans move to cloud despite NSA spying scandal

Headstrong U.K. parliamentary IT fellows believe, in spite of an ongoing scandal over NSA spying on non-U.S. citizens, a move to the cloud is still a good idea. Here's why it's not.

June 30, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

How secure are the National Security Agency spy lines?

We know that there's no such thing as a completely secure computer system. Is the NSA spy system the largest security risk of them all?

June 12, 2013 by Tom Foremski

U.K. government 'complicit' in NSA's PRISM spy program

According to a report, the U.K. government allegedly bypassed international intelligence-sharing treaties by tapping into the NSA's reported PRISM network.

June 7, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

Latest NSA leak details PRISM's bigger picture

Another leaked batch of top secret slides relating to the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM data collection program sheds further light on how non-U.S. data is collected from various tech firms, and how under law, U.S. data is filtered out — albeit not always.

June 29, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

ZDNetGovWeek: NSA chaos continues, big tech fights back

The ongoing chaos that is the NSA story continues. Google, Microsoft, and Facebook try to get permission to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That doesn't work out so well, and all we get are aggregated numbers and more aggravation.

June 17, 2013 by David Gewirtz

Congressman denies report claiming NSA can listen to calls without warrants

CORRECTED: The politician who allegedly said the U.S. National Security Agency can listen to phone calls of both U.S. residents and foreign nationals without a court order debunks the original report.

June 15, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

Anonymous leaks more NSA-related docs as Obama defends PRISM

UPDATED: Anonymous says that it leaked a bunch of government documents, but that might not exactly be the case.

June 7, 2013 by Rachel King

The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism

A bombshell story published in the Washington Post this week alleged that the NSA had enlisted nine tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, in a massive program of online spying. Now the story is unraveling, and the Post has quietly changed key details. What went wrong?

June 8, 2013 by Ed Bott

ZDNetGovWeek: More NSA fun, tin foil hats, Google slapped in UK, and more

There's nothing more fun than government news, and nothing that puts humanity's foibles in clearer light. This week, the NSA story continues, we gently mock those wearing tin foil hats, Google's Street View is once again in view, and all around the world, governments are keeping us entertained (and worried).

June 23, 2013 by David Gewirtz

EU 'assessing U.S. relationship' amid PRISM spying claims

In a letter obtained by ZDNet, the EU justice chief hints at consequences to come for the U.S. government if European citizens were targeted by the NSA's PRISM program.

June 13, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

FBI, NSA said to be secretly mining data from nine U.S. tech giants

UPDATED: Turns out U.S. government agencies might be tapping into into a lot more than just Verizon customer records.

June 6, 2013 by Rachel King

Privacy is dead: So what if you friended the NSA?

The National Security Agency is better than Santa Claus. It knows when you're sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows when you've been bad or good. Not that most Internet users will care.

June 6, 2013 by Larry Dignan

Obama's legacy: Domestic spying scandal that could prove greater than Watergate, WikiLeaks

U.S. President Barack Obama, just six months into his second term, has his legacy set out for him: the greatest domestic spying program the U.S. — perhaps the world — has ever seen.

June 7, 2013 by Zack Whittaker

NSA: All up in your privacy junk since 1952

The National Security Agency has been violating your privacy for over 50 years. And you've just suddenly become aware of this now?

June 6, 2013 by Jason Perlow

How did mainstream media get the NSA PRISM story so hopelessly wrong?

Last week's bombshell stories by The Guardian and The Washington Post accused some of the biggest names in tech of willingly working with the NSA to give up your data. It now appears that those stories misread the technical details and got the story wrong.

June 14, 2013 by Ed Bott

Spying on people's emails, phone calls . . . and money

Most people aren't too concerned about having their phone records or emails monitored. Spying on their money is different.

June 29, 2013 by Tom Foremski

America's Newest Secret Weapon: Pizza for Peace

Pizza is a great food and when people are eating it they are always happy. Happy people don't want to fight. The US military knows this and are now having their soldiers trained by Little Ceasars Pizza delivery boys. Instead of soldiers delivering a burst of .223 rounds from their M-16s to their enemies they are now delivering hot and tasty pizza and wings to the enemy in hope that they will sit down with them for a Coke and a slice.

The next time a cruise missile or a drone flies over the Middle East instead of dropping  bomblets or firing deadly missiles it will be dropping stuffed crust pizza, 2 liter Pepsi, and Buffalo wings. Think of it as pizza pie parabellum.

How Corporate Slime Is Fucking You Is Mind Blowing

A judicious writer avoids adjectives like "mindblowing," especially when covering political or economic issues. But no other word seems to describe the stunning reality of corporate taxation in modern America, which cries out for the italics-heavy, exclamation-point-driven format made famous by Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Stylistic overkill? Read these thirteen facts and you may change your mind.

1. We're told we can't "afford" full Social Security benefits, even though closing corporate tax-haven loopholes would pay for Obama's "chained CPI" benefit cut more than 10 times over!

Abusive offshore tax havens cost the US $150 billion in lost tax revenue every year (via FACT Coalition). That's $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

The "chained CPI" cut, proposed by President Obama and supported by Republicans, is projected to "save" a total of $122 billion to $130 billion over the same time period by denying benefits to seniors and disabled people.

It's true. "Serious" politicians and pundits are demanding that ordinary people sacrifice earned benefits, while at the same time allowing corporations to avoid more than ten times as much in taxes.

2. Corporate tax rates are near their 60-year low, even though profits are at a 60-year high!

Need we say more?

(Source: Americans for Tax Fairness.)

3. Wells Fargo got $8 billion in tax breaks, even as executives at its subsidiary Wachovia avoided indictment for laundering money for the Mexican drug cartels!

That's right. Wells Fargo paid a negative tax rate of -1.4 percent between 2008 and 2010 while Wachovia, a Wells Fargo subsidiary, admitted to laundering more than $378 billion for Mexican drug gangs.

We're talking about crazed killers like "El Loco" and gangs like "Los Zetas" -- gangs who cut people's heads off and toss them out onto disco dance floors or display them in the town square.

Wachovia bankers ignored repeated warnings from law enforcement officials, and continued to launder money for cartels that have murdered tens of thousands.

And yet no criminal indictments were handed down because, as a Senate investigator told Bloomberg News, "There's no capacity to regulate or punish them because they're too big to be threatened with failure."

4. Some other huge corporations paid less than nothing, too.

Pepco Holdings (-57.6 percent tax rate)
General Electric (-45.3 percent)
DuPont (-3.4 percent)
Verizon (-2.9 percent)
Boeing (-1.8 percent)
Honeywell (-0.7 percent)

(Source: Citizens for Tax Justice)

5. The amount of money http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/12/fortune_500_corporations_holding_16_trillion_in_profits_offshore.php#.Uc-VlD7h6lLUS corporations are holding offshore is an estimated 1.6 trillion dollars!

Rather than tax these profits the way other countries do, corporate politicians are promoting a tax "repatriation" break that would let corporations "bring this money home" while paying even less than their currently low rates.

They tried that in 2004 and it didn't create any jobs. In fact, corporations took the tax break and then fired thousands of people. What "repatriation" did do is line a lot of wealthy investors' pockets.

So, naturally, they want to do it again.

6. One building in the Cayman Islands is the official location of 18,857 corporations!

According to the Government Accountability Office, a five-story building called "Ugland House" is home to nearly 20,000 corporations. That's impressive, especially for such a small edifice. (Perhaps it has supernatural half-floors and space-time defying "mind tunnels" like the office in Being John Malkovich.)

While impressive, Ugland House's distinction pales next to that of 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. According to one investigation, that address is home to 217,000 corporations.

http://tjn-usa.org/storage/documents/FACT_Sheet_By_the_Numbers_Final1112nt.pdfhttp://tjn-usa.org/storage/documents/FACT_Sheet_By_the_Numbers_Final1112nt.pdf

That's because Delaware has very generous tax rules -- and, as a result, is home to more than half of all the corporate subsidiaries in the United States. That's startling, since only 1/342th of the nation's population lives in that state (917,092 residents, out of a national total of 313,914,040, according to the latest census results).

7. Conservatives complain about the "official" corporate tax rate in this country, but corporations actually pay roughly one-third of the official rate in actual taxes.

The official, or "statutory," corporate tax rate is 35 percent. But the actual rate paid by American corporations is only 12 percent, less than that paid by many middle-class Americans.

(Source: The FACT Coalition.)

In fact, US Corporations pay less tax as a percentage of the GDP than corporations in Canada. Or Japan ...

... or South Korea. Or Norway. Or Luxembourg, New Zealand, Israel, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, and Italy.

(Source: OECD StatsExtract interactive database.)

8. Corporations used to pay 30 percent of Federal taxes, and now they pay less than 7 percent!

That's because the corporate tax rate has plunged since Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and is now the lowest it's been in modern history.


(Source: FACT Coalition.)

9. Big corporations paid $216 million to Congress and got $223 billion in tax breaks!

As Citizens for Tax Justice and USPIRG reported, 280 large and profitable corporations contributed $216 million to Congressional campaigns over four election cycles and got nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

That's a terrific investment for them -- a return of more than a thousand to one -- but it's a bad deal for the American people.

10. We don't even know who owns some corporations, even though that makes it easier to evade taxes, dodge creditors, avoid paying alimony or child support, and even fund terrorism!

Here are some examples of investments that might represent a terror threat. Corporate interests are blocking disclosure rules that would help protect our national security.

11. Bank of America committed foreclosure fraud, was bailed out by the government, and then paid no taxes on $4.4 billion in profit!

That's right. In 2010, while BofA was negotiating a sweet settlement deal for its foreclosure fraud, it paid nothing in taxes. (Source: FACT Coalition.) Zero, on $17.2 billion in offshore earnings. (Source: Americans for Tax Fairness Corporate Tax Dodgers.)

Its $4.1 billion tax break came on the heels of the bank's taxpayer-funded bailout, immunity from prosecution for its criminal employees, and a cushy government settlement for its foreclosure fraud.

Now David Dayen reports that the bank has apparently continued to defraud customers in violation of its government settlement. Whistleblowers have stated in affidavits that they were "told to lie" to customers, continued to deceive homeowners before foreclosing on them, and flipped customers to new servicing companies to invalidate previous homeowner agreements.http://www.salon.com/2013/06/28/new_bank_of_america_whistle_blower_emerges_more_customer_abuse/


12. What they call "tax reform" would actually prevent our elected representatives from giving businesses financial incentives to improve our lives!

The word "reform" is an honorable one that's been put to some dishonorable uses lately. "Entitlement reform," for example, is merely a euphemism for gutting Social Security and Medicare.

Similarly, corporate-backed politicians are pushing a formula for permanent corporate tax breaks and calling it "tax reform." They insist their "reform" be "revenue neutral" and say it will "broaden the base while lowering the rate."

Here's an English translation: The current, unsustainably low rates for corporations would be made permanent, while eliminating many tax deductions in the name of "simplification."

Here's what that really means: The domestic tax credit for creating jobs? Gone. Tax breaks for protecting the environment with clean energy, rather than harming other people's health and leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean up? Gone.

All in all we'd lose dozens of important policies that make our lives better, while permanently fixing corporate taxes at today's cushy giveaway rates.

"Reform"? Ripoff is more like it.

13. Despite their greed, mismanagement, and freeloading, tax-dodging corporations are using shell organizations like "Fix the Debt" and "the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget" to tell ordinary Americans they have to sacrifice even more to preserve corporate wealth!

These organizations are using the heads of failed banks -- people like Chase's Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs -- to dispense "advice on the economy." That's like getting navigation tips from the captain of the Exxon Valdez.

(Tax breaks for Exxon Mobil: $4.1 billion between 2008 and 2010. The company paid no taxes at all in 2009.)

These executives and their paid spokespeople tell the rest of us we need to "sacrifice" and "tighten our belts" so that their party can go on forever. And too often they're treated as credible sources, rather than as corrupting influences on our public life.

It's all true -- and there are many more astonishing facts to be found in the world of corporate taxation. To fix the economy more people will need to learn about them - and demand that they be changed.

How Google Is Aiding Terrorism

 

 

It's a fact 99.999999999999999% of terrorist acts worldwide are carried out by Muslims in the name of Allah or the pedophile Prophet Mohammad. 

The so called Religion of Peace is anything but a religion of peace and anyone with a brain knows it and anyone with a shred of honesty will admit it. The censors at Google same as the Nazi censors are censoring anything critical of Islam. Why aren't these cyber thugs censoring anything critical of Christianity when Christians complain? Could it be that Christians like the idea of free speech?

For further statistics of a similar nature, see Persecution and Homosexuals. For statistics covering prejudice against Jews and Muslims, see Antisemitism and Crime & Prejudice. 

If the latest FBI hate-crime statistics are any indication, of the 1,314 verified offenses motivated by religious bias, 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish.

Only 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic, despite claims of rampant anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S. by groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Raped and beheaded by Muslims for being a Christian.

Google Takes Down Sites critical of Islam

In early 2006, Google removed several news sites from its news search engine because complaints were received about various articles that were critical of Islam.^[5][6] These included the The New Media Journal, which contained phrasing such as, "[in the] world of Islam ... it is common for the men to have multiple wives, and harvest many children with each of his wives to train for martyrdom." MichNews and The Jawa Report were among the other sites removed from Google News. These sites do remain accessible from Google's main search page as normal. Google responded to the change by stating, "We do not allow articles and sources expressly promoting hate speech viewpoints in Google News, although referencing hate speech for commentary and analysis is acceptable"

Calling something hate speech is one of the most insidious forms of censorship. If Google want to ban hate speech they should ban the Koran because the Koran is a very hateful book.  Google sees telling the truth as hate speech as it aids the NSA in spying on millions of innocent Americans and while Muslims terrorize the civilized world.

Banning Gay Marriage or Denying Gay Marriage Rights is Unconstitutional

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark victory for gay rights on Wednesday by forcing the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in states where it is legal and paving the way for it in California, the most populous state.

You may be asking yourself where is the fat angle here.  Gays will be moving to gay friendly states same as fatlings move to fat friendly states. This is a good thing for fatties who live in gay friendly states because gays are economically more productive. This means more tax revenue for the states and that translates into more handouts for us fatties. It could also mean a shortage of straight men who are homophobic and that means more women for us fat guys. The downside is that it could mean an influx of angry man hating fat girls. Diesel dykes are great when they are in a porno rug munching a hot feminine  skinny chick but in the real world they can be a huge pain in the butt.

 The most important fat reason is that gay men are great cooks and gay waiters are very efficient.

Clearly, fat boy Justice Anton Scalia know that gay mens are great cooks and that gay waiters are stronger than waitresses and are capable of handling heavier trays with more food as they swish and sway on their quest to deliver large amounts of food to us greedy gluttons in a timely manner!

You Are What You Eat

McDonalds gets a lot of credit for the obesity bloom but it's not fair to companies like KFC, Papa John Pizza, Carl's Jr, Hardees, Burger King, Denny's, Taco Bell, Star Bucks, Golden Corral Cheese Cake Factory ect ect ect...

McDonalds may have been the grand daddy in obesity and gluttony promotion but when it comes to serving up full glutton size portions McDonalds is quite far back in the pack.

NSA Leaker Edward Snowden and Democrat and Republican Hypocrisy

What's the differenece Hannity you lying piece of shit errand boy for the criminal elite?

Here's the question. What has Snowden disclosed to the world about illegal NSA spying that we didn't know in 2006?

If you look through stories from today and compare them to, for example, a story from 2006 when the NSA found itself in a firestorm of public outrage for collecting phone records, it's difficult to tell the two apart.

So, try to identify whether the following excerpts are from this week's Guardian's story and its fallout, or a scoop from USA Today in May 2006.

1.   "A massive government database containing the phone records of tens of millions of Americans … marks the modern intersection of two powerful emerging forces: terrorism and technology."

2.   "The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of

U.S. customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top-secret court order issued in April."

3.   "On Capitol Hill, Democrats expressed outrage over the secret project, and some leading Republicans … expressed concern.

4.   "For roughly two years … two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the U.S. government is relying on 'secret legal interpretations' to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be 'stunned' to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted."

5.   "Are you telling me tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida?' These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything." – Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. 

6.   "As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past … years. This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the Patriot Act. Therefore it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress." – Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

7.   "The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted the order … giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ... " 

8.   "Among the controversies over the database, however, is that it was built without court warrants or the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a panel of federal judges established to issue secret warrants, according to people with direct knowledge of the arrangement."

9.   "Actually, the program doesn't involve monitoring the content of telephone conversations.... The NSA is expert at using computers to review vast quantities of digital data — such as phone numbers — to identify patterns of activity."

10.   "Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered."

Answers:  
1) USA Today, 2006;  2) Guardian, 2013; 3) USA Today, 2006; 4) Guardian, 2013; 5) USA Today, 2006; 6) June 6, 2013; 7) Guardian, 2013; 8) USA Today, 2006; 9) USA Today, 2006; 10) Guardian, 2013

It was wrong when Bush did it but ok ow that Obama is doing or was it OK when Bush did it and not OK that Obama is doing it. Can anyone say hypocrisy?