Is Google Evil?

Is Google Evil?

Internet privacy?

Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.


by Adam L. Penenberg - October 10, 2006

Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two former Stanford geeks who founded the company that has become synonymous with Internet searching, and you’ll find more than a million entries each. But amid the inevitable dump of press clippings, corporate bios, and conference appearances, there’s very little about Page’s and Brin’s personal lives; it’s as if the pair had known all along that Google would change the way we acquire information, and had carefully insulated their lives—putting their homes under other people’s names, choosing unlisted numbers, abstaining from posting anything personal on web pages.

That obsession with privacy may explain Google’s puzzling reaction last year, when Elinor Mills, a reporter with the tech news service cnet, ran a search on Google ceo Eric Schmidt and published the results: Schmidt lived with his wife in Atherton, California, was worth about $1.5 billion, had dumped about $140 million in Google shares that year, was an amateur pilot, and had been to the Burning Man festival. Google threw a fit, claimed that the information was a security threat, and announced it was blacklisting cnet’s reporters for a year. (The company eventually backed down.) It was a peculiar response, especially given that the information Mills published was far less intimate than the details easily found online on every one of us. But then, this is something of a pattern with Google: When it comes to information, it knows what’s best.

From the start, Google’s informal motto has been “Don’t Be Evil,” and the company earned cred early on by going toe-to-toe with Microsoft over desktop software and other issues. But make no mistake. Faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google has almost always chosen expediency. In 2002, it removed links to an anti-Scientology site after the Church of Scientology claimed copyright infringement. Scores of website operators have complained that Google pulls ads if it discovers words on a page that it apparently has flagged, although it will not say what those words are. In September, Google handed over the records of some users of its social-networking service, Orkut, to the Brazilian government, which was investigating alleged racist, homophobic, and pornographic content.

Google’s stated mission may be to provide “unbiased, accurate, and free access to information,” but that didn’t stop it from censoring its Chinese search engine to gain access to a lucrative market (prompting Bill Gates to crack that perhaps the motto should be “Do Less Evil”). Now that the company is publicly traded, it has a legal responsibility to its shareholders and bottom line that overrides any higher calling.

So the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing—it hasn’t, and it won’t. It’s whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast informational honey pot that attracts hackers, crackers, online thieves, and—perhaps most worrisome of all—a government intent on finding convenient ways to spy on its own citizenry.

It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to worry about such a threat. “I always thought it was fertile ground for the government to snoop,” ceo Schmidt told a search engine conference in San Jose, California, in August. While Google earned praise from civil libertarians earlier this year when it resisted a Justice Department subpoena for millions of search queries in connection with a child pornography case, don’t expect it will stand up to the government every time: On its website, Google asserts that it “does comply with valid legal process, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information.”

What’s at stake? Over the years, Google has collected a staggering amount of data, and the company cheerfully admits that in nine years of operation, it has never knowingly erased a single search query. It’s the biggest data pack rat west of the nsa, and for good reason: 99 percent of its revenue comes from selling ads that are specifically targeted to a user’s interests. “Google’s entire value proposition is to figure out what people want,” says Eric Goldman, a professor at Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara School of Law and director of the High Tech Law Institute. “But to read our minds, they need to know a lot about us.”

Every search engine gathers information about its users—primarily by sending us “cookies,” or text files that track our online movements. Most cookies expire within a few months or years. Google’s, though, don’t expire until 2038. Until then, when you use the company’s search engine or visit any of myriad affiliated sites, it will record what you search for and when, which links you click on, which ads you access. Google’s cookies can’t identify you by name, but they log your computer’s IP address; by way of metaphor, Google doesn’t have your driver’s license number, but it knows the license plate number of the car you are driving. And search queries are windows into our souls, as 658,000 aol users learned when their search profiles were mistakenly posted on the Internet: Would user 1997374 have searched for information on better erections or cunnilingus if he’d known that aol was recording every keystroke? Would user 22155378 have keyed in “marijuana detox” over and over knowing someone could play it all back for the world to see? If you’ve ever been seized by a morbid curiosity after a night of hard drinking, a search engine knows—and chances are it’s Google, which owns roughly half of the entire search market and processes more than 3 billion queries a month.

And Google knows far more than that. If you are a Gmail user, Google stashes copies of every email you send and receive. If you use any of its other products—Google Maps, Froogle, Google Book Search, Google Earth, Google Scholar, Talk, Images, Video, and News—it will keep track of which directions you seek, which products you shop for, which phrases you research in a book, which satellite photos and news stories you view, and on and on. Served up à la carte, this is probably no big deal. Many websites stow snippets of your data. The problem is that there’s nothing to prevent Google from combining all of this information to create detailed dossiers on its customers, something the company admits is possible in principle. Soon Google may even be able to keep track of users in the real world: Its latest move is into free wifi, which will require it to know your whereabouts (i.e., which router you are closest to).

Google insists that it uses individual data only to provide targeted advertising. But history shows that information seldom remains limited to the purpose for which it was collected. Accordingly, some privacy advocates suggest that Google and other search companies should stop hoarding user queries altogether: Internet searches, argues Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, are part of your protected personal space just like your physical home. In February, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to this effect, but Republicans have kept it stalled in committee. Google, which only recently retained a lobbying firm in Washington, is among the tech companies fighting the measure.

When I first contacted Google for this story, a company publicist insisted I provide a list of detailed questions, in writing; when I said that I had a problem with a source dictating the terms for an interview, he claimed that everyone who covers Google—including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—submits advance questions. (A Times spokeswoman told me the paper sees no ethical problems with such a procedure, though individual reporters’ decisions may vary; an editor in charge of editorial standards at the Journal said the same thing.) The Google flack assured me that this was so he could find the best person for me to talk to—more information for Google, so that Google could better serve me.

Eventually he agreed to put me in touch, sans scripted questions, with Nicole Wong, Google’s associate corporate counsel. I asked her if the company had ever been subpoenaed for user records, and whether it had complied. She said yes, but wouldn’t comment on how many times. Google’s website says that as a matter of policy the company does “not publicly discuss the nature, number or specifics of law enforcement requests.”

So can you trust Google only as far as you can trust the Bush administration? “I don’t know,” Wong replied. “I’ve never been asked that question before.”

Spooks at Google… and MySpace, PayPal, YouTube, Ebay, and Yahoo

Friday October 27th 2006, 2:36 pm

It comes as no surprise that Google is in bed with the CIA, or rather it is no surprise the CIA ate Google and has turned it into yet another front company. “A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is ‘in bed with’ the intelligence agency and the U.S. government,” writes Paul Joseph Watson for Prison Planet.

Robert David Steele, the top-rated Amazon reviewer who recently admitted Webster G. Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror “is the strongest of the 770+ books” he has reviewed for the online bookseller—and thus he believes there is enough evidence to have the Bush cabal do the perp walk in snazzy orange jumpsuits—told Alex Jones he thinks “that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government—that is a huge mistake and I’m hoping they’ll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off…. they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development…. If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it’s important that be documented and publicized.”

Of course, ending a relationship with the CIA is akin to ending a relationship considered vital to Don Corleone or the Stracci, Barzini, Cuneo, and Tattaglia crime families. No doubt Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, and current Google CEO harbors no desire to sleep with the fish.

I exaggerate, but only a little.

It is no exaggeration, however, to state that the CIA has fished around for top drawer search technology for some time. Back in 2002, shortly after “everything changed,” the CIA went shopping at Inktomi for “search and retrieval technology,” according to Internet News. Inktomi entered into a business relationship with In-Q-Tel, described as the “venture capital arm of the American Central Intelligence Agency,” that is to say a front company set-up to roll investment hungry technology companies into the spook Borg Hive. According to Buzzy “Put Options” Krongard, a onetime investment banker and former Executive Director of the CIA, In-Q-Tel presented a “wonderful model… in accessing the capabilities of the private sector,” that is to say snooping and sleuthing by way of the private sector.

“Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism,” writes Michael Hampton for Homeland Stupidity. “In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.”

According to Hampton and IT professionals, the CIA is not simply interested in the search capability of Google, but those of us who use that unparalleled capability. “The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.” Hampton continues:

The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror. . . .

One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

Last November, the CIA—through In-Q-Tel—issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that “Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.”

Hampton suggests blocking all Google cookies, but even “with cookies blocked, a limited amount of user tracking is possible, so unless you really are a terrorist, it probably isn’t worth the trouble.” Of course, as the CIA is responsible for creating a large share of what passes for terrorism, tracking terrorists through Google is not really necessary.

In fact, they are interested in tracking and profiling you and me, not the dead Osama.

But if this does not make you paranoid enough, consider a post at Internet Portal Community Watch. Ebay is run by Richard T. Schlosberg III,
former graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. MySpace, of course, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. According to blogger Josh Smith, the “social networking” site Facebook is a data-gathering operation that received initial funding from Peter Thiel, who is connected to James Breyer, who is the former chairman of In-Q-Tel. Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal. Yahoo, the IPVW post asserts, is a possible “U.S. Military or psyOP Pentagon front.” Yahoo director Ed Kozel worked at Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and SRI International. Chad Hurley, a former PayPal employee, is CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube. As we know, Google bought up YouTube, and Google’s connection to the CIA is less than speculative.

Finally, if you’re thinking about using Yahoo over Google, think again. Earlier this year, Michael Callahan, Yahoo’s senior vice president and general counsel, under “cross-examination during a congressional hearing … refused … to say whether the company opens its records for government surveillance [that is, the NSA] without a court order,” according to ZDNet. Although the NSA is supposedly restricted by its charter from “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons,” it has done so habitually since its establishment on November 4, 1952. The NSA captures civilian telephone, fax, satellite, and data traffic through ECHELON. It runs “the largest database ever assembled in the world,” containing call detail records of all calls (domestic and international) placed through AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

Google Caught In Terror Storm Censorship

Viewing totals reset despite runaway popularity of Alex Jones video

Every time the ratings for "Terror Storm" place it among the "most watched" videos, Google "accidentally" erases the ratings.

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | September 25 2006

Google is again embroiled in a censorship farce after its Google Video sub-division was caught altering viewing statistics for Alex Jones' Terror Storm documentary, resetting runaway growth curbs to prevent the video making the website's top ten and its online viewership exploding exponentially.

Following last week's buzz about Terror Storm being available for viewing free on Google Video, numerous websites linked to our promo page and as a result viewing figures for all versions of Terror Storm at Google Video began to climb rapidly.

However, upon checking the same viewer figures on Sunday, Alex Jones noticed that many had been reset to zero and had only begun to climb into the hundreds and early thousands, nowhere near their previous levels of tens and hundreds of thousands for the previous days. The trends had been artificially reversed and this prevented Terror Storm from entering the top ten list of Google Video which would have ensured an explosion of further circulation of the video.

As you can see from the screenshot a reader e mailed us, Terror Storm was being highlighted as one of Google Video's most popular selections and was heading for the top ten, until late Saturday/early Sunday when viewership totals for the video were inexplicably reset.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Is this another mistake on the part of Google or is it an attempt to minimize the impact of Terror Storm and prevent it from mirroring the same online presence as Loose Change?

This is not the first time we have caught Google engaging in censorship of Alex Jones and his websites.

During our Charlie Sheen coverage, Google intentionally blocked news stories pertaining to Sheen's comments which were first made on the Alex Jones Show and turned into a nationwide media spectacle.

Even after the story had gone supernova, and our original write-up had been linked all over the web, including the Drudge Report, Google's main search engine did not list the article.

After we blew the whistle on this act of censorship, the story was re-listed and Google even began carrying some of our content in their news section - a practice that has now also ceased.

Google's penchant for abandoning their founding principle of "don't be evil" and kissing up to Communist China for privileged access into the world's biggest untapped Internet market, was exemplified in February this when Google completely erased the Space War website from its search engine. Space War is a large mainstream news website that carries articles about geopolitics and the defense industry from AFP.

Space War speculated that it was their reporting on advancements in China's military technology and missile programs that provoked a censorship order from the totalitarian Chinese government which Google acted upon. Again, after a mass e mailing campaign which we fully supported, Google re-indexed the Space War website.

We hope that by drawing attention to this matter Google will remedy the artificial alteration, whether a result of technical gremlins or deliberate censorship, and enable an accurate and true reflection of the growth and popularity of Terror Storm.

Google Caught Censoring Charlie Sheen 9/11 Story

Quickly re-indexes pages during live radio discussion

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | March 23 2006

Note: Before you e-mail, please understand that we are aware of the fact that Google now carries links to Sheen 9/11 articles, that is not our point as you will read below. The censorship issue began before Google reversed their policy.

Google is again embroiled in a censorship scandal after being caught blocking information about Charlie Sheen's 9/11 comments, despite the fact that every other major search engine had indexed the pages.

For days, major search engines like Yahoo and others contained tens of thousands of web pages relating to Sheen's comments first broadcast on the Alex Jones Show on Monday afternoon. Last night CNN aired a piece on the issue and by early this morning both the New York Post and the Boston Herald ran articles.

We first noticed that there were no search results related to the story on Google the day after we broke the Sheen story. At first we decided to be fair and wait another day for Google to index an article which was by now linked on thousands of other websites and blogs. By Thursday afternoon, and with the story receiving more traffic, Google still had not indexed any material relating to the Sheen interview, from Prison Planet.com or any other websites. This despite the fact that the Drudge Report had briefly directly linked to our article, sending it millions of visitors.

During a live radio discussion of this issue between Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson on Alex Jones' broadcast Thursday afternoon, Google, as if they had people listening to the show, immediately re-indexed the pages and a search for 'Charlie Sheen 9/11' now returns 111,000 results at time of writing.

Pictured below are screenshots we managed to cache shortly before Google re-indexed the pages with the search terms 'Charlie Sheen 9/11' and the entire headline "Actor Charlie Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story". As you can see, the Boston Herald story is linked from Google News (Google do not censor their affiliates) but the main search engine below returned no results. To stress again, this is three days after we broke this massive story. The usual index time for a story of this size is 12-24 hours and at the same time that Google returned no results whatsoever, tens of thousands were being carried by other major search engines like Yahoo.



CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENTS



To make it crystal clear, Google's web spidering process is automated and we have received high Google rankings in the past for nothing stories that get little traffic. The Sheen story was linked everywhere and to eliminate it from Google's search results would have required technicians to physically access the spidering control panel and exclude an enormous amount of varied search terms.

Google has a history of censoring websites it dislikes within the US. Google Inc. banned and removed a mainstream news website from all its worldwide search engines, seemingly due to the website's reports on China's geopolitical affairs and military technology.

Google has banned its users inside the US and the rest of the world from accessing the Space War website from its search engine. Space War speculated at the time that this was at the behest of the "boys from Beijing."

Space War is a reasonably tame mainstream website that focuses on geopolitical affairs and satellite and military technology advancements. It is based in Australia and carries articles from AFP and United Press International.

After a complaints campaign supported by this website, Google agreed to re-index the website.

Did our defense of Space War cause Google to impose a blackballing campaign on our major articles or is this just a response to the sheer magnitude and influence of the Charlie Sheen story?

To emphasize, Google is now carrying search results related to Charlie Sheen's 9/11 comments, but only after it was exposed live on nationally syndicated radio that they had stonewalled this issue for three clear days even as it raged around the rest of the Internet as a viral story and broke into the mainstream yesterday and early this morning.

The floodgates on the Sheen story have opened, with CNN airing a balanced piece on the controversy. Meanwhile mainstream publications like Human Events, the New York Post, CBS and the Boston Herald used Sheen's comments to attack him and demonize anybody who questions the official line on 9/11. A round-up article of today's reaction to Charlie Sheen's comments will follow later tonight.

Google Is The New Surveillance

Google in bed with U.S. intelligence

by: Michael Hampton
Posted: February 22, 2006 11:31 am

Even while Google presents a public image of vigorously protecting its users’ privacy, it has quietly provided assistance to several U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. prosecutes its war on terrorism. In addition, Google may be providing assistance to the National Security Agency.

IT contractors and intelligence officials familiar with the arrangement confirmed to HSToday.us that Google had been providing assistance to the intelligence community, but would not say under what authority that assistance had been requested or provided.

The intelligence community appears to be interested in data mining Google’s vast store of information on each user who uses Google’s services. Google collects data on each user’s search queries, which web sites users visited after making a query, and through its Google Analytics service, can also track users on cooperating web sites. It’s not clear what level of access to or how much of this information has been made available to intelligence agencies.

The contractor, who spoke on a not-for-attribution basis, said that at least one US intelligence agency he declined to identify is working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort by the IC to glean from this data information of “national security intelligence interest” in the war on terror. . . .

One of the sources did say, however, that the CIA’s Office of Research and Development “has been giving them additional money and guidance and requirements.”

Last November, the CIA - through In-Q-Tel [CIA venture capital company] - issued notices to sell $2.2 million worth of Google stock.

Robert David Steele, intelligence veteran and CEO of OSS.Net, Inc. which sponsored last week’s event, told HSToday.us Tuesday evening that “Google is being actively hypocritical and deceptive in playing up its refusal to help the Department of Justice when all along it has been taking money and direction for elements of the US Intelligence Community, including the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency, In-Q-Tel, and in all probability, both the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command.”

Steele added, “I have no doubt that Google, in its arrogance, decided it could make a deal with the devil and not get caught.” — HSToday.us

If you are extremely concerned about the possibility that your private browsing information is going to wind up in the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies, you can throw a spanner in the works by blocking cookies from the following domains: google.com, googlesyndication.com, google-analytics.com, and your country-specific Google domain (e.g. google.co.uk). If you actually use Google services, such as Google Mail, then this obviously will prevent you from using those services.

Even with cookies blocked, a limited amount of user tracking is possible, so unless you really are a terrorist, it probably isn’t worth the trouble. I still have all of my Google Cookies. Then again, I already know they’re watching me…

Former Intelligence Agent Says Google In Bed With CIA

Steele also sounds off on 9/11 doubts
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 27 2006

A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is "in bed with" the intelligence agency and the U.S. government. He has also gone public on his deep suspicions about the official explanation behind 9/11.

Robert David Steele appeared on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones radio show and began by voicing his deep doubts about the official 9/11 story.

While Steele stopped short of saying 9/11 was a complete inside job, he agreed that the evidence points to the overwhelming complicity of the Bush administration.

"The U.S. government did not properly investigate this and there are more rocks to be turned over," said Steele adding, "I'm absolutely certain that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition and that as far as I'm concerned means that this case has not been properly investigated."

"There's no way that building could have come down without controlled demolition."

Steele pointed the finger of suspicion directly at the Vice President saying, "There's no question in my own mind that Dick Cheney is the tar baby in this whole thing."

Steele outlined the bizarre circumstances preceding the attack that would have greased the skids for bombs to be planted in the buildings.

"You do have the whole issue of the security cameras being disengaged, the bomb sniffing dogs being removed, the family ties with Bush - I mean if you smell a rotten fish there's probably a rotten fish somewhere around."

Steele's biography is impressive. He was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992. Steele is a former clandestine services case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

He is the founder and president of Open Source Solutions, Inc., and is an acknowledged expert on computer and information vulnerabilities. Steele holds graduate degrees in International Relations and Public Administration from Leigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned certificates in Intelligence Policy from Harvard University and in Defense Studies from the Naval War College.

Before the 2004 election Steele advocated the re-election of George W Bush and he has been cited by numerous Republican luminaries as a credible source. His testimony is added to the chorus of other credible 9/11 whistleblowers both in and out of government and academia.

Steele raised eyebrows when he confirmed from his contacts within the CIA and Google that Google was working in tandem with "the agency," a claim made especially volatile by the fact that Google was recently caught censoring Alex Jones' Terror Storm and has targeted other websites for blackout in the past.

"I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government - that is a huge mistake and I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off," said the ex-CIA man.

"Google was a little hypocritical when they were refusing to honor a Department of Justice request for information because they were heavily in bed with the Central Intelligence Agency, the office of research and development," said Steele.

Steele called for more scrutiny to be placed on Google if it continues to engage in nefarious practices, saying, "If Google is indeed starting to do harm then I think it's important that be documented and publicized."

Google Vows to Fight White House Over Porn Probe

Jae C. Hong / AP
Truthdig.com
Posted on Jan. 19, 2006

The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google Inc. for details on what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine. Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department said in papers filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose.

Google may have to fight second subpoena

By Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com
February 17, 2006

Google may be about to face a second round of subpoenas for search-related information.

If the U.S. Justice Department is successful in obtaining a week's worth of search terms from Google, which it demanded as part of an attempt to defend a 1998 Internet pornography law, a second round of subpoenas is shaping up to be far more intrusive.

The American Civil Liberties Union warned Friday that if the first subpoena is granted--giving the government's expert the information to use to evaluate the effectiveness of porn filters--the ACLU's legal assault on the same antipornography law will require it to target Google as well.

"If the government utilizes the information in any manner, we're very likely going to need to do follow-up discovery," ACLU attorney Aden Fine said.

A legal brief the ACLU filed with a federal judge in San Jose, Calif., on Friday says its request would seek to learn how Google's search engines operate, how Google serves up links in response to queries and whether there is "any way to distinguish between queries generated by actual individuals and queries generated by artificial programs or software."

The civil liberties group, which characterizes itself as a staunch defender of privacy, says it is not eager to expose details about Google's inner workings and the habits of its users. The ACLU says it has "no need or desire to obtain any of this information from Google." But, the group warns, if the government gets the information, it would have little choice.

The unexpected news of a second subpoena from the ACLU could complicate the Justice Department's attempt to convince U.S. District Judge James Ware to grant its request. Ware has scheduled a hearing for March 13.

The Justice Department is seeking a random sample of 1 million Web pages from Google's index, along with copies of a week's worth of search terms to aid in the defense of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo voluntarily complied with similar requests.

A representative for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

For its part, Google has raised the possibility of being enmeshed in the increasingly complex COPA lawsuit as a reason to oppose the subpoena. That would place Google "in the witness chair, and exposes Google's intellectual property to cross-examination in open court by the ACLU, its counsel, experts and consultants," the company said in its own brief filed Friday.

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo each have received two subpoenas from the Justice Department, one asking for information about filtering technology and the other asking for search terms. The ACLU has given AOL a subpoena to appear at a deposition "asking for testimony about their parental control technology," according to the ACLU's Fine.

The Justice Department has disclosed nothing about what it plans to do with the records from search companies, except to say it has hired Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley, to evaluate the search logs.

Google Sued Over Refusal To Comply With US Subpoena

by Axxel
January 21st 2006

You might have never though it possible, but yes, giant search engine Google is being sued by none other than its own country, the United States. The reason? Protecting its users privacy and refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Department of Justice.
As you might have read during these past few days (including the two articles above on the subject), the world’s most popular search engine, used by 90 million people every month, has been asked to hand over an entire week of search requests made at Google.com.
The US Department of Justice wants the information to help it to establish how much child pornography is available on the internet.
And since Google refused to comply with the subpoena, it has now been taken to court in California by Alberto Gonzales, the US Attorney-General. The lawsuit describes any privacy concerns as illusory, arguing that it does not want to see “any additional information that would identify the person who entered the search”.
Other search engines, such as Yahoo! and AOL — which use Google technology — have complied with the request, although it is not clear what they handed over. Google was originally asked to hand over every search made between June 1 and July 31 last year.
The site’s lawyer said: “Google’s acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept.” However, despite this statement, it seems that the company objected to the breadth of the government's request but did not consider it to be a privacy issue since the search terms would not include personally identifiable details.
But others were not reassured. According to the Reuters agency, Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, the ranking Democrat on the telecommunications subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he would introduce a bill to strengthen consumers' Internet privacy by prohibiting the storage of personally identifiable information Internet searches beyond a reasonable time.
"Internet search engines provide an extraordinary service, but the preservation of that service does not rely on a bottomless, timeless database that can do great damage despite good intentions," Markey said.
Chris Jay Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center worried that the government could follow up its initial request with a demand for more information.
"If Google hands over the search logs and the Justice Department finds search strings like 'child porn' or 'naked children,' could they not then go back and ask Google for the user's Internet address?" he said.
Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology said he was glad Google was fighting the case but the company needed to make privacy a more fundamental part of its products. He said the case was a wake-up call to all Internet users that information was being collected on them all the time and was stored indefinitely.
Danny Sullivan, an Internet consultant who created Search Engine Watch, said in a posting on his site: "Such a move absolutely should breed some paranoia. They didn't ask for data this time, but next time, they might."
This is a very serious situation, and especially for the Bush administration, which is already under fire from a number of rights groups over security measures it has taken since the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, including pursuing checks on library records and eavesdropping on some telephone calls.
It remains to be seen what the judges will decide in this case. But, no matter what verdict will be reached, it will represent a very important precedent for the future of online privacy.

Google Imposes Worldwide Ban On China Critical Website

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com | February 24 2006

Space War accuses company of selling out to
the "boys from Beijing"

For the first time in what some fear will signal a growing trend, Google Inc. has banned and removed a mainstream news website from all its worldwide search engines, seemingly due to the website's reports on China's geopolitical affairs and military technology.

Google came under fire last month for agreeing to install government search filters on its Chinese based search engine. The company that was founded on the motto "don't be evil," claimed that some censorship was acceptable because in the long term the Internet would be opened up to a wider audience and freedom of speech would expand.

That excuse can today be put to bed because Google has banned its users inside the US and the rest of the world from accessing the Space War website from its search engine.

Space War is a reasonably tame mainstream website that focuses on geopolitical affairs and satellite and military technology advancements. It is based in Australia and carries articles from AFP and United Press International.

In a statement posted on its website today, the President and Publisher of Space.TV Corporation Simon Mansfield released the following comments,

"Google Inc. has banned SPACEWAR.COM, a news site covering military space. Reasons for the ban by Google are unclear. The company did not communicate with Space.TV Corp., the owner of SPACEWAR.COM, prior to its action, and Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment."



"Google Inc.'s preferred method of banning a site is to delist its primary domain URL - www.spacewar.com - from the Google search index. Google also can reduce a site's page rank, or eliminate it entirely, as it has done to SpaceWar.com."

"Google Inc in the wake of pressure from the Chinese government has begun blocking access to various websites deemed unfriendly to the "Boys From Beijing" (TM)."

"At this stage we have no evidence to suggest this is the reason why Google has banned SPACEWAR.COM. The lack of any forewarning that SPACEWAR.COM was operating in violation of Google's increasingly strict search engine compliance requirements, however, leads us to suspect the ban is politically motivated."

"Google Inc.'s corporate mantra is "Do No Evil." Obviously, this is not true given Google's willingness to submit to the censorship requirements of the Chinese government."

It is important to stress that Space War is not even outright hostile to the Chinese government, it simply reports on publicly available information about its military progression and relations with other countries.

This sets the precedent for Google to ban any website that is even mildly critical of the Communist dictatorship in China. Much to our surprise, the website you are reading now is still accessible in most areas of China but we don't expect it to remain that way for very much longer.

The Chinese government is held aloft by the UN and others as the model of the New World Order. The country is no less totalitarian than it was when the PLA massacred as many as 2600 protesters and injured 10,000 more at Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989.

Political dissidents and peaceful practitioners of the Falun Gong religion and even the lawyers who defend them are subject to mobile execution vans or if they're lucky, hauled off to permanent detention camps.

US companies like Microsoft and Yahoo have been complicit in helping the Chinese government locate and arrest Chinese bloggers who post even mild criticism of the government.

Space War is inviting its readers to complain to their political representative. We urge you to support them by following this link and ensuring that the practice of worldwide censorship of websites critical of the ChiComs ends now.

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Is Digg Rigged?...Is Digg Dumb...Or Just Busted?

Is Digg Rigged?

Are "bury brigades" helping to censor Prisonplanet & Infowars reports?

by Steve Watson - Friday, March 2, 2007

Reports this week have suggested that the online news community digg may be suffering abuse at the hands of a group of users that are burying Digg stories they find ideologically unappealing.

Rumors are flying around the Internet that these so called "bury brigades" could be more than just a group of geeky self appointed censors and that it may actually be Digg themselves, or even agencies of the government, that are censoring stories and preventing the information from going viral on the net.

Wired news reports:

On Tuesday, a bug in the social news site's Digg Spy tool gave one smart Digger the ability to peer into the inner workings of the community. Namely, David LeMieux found a way to highlight which users were burying stories on Digg, and why.

Muhammad Saleem followed up LeMieux's data with a post titled, "The Bury Brigade Exists, and Here's My Proof."

The suggestion is that a select group of users are doing a great deal more burying than anyone else. Obviously this cannot be proven definitively for the moment, but it is interesting to note the subject matter of what is being buried.

The same Wired report mentioned above was submitted to digg and was immediately buried. Wired then reported that all similar reports linking to the same issue had also been buried very quickly, commenting:

Is this a legitimate act of the community, or is it censorship? Digg does have silent moderators, and there have always been rumors that they delete or bury submissions which overtly threaten Digg's reputation. My opinion: Information wants to be free, and if this is censorship, then shame on Digg. If the buries came from the community, I'm curious as to why all discussions related to the bury problem are themselves buried. Does the community not want to confront these problems?

It is highly suspicious as to why anyone would continually go to the trouble of burying these stories.

What is not so hard to believe, however, is the fact that every major report we have put out on the 9/11 revelations this week have been instantly buried, sometimes only a matter of minutes after they have been submitted.

A cursory search through David LeMieux' hacked list of buries reveals that many stories relating to 9/11 have been buried by the same group.

As soon as a story is submitted, it instantly goes into the "Upcoming Stories" section on the digg page. Once it receives enough diggs, usually around 70, Then It moves up the ranking of the upcoming stories section and can quickly hit the home page, unless users choose to digg it down or bury it.

Digg has never revealed exactly how the bury system works, but they tell us that the number of reports required to bury is based on a sliding scale that takes several factors into consideration (such as number of diggs, reports, time of day, topic submitted to, etc.).

However, this system is clearly flawed as many of our reports have gone on to receive thousands of diggs and hundreds of comments AFTER they have been buried. All this has been of little use because once a story is buried it cannot be brought back and thus cannot hit the front page of digg.com and be seen by millions of readers who do not normally visit Prisonplanet and Infowars.

Digg's bury system has been accused of being totally undemocratic because it allows a few users to prevent the many from reading articles and making their own mind up on the material.

For a story to be buried after just a few minutes defeats the whole point of the community and has thus prompted many users to complain to digg, who have responded by promising to "look into it".

It seems that the "bury brigades" are working together and are closely monitoring every story that is submitted, hitting bury and then "digging down" all the comments, as soon as they come in, which is rumored to bury a story more quickly.

In order to do this, you have to keep refreshing the page every 2 seconds or so. It is difficult to believe that someone or some group would dedicate themselves to doing this without having a purpose behind it, and the evidence so far suggests that a select few are the ones doing the burying.

We encourage all of our regular readers to digg down the negative comments, and digg up 9/11 truther comments, when submitting to digg. We wait with baited breath to discover whether this article will also be instantly buried by the unidentified censors.

For more information on how digg works, click here.

Is Digg dumb...Or Just Busted?

by Douglas Herman - 3-2-7

I don't dig Digg. Maybe I'm too dumb to get it. What seems like a simple website warehouse for stories "Digged" to the top of newsworthiness (stories I wouldn't waste my time reading) seems, at first glance, like a great idea.

But I took a closer look at the archive. This isn't Rense with a smattering of well-written essays, nor the Liberty Forum with their "Flags" for intelligent commentary. Rather a sort of Junk Brothers for stories that somehow rose to the top of the Digg ratings for God-only-knows-what-reason.

I mean, check the top entries for February 27 in their Popular Archive. Very esoteric, right? Some signs of intelligent life, right? Sort of geeky, gizmo, computer-oriented, right? I mean, "Geek Squad Charges $415 Dollars To Replace A HArd Drive" (2,777 diggs) is pretty relevant to millions of computer owners. Right? But what do you make of all those people recommending, or "Digging," a story about how "Coca Cola Redesigns cans" (1,873 diggs)? Trivial beyond all comprehension, right?

But Digg got busted the other night, caught being just another gatekeeper, like the BBC. In fact they got busted because of that story about the BBC. According to the Digg honchos, readers vote on the relevancy of a story (a lie) and can bury an irrelevant story and laud a newsworthy story.

So WHAT was the top Digg-of-The-Day, on February 27? Another cartoon called, "I will not throw paper airplanes in class" (4,577 diggs). Is it just me, or do all these Digged stories indicate a myopic world? Especially while three US aircraft carriers lurk offshore Iran, awaiting the word to start a nuclear war. Is Digg dumb, or are the people who dig it dumber?

Next I clicked on "Science vs Faith, A simple picture says it all." (3,868 diggs). I wanted to see what sort of picture transcended religion and science. The image of the Shroud of Turin perhaps in the smoke of a shuttle launch? Now I confess, my interests are weird science, religious hypocrisy, archeology, history, fossil-hunting, conspiracy theories and how to detect conspiracy theories, government plots and plotters, political shysters and how to spot them, military blunders and the confessions of simple soldiers used by callous wartime leaders, political whistleblowers, collapsing skyscrapers (since 9/11) and lost-and-found treasures and where to find them. Looking at some geeky design (hardly a picture) left a lot to be desired. Some poster even called it a cartoon. And this got 3,868 diggs? Wonder what Galileo would make of it.

How many stories in their Popular Archive catch YOUR interest? Admittedly, many of the computer-related links exceed my knowledge and understanding. Many more appear adolescent and superficial. And these were the TOP Digged stories. How many would interest the average person? To the average over-sexed computer geek, ALL of them of course. Digg aficionados, it appears, are way smarter than the rest of us but way dumber than the rest of us--in a trivial, post-pubescent sort of way.

Love it or hate it, Digg stories reflect their founder, a UNLV dropout/wunderkind named Kevin Rose. Not surprisingly and to their credit, the most popular links on Digg hardly represent a cross section of the average Ana Nicole-addled, Superbowl addicted, NASCAR- distracted, poor white trash American. Diggers, at first glance, appear to be of above intelligence, a cross between a computer tech prodigy and Beavis and Butthead.

But then a conspiracy theorist a 911Blogger.com caught Digg dumping top stories for their, yup, conspiracy theory angles. We had all read that accusation before. Until now we had always ignored them. Nobody knew if the accusations were true or not but, being a conspiracy-theorist, I could dig it.

According to one critic who wrote to Digg tech support, a fellow called J. A. Simon, who referred to himself as SuperNova: "It appears Digg is not interested in media democracy. In your 'How Digg Works' section your website Digg states the following: "Digg is a digital media democracy. As a user, you participate in determining all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, videos, and podcasts that appeal to you." This is appears to be deceptive. Your company is purposely suppressing a story."

Digg techies responded to SuperNova: "That story was reported as lame and subsequently removed by the digg community. Please review our FAQ (digg.com/faq) for more information on the promotion/burial of stories. This is just how the system works. This is crowd-generated media. There was a high number of diggs with very low karma and a high number of buries from users with very high karma. There is no conspiracy (emphasis mine), there is no abuse, the buries happened from veteran users on digg with proven track records."

Oh what tangled webs we weave. High karma? Veteran users? Proven track record? Things that make you go Hmmmm. Can you dig it?

OK. So a story gets "voted" on by high karma veteran geeks at Digg? Weird but the same thing happens every day down at your local newspaper by a couple of editors without any karma at all. But Digg was supposed to be different, right? Not like the power wielded by corrupt Catholic church officials of the Inquisition who voted on whom to torture. Digg would have let readers vote on Galileo---an early planetary conspiracy theorist--and not censor his views by a secret group of veteran users, with high karma and a proven track record. Right?

But Simon, SuperNova, wouldn't let Digg placate him with obvious contradictions and obfuscations. He responded:

"RE: Suppressed Story On Digg - BBC Reported Building 7 Had Collapsed 20 Minutes Before It Fell. At the time I am sending this email (Feb 27) it currently has 1,364 Digg's (and) it is not listed under ANY of your top story lists.When I check under the top stories of the last 24 hours, I see that it is absent. According to the stories that I see in these sections and the number of 'Digg's' attached to them, it clearly should be listed in the top ten of all three of these categories. This information clearly exposes your company as being deceptive and a practitioner of censorship. I would appreciate a prompt response clarifying your reason for doing this. Sincerely, J. A. Simon"

As you can see from the list of TOP stories of February 27, in the Popular Archive, 1,364 Diggs would clearly put that story among the top links. Certainly more worthy, and more highly-rated, than paper airplanes, sex toys and a Borat DVD.

But that was before Digg got Busted.

David Cohn, at Wired, wrote, after the revelation: "Amid all the claims that Digg has a biased Bury Brigade, it's actually reassuring to know that a network of Digg users has risen up to try and get to the bottom of this."

Only because they got caught, Dave. How long would it have taken them to fix their fraud if some intrepid soul hadn't busted them? Just like the BBC---ironically because of the BBC fraud---Digg got caught fukking with their files.

Maybe I'm too dumb to dig Digg. Or maybe Digg just doesn't get it. Maybe Digg--now that they've been blatantly caught censoring information---doesn't get the intrinsic nature of the Internet. The freedom of ALL information. Sure some information scares the hell out of all of us. This is an Orwellian world. And you are either part of the problem---Digg and the BBC for example--or part of the solution. Because freedom of information is far more important than how to rig a computer or make it run faster. Or to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau: "What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" So what is the point of a perfect computer if you haven't got an uncensored planet to put it on?

Wacky naturalist and amateur fossil hunter, Douglas Herman writes for Rense.com occasionally. Don't bother digging this story; the Fukks there will just Buryy itt.

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NSA, Microsoft Worked Together on Windows Vista Security

NSA, Microsoft Worked Together on Windows Vista Security

JAN 10, 2007

The U.S. agency best known for eavesdropping on telephone calls had a hand in the development of Microsoft’s Vista operating system, Microsoft confirmed Tuesday.

The National Security Agency (NSA) stepped in to help Microsoft develop a configuration of its next-generation operating system that would meet U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) requirements, said NSA spokesman Ken White.

This is not the first time the secretive agency has been brought in to consult private industry on operating system security, White said, but it is the first time the NSA has worked with a vendor prior to the release of an operating system.

By getting involved early in the process, the NSA helped Microsoft ensure that it was delivering a product that was both secure and compatible with existing government software, he said.

"This allows us to ensure that the off-the-shelf security configuration that the DoD customer receives is at a level that meets our standards," White said. "It just makes a lot more sense to be involved up front than it does to have the tail wag the dog."

The NSA’s involvement in Vista was first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post.

The NSA has provided guidance on how best to secure Microsoft’s Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems in the past. The agency is also credited with reviewing the Vista Security Guide published on Microsoft’s website.

Microsoft declined to allow its executives to be interviewed for this story. But in a statement, the company said it asked a number of entities and government agencies to review Vista, including the NSA, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Still, the NSA’s involvement in Vista raises red flags for some. "There could be some good reason for concern," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). "Some bells are going to go off when the government’s spy agency is working with the private sector’s top developer of operating systems."

Part of this concern may stem from the NSA’s reported historical interest in gaining "backdoor" access to encrypted data produced by products from U.S. computer companies like Microsoft.

In 1999, U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon said that "high-level deal-making on access to encrypted data had taken place between the NSA and IBM and Microsoft," according to EPIC’s website.

With Vista expected to eventually power the majority of the world’s personal computers, it would be tempting for the government agency to push for a way to gain access to data on these systems, privacy advocates say.

The NSA provided guidance on Vista’s security configuration, but it did not open any back doors to Windows, White said. "This is not the development of code here. This is the assisting in the development of a security configuration," he said.

While the NSA is best known for its surveillance activities, the work with Microsoft is being done in accordance with the NSA’s second mandate: to protect the nation’s information system, White said. "This is the other half of the NSA mission that you never hear much about," he said. "All you ever hear about is foreign signal intelligence. The other half is information assurance."

-Robert McMillan, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)

FLASHBACK: How NSA access was built into Windows

Duncan Campbell 04.09.1999

Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA.

A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information" into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.

Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:\Windows\system directory of your computer.

ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run crypographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.

Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.

A second key Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".

Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.

A third key?! But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.

Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.

Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".

"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked.

Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?

Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.

Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's.

According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."

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Wikipedia - Unbiased Encyclopedia or a Jewish Tool

by judicial-inc.biz

James Wales Is The Founder

The 'Wikipedians' or Moderators

What Is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is an internet encyclopedia, that anyone can edit and add information. Wikipedia claims it's articles are based on a totally neutral point of view. It's size is formidable, at 2.5 billion views a month. Once you get below the surface, you find moderators that follow an agenda, which clearly takes a Pro-Jewish point of view.

History Of Wikipedia

Larry Sanger, and Jim Wales, founded Wikipedia in Jan. of 2001. It was an offshoot of Nupedia, an more formal encyclopedia. Wales is presently in charge. Sanger left in 2002, and is a professor/lecturer at Ohio State. Names like Jeremy Rosenfeld, Benjamin Kovitz, Seth Cohen, dot the landscape of technical staff. Moderators openly admit to a pro-Jewish bias.

James Wales History

Randolph prep school, and onto the University of Alabama. Wales graduates, and becomes a Futures Trader in Chicago. Next he opens Bomis, an 'Adult Content' website, which is followed by Nupedia, which morphs into Wikipedia. Wales is the darling of the Jewish crowd at Harvard, being a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at the Harvard Law School.

Who Is Bomis.Com?

Basically 'Bomis' is an adult site, started by Wales, but Wikipedia calls it erotica. A typical site (caution - extremely pornographic)

Wikipedia System Of Control

Wikipedians (Jewish volunteers) will concentrate on a certain subject, and actively moderate any new replies. Once an individual edits an article, his ISP number is recorded, and he is assigned a sayanim that will monitor all his future writings. Individual contributors are assigned a tracking page, and an open record of all writings. Through out the cycle the contributor this will be monitored by Hillel, ADL, SPLC, type control agents.

Examples Of Censorship

In 1967, with Lyndon Johnson's blessing, Israel attacked Egypt in a surprise assault. In an attempt to create a 'False Flag' pointing at Egypt, the Zionists attacked the USS Liberty, killing 44 and wounding 177. The attack failed when three attacking torpedo boats were on their final run, they collided, and their shots missed the ship. The Liberty got an SOS off to the USS Saratoga, and Israel was forced to abort the attack.

Wikipedia's Stance

Their interpretation is the attack was an innocent mistake, the torpedo boats were actually rescue vehicles, which the USS fired on, and innocent Israelis had to defend themselves.

Dr. Fredrick Toben

Dr. Toben is German historian and scholar, that grew up in Australia, and runs the Adelaide Institue. He is noted for his investigation of the 'Jewish Holocaust'. Wikipedia contributors wrote a slanderous page on him, and when he went to refute it, the sayanims deleted all his comments.

Wikipedia's Stance

Toben is a monster, who associates with criminals, and himself was a convict

Theresienstadt

In 1941, Germany gave Jewish artists their own experimental town as prototype refuge, to protect Jews. Subsequently the Jews have altered history, and refer to it as a death camp. When a 1943 documentary film was edited into Wikipedia's Theresienstadt page, the Hillel Wikipedians immediately deleted, saying it was propaganda and holocaust denial

Wikipedia's Stance

Theresienstadt was Nazi hellhole, where Jews were starved to death, and then sent on to Auschwitz.

New Recent Examples Of Censorship

Wikipedia Zionists Attack Honest Historian James Bacque

Wikipedia Goes Orwell

Wikipedia and bin Laden - A 'Conspiracy Theory' Too Far?

Where Does Wikipedia Get It's Funds?

According to it's founder, James Wales, it lives on grants and small individual contributions.

What's The Real Story?

From all the available information, it appears Wikipedia was started by a two Jewish kids, one a programmer, and the other an 'Adult Site' operator. It's dynamic success (800,000 pages) stems from 10,000 + individual contributors, which are monitored by core sayanims. Wikipedia's claim: ~ 'We are an internet encyclopedia with a neutral stance' ~ is absurd. This project is an attempt to control student research on the Internet. Any subject Googled will show Wikipedia as one of the first entries. Type in the word Bolshevik, and the first entry is Wikipedia. Explore their version, and you won't be the slightest mention that the movement was a Jewish instigated bloodbath, that was responsible for 20,000,000 deaths.

Freemasonry link to Kofi Annan's father disappears from Wikipedia

by Judi McLeod Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Underneath a reminder that, "Your continued donations help Wikipedia grow and improve!" is the biography of that world acclaimed diplomat, Kofi Annan. Information about Kofi’s father in the biography held that dad was "a high ranking freemason". For reasons unknown, lately that information has been removed. Readers can browse Wikipedia under Kofi Annan’s Biography, Early years and family: "Annan was born to Henry Reginald and Victoria Annan in the Kofandros section of Kumasi, Ghana" and "As with most Akan names, his name indicates the day of the week he was born and place in his family: Kofi indicates a boy born on a Friday, and Annan denotes that he was the fourth child of his family. Annan was a twin, an occurrence that is regarded as special in Ghanaian culture; his twin sister Efua Atta died in 1991." Still up on the first page of Google is a William Shawcross article on Annan from Saga Magazine, dated November 2002: "Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General was born in Ghana in 1938. His mother was from the Fante tribe on the Cape Coast of Ghana and his father was half Fante, half Ashanti. Annan could have become a chief of either tribe. In the last days of the British Empire, his father was in business, a manager in Lever Brothers subsidiary and a leading Freemason." Even though it has more than 6 million members worldwide, Freemasonry and what it stands for is something not readily understood by the chattering classes. One needs the time and patience to go back through history to ever begin to understand the intrigues of this all-boy organization. According to Freemasons, Illuminati and Associates, "Freemasonry is the largest international secret society in the world. "The highest degree of the Scottish rite of Freemasonry, the Meritorious Degree, the Degree of the Illuminati, whose motto is "Ordo Ab Chao", or "Out of Chaos comes order"–which literally means if they break down the existing structure and cause the population to cry out for order, they will emerge as rulers and have the world that they seek." How many politicians create havoc only to jump in and save us right around election time? Interesting to note that many of the estimated six million Free Masons occupy leadership positions around the world. Almost as interesting to note that some conspiracy types swear that the main agenda of the United Nations is for One World Order. Was Kofi Annan’s father a "leading Freemason"? If the father of the seventh and current Secretary General of the United Nations was a Freemason, what affect did this have on the little boy who grew up to run the world’s largest bureaucracy? Meanwhile, why did the information about Kofi Annan’s father being a high-ranking Freemason flat out disappear from Wikipedia? For sure, the answer would make for an intriguing story.

Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily.

Wikipedia: What it Doesn't Say

I have just spent several frustrating hours trying to revise and improve the entry on "Scholars for 9/11 Truth", only to discover that my rewrites were being over-ridden by someone at Wikipedia. I find that offensive. The present entry has a warning label stating, "The neutrality of this article is disputed." From what I can discern from reviewing the "Talk Page", persons with scant or biased knowledge of the society appear to be determining the contents. So I agree with the warning but not for the reasons that may have motivated it. Here is what I tried to post in its place. 
One minute Video Clip

Related:

• Muslims, Jews, Christians Join To Condemn Zionism
• Jeff Rense Zionism Datapage
• The Challenge of Jewish-Zionist Power in an Era of Global Struggle
• The Israeli Spy Ring Scandel
• Israeli Lobby Exposed - The Report
• U.N. votes 150-6 against West Bank barrier

How Israel Controls America

ESSENTIAL VIDEOS

If Americans Only Knew How Israel Controls Us

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The Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy

The US-Israel Empire

Mearsheimer - Israel Lobby Has Warped US Policy - Part 1

Mearsheimer- Israel Lobby Has Warped US Policy - Part 2

Prof John Mearsheimer On The Isreal Lobby

Measheimer And Walt On The Israel Lobby

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Internet Censorship - Total Information Awareness

by Wayne Madsen - 12-9-5

Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.

Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.

In this case, "it," is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.

The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.

Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden

The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of the 90s, John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals between the Federal government and the Internet service industry, and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of Internet censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were wrong, dead wrong.

Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses.

With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today that the United States has transmitted a Homeland Security Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email strongly suggests that such a list exists.

News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game.

Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks.

America On Line is the most egregious is stifling Internet freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The AOL term of service (TOS) has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email.

Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their respective e-mail services.

There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to certain information. According to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in the last month. In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed as coming from their web site addresses.

Government disruption of the political side of the web can easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software and services than actual long-term disruption of banks, utilities, or airlines.



Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries. They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons."

Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved are in a position to know what deals have been made and how extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure to their customers and their fellow citizens.

http://waynemadsenreport.com/

The internet nanny is cute ...

by Shanghailist.com

... until she confiscates your computer and hauls you away and locks you up for a couple of years on trumped up charges relating to national security leaking national secrets . and then you realize she.s a hard ass. Inspired by the hideous and tacky mascots of the Beijing Olympics, the Shenzhen police devised a way of making their new internet police force (which started work on January 1 of this year) seem more cute and acceptable to the masses . using cartoon mascots of their own. One is named Jing Jing (the male), and the other Cha Cha (the female). .Jing. and .cha. are the characters that comprise the word for .police. in Chinese. Shanghaiist is sure that some of you readers are no doubt Westerners that just don.t get China and Chinese values, which is why the po-lice have to spell it out for you:

????????? ????????“????”,??????????????,???????????

This basically states that websites, including BBSs, discussion groups (and most definitely blogs) are public places, and so internet denizens must likewise watch what they say and do. Thus the two cartoon figures will appear on various Shenzhen sites from now on. Apparently, you can click on either one and then be brought to a page (here or here) where you can talk live with real cops. One of the interesting things about these cartoon cops is that people have expressed the feeling that Jing Jing and Cha Cha look just too darn cute, and that no internet bad boys are going to be thinking about what they gonna do when these cartoon cops come for you. To learn more, read an English report here. There is something we don.t get, though: Why is it that Cha Cha has those marks under her doe eyes that indicate she.s a she, while neither she nor Jing Jing even has a f*cking nose? Anyway, we.d definitely pay more attention to her if she looked like, say, Jessica Rabbit . but we digress. You won.t find these two at your local donut shop . they.re hard at work on many sites, like on the right side of this webpage. Click on the icon and it.ll take you to yet another page where you can then go to the links we gave above where you can talk with real coppers. We.ve been unsuccessful at actually getting someone thus far. It could be that there are just too many people out there dying to talk to an internet cop about T1betan independence, official corruption, human rights violations, heroin and gay sex.

Related:
China: Web censorship gives US pause for thought (silicon.com)
How China Controls the Internet (Business Week)

Anonymizer's new anti-filter service for China netizens

Anonymizer launched a new project called "Operation Anti-Censorship" last week -- free privacy software to help Chinese citizens circumvent government-issue Web filters. Snip from product launch announcement:

In addition, the new solution protects users from detection, persecution, and retribution by shielding their personal identities and related information that the Chinese government is currently able to monitor. The site that currently hosts the software download is www.xifuchun.com, however please note that this URL will be changed on a regular basis to avoid blocking by the Chinese government. Anonymizer relies on early adopters to share the regularly changing URLs with their friends and family members so the number of people able to safely access the Internet continues to grow.

Also: Website censorship in Thailand

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

by Adam Brookes - BBC Pentagon correspondent
27 January 2006

Information Operations Roadmap The document says information is "critical to military success"

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.

It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".

It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.

'Fight the net'

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum"

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

Quotes:

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.
~ Tommy Smothers

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

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posted by Chazzsongs at 8:49 AM | 0 comment(s)

Patriot Act e-mail spying approved

by Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: February 9, 2006

What: The Justice Department asks a judge to approve Patriot Act e-mail monitoring without any evidence of criminal behavior.

When: Decided Feb. 2, 2006 by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C.

Outcome: E-mail surveillance approved.

What happened: As part of a grand jury investigation that's still secret, the Justice Department asked a federal magistrate judge to approve monitoring of an unnamed person's e-mail correspondents.

The request had a twist: Instead of asking to eavesdrop on the contents of the e-mail messages, which would require some evidence of wrongdoing, prosecutors instead requested the identities of the correspondents. Also included in the request was header information like date and time and Internet address--but not subject lines.

The federal magistrate judge balked and asked the Justice Department to submit an additional brief to demonstrate that such a request would be legal.

Instead, prosecutors asked Judge Hogan to step in. He reviewed the portion of federal law dealing with "pen register" and "trap and trace" devices--terms originating in the world of telephone wiretapping--and concluded it "unambiguously" authorizes the e-mail surveillance request.

Though the language may be clumsy, Hogan said, the Patriot Act's amendments authorize that type of easily obtainable surveillance of e-mail. All that's required, he said, is that prosecutors claim the surveillance could conceivably be "relevant" to an investigation.

Excerpt from the court's opinion:
"In 2001, Congress enacted the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (the "USA Patriot Act"), Section 216 of which explicitly amended the authorities relating to pen registers and trap and trace devices...by expanding the definitions of these devices to include "processes" to obtain information about "electronic communication."

"Commenting on the very language that was finally enacted in Section 216 of the USA Patriot Act, several members of Congress highlighted the fact that the amendments would bring the state of the law in line with current technology by making pen registers and trap and trace devices applicable to the Internet and--more to the point--e-mail.

"For example, a section-by-section analysis of the bill that Representative John Conyers included in the record before the final House vote, which contains the same language that was finally enacted by Congress, states that Section 216 "extends the pen/trap provisions so they apply not just to telephone communications but also to Internet traffic."

"In addition, Senator Jon Kyl, who is currently Chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology & Homeland Security, noted that the same language in the Senate version of the bill "would codify current case law that holds that pen/trap orders apply to modern communication technologies such as e-mail and the Internet, in addition to traditional phone lines."

"The Congressional Research Service also published a legal analysis of the USA Patriot Act that states that the Act "permits pen register and trap and trace orders for electronic communications (e.g., e-mail)."

"The plain language of the statute makes clear that pen registers and trap and trace devices may be processes used to obtain information about e-mail communications. The statute's history confirms this interpretation and there is no support for a contrary result."

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posted by Chazzsongs at 5:25 AM | 0 comment(s)

Is anyone else reading your email ?

Is your boss or even some coworker secretly reading your email ? Are the Federal agencies snooping your email messages ? Following are two simple techniques that can help you confirm your suspicion - it detects snoopers and can track the address of the computer that is watching your email.

Remember that for steps 3 & 4, you can create a free account on geocities.com, create a dummy HTML file that contains Statcounter or Google Analytics tracking script.

1. Set up a Hotmail account in US and and a second email account with a non-U.S. provider. (eg. Rediff.com or IndiaTimes.com)
2. Send messages between the two email accounts which might be interesting to the email snooper or NSA who may be monitoring your email.
3. In each message, include a unique URL to a Web server (link to the dummy file on geocities.com containing the tracking code) that you have access to its server logs. This URL should only be known by you and not linked to from any other Web page. The text of the message should encourage an NSA monitor or email snooper to visit the URL.
4. If the server log file ever shows this URL being accessed, then you know that you are being snooped on. The IP address of the access can also provide clues about who is doing the snooping.

The other technique uses Google Analytics for tracking the email impressions.

1. Create an email email message such that Urchin with the following HTML code to embed the __utm.gif image anywhere in your email message.

<img src="http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?
utmt=imp&utmac=C&utmcsr=news1&utmcmd=email&utmctr=em&uctr=k">

The email impressions would be credited to the source "news1" and the medium "email". As soon as someone ones your email, the impression will be registered on Google Analytics server as the gif file is downloaded on the spying computer.

2. If the email recipient has disabled automatic downloading of internet images, you can create a campaign link to track the email referrals. Tag these links using the utm_ campaign variables.

Continuing with the example above of an email message which you track using the source "news1" and the medium "email," your tagged link might look like this:

< a href="www.mywebsite.com/?utm_source=news1&utm_medium=email" <click here</a>

Update: According to NYT, the volume of information gathered from telephone and Internet communications by the National Security Agency without court-approved warrants was much larger than the White House has acknowledged.

Americans come to the program's attention only if they have received a call or e-mail message from a person overseas who is already suspected to be a member of certain terrorist groups or linked somehow to a member of such groups. And the agency still gets a warrant to intercept their calls or e-mail messages to other people in the United States.

Source: How do I track email campaigns? | Who is snooping on my email? - confirm if one's email messages are being read by someone else.

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posted by Chazzsongs at 5:28 AM | 0 comment(s)