I. WOW! Check out this “Domestic Surveillance Directorate” page on the NSA website.
Posted on July 10, 2021 by State of the Nation
♦ Domestic Surveillance Directorate ♦
WOW! Check out this “Domestic Surveillance Directorate” page on the NSA website.
Webmaster’s Introduction: Any intelligent 11-year old should be able to comprehend that 9/11 was an inside job and that, hence, the American anti-terrorism apparatus, the multi-trillion dollar/year “National Security Racketeering Network” aka “NSA Global Spy Network” is designed to track and terrorism citizens who are designated as “dissidents” or “truth-tellers” or “whistle-blowers.” This is perhaps one of the greatest, and most lucrative, con jobs in world history.
Our Partners
Domestic Surveillance is a team sport. Our success depends upon our partnership with other federal, state, and local agencies. The USA PATRIOT Act was passed in 2001 for the purpose of “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”. This far-reaching law gave us a wide range of new tools to detect and prevent terrorism. Our partners transmit a steady flow of intelligence information 24-hours a day from across the nation. The incoming data is indexed, stored, and shared throughout the Intelligence Community on our massive cloud computing network.
Suspicious Activity Reporting – Fusion Centers
The Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI) is a collaborative effort led by the U.S. Department of Justice in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement partners. This initiative establishes a national capacity for gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, and sharing SAR information gathered by fusion centers across the county.
Located in states and major urban areas, fusion centers are uniquely situated to empower front-line law enforcement, public safety, fire service, emergency response, public health, and private sector security personnel to gather and share domestic threat-related information.
Fusion Centers Location Map
map of fusion center locations Click on map to locate your local fusion center
Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Information Flow
Suspicious Activity Reporting SAR information flow diagram
National Counterterrorism Center
The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) operates as a partnership of more than 16 organizations including the CIA, FBI, State Department, Defense Department, Homeland Security; and other agencies that provide unique expertise such as the Departments of Energy, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, and Health and Human Services.
The NCTC is the primary organization for analyzing and integrating all foreign and domestic terrorism-related intelligence possessed or acquired by the United States. It was also recently given the authority to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.
FBI Terrorist Screening Center
FBI Terrorist Screening Center
The FBI Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was established in 2003 by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6 which directed that a center be established to consolidate the government’s approach to terrorism screening. The TSC maintains the U.S. government’s consolidated Terrorist Watch list, a single database of identifying information about those known or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity.
Terrorist screening database information flow
FBI Surveillance Aircraft
FBI airplanes equipped with high-tech cameras and sophisticated surveillance technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones below fly circular routes daily around many major U.S. cities tracking targets and gathering intelligence. The clickable map below shows the unusual flight patterns in some of the targeted areas. View full size map.
Other Partnerships We Can Publicly Disclose
FBI – The FBI is our go-to partner for much of our nation’s domestic surveillance needs:
Information collected from the use of National Security Letters authorized by the PATRIOT Act
– Phone calls and text messages from the FBI Digital Collection System (DCSNet)
– “Google-like” search capability of citizen information from the FBI Law Enforcement National Data Exchange Program (N-DEx)
– Cell phone location tracking from the Stingray “IMSI catchers” (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) masquerading as cell phone towers
– Massive FBI data-mining project with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners collected by the FBI’s National Security Analysis Center (NSAC)
– CIA – The Central Intelligence Agency has publicly committed to increasing its data collection efforts. CIA Chief Technology Officer Gus Hunt explains why: “The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time. Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”
DHS – TSA airline passenger data; surveillance data from unmanned domestic Predator B drones patrolling the northern and southern borders
Treasury – Cash Transaction Reporting and Suspicious Activity Reporting data
U.S. Postal Service – The exterior of every piece of paper mail processed in the United States is photographed and stored by the “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program”. Some post offices have installed hidden cameras outside to capture and record the license plates and facial features of customers leaving the parking lots.
United States Congress – In 2011, Congress extended three key provisions of the PATRIOT Act for another four years. (Senate vote / House vote). In 2012, Congress reauthorized the FISA Amendments Act. (Senate vote / House vote). In 2015, both houses of Congress passed the USA Freedom Act which legally codifies our dragnet data collection while happily appeasing the civil liberties folks (a double win!).
State/Local government – Electronic transit cards; electronic toll collectors; vehicle information and location data captured by license plate readers; public transportation video/audio surveillance systems
British Spy Agency GCHQ – The GCHQ (UK Government Communications Headquarters) through its “Mastering the Internet” and “Global Telecoms Exploitation” programs uses secret agreements with commercial companies allowing them to tap into the transatlantic fiber-optic cables carrying the world’s phone calls and internet traffic. The GCHQ processes, stores, and shares this information with the NSA via the Tempora program.
Yahoo – Secretly searches all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific character strings provided by the NSA/FBI.
II. A Country That Has Lost Its Way: U.S. Government and Corporations Combine to Strip Citizens of Their Rights
By Philip Giraldi
Strategic Culture
July 10, 2021
The Biden Administration is calling on Americans to spy on friends, neighbors and family and reporting any “extremist” views to the authorities.
The American people have increasingly become aware that government surveillance and corporate censorship have combined to keep people ignorant and controlled. What is taking place has generated some dark humor. A friend of mine, also a former CIA officer, wrote to me recently and said tongue-in-cheek that he retains a lot of respect for the Agency because it is the only major government national security entity that does not read our mail and emails. Those jobs are the responsibility of the NSA and FBI. I responded that I would imagine that CIA does in fact read quite a lot of mail where it operates overseas but it is probably done the old-fashioned way by recruiting an underpaid mail clerk as an agent.
The whole issue of the government spying illegally on its own citizens has again made the news with the claims by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that NSA has been spying on him, presumably because he has connections that the government regards either as subversive or, in the new reckoning, as “extremists” who are potential “domestic terrorists.” Given the reasonable assumption that anyone who voted for Donald Trump might well fall under those categories, that means that something like half the U.S. population could be under suspicion.
Mass electronic surveillance of literally trillions of phone calls and messages worldwide without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment restrictions on searches without probable cause or a proper warrant issued by a judge has been the regular NSA authorized procedure at least since 9/11 and there is no reason to assume that it is no longer the practice. It basically is initiated by the agency involved (normally NSA or FBI) going to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court or to some other appropriate judge to get a warrant on an individual where there is some probable cause. Probable cause can consist of “someone searching the web for suspicious stuff.” The Court then gives its approval, which it does in the case of FISA 99% of the time. When that individual is then surveilled, the names of his or her contacts are also added to the investigation. And it goes on from there, expanding and growing until it includes thousands of phone numbers and email addresses, individuals who are overwhelmingly innocent of any wrongdoing.
So, it is safe to assume that many of us are right at this moment eligible for being monitored electronically by the federal government. If one combines that with the Biden Administration’s June 1st announcement of a war on “domestic terrorism,” which it clearly considers to be a function of “white supremacists,” it is easy to see where all that is going. Biden pulled no punches, describing the threat from “white supremacy” as the “most lethal threat to the homeland today,” so that would mean that the government is doing all in its power to stamp it out, whatever it takes and whatever that means.
Surveilling ordinary Americans for what they might be thinking, which is what this comes down to, would be a George Orwellian 1984 tale for our times, updated from when Winston Smith was doing mandatory daily exercises in front of his television set. He slacked off a bit and the TV instantly admonished him. He then wondered whether it was possible that he and all the other residents of Airstrip One (once called Britain) are surveilled all the time. He concluded that they were.
So, if your television set suddenly speaks to you in the next few months, it might not be Alexa. The other development that has surfaced in the past couple of weeks is the increased corporate cooperation with what the government is saying and doing. Mainstream media has certainly done its share of obfuscation, including the current near total suppression of the story that a key witness who provided false testimony against journalist Julian Assange languishing in a British prison has turned out to be a pedophile, diagnosed sociopath and serial liar. But the major player is inevitably social media, which has enormous power in the United States and also elsewhere to shape opinions and propagate false information that serves the government agenda. The media has banned numerous groups, individuals, and links to sites from its pages, a barrier to free speech and freedom of expression. And it has, for example, enthusiastically cooperated fully with the essentially fraudulent government claims of Russian interference in the two most recent U.S. elections. It is censoring or denigrating material that is at variance with official policies, including, for example, Facebook’s pop-ups that appear whenever there is any article that contests the approved version of the response to the COVID virus.
Back in June, the Biden administration said it would also be working with some of the large high-technology and social media companies to “increase information sharing” to assist in combatting radicalization. Biden announced that his Justice Department would create ways for Americans to report radicalized friends and family to the government. One senior official put it this way: “We will work to improve public awareness of federal resources to address concerning or threatening behavior before violence occurs… If you see something, say something. This involves creating contexts in which those who are family members or friends or co-workers know that there are pathways and avenues to raise concerns and seek help for those who they have perceived to be radicalizing and potentially radicalizing towards violence.”
In other words, in plain English, the Biden Administration is calling on Americans to spy on friends, neighbors and family and reporting any “extremist” views to the authorities. Well, Facebook is now fully on board with more of the same, engaged in the “hot” war against the “white supremacists/extremists/domestic terrorists.” It has blocked or shut down many former contributors and also begun posting at least two versions of warnings to users. One targets individuals who might have personally been visiting an “extremist” site while the other encourages users to snitch on friends or family who might be enticed by such material. The personalized pop-up reads as follows: “[Name of Recipient], you many have been exposed to harmful extremist content recently – Violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment. You can take action now to protect yourself and others.-Get support from experts-Spot the signs, understand the dangers of extremism and hear from people who escaped violent groups.”
The snitch on friends version reads: “Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?-We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support.-How you can help.-Hear stories and get advice from people who escaped violent extremist groups-Get support.”
To be sure, one has to ask how Facebook knows that one has visited an “extremist” site since they have blocked such material. Are they somehow hacking into the personal accounts of their own users? The situation is dire, no doubt about it, but it has provoked a backlash, including this post: “Become the extremist Facebook warned you about!” One also has to wonder how Facebook will deal with individuals who complain about some other groups with a demonstrated history of promoting violence, including black lives matter, that are not white supremacist related. It will almost certainly do nothing, just like the federal government’s demonstrated “racially sensitive” supine response to a year of riot, burning, looting and homicide. In truth Americans are standing at the edge of a precipice with just one more “crisis” possibly coming that will tip everyone over the edge so we wind up with a totalitarian government which works hard to keep everyone safe by doing the opposite. We are almost there, and if you doubt it just go take a look at Facebook.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.
The Best of Philip Giraldi
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax-deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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