Political Grandstanding, FBI’s Long History Of Surveillance Abuse May Finally Get It Booted Off The Section 702 Block

from the hell,-I’ll-take-politicized-if-that’s-the-best-option dept

Wed, Feb 15th 2023 10:45am – Tim Cushing

The FBI has had access to Section 702 surveillance and it has always abused this access. The data and communications are collected by the NSA under this authority. Once collected, the FBI hooks up to this massive data store and to perform backdoor searches on domestic targets, even though it’s only supposed to received masked/minimized domestic data from the NSA.

Political Grandstanding, FBI’s Long History Of Surveillance Abuse May Finally Get It Booted Off The Section 702 Block

Seymour Hersh on US Bombing Nord Stream Pipelines — Radio War Nerd EP #366

We talk to legendary Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh about his latest bombshell scoop: the United States, on President Biden’s orders, blew up the Nord Stream pipelines that were foundational to Germany’s export economy until last year.

Seymour Hersh on US Bombing Nord Stream Pipelines — Radio War Nerd EP #366 via Radio War Nerd

Previously:

US bombed Nord Stream gas pipelines, claims investigative journalist Seymour Hersh

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

Report: The CIA Is Directing Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia

The CIA has been using a European NATO country’s intelligence services to conduct sabotage attacks inside Russia since the February invasion of Ukraine, investigative journalist Jack Murphy reported on Saturday, citing unnamed former US intelligence and military officials.

Report: The CIA Is Directing Sabotage Attacks Inside Russia

Related:

The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia under the agency’s direction, according to former U.S. intelligence and military officials.

‘CIA behind spate of explosions in Russia’: US veteran claims CIA and NATO ally behind sabotage

The American Colony Called Germany

Dec 12, 2022 – The end of World War II resulted in a stand off with the Soviet Union. The practical solution was to rebuild and rearm West Germany to deter a Soviet invasion, but keep that nation under American rule. After World War II, Germany remained occupied by a million foreign troops during the Cold war. After that ended in 1990, the Russians returned home and the Warsaw Pact alliance disbanded.

There was no threat to the west and NATO troops returned home, except the Americans, who insisted on keeping several large bases in Germany. Billions of dollars were spent on new military facilities to include a massive spy center at a newly expanded Wiesbaden base. You do not have to look very hard to find historical information revealing that the CIA has been spying inside Germany for more than seventy years to bribe and blackmail political leaders and journalists.

In 2022, the United States destroyed the Nordstream pipelines and thus the German economy. This was the third time in a century the United States destroyed Germany. The innovative and productive German industry was shut down in 1919, 1945, and 2022. Germany is not a true democratic state, but a colony of the United States.

The American Colony Called Germany via Tales of the American Empire

The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests

The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests

There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.

This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.

Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.

Related:

No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’

So, who was the Trump Administration targeting?!

But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.

I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).

2703(d) order:

Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following

BEFORE THE TWITTER FILES: Alt Media Warned of Twitter Links to FBI CIA Deep State

Manila Chan originally discussed the links between Twitter and FBI, CIA, NSA, deep state back in June 2022. Originally aired on a “certain” international media outlet. First shirked off as “Russian disinformation” – the now massive trove called the Twitter Files brought to light by Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss confirmed Manila’s reporting from 6 months prior.

BEFORE THE TWITTER FILES: Alt Media Warned of Twitter Links to FBI CIA Deep State via Manila Chan

Related:

The Federal Bureau of Tweets: Twitter is Hiring an Alarming Number of FBI Agents

Twitter Still Infiltrated with Former FBI and CIA Agents