Why we must, at least, listen to the young Mr Snowden and the fearful concerns he has brought to light.

<<<<  He is 29 and believes in the founding principles of this great nation.  Right or wrong, he is not the subversive the hypocrites would have you believe.  "He violated the law !!"  Wow. When did that become a reason for national alarm?  We have an Administration that has built a legacy around bold faced deceit and the violation of one law after another.  

Here is the problem:  the nation is being lead by more than one person we do not trust and for verifiable reason.  We have been lied to so many times,  even we critics cannot keep up.  It seems as if there is a scandal a week and the watch dogs of democracy,  the free press,  are so concerned for its own Utopian/political agenda,  that it refuses to do its job,  giving those leaders with whom they agree a free pass and almost destroying those they see as being “out of step.”   

You will pardon those of us who despise this Administration’s national intentions for our “conspiracy theories” when we -  liberals and conservatives alike - know that the country’s largest and most intrusive agency,  the IRS,  has been overrun by those who would destroy individuals and associations for the sake of their political influence and point of view.  Conservatives have been laughed at,  for years,  for making such claims,  only to find undeniable proof for their long held fears. 

So,  what do we have?  On one hand,  we have a repressive governance that uses its several agencies (the EPA, the ATF,  the FBI and most fearful of all,  the IRS) against its "enemies,"  and,  on the hand,  we now know that the Central Government spies on every American,  collecting billions of bits of information each day, a practice that has been a closely held secret for years.  And we have a "president" who talks of the need to "balance" transparency with domestic surveillance when it is clear that he had no intentions of ever revealing the recently discovered domestic eavesdropping programs of this government.  

What is most concerning to this editor,  is this:  it is common knowledge (or should be) that H Obama created the largest political machine,  in history. What is missed in this reality,  is the absolute fact that this "machine" was built around the collection of data.  There is a great article in the MIT Technological Review,  that gives us this reality:  

" Obama’s campaign began the election year confident it knew the name of every one of the 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had put him in the White House. They may have cast those votes by secret ballot, but Obama’s analysts could look at the Democrats’ vote totals in each precinct and identify the people most likely to have backed him." 

And this reality was via the collection of data. If the reader thinks that Obama will not, at least, try to use the collection of data viewed in the latest national revelations,  that reader is just too stupid to continue reading this article.    After all,  H Obama has employed the biggest names in data collection in this as he words to manipulate the national vote.  

In the end,  it is clear to this old man,  that this country,  built on wonderful ideals,  is no different from the great nations of old in that its ability to destroy itself is much larger than its ability to survive with its founding principles in tact.  H Obama is as repressive and totalitarian as a president can get,  in this day and time,  and the electorate is as illiterate as never before.  

And, to watch the GOP fall all over itself,  in defending this practice, is the most disturbing reality of all.  The RINO Herd thinks itself to be "in charge" of the destiny of that body politic,  when it can't get out of its own way when it comes to redefining itself in terms of a changing population.  Heck,  look at John McCain,  traveling to Syria for a photo shoot with Syrian rebels who,  as it turns out,  were members of the Muslim jihad.  How ignorant is that?  And yet,  this bozo of a politician,  continues to believe that his mindless arrogance qualifies him as a political leader.  
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Related articles: 

How President Obama’s campaign used big data to rallyindividual voters, Part 1

How President Obama’s campaign used big data to rallyindividual voters, Part 2.

Barack Obama's Big Data won the US election  :  IDG News Service - Traditional news media on the eve of the United States Presidential election was reporting a closely-contested election and there were many polls indicating that it might be a photo-finish. However, one thing has become clear from this election: not all polls are created equal. The pollsters using the latest data processing and analysis techniques were the most successful in predicting the outcome of the elections. For those who had the stamina to watch the election campaign unfold over 22 long months, it became not just a battle of ideologies and campaign issues, but also a rivalry between old media pundits and new media analysts.

Three different "polling aggregators" used different methodologies to predict the outcome of the elections. One, Drew Linzer, posted on his website in June 2012 that the election would be won with a result of 332 votes for Obama, 206 for Romney. Over the months that followed, that prediction didn't change, even as new information came in. As I write, Florida has just been called with the final electoral count coming in at ... 332 votes for Obama, 206 for Mitt Romney.

What is remarkable here, is not only that savvy pollsters are using predictive analytics to determine outcomes -- but just how accurate these predictions have proved, particularly compared with old-school Washington methodologies of going on a hunch, following your instinct, etc. So, these results show that we have now got better at predicting the future which is no small feat -- but how about influencing the outcome? It turns out this was also the election where that happened too.

President Obama's campaign ran an extremely sophisticated and relentless digital operation that threw out the rule book and took no assumption for granted. This was not an election won with a clever advertising campaign -- that is too 90's -- and actually, that is what the Republicans did. This campaign was masterminded by data analysts who left nothing to chance. They revived the virtual campaign centre called mybarackobama.com from the '08 election (and thus highlighting the benefits of "owning" your data), and encouraged supporters to volunteer their personal information, comments, post photos and videos, and donate funds. But this was only the starting point. In a multi-pronged engagement strategy, webmasters used supporters' content to galvanise others and drive traffic to other campaign sites such as Obama's Facebook page (33 million "likes") and YouTube channel (240,000 subscribers and 246 million page views).

The Romney campaign struggled to keep up in this digital arms race and resorted to an old-fashioned conservative rhetoric posted in blogs, sympathetic TV and radio stations which attracted headlines and roused followers but Romney's YouTube channel only attracted 23,700 subscribers and 26 million page views.

What this tells us is that data mining is changing politics and the Obama campaign micro-targeted potential supporters. Take this example: a contest to dine with Sarah Jessica Parker in her New York home targeted a small selection of people who have an affection for competitions who also like small dinners and are attracted to celebrities in order to raise funds. Such a group exists -- and has deep pockets. Everything about a person that can be measured, was measured and, combined with predictive analytics, allowed the campaign not only to find voters but also to determine what sorts of messages would get their attention and what types of people would be persuaded by certain types of messages.

The entire volunteer system of the Obama campaign, a not inconsiderable number of people, was also carefully parsed and call lists allocated based on likelihood to match. Call lists ranked names in order of persuadability; 75 per cent of data covered basics such as gender, age, address and voting record, but an additional 25 per cent of consumer data allowed them to predict who was going to make a donation online, who would do it by mail, or who would become a volunteer.

When the campaign felt it had sufficient momentum with galvanising supporters, it turned to fundraising, and then to voter turnout. Every single night, the team ran 66,000 computer simulations going over how the elections might pan out in order to find the optimum breakdown. Such exercises turned them onto avenues they hadn't taken, such as Reddit, a social news website.

This was also the first time that cloud computing played a big role in the campaign: the Obama team ran their data mainly using Amazon Web Services and used open source software and Amazon services to inexpensively write or tailor their own programmes.

Team Obama's experience will tell you that David beat Goliath -- it wasn't the super-expensive ads on the national networks that won the election, but the very careful micro-targeting of messages tailored to each reader. The campaign messages were directed differently at siblings and spouses.

And this is something that corporate marketers and CIOs can replicate very easily. If, predictive analytics and data processing is taking some of the magic out of democracy -- will the same concepts applied to consumer mean the end of free will?

About the Author:

Mike Lynch is the founder and former CEO of UK software company Autonomy

Part I of II : NY Times writes: ". . . [this] administration has now lost all credibility . . . .." See what they are talking about and know that when Obama's incestral friends turn on him, he is in serious political trouble.

<<<<  I have never printed pictures of the Obama's such as this.  Today is a first for this blog  -  but it captures what the pretender really is.  He is arrogant in his sense of self confidence and totalitarian in his determination to "change America."  He is to be feared.  

Update: this spy scam now includes our credit card purchases,  our mobile phones,  pictures on our Facebook . . . virtually all our communications

From the Editorial Board at the New York Times,  we have this scathing summary of the Obama’s Administration and its quest to control not only the news of the day (which it has failed to do) but the communications of average American citizens,  folks who are admittedly under no criminal or terror suspicions of any kind.  Obama has been spying on “us” from the very beginning.  And now,  this scam on the American people is blowing up in his face,  and who is defending this nonsense?  Why, the RINO population of the GOP along with the radicalized collectivists in the Democrat Party,  that’s who.  Here is a rather long excerpt from the NYTimes editorial.  You will want to read the full publication. Understand that when the NY Times turns on a politician after befriending him in the most incestral of ways,  well,  let’s just say,  “These are troubling times within the Kingdom.”   Understand that while this sort of thing has been going on since the early days of Bush,  such surveillance was limited to terror suspects.  Obama as per his M.O.,  has taken the law and turned it into a monster for his own purposes.  Big Brother is here and in the person of B Hussein Obama.  Anything highlighted in red comes from this blog's editor.  

From the Editorial Board at the NY Times:  

The administration has now lost all credibility. [Note: the Times has added "on this issue" since first publishing its criticism of Obama - blog editor]   Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.  

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls.

Articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian described a process by which the N.S.A. is also able to capture Internet communications directly from the servers of nine leading American companies. The articles raised questions about whether the N.S.A. separated foreign communications from domestic ones.

That is a vital goal, but how is it served by collecting everyone’s call data? The government can easily collect phone records (including the actual content of those calls) on “known or suspected terrorists” without logging every call made. In fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was expanded in 2008 for that very purpose.

Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.

This sort of tracking can reveal a lot of personal and intimate information about an individual. To casually permit this surveillance — with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power — fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and it repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy. . . . . .  and there is more, here.  

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Related notes and articles:
From the Washington Times,  Sept 14,2011:   Be careful, if you dare to criticize Citizen Obama, comrade. The Web is watching. This week, President Obama’s re-election team launched “Attack Watch,” an interactive website that allows the president’s registered supporters to report instances of “attacks” against the commander in chief or his record. Citizen snitches are asked to detail who the attacker is, the type of attack, and whether the offending words were actually heard or passed along as second-hand rumors.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/14/big-brother-obama-is-watching/#ixzz2VWxD4yrb 
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Part II of II: See what the other incestral friend of H Obama is saying, now that the cover has been blown on Obama's domestic spy plans.

The NSA has had its own "whistleblowers," for years.  Thomas Drake was charged under the Espionage Act (a 1913 law that was written decades before the modern day debate on techno spying and surveillance) for retaining classified documents. Drake framed his own prosecution as “vindictive and malicious.” He was actually sentenced to a year of probation.  Two other NSA whistlerblowers,  Binney and Wiebe,  were accused of leaking classified information to the press and persecuted/prosecuted for their "crimes," as well.    They continue to speak out against NSA and its use by the Federal Government as it invades the whole of the America citizenry without cause and for no established reason  . . . . and in total secrecy.    “What we've been saying all along has proven to be so. Our worst fears are being realized. We had a solution to this entire problem that would have avoided this whole mess.” – Kirk Wiebe

NSA Spying: Whistleblowers Claim Vindication On Surveillance State Warnings

From the Huffington Post - another exfriend of H Obama: 

For years, four former National Security Agency analysts warned that the government was conducting widespread surveillance on domestic communications. Their warnings were largely ignored.

But on Thursday, after The Guardian newspaper reported that Verizon was turning over customer phone records to the intelligence agency as part of a secret court order, Kirk Wiebe had a “feeling of great gratification.”

“What we've been saying all along has proven to be so," the 68-year-old whistleblower told The Huffington Post. "Our worst fears are being realized.”

While at the NSA, Wiebe, along with Ed Loomis and Bill Binney, created a computer program that could isolate large amounts of information collected by the NSA while protecting Americans’ privacy. But the NSA ignored their program, saying “it was too invasive,” Loomis said.

"We had a solution to this entire problem that would have avoided this whole mess," Wiebe said.

Instead, the NSA chose Trailblazer, a multi-billion dollar computer program that was supposed to revolutionize how the agency analyzed communications data. Wiebe, Loomis and Binney called for an investigation into Trailblazer, citing massive waste and fraud.

In response, Binney and Wiebe were accused of leaking classified information to the press. The FBI raided their homes. Still, they continued to speak publicly about their concerns about the NSA invading Americans' privacy.

On Thursday, they had a moment of vindication as they gave interviews criticizing the NSA over a domestic surveillance program they had been warning about.

“This would appear to be the hardcore evidence that I think a lot of people needed to start to believe it,” Binney, who was at the NSA for nearly 40 years, told The Huffington Post. “It’s domestic spying, that’s what it is, on a very large scale.”

A fourth NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, criticized the court that authorized the surveillance.

“There is no need to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” Drake said in an interview with Democracy Now on Thursday. “Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond.”

You will want to read the full article here:  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/nsa-spying-whistleblowers_n_3399258.html

Thoughts about Obama's secret seizure of Verizon's customer base for specified information.

<<<<  Picture of an Obama campaign center taken on or about August 28, 2012.  These centers were busy collecting data as early as July,  of 2011 and there is no reason to assume that such activity by the Democrats,  has been abandoned following the last election.  

This latest effort at data mining has been going on since April 25.  

There is no specific reason except "national security."  Problem:  if national security is the reason,  why only Verizon ?  Clearly,  this is data mining,  on the part of this Administration.  It tracks a large portion of the American population and reveals societal trends as to the individual citizen.  

The American press,  as usual,  was sitting on its hands while the UK news source got this very important "scoop."  

The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.

The data collected is called "meta-data."  

There is a massive data collection center in Utah,  currently under construction,  that can hold cell phone information on 300 billion phones,  according Thursday morning reports on Fox News.  Of course, only a small,  small, fraction of this number constitutes the actual number of existing cell phones in the country or in the world  -  perhaps a billion phones world wide (?),  total,  compared to a high  capacity data storage center that is 300 times larger than current or imagined "need."   Obviously,  we are well into the Big Brother stage of this nation's existence and we all are sitting on our butts,  watching this happen.  

Obama has  been involved the most extensive data mining process in this nation's history.  And that is not my opinion,  but the opinion (i.e. fact) resulting from a investigative summary in the NY Times: 

President Barack Obama's campaign for re-election rested heavily on a busy data mining operation, complete with an analytics teams five times as big as the one in 2008, mysterious code names, and a chief number cruncher. Just what this operation was doing was held close to the vest during the campaign, but Time magazine's Michael Scherer got the inside scoop.     

The data mining operation was instrumental in helping the campaign raise $1 billion, target ads and model voters in battleground states, senior campaign advisors told Scherer. To boost fundraising efforts, the data crunchers started by creating a single system for gathering data from a huge variety of sources, including field workers, pollsters, fundraisers, consumer data and social media and merging it with the main Democratic voter databases in the key states. This massive database helped the campaign predict what types of voters would be persuaded by what types of appeals.  More pictures of these data collection centers:

"We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers," a senior adviser said. "In the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in '12 than in '08 because it made our time more efficient."

Read more: The big data behind Obama's campaign victory - FierceCIO http://www.fiercecio.com/story/big-data-behind-obamas-campaign-victory/2012-11-07#ixzz2VRxEOl2l
Subscribe at FierceCIO

To pretend that this mining procedure,  under the guise of "national security" is not going into the coffers of the Socialist Democrats headed,  for the time being, by H Obama,  is to live life with one's head in the sand.  
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Related articles you need to read:  

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/obama-expands-bush-data-mining-program/

A very important report on the NY Times story:  http://www.fiercecio.com/story/big-data-behind-obamas-campaign-victory/2012-11-07

And article exposing Obama's thirst for data:  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0df7cc4a-fd35-11e1-a4f2-00144feabdc0.html#slide0
                                             
    A July 14, 2011 article written just 7 months after the 2010 midterm elections  ---   http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0711/Obama_campaign_hiring_data_mining_scientists.html
"Using statistical predictive modeling, the Democratic Party's comprehensive political database, and publicly available data, modeling analysts are charged with predicting the behavior of the American electorate. These models will be instrumental in helping the campaign determine which voters to target for turnout and persuasion efforts, where to buy advertising and how to best approach digital media."                                                                                                            

If you are a Version customer, your phone company is being required to cough up your phone records.

<<<<<    There is only one reason a government spies on its citizenry and that is for the sake of control.  There is no reason,  security or otherwise,  that explains the so-called "need" to collect your phone records, yet that is what is happening to Verizon customers by the millions.    

Update:  all 120 million Verizon customers are being surveyed for calls made,  to whom they called,  and the e.t of each call.  

In a story found in European papers (the Guardian.co.uk) we learn of this intrusive action taken by the H.  Obama Administration: 

. . . . . . . . . . .  document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Understand that the FBI works for the Obama Administration. In increasing measure,  it does the Administration's domestic dirty work of citizen harassment and domestic spying.  In other words,  Obama made this request.

Imagine,  in the midst of an IRS scandal in which that agency illegally requested donor lists,  names and contact information for family members,  demanded to know if one had plans to run for office and who their donors MIGHT be,  Hussein Obama is demanding even more intrusive searches of the general population. 

If you are a Version customer,  your phone company is being required to cough up your phone records.  Go ahead and sit around like sheep,  and low this to happen,  or change phone companies or figure out other ways to communicate.