Was There Illegal Surveillance Of Trump’s Team? If So, Should There Be Criminal Prosecution?

Tags

criminal prosecution, Donald Trump, government surveillance, Spying, Trump transition team, wiretapping

Every week on Monday, the WoW! staff, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question:Was There Illegal Surveillance  Of Trump’s Team? If So, Should There Be Criminal Prosecution?

Micheal McDaniel: Was there illegal surveillance of Donald Trump? Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears defecate in the woods? Are congressional Republicans the Stupid Party?

Before definitively answering, let’s examine some unquestionable facts. Barack Obama is the product of the Chicago political machine. He thinks like a sociopathic, narcissistic thug. Whatever he desires must be his, and ethics, law, morality, decency or consideration of damage to others does not enter into it. He spent eight years weaponizing the entire federal bureaucracy, from the Department of Justice to the FBI, IRS, EPA, every agency and department of the federal government, including every facet of the intelligence “community.” His radical leftist agents are everywhere, and they are more than willing to do his bidding; that’s why they’re there.

Embarrassing evidence of criminal acts under court order for preservation at the IRS? Ooops! Sorry your honor, it somehow got erased! It’s nobody’s fault, really… Americans murdered by terrorists due to gross Obamite incompetence? Lie about it, and lie about lying about it. Constitution get in the way of progressive whims? I’ve got a pen and a phone!

We now know Obamite agents, those out of government and those still embedded in the government, are covertly and overtly doing all they can, with the help of a corrupt and amoral media, to destroy Donald Trump and his administration, and any collateral damage, like national security, the Constitution, and American’s trust in government, is of no concern to them. They believe they’re immune from consequences, and they’ll always come out on top.

And we also know, at the least, some of Trump’s transition team were “inadvertently” caught up in surveillance of foreign agents, diplomats, etc. We also know the names of such people were released to the media by Obamite agents, including potentially high-ranking intelligence officials. We know such actions are, in fact, illegal. We also know, if we’re honest, it’s highly likely Donald Trump was right. He was being “wiretapped.”

But he wasn’t actually “wiretapped.” Probably not, but he wasn’t suggesting someone actually attached wires to telephone pairs to overhear his conversations. That’s old technology, but Trump is of an age where “wiretapping” is a generic term for all manner of electronic surveillance. In the same way, when I speak of replaying a chapter of a DVD, I invariably say “rewind,” because I’m so used to thinking of VHS technology, though I haven’t owned a VHS tape for years.

We’re not absolutely sure, as in having crystal clear video and sworn documentary evidence, that Mr. Trump was the direct subject of surveillance, or that Mr. Obama ordered it. What we can be reasonably sure of is the same Obamite agents that violated federal law to unmask innocent citizens associated with Donald Trump, would absolutely tell Mr. Obama what they found and what they were doing. Oh, they may not tell him directly, face to face, but they would tell his acolytes, who would tell him. Plausible deniability, you know.

We can also be reasonably sure that Mr. Obama did not directly tell anyone to “wiretap” Mr. Trump or anyone else. It would have been entirely unnecessary. At best, he might have said something like “will no one rid me of this troublesome Trump?” One doesn’t weaponize the entire federal bureaucracy without expecting such criminal minds to engage unbidden in whatever dirty deeds are necessary for the furtherance of the holy progressive cause. That’s why they’re there. Even if such surveillance were incidental, no one had to tell Obamite operatives to use that information to the detriment of Donald Trump.

Would Barack Obama and his minions want to have had intimate knowledge of everything Trump was up to? Would they have violated the law to gain that information? Would they have given a damn about violating the law? Does any rational person really need answers to those questions?

Something else to consider is the silence of Barack Obama and most of his toadies regarding this situation, as well as a warning from one of his former lackeys to be careful about saying no wiretapping of Trump was done. Has Obama ever been silent about such things? Has he ever hesitated to lecture, accuse, berate and lie about anything? Is it possible he might be lying low, hoping his agents remaining in government can still destroy evidence and still protect him? Or is he merely scheming, waiting for that evidence to be destroyed, only then to resurface and taunt the American people to prove him a criminal?

And what of the FBI, which is, at last report, refusing to cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee? Can the FBI be trusted anymore, or has it been coopted by Obamites?

Should violations of federal law be discovered and provable, everyone involved must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Absent that, we will have devolved to a banana republic, where some people are immune from prosecution, and able to violate the law at will. We may not be far from that already.

 Don Surber : It was legal. It was wrong.

JoshuaPundit: This involved something Barack Obama’s presidency was noted for…weaponizing government agencies like the EPA,DOJ and IRS among others and using them against his ‘political enemies.’

If this wasn’t illegal surveillance, then neither was Watergate. It also involved a government using surveillance against political opposition in an election year. One big difference – Nixon was unaware of the Watergate mess until after it happened, while Barack Obama almost certainly was. That’s why just before the end of his presidency, Obama issued an executive order allowing massive, open distribution of the transcripts of the surveillance on the Trump transition team and on the president elect himself.

Moreover, such transcripts are supposed to be redacted by law. These weren’t, and in fact were passed on to a helpful media.

As I mentioned here, the BBC documented and reported on how the Obama Administration gamed FISA requirements to get a warrant after two failed attempts. They accomplished this illegal act by placing the entire case as a FISA case (probably under Sally Yates at DOJ) as a “foreign” case, and then omitted Trump’s name from the third request for a surveillance warrant submitted to the FISA court, which the court unwittingly granted.

It’s a major felony under section 1809 of the FISA laws for anyone to either perform electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA or to disclose or use the information gathered from it. If these transcripts were leaked to the helpful press as they obviously were, that’s another serous felony.

Misusing the FISA system when foreign intelligence is NOT involved is another felony. So is perjury or conspiracy to commit perjury when it comes to say, testimony in congress used to falsely accuse Attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Now since we’ve answered the illegality question, should it be prosecuted? Of course it should, but there are obstacles.

President Trump will have to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor. On of Bill Clinton’s last gifts to the country was to abolish the formerly independent Special Prosecutor’s office and make it part of the Department of Justice under the U.S. Attorney General’s total control.

Assuming the special prosecutor finds a few John Dean style rats willing to avoid prison by testifying (Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan and a number of ‘journalists’ would be good places to start) the political feedback has to be calculated. And that could be troublesome.

If the trial of evidence leads back to Barack Obama, there could be other matters that come out regarding IRSGate, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the president using Mrs. Clinton’s illegal server with a pseudonym and a number of other matters. What then?

Since Barack Obama is no longer president, he no longer has any legal immunity and the question of getting votes to impeach him is moot. But he was the historic first black president. So President Trump would face an unusual dilemma. He can pardon the former president. That would lead to widespread disgust from his supporters that could very well doom his re-election as it did Gerald Ford’s, and lead to a national cynicism about the rule of law at a time when it’s already rampant.

Or he could choose to try Obama and convict him. No matter the evidence, that choice would have the media in hysterics, calls for open rebellion and riots umm, urban unrest in many of America’s cities. There’s also the question of what you do with a former president convicted of numerous felonies. He obviously can’t be housed in a normal prison. As president, he was simply privy to far too much sensitive information. What if he was kidnapped by a foreign power? The only solution would be a private security compound. And what would he do once his sentence was served? Barack Hussein Obama was not referred to in some quarters as the first post-American president for nothing.

Imagine his attitude after spending a few years in prison.

The third choice would be to simply expose these matters, prosecute and imprison the aiders and abettors (including those ‘journalists’ ) and let the American people know the truth about what happened. That’s the choice I’d expect President Trump to make.

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : There is enough smoke to believe there was illegal surveillance of Trump’s team at Trump Tower. Congress should pursue exposing who was involved in this surveillance; who authorized it and who carried out those orders. Those individuals should be prosecuted and if found guilty should be sentenced to the maximum extent the law allows. Those working in our intelligence community should be held to the highest standards their positions demand. We seem to have too many political ideologues working in what are supposed to be apolitical positions.

Before President Obama left office one of his final executive actions introduced new rules that allow the NSA to share private data gathered without a warrant, court order, or congressional authorization with sixteen agencies within the intelligence community; including DHS, FBI, and DEA. This rule permits employees in these intelligence agencies to sift through raw data collected by the NSA. Prior to this the NSA would share information but only after filtering out irrelevant material and masking the names of innocent American citizens. How many innocent Americans are having their private and personal communications shared among employees in these intelligence agencies?

With these new rules President Obama lit a fuse before he left the White House. Our legislators must act in a non-political bipartisan manner to assure this private information remains private and is never publicly shared. Our intelligence community must understand the gravity of their positions and if they fail to honor their oaths of office they will be dealt with harshly and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows.

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

NSA Whistleblower Says NSA Spied on Congress, SCOTUS and Trump.

Tags

Congress, Donald Trump, government surveillance, NSA, SCOTUS, Spying, Trump administration, William Binney

Information Liberation by Chris Menahan

NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on “all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House.”

Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.

“They’re taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind,” Binney said.

“That’s the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens,” he said. “Everything we’re doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it.”

Continue Reading

InformationLiberation articles CC 4.0

Cross-posted on Wow! Magazine.

With Rule 41, Little-Known Committee Proposes to Grant New Hacking Powers to the Government

Tags

Congress, government hacking, government surveillance, government tyranny, Invasion of Privacy, Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Spying, Supreme Court

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.org) By Rainey Reitman

The government hacking into phones and seizing computers remotely? It’s not the plot of a dystopian blockbuster summer movie. It’s a proposal from an obscure committee that proposes changes to court procedures—and if we do nothing, it will go into effect in December.

The proposal comes from the advisory committee on criminal rules for the Judicial Conference of the United States. The amendment would update Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, creating a sweeping expansion of law enforcement’s ability to engage in hacking and surveillance. The Supreme Court just passed the proposal to Congress, which has until December 1 to disavow the change or it becomes the rule governing every federal court across the country. This is part of a statutory process through which federal courts may create new procedural rules, after giving public notice and allowing time for comment, under a “rules enabling act.”1

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure set the ground rules for federal criminal prosecutions. The rules cover everything from correcting clerical errors in a judgment to which holidays a court will be closed on—all the day-to-day procedural details that come with running a judicial system.

The key word here is “procedural.” By law, the rules and proposals are supposed to be procedural and must not change substantive rights.

But the amendment to Rule 41 isn’t procedural at all. It creates new avenues for government hacking that were never approved by Congress.

The proposal would grant a judge the ability to issue a warrant to remotely access, search, seize, or copy data when “the district where the media or information is located has been concealed through technological means” or when the media are on protected computers that have been “damaged without authorization and are located in five or more districts.” It would grant this authority to any judge in any district where activities related to the crime may have occurred.

To understand all the implications of this rule change, let’s break this into two segments.

The first part of this change would grant authority to practically any judge to issue a search warrant to remotely access, seize, or copy data relevant to a crime when a computer was using privacy-protective tools to safeguard one’s location. Many different commonly used tools might fall into this category. For example, people who use Tor, folks running a Tor node, or people using a VPN would certainly be implicated. It might also extend to people who deny access to location data for smartphone apps because they don’t feel like sharing their location with ad networks. It could even include individuals who change the country setting in an online service, like folks who change the country settings of their Twitter profile in order to read uncensored Tweets.

There are countless reasons people may want to use technology to shield their privacy. From journalists communicating with sources to victims of domestic violence seeking information on legal services, people worldwide depend on privacy tools for both safety and security. Millions of people who have nothing in particular to hide may also choose to use privacy tools just because they’re concerned about government surveillance of the Internet, or because they don’t like leaving a data trail around haphazardly.

If this rule change is not stopped, anyone who is using any technological means to safeguard their location privacy could find themselves suddenly in the jurisdiction of a prosecutor-friendly or technically-naïve judge, anywhere in the country.

The second part of the proposal is just as concerning. It would grant authorization to a judge to issue a search warrant for hacking, seizing, or otherwise infiltrating computers that may be part of a botnet. This means victims of malware could find themselves doubly infiltrated: their computers infected with malware and used to contribute to a botnet, and then government agents given free rein to remotely access their computers as part of the investigation. Even with the best of intentions, a government agent could well cause as much or even more harm to a computer through remote access than the malware that originally infected the computer. Malicious actors may even be able to hijack the malware the government uses to infiltrate botnets, because the government often doesn’t design its malware securely. Government access to the computers of botnet victims also raises serious privacy concerns, as a wide range of sensitive, unrelated personal data could well be accessed during the investigation. This is a dangerous expansion of powers, and not something to be granted without any public debate on the topic.

Make no mistake: the Rule 41 proposal implicates people well beyond U.S. borders. This update expands the jurisdiction of judges to cover any computer user in the world who is using technology to protect their location privacy or is unwittingly part of a botnet. People both inside and outside of the United States should be equally concerned about this proposal.

The change to Rule 41 isn’t merely a procedural update. It significantly expands the hacking capabilities of the United States government without any discussion or public debate by elected officials. If members of the intelligence community believe these tools are necessary to advancing their investigations, then this is not the path forward. Only elected members of Congress should be writing laws, and they should be doing so in a matter that considers the privacy, security, and civil liberties of people impacted.

Rule 41 seeks to sidestep the legislative process while making sweeping sacrifices in our security. Congress should reject the proposal completely.

Read EFF and Access Now’s joint testimony on Rule 41.

 

Permission to republish granted by Electronic Frontier Foundation.org.

To The Next Level – Everyone Is A Terrorist App

Tags

Department of Homeland Security, fourth amendment violation, Invasion of Privacy, Spying

 

Written by Lady Raven

The possibility for abuse staggers the mind!

Last night at the grocery store the man waiting to pay (behind me) was way over the line suspicious with his inquiries of my Thanksgiving plans! Why – just the amount he was revealing of his own upcoming turkey day was more than any stranger needed to know – and the woman behind him holding a ten pound bag of sugar – he offered her a cup from his own stash! Pervert? Stalker? Potential kidnapper? Terrorist for sure as there are plenty in who he would instill fear!
Or – hey – how about blog post comments? A gold mine!

Gotta tell you – there is a real conflict invading my psyche on this day meant to give thanks so I shall just do the “happy” part?

Happy Thanksgiving Curtis[…]

Click Here To Read The Rest of: To The Next Level – Everyone Is A Terrorist App

 

Obama has been working on this every since the Go Fishy or Get Fishy White House site failed. In the meantime, the sheeple continue to slumber. It’s just a matter of time before their slumber becomes a nightmare.

While Watching Your Vizio Smart TV, It’s Watching You Back

Tags

Data mining, fourth amendment violation, Invasion of Privacy, smart tvs, Spying, tracking, Vizio

Another one of my conspiracy theories to hear others tell it has panned out. While people are watching their Smart TVs, the Smart TV reciprocates by watching the viewers back, especially if it’s a Vizio. Hah!

 

Originally Published on Pro Publica by Julia Angwin

TV makers are constantly crowing about the tricks their smart TVs can do. But one of the most popular brands has a feature that it’s not advertising: Vizio’s Smart TVs track your viewing habits and share it with advertisers, who can then find you on your phone and other devices.

The tracking — which Vizio calls “Smart Interactivity” — is turned on by default for the more than 10 million Smart TVs that the company has sold. Customers who want to escape it have to opt-out.

In a statement, Vizio said customers’ “non-personal identifiable information may be shared with select partners … to permit these companies to make, for example, better-informed decisions regarding content production, programming and advertising.”

Vizio’s actions appear to go beyond what others are doing in the emerging interactive television industry. Vizio rivals Samsung and LG Electronics only track users’ viewing habits if customers choose to turn the feature on. And unlike Vizio, they don’t appear to provide the information in a form that allows advertisers to reach users on other devices.

Vizio’s technology works by analyzing snippets of the shows you’re watching, whether on traditional television or streaming Internet services such as Netflix. Vizio determines the date, time, channel of programs — as well as whether you watched them live or recorded. The viewing patterns are then connected your IP address – the Internet address that can be used to identify every device in a home, from your TV to a phone.

IP addresses can increasingly be linked to individuals. Data broker Experian, for instance, offers a “data enrichment” service that provide “hundreds of attributes” such as age, profession and “wealth indicators” tied to a particular IP address.

Vizio recently updated its privacy policy to say it has begun providing data about customers’ viewing habits to companies that “may combine this information with other information about devices associated with that IP address.” The company does not promise to encrypt IP addresses before sharing them.

Cable TV companies and video rental companies are prohibited by law from selling information about the viewing habits of their customers. However, Vizio says that those laws – the Video Privacy Protection Act and cable subscriber protections – don’t apply to its business.

Vizio hopes its new tracking forays will provide a boost to the thin profit margins it earns in the competitive television manufacturing business. In an October filing for an initial public offering, Vizio touted its ability to provide “highly specific viewing behavior data on a massive scale with great accuracy.”

The company said in its filing that revenues from its viewing data business are not yet significant. But people familiar with the company said that Vizio has begun working to combine its viewing data with information about users that it gets from data broker Neustar.

Neustar declined to comment about the relationship, but said the company does not handle or distribute viewing information about Vizio users.

A spokeswoman for Tapad, a company that helps identify users across their many devices, said that its contracts prevent it from sharing the name of the companies it works with.

An Experian spokeswoman said, “We currently do not have a relationship with Vizio.”

 

Republished with permission from ProPublica.org – Creative Commons.

LINK:

https://www.propublica.org/about/steal-our-stories

Common Core Dissent *NOT* Appreciated by Connecticut Police Officer

Tags

Common Core, Connecticut, government overreach, Police State, Spying, surveillance

Missouri Education Watchdog by Gretchen Logue

A dossier of sorts was compiled by a police officer on an Connecticut citizen organizing an anti-Common Core informational session. Maybe the police officer didn’t like that the dissenter is a Republican or is a ‘birther’. Is dissent by a citizen with such credentials considered patriotic or a threat to the State?

From Greenwich CT and Bob Horton: Police captain confused ‘service’ with ‘surveillance’:

‘One day in late August, local political activist Arthur “Cort” Wrotnowski placed flyers on car windshields in the Island Beach ferry parking lot, hoping to drum up a crowd that would listen to his take on the perils of the Common Core, the controversial federal and state educational reform initiative.

His flyers were not compelling enough to get people to give up the outdoors on one of the last beautiful Friday nights of the summer; only two people attended the early evening event at Town Hall on August 28. But the one-page notice did catch the eye of Greenwich Police Captain Mark Kordick, head of the Detective Division and an almost three-decade veteran of the force. He immediately drafted an email to School Superintendent William McKersie, informing the schools chief of the anti-Common Core meeting. That set off a chain of events that resulted Thursday in First Selectmen and Police Commissioner Peter Tesei starting an investigation into Captain Kordick’s behavior.

At issue in the investigation are questions about the proper role of police…

Continue Reading Article – Missouri Education Watchdog

This is not my America or the America I want for my grandchildren. Captain Kordick’s actions are in fact “surveillance,” i.e., “surreptitious monitoring” and a subtle form of bullying by an officer of the court.

I always suspected that Janet Napolitano’s “if you see something, say something” meme was shutting down voices of dissent from those who refuse to go along but going after someone because he or she is holding a forum on the perils of Common Core is an overreach and abuse of power.

Kordick’s rationalization of infringing upon Mr. Wrotnowski’s right of free speech and spying on his activities brings to mind DHS’ Lexicon of extremists dispatched years ago to law enforcement across the country.

It is madness.