Posted originally on the CTH on April 28, 2023 | Sundance
Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified yesterday that more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government. These search queries were based on authorizations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.”
Additionally, IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.
If we were in a functioning system of government everything would be stopped right now, and no conversation would be taking place that was not about this issue. This is the total and complete surveillance state being talked about as if we were discussing what’s for dinner.
This is beyond jaw-dropping.
Context: In 2018 CTH revealed through research of their own documents that FBI and DOJ/FBI contractors had done more than 1,000 illegal searches using the NSA database, targeting Republican primary candidates from November 2015 through May 2016. These stunning admissions were from the DOJ’s own reporting to the FISA court.
Few were paying attention.
Although the number of the illegal search queries were redacted, we know the number is four digits from the size of the redacted text. More than 1,000 and less than 9,999.
FAST FORWARD TO 2023 – Yesterday, IG Horowitz outlined that more than 1.1 millionillegal searches of this database were conducted in 2021 during the first year of the Joe Biden administration.
Additionally, and perhaps more consequentially, to give scope to how the process of total domestic surveillance has expanded, Horowitz now admits in 2021 the number of federal government employees with access to this total metadata collection system now exceeds 10,000 people. STOP THE PRESSES!
Yes, congress is talking about this ‘as if’ there is some level of importance. However, the basic questions are not being asked, or have perhaps just become so accepted that legislators have become oblivious to the insanity of it. Beyond the blood boiling questions about searching the NSA database, questions like:
In order for these search queries to take place, there has to be a housing facility to capture it.
Where is all of this electronic data being stored?
Why is all of this electronic data being stored?
Who is in control of this all-encompassing electronic data collection?
Forget the searches for a moment, what act of congress authorized the capture of this private data collection? Essentially electronic intercepts of communication systems that flow throughout our life.
The background context here is congress debating the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the power of the DOJ and FBI to intercept American citizen communication and electronic data via the “702” authorizations, that permit the NSA database to be searched and queried.
If the inspector general is now admitting the FISA laws have been so comprehensively corrupted such that 3.4 million searches by more than 10,000 federal employees and government contractors now have access, there is no way that any reasonably intelligent person should support such reauthorization. Even contemplating this request is absurd, beyond absurd.
The United States government is admitting to the public that a total and comprehensive surveillance state is currently in place, and 10,000 federal government agents have the authorization to monitor everything we do.
This is the admitted and current status of RIGHT NOW. Yet people are worried about possible ‘vaccination passports’ or ‘digital currencies’ or ‘social credit scores’ sometime in the future?
Have we totally lost connection to the reality of our current condition?
The context for the IRS whistleblower case of political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation gains a significant amount of context with this new revelation. According to NBC reporting the FBI investigation of Hunter Biden concluded a year ago, and the IRS investigation “completed more than a year ago.”
If the IRS and FBI completed their investigation, then where are the charges? Now the ‘whistleblower claims’ start to make sense.
(Via NBC) – Federal prosecutors have considered charging Hunter Biden with three tax crimes and a charge related to a gun purchase, said two sources familiar with the matter.
The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony.
Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about “growing frustration” inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago.
The Washington Post previously reported that federal investigators believed they had gathered enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase.
The decision on which charges to file, if any, will be made by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and retained by the Biden administration to continue the Hunter Biden investigation. There are no indications a final decision has been made, said the two sources familiar with the matter.
The IRS Criminal Investigation division, the Justice Department, the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware and attorneys for Hunter Biden declined to comment. (more)
According to the prior developments in the IRS whistleblower reporting, the “senior U.S. justice department official” who is interfering and lying under oath to congress is U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland is the unnamed official whose sworn testimony before Congress is being challenged in a bombshell letter from an IRS whistleblower’s attorney that also alleges a coverup in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation, The Post has learned. (more)
The issue stems from Garland testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss would be able to investigate the Hunter Biden issues without interference from the DOJ, and that Weiss would be able to prosecute any crimes that may have occurred outside his Delaware jurisdiction. As the story is evolving, Main Justice is not following the process as outlined by Garland, and the DOJ is actively involved in approvals or non-approvals of the investigative process.
The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, appeared on Fox News with Brett Baier to outline the issues at stake in the matter and why congressional approval is needed before the IRS whistleblower can give specific evidence and testimony to the committees with jurisdiction. WATCH:
Knowing what we know about how Main Justice is being operated in the era of Joe Biden, I would not be surprised to discover that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco is actually the main character in this DOJ manipulation. AG Garland may be the front man giving what amounts to false testimony, but it is likely Lisa Monaco pulling the strings behind Garland that are making his congressional statements false.
Posted originally on the CTH on April 19, 2023 | Sundance
Some insider threats are more equal than others; so goes the position of the nation’s biggest leaker of classified documents in modern history, and it’s not Jack Teixeira.
This story shows the importance of what was hidden by the combined efforts of the national security apparatus in 2018.
Readers here are familiar, but most Americans are not, with how Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner leaked a top-secret classified Title-1 FISA application in March of 2017.
Then the Vice-Chair of the SSCI, Senator Warner instructed Senate Security Director James Wolfe to leak the 82-page FISA application assembled against Carter Page. On the afternoon of March 17, 2017, Wolfe took 82 pictures of the “Read and Return” document that was delivered to the SSCI basement SCIF by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Brian Dugan from the Washington Field Office.
Later that evening, Wolfe sent the images to journalist Ali Watkins using an encrypted messaging app. Ms. Watkins then shared the FISA content with her peers and used the information to leverage a top-tier job at the New York Times. The media were off to the races talking about FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign and using the leaked FISA as evidence of the ongoing investigation, later known as Crossfire Hurricane. Three days later, March 20, 2017, after coordinating the intent of the narrative creation with Mark Warner, FBI Director James Comey publicly admitted the Trump-Russia investigation for the first time.
After James Wolfe was arrested for the FISA application leak, his defense lawyers threatened to expose the role of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the leak and subpoena the members as witnesses. The Mueller/Weissmann team, then in charge of all DOJ operations that touched on Trump-Russia, took apart the evidence of Wolfe’s conduct, and DC Attorney Jessie Liu dropped most of the charges against Wolfe. Mueller then ran cover for Mark Warner, and eventually – out of an abundance of caution to maintain the need for the coverup operation – the Mueller/Weissmann team then made the FISA application public. The rest is history.
Keep in mind, I could be civilly sued if anything written above as an asserted truth was false. I’m not, because the truth is the defense. All of this happened.
At the time of the Mark Warner TSCI leak, no one outside the DOJ-FBI and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had ever seen a FISA application. Heck, in 2017 through early 2018, it was considered a classified intelligence breech to even discuss the FISA process, the procedures or the court itself. People forget that.
The 2017 leaking of the FISA application was the biggest national security breach in years, perhaps seconded only to the 2017 leaking of the TSCI transcript from National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, given to the Washington Post by the FBI a month earlier.
So, it’s somewhat hypocritical and ironic to see SSCI Chairman Mark Warner now railing against the Pentagon and Director of National Intelligence over not being provided the details of documents leaked by a low-level military servicemember in the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
WASHINGTON DC – The Senate Intelligence Committee is demanding the Pentagon hand over copies of all the classified documents leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira.
The 21-year-old serviceman was accused by the Department of Defense of leaking “sensitive and highly-classified material” into a chat on the encrypted communications platform Discord. It then made its way onto other social media platforms. He was charged on Friday.
In a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the leak prompted concerns about “serious deficiencies” in the government’s security protocols.
“According to public reporting, A1C Teixeira began sharing classified information and classified documents within a social media platform as early as December 2022—nearly four months before the government’s discovery,” the letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, read. “These disclosures indicate serious deficiencies in the government’s insider threat and security vetting protocols.” (read more)
It’s official – the US is at war with Russia. This is no longer a proxy war regardless of whether an official declaration has been made. Washington confirmed that there is “a small U.S. military presence,” but only made the admission after the Pentagon data leak. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby insists American soldiers are not fighting on the battlefield.
“I won’t talk to the specifics of numbers and that kind of thing. But to get to your exact question, there is a small U.S. military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the Defense Attachés office to help us work on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine,” Kirby said, claiming the troops are connecting to a specific embassy. The initial data leak showed that there are also at least 50 troops from the UK on the ground in Ukraine, along with military personnel from 33 NATO nations.
The New York Times reported on Monday morning that NATO members are amassing their troops along the border. “NATO is rapidly moving from what the military calls deterrence by retaliation to deterrence by denial. In the past, the theory was that if the Russians invaded, member states would try to hold on until allied forces, mainly American and based at home, could come to their aid and retaliate against the Russians to try to push them back,” Steven Erlanger wrote. But NATO is going on the offensive rather than the defensive this time around. “To prevent that, to deter by denial, means a revolution in practical terms: more troops based permanently along the Russian border, more integration of American and allied war plans, more military spending and more detailed requirements for allies to have specific kinds of forces and equipment to fight, if necessary, in pre-assigned places,” the journalist wrote.
The war in Ukraine has already cost more than any war since World War II. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and there has never been a situation where NATO prepared its troops to battle a country unaffiliated with its alliance. Russia is completely backed into a corner now and the war must escalate. Putin will not retreat or surrender. Russia does not have the option to surrender as the world powers would swoop in and take over the nation, including its very valuable resources, which they’ve wanted all along. Zelensky is no longer running the show, and the global elites will decide how quickly to escalate this battle. Countless men, women, and children will die, all for the pride of a few who want to destroy the world to Build Back Better.
Posted originally on the CTH on April 16, 2023 | Sundance
Tucker Carlson has interviewed Twitter CEO Elon Musk and will broadcast the interview on Monday at 8:00pm ET.
If Carlson had the accurate and full context of the background situation, he would be able to ask the right questions. It appears Mr. Carlson does have the key issues well understood. This should be a good interview.
In this preview segment {Direct Rumble Link Here}, Musk admits his mind was blown when he discovered the extent of the full government access to everything that was happening on Twitter. He essentially confirms two key elements. First, our long-held framework of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop, is accurate. Second, Musk had no idea when he bought it.
There has been an ongoing debate about whether Elon Musk was aware of the U.S. government and intelligence community control over Twitter prior to the purchase; with many people saying there is no way that Musk could not know given the scale of the money involved, $42 billion and the due diligence that generally follows such transactions.
However, in this interview Musk states he had no idea how much operational control and influence the government and intelligence apparatus held over the platform prior to the purchase.
Readers here are so far ahead of the curve on this story, it’s kind of cool, funny, and yet frustrating at the same time. Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop is all a wild conspiracy theory born from the oddly wired brain of some dude in the corner of the internet; until suddenly it’s not.
Factually, it has been visible since the U.S. Government operation began in 2011/2012, yet no one was willing to believe it. For several years, CTH has been outlining the relationship between DHS and social media, specifically Twitter. However, as I said from the outset of this new awakening moment, I promise you things are not what they seem.
As noted earlier, and it is worth repeating, let me put some context to the dynamic that will hopefully clarify the issue and perhaps the context will help explain what we are seeing and not seeing as this unfolds. There are going to be a lot of citations to fill in the details, and understanding the modern Fourth Branch of Government is critical.
♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter was/is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012. Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus. As he now admits, Elon Musk had no idea.
To explain the background activity of Twitter in a way that readers could understand, I used the metaphor of Twitter as Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop.
…”The metaphorical Jack had a great idea, open a coffee shop where the beverages were free and use internal advertising as the income subsidy to operate the business. Crowds came for the free coffee, comfy couches, fellowship, conversation and enjoyment.
It didn’t matter where Jack got the coffee, how he paid for it, or didn’t, or what product advertising the customers would be exposed to while there. Few people thought about such things. Curiously, it didn’t matter what size the crowd was; in the backroom of Jack’s Coffee Shop they were able to generate massive amounts of never-ending free coffee at extreme scales.
Over time, using the justification of parking lot capacity and township regulations, not everyone would be able to park and enter. Guards were placed at the entrance to pre-screen customers. Some were denied. A debate began.”…
Here’s what happened….
In/around 2011 and 2012 the U.S. Government, Obama administration and the U.S. State Dept., came into Jack’s Coffee Shop and asked him for help.
The govt officials needed to deliver massive amounts of coffee to their allies in Egypt, Libya and the middle east to support the Arab Spring party. Jack told the officials he was willing to help but didn’t have the capacity to deliver on that scale. The officials told Jack not to worry, they would handle that aspect – he just needed to agree to the partnership and let them utilize his business. Jack agreed.
[Note, the timing here is not accidental. The operational agreement happened at the same time DHS was fine tuning the domestic surveillance systems to monitor social media platforms and target political opposition. See The Fourth Branch.]
Over the next several weeks, months and eventually years, Jack watched as hundreds of new employees flooded into the business to facilitate the rapid expansion. Along with a myriad of new faces, new equipment was delivered, and soon Jack found himself looking at heavy industrial equipment erecting large buildings in the back lots of the property. Coffee urns were replaced with massive industrial coffee delivery systems that far exceeded anything Jack ever imagined.
Business was booming, but slowly Jack realized he had lost control. Jack was riding a dragon.
As the years progressed, thousands of new employees moved into the offices of the new buildings and massive pipelines were producing incredible scales of coffee. Jack noted offices of the United Nations Human Rights Commission were now creating unique blends of coffee for international distribution, and the European Commission had an entire suite of specially trained coffee production engineers creating alternate combinations and flavors.
By 2018, Jack had essentially become an “owner emeritus”; his name was on the shingle, but the day-to-day operation of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop had turned into an industrial park complex.
Jack saw his personal wealth attached to the success of the business, but operationally, his only responsibility was traveling to symposiums and venues where he would stand on stage and wax philosophically about the future of a coffee delivery organization he no longer controlled. Day-to-day operations were now controlled by experts in the scale of massive industrial coffee. Those experts came from the Dept of Homeland Security.
[The Intercept] – […] Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February.
In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government. Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.” (read more)
To streamline the operational efficiencies as the industrial coffee system grew, direct portals between the Washington DC government offices and Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop were created. Officials no longer needed to travel to the location of Jack’s Coffee Shop in order to operate the valves, mixers, grinders and systems to generate the scale of blends being produced.
Experts could now use direct portals to the facility to operate the coffee production systems remotely, with a limited number of specially trained (FBI) coffee engineers doing the laborious tasks and maintenance at the facility.
The badges were intimidating to Jack who went to sleep every night under the realization he no longer had any clue about how the coffee shop communication business was operating.
[…] The extent to which the DHS initiatives affect Americans’ daily social feeds is unclear. During the 2020 election, the government flagged numerous posts as suspicious, many of which were then taken down, documents cited in the Missouri attorney general’s lawsuit disclosed. And a 2021 report by the Election Integrity Partnership at Stanford University found that of nearly 4,800 flagged items, technology platforms took action on 35 percent — either removing, labeling, or soft-blocking speech, meaning the users were only able to view content after bypassing a warning screen. The research was done “in consultation with CISA,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Prior to the 2020 election, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord, Wikipedia, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Verizon Media met on a monthly basis with the FBI, CISA, and other government representatives. According to NBC News, the meetings were part of an initiative, still ongoing, between the private sector and government to discuss how firms would handle misinformation during the election. (keep reading)
After several years of increasing distance from the Coffee Shop operation he initially started, eventually Jack decided it was silly to own an industrial coffee delivery system that he didn’t control. So, Jack decided to sell his shingle to someone else.
Enter, Elon Musk.
Billionaire Elon Musk, a man intimately familiar with large industrial systems and government, had been watching the disgruntled visitors to Jack’s Coffee Shop who were no longer permitted to enter. Musk saw an inequity between the amount of coffee that was available, and the scarcity of the coffee amid a community blacklisted by the operational executives and managers of the shop.
With expressions of both interest and fellowship, Mr. Elon Musk told Mr. Jack Dorsey he would take ownership of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and remove any discriminatory guards that were now controlling permitted entry. Jack had no aversion to Elon and eventually a deal was brokered.
After the transfer of sale was complete, Mr. Musk fired many of the guards and then set about checking the payroll to identify which group of shop employees were actually involved in the generation of coffee, and which employees were involved in promotion of the industrial coffee delivery system that were no longer needed.
Within this process, Elon Musk begins to discover the complex nature of what, at least at the surface, appeared to be an uncomplicated coffee shop. Why is there a 500-room glass walled office building on the backside of the coffee shop? What is going on in that GEC building that has anything to do with selling domestic coffee?
The sunlight revelations began surfacing several months ago, when someone of reasonably intelligent curiosity finally asked Elon Musk the right question about this direct portal from DHS into the coffee shop. Twitter owner Elon Musk had no idea a DHS portal into the coffee shop existed and what it would be for.
To put it in brutally honest terms, the State Dept initially created the partnership between the U.S. government and Twitter (Arab Spring). However, when the operations needed to become domestically centered (post Trump election), another agency stepped in. The United States Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) is the operating system running in the background of Twitter.
The State Dept started it with GEC, but ultimately DHS, via CISA, controlled Twitter. The justification for control was ‘national security.’ Mr. Elon Musk is now the face of a quasi govt controlled enterprise. This is why what we see being released by Elon Musk in the Twitter Files is actually a filtered outcome as a result of this new ownership dynamic.
Put simply, DHS stakeholders, to include the DOJ, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), are mitigating any consequential public exposure of their domestic surveillance activity by controlling and feeding Mr. Musk selected information about their prior Twitter operations. DHS is still the ghost in the machine.
The larger objective of U.S. involvement in social media has always been monitoring and surveillance of the public conversation, and then ultimately controlling and influencing public opinion.
I will continue peeling these types of issues apart, applying sunlight as heavily as possible, because the mechanisms and the institutions themselves need to be destroyed. They cannot be reformed because they have assembled too much power. They need to be completely defunded and removed.
[…] “Intelligence agencies backed new startups designed to monitor the vast flow of information across social networks to better understand emerging narratives and risks.” [HERE]
Posted originally on the CTH on April 14, 2023 | Sundance
Always keep in mind that retails sales from the Dept of Commerce [DATA HERE pdf] are always calculated in dollars. Inflation can artificially skewer retail sales if prices increase, and yet consumer purchases decline at a rate lower than the increase in price. Fewer units sold at higher prices can give the false impression of increased sales.
During an inflationary environment, when prices increase yet retail sales drop, there are substantially fewer units being purchased. Overall purchases at stores, restaurants and online declined a seasonally adjusted 1% in March from the prior month.
During the time measured gasoline was less expensive, so that led the drop in fuel sales; however, drops in dept stores (-2.5%), General Merchandise (-3.0%), electronics (-2.1%), and building supplies (-2.1%), shows another broad-based pullback of Main Street consumer spending. (pdf here)
These outcomes are in general alignment with what many people have shared via regional ground reports. Grocery store sales are flat despite major increases in grocery store prices (+10 to +20%). People are buying fewer grocery store units and making their food budget stretch as far as possible.
Durable goods are not considered essential, and sales of cars, electronics and department store products are much lower.
I am actually a little (pleasantly) surprised to see restaurant sales holding (+0.1%), despite the massive increase in fresh food costs. I thought people would eat out less, but the total decline in restaurant foot traffic seems to be in the single digits. I guess people can afford it more than I anticipated.
(Via Wall Street Journal) – […] The retail-sales report mainly captures spending on goods rather than most services such as travel, rent and utilities, offering only a partial picture of spending. The Commerce Department will release more complete figures later this month.
Spending on air travel was robust in March but outlays on other services like hotels declined, transaction data from Bank of America credit and debit cards showed. And the cost of shelter has increased faster than the overall rate of inflation, federal data show.
Some Americans have had to make adjustments to allow them to keep spending.
Recent data suggest many consumers are more cautious about purchases of goods they often have to borrow money to buy. In March, spending declined in big-ticket categories including vehicle sales, electronics, furniture, and at home-improvement and department stores.
“The current challenges in the used auto industry are well documented,” CarMax Inc. Chief Executive Bill Nash said on a call with analysts this week, “with affordability pressured by broad inflation, climbing interest rates, tightening lending standards and prolonged low consumer confidence.” (more)
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 