GOP Rep. Grills Obama Appointee In Heated Hearing ~> Demands Info On Government Data Mining ~> Video

Congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin grilled the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday, September 12, 2013 at a House Committee Meeting. He demanded to know from CFPB head Richard Cordray how many Americans had their financial information data mined without their knowledge.

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NSA Tapping All Smartphone Records & Applications ~> Full Report

For the record, there is nothing cool about it. In fact, you're violating the Constitution. America never authorized this, and we will see it stopped.

The U.S. National Security Agency is able to crack protective measures on iPhones, BlackBerry and Android devices, giving it access to users' data on all major smartphones, according to a report Sunday in German news weekly Der Spiegel.

The magazine cited internal documents from the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ in which the agencies describe setting up dedicated teams for each type of phone as part of their effort to gather intelligence on potential threats such as terrorists.

The data obtained this way includes contacts, call lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information, Der Spiegel reported. The documents don't indicate that the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of phone users but rather that these techniques are used to eavesdrop on specific individuals, the magazine said.

The article doesn't explain how the magazine obtained the documents, which are described as "secret." But one of its authors is Laura Poitras, an American filmmaker with close contacts to NSA leaker Edward Snowden who has published several articles about the NSA in Der Spiegel in recent weeks.

The documents outline how, starting in May 2009, intelligence agents were unable to access some information on BlackBerry phones for about a year after the Canadian manufacturer began using a new method to compress the data. After GCHQ cracked that problem, too, analysts celebrated their achievement with the word "Champagne," Der Spiegel reported.

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Citizen's Turn Table On NSA & Obama ~> Launch Where Is Obama ~> Tracks His Every Movement ~> Full Report

“Where is Obama?” is a new site that uses crowd-sourced information to track the location of the president. The idea launched in response to government surveillance. (Photo via Tumblr)

Old Childhood saying, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. Just maybe, this is what it's gonna take to get DC to come to their senses. We suggest, do this to every elected official in DC.

In response to what some consider over-reaching surveillance programs conducted by U.S. intelligence agencies, which have been shown to collect thousands of communications with no terror connection, a group decrying the privacy implications of these programs is turning the tables on the president.

According to the Creator’s Project, “Where is Obama” pinpoints the location of President Barack Obama using what the group calls the ”Crowd-Sourced Positioning System, or CSPS.”

“The position of the president is a state secret. The White House website shows only Barack Obama’s schedule from the current day, but never dates beyond. The accuracy of this information is controversial. Obama, on the other hand, knows your entire calendar,” the creators Kim Asendorf, Ole Fach, Kyle McDonald and Jonas Lund said of the project. “Every person in the world can now participate in the supervision of the President.”

Speaking with the Creator’s Project, McDonald explained that the idea was initially spurred by the global search for whistleblower Edward Snowden after his initial leak about the NSA’s classified programs..

More: The Blaze

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Obama-Care's "Database" Rivals NSA ~> Privacy & Legal Questions Soar ~> U Need 2 Know ~> Full Report ~> WTF

The information revealed, everybody needs to know. This is unacceptable and must be stopped. Either the people own the Government, or the two entrenched political parties do. Protection from Government intrusion and the right to privacy is woven throughout our Constitution. It's an explicit and indisputable right of every American, it's not open to negotiation. Big Brother dictating, monitoring and utilizing all there is to know about every citizen, it ends here and now!

Would you trust thousands of low-level Federal bureaucrats and contractors with one-touch access to your private financial and medical information? Under Obamacare you won’t have any choice.

As the Obamacare train-wreck begins to gather steam, there is increasing concern in Congress over something called the Federal Data Services Hub. The Data Hub is a comprehensive database of personal information being established by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement the federally facilitated health insurance exchanges. The purpose of the Data Hub, according to a June 2013 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, is to provide “electronic, near real-time access to federal data” and “access to state and third party data sources needed to verify consumer-eligibility information.” In these days of secret domestic surveillance by the intelligence community, rogue IRS officials and state tax agencies using private information for political purposes, and police electronically logging every license plate that passes by, the idea of the centralized Data Hub is making lawmakers and citizens nervous.

They certainly should be; the potential for abuse is enormous. The massive, centralized database will include comprehensive personal information such as income and financial data, family size, citizenship and immigration status, incarceration status, social security numbers, and private health information. It will compile dossiers based on information obtained from the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Veterans Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, state Medicaid databases, and for some reason the Peace Corps. The Data Hub will provide web-based, one-stop shopping for prying into people’s personal affairs.

Not to fear, HHS says, the Data Hub will be completely secure.

Read More: Rare

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