US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal

 

DHS sent undercover agents to meetings and infiltrated chats of groups opposing Trump’s immigration crackdown

Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.

Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.

Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.

Russian spy trial: How difficult is it to get top secret information out of Germany

A German spy has gone on trial accused of betraying his country, in one of the biggest cases of treason in decades. The case centers around a top official from Germany's foreign intelligence agency. He is alleged to have turned spy for Russia. Prosecutors believe the man and an accomplice shared top secret documents regarding the war in Ukraine with spies in Moscow. Investigators say the men received thousands of euros in return.

The Spy in Your Phone | Al Jazeera World

 

In mid-2020, a mobile phone belonging to an Al Jazeera Arabic investigative team was hacked. Over the next few months, reporter Tamer Almisshal and the Canadian research group Citizen Lab investigated Pegasus, the sophisticated spyware used.

Huawei: A Global Force - High Tech Giant and Suspected Spy | DW Documentary

 Telecommunications giant Huawei is said to be one of the most powerful companies in China. But Huawei has been accused of systematic espionage, and some Western governments doubt whether the company is truly independent of the Chinese government.

Want Students To Study More And Behave? Pull A Big Brother

Understanding the paranoia that pervades China's seems simple were going to spy on you like stink on _____.  Will monitor your telephone calls, internet use and your associations.  Given all the spy games one might believe that an institution of higher learning might be a little less paranoid. Wrong.  A university in  Central China has concluded that spying on their students activities 24 hours a day will instill paranoia, I mean a sense of responsibility in students studying there.  Why not just go all the way like Big Brother and install two monitors so that they can really be brought under control and be taught the true meaning of what their future lives have in store for them. A life of suppression.

A university in central China has reportedly been using surveillance cameras to monitor virtually every inch of its 73-hectare (181-acre) campus, including its classrooms and dormitories.

The Wuchang University of Technology in the city of Wuhan reportedly introduced the technology last year, paying 6 million yuan (about £645,000) in order to keep closer tabs on its 12,500 undergraduates.

A 100-strong team of officials has been tasked with monitoring the images as they are captured, according to a report on cnhubei.com, a news website in Hubei province, where the university is located.

    Internet users also reacted to the revelation with suspicion.

“It’s a university, not a prison,” one critic wrote on Weibo, a Chinese site similar to Twitter.

“Can I suggest installing surveillance cameras in the bedrooms of the university’s president and [Communist] party secretary?” said another.

Bill Maher: 'What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas' Should Apply Everywhere

Bill Maher's New Rules on the price we're paying for the lack of privacy in America, whether it's the NSA, or the telecoms or social networking and what should be done about it. MAHER: And finally, New Rule, the ad slogan, 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" must be expanded to include the entire country,…

Alert The Irony Police: US indicts China officials over cyber spying

The U.S. Justice Department announced on Monday that a grand jury had indicted five Chinese nationals for hacking.   Yes, the U.S. government which has used the NSA to collect millions of private phone calls and emails from not only their own citizens, but those of its allies and world leaders like Angela Merkel whose mobile phone was hacked by the NSA.

Its all good, because it was the USA doing the spying and not those Communist Chinese.

The United States has indicted five Chinese military officials with cyber espionage charges for allegedly hacking into US companies to gain trade secrets, the Justice Department has said, publicly accusing China of cyber spying for the first time.

The department said on Monday that the hackers targeted US companies in the nuclear power, metals and solar products industries to steal information useful to competitors in China. The charges are the first-of-its-kind against state actors by the US.

China refuted the accusation, saying they were "made up," Reuters news agency reported. China's Foreign Ministry said that it had already protested against the indictment and urged the US to "immediately rectify mistake".

The ministry added that "so-called prosecution" would damage China-US relations and mutual trust, Reuters reported.

US Attorney-General Eric Holder said that the companies targeted are Alcoa World Alumina, Westinghouse Electric Company, Allegheny Technologies, US Steel Corporation, United Steelworkers Union, and SolarWorld.

Spying on millions of Americans in the 'United States of Secrets'

FRONTLINE documentary reveals U.S. domestic surveillance program's birth, evolution in secrecy

You have to remember that the NSA was created after World War II to prevent another surprise attack. That was the whole raison d'etre for NSA: Pearl Harbor. We don't want another Pearl Harbor. — James Bamford, author

When al-Qaida terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, the staff at the world's most technologically sophisticated intelligence agency learned about it from a news broadcast on a $300 TV set. Shortly afterward, a transformation began at the NSA that would irrevocably alter the way the U.S. government regarded its citizens' privacy, just as Americans faced choices about what freedoms to sacrifice to prevent more attacks on home soil.

"You have an agency that was created to prevent something like 9/11 — they are not allowed to turn their eyes and ears on America. But of course, the attack came from al-QaIda operatives who had been living inside America," said Michael Kirk, producer, director and writer of a new FRONTLINE documentary film, "United States of Secrets," premiering tonight on PBS at 9 p.m. (check local listings) and previewed exclusively on Yahoo News.

The remedy, as we now know, was to turn an agency with a strict legal mandate to look outward at the activities of foreign governments inward, toward its own. "So the government was faced with a question: What do they have to do to walk right up to the edge of what's legal and right to protect the rest of the country?," Kirk, whose other film credits include the Peabody award-winning "League of Denial" and "Bush's War," told Yahoo News in a telephone interview.

Following those attacks it became apparent that if you were an American you'd better find an enormous amount of patriotic fervor and stifle any doubts about the removal of your civil liberties with the passage of the USA Patriots Act.  Like in the former East Germany Americans were encouraged to inform on their neighbors and friends like the former East German government did as means of keeping track of dissenters.