Friday, June 7, 2013

Huge Obama donor, Democracy Alliance founder turns over domestic spying

A wireless provider with ties to the secret dark money group the Democracy Alliance is pushing back against the Obama administration’s surveillance of customers. CREDO Mobile cofounder Michael Kieschnick said on Thursday he was “deeply disturbed” by the administration’s invasion of individual’s civil liberties. - Washington Free Beacon

“As the CEO of a mobile phone company, I’m deeply disturbed by the Obama administration’s growing record of executive power grabs at the expense of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties,” Kieschnick said in a statement to CNN Money.

Scope of phone records seizure causes alarm; data collection goes beyond Verizon - Dave Boyer/Washington Times

The Obama administration on Thursday defended its secret seizure of the phone records of millions of U.S. citizens as part of counterterrorism efforts, while privacy advocates blasted the move as illegal and a debate erupted in Congress over the intended scope of a key surveillance law.

In a new development, the National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies in real time, obtaining audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails and other information, various news outlets reported. The program is code-named PRISM.

NSA Phone Record Collection 'Beyond Orwellian,' ACLU Says - Huffington Post

“From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming," Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, said in a statement. "It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents. It is beyond Orwellian, and it provides further evidence of the extent to which basic democratic rights are being surrendered in secret to the demands of unaccountable intelligence agencies.”

ACLU on Obama’s NSA Snooping on Verizon Customers: ‘It Is Beyond Orwellian’ - Jammie Wearing Fool

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy