The FBI’s Rap Back program is quietly transforming the way employers conduct background checks. While routine background checks provide employers with a one-time “snapshot” of their employee’s past criminal history, employers enrolled in federal and state Rap Back programs receive ongoing, real-time notifications and updates about their employees’ run-ins with law enforcement, including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions. (“Rap” is an acronym for Record of Arrest and Prosecution; “Back” is short for background.) Testifying before Congress about the program in 2015, FBI Director James Comey explained some limits of regular background checks: “People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this.”
A majority of states already have their own databases that they use for background checks and have accessed in-state Rap Back programs since at least 2007; states and agencies now partnering with the federal government will be entering their data into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database. The NGI database, widely considered to be the world’s largest biometric database, allows federal and state agencies to search more than 70 million civil fingerprints submitted for background checks alongside over 50 million prints submitted for criminal purposes. In July 2015, Utah became the first state to join the federal Rap Back program. Last April, aviation workers at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport and Boston Logan International Airport began participating in a federal Rap Back pilot program for aviation employees. Two weeks ago, Texas submitted its first request to the federal criminal Rap Back system.
Rap Back has been advertised by the FBI as an effort to target individuals in “positions of trust,” such as those who work with children, the elderly, and the disabled. According to a Rap Back spokesperson, however, there are no formal limits as to “which populations of individuals can be enrolled in the Rap Back Service.” Civil liberties advocates fear that under Trump’s administration the program will grow with serious consequences for employee privacy, accuracy of records, and fair employment practices.
A fingerprint-scanning device that allows for portable FBI-certified fingerprint scanners to be used anywhere.
Photo: Alex Hicks Jr./The Spartanburg Herald-Journal/AP
Indefinite Retention
In typical federal background checks, the FBI expunges or returns the fingerprints it collects. But for the Rap Back system, the FBI retains the prints it collects on behalf of companies and agencies so that it can notify employers about their employee’s future encounters with law enforcement. The FBI has the license to retain all submitted fingerprints indefinitely — even after notice of death. Employers are even offered the option to purchase lifetime subscriptions to the program for the cost of $13 per person. The decision to participate in Rap Back is at employers’ discretion. Employees have no choice in the matter.
“This type of infrastructure always tends to undergo mission creep,” explained Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union, referring to how agencies often find secondary uses for data beyond its original function.
There are no laws preventing the FBI from using the data it collects for other purposes, said Jeramie Scott, an attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. A massive trove of digital fingerprints collected by the FBI, he noted, could be used to open up devices like smart phones without the owner’s consent. In addition, Scott pointed out that the FBI often collects a photo of Rap Back participants’ faces. “Although the FBI has stated that they do not use these photos in facial recognition searches,” he said, “there is no legal barrier from the bureau changing this policy.” The agency is no stranger to mission creep. As documents obtained by EPIC show, the FBI’s use of facial recognition searches is increasing and the NGI database continues to expand.
In January, EPIC obtained two years of monthly statistics for the NGI system under the Freedom of Information Act. The summary sheets show that the database’s expansion has been fueled by submissions of non-criminal identifiers, such as the prints submitted for background checks. Fact sheets from January 2015 through August 2016 show the database growing at a much higher rate from its collection of data from civil settings than from criminal justice purposes. During that period, civil submission rates constituted nearly 70 percent of new submissions. “Through the Rap Back program the FBI is collecting biographical and biometric data on potentially millions of civilians for purposes not associated with criminal justice,” Scott said.
At least two dozen separate state laws already include provisions for various kinds of individuals to be entered into the Rap Back Service. Slideshows obtained by EPIC through a FOIA request reveal that the FBI planned as early as 2013 for the Rap Back program to be introduced into various employment-related legislation across states. In a slide identifying “legislating hurdles,” the FBI listed the need to identify state legislators to “champion” the program and to “attach needed language to other legislation already on calendar.” The program’s greatest victory in this respect is a little-known provision of the Affordable Care Act, which awards grants for states to develop the means to implement Rap Back for long-term home health care providers as well as other “direct patient access” employees. According to an explainer provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it is possible that Congress may require states to enroll in Rap Back in order to receive federal funding for health care programs.
In June, Hawaii became the first state to put gun owners into its Rap Back system, which will notify law enforcement whenever a gun owner is arrested for a crime in any state. Jay Stanley, of the ACLU, said that such a real-time database for monitoring might seem like a good idea in theory — until the same logic is applied to all kinds of other groups in practice. In Utah, for instance, anytime an immigrant with a driver’s license generates any sort of criminal record, the state’s Rap Back program will notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement, possibly triggering deportation proceedings.
What the program counts as “triggering events” differs depending on how subscribers configure their systems. In Missouri, where public school teachers are entered into the program, a police captain told a local paper that scanning fingerprints triggers the release of closed records, including charges that are not prosecuted and judicial decisions that result in dismissals or not guilty findings.
Such a broad mandate could “provide employers with an unprecedented window into employees’ lives,” according to Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In domestic violence cases reported to the police, for instance, both the abuser and victim can be arrested. “Depending on workplace discrimination laws,” Lynch said, “this could allow employers to use a minor criminal infraction as a reason to demote or fire an employee.”
Lynch said it’s possible that employees could be fired for an arrest where they were exercising their First Amendment rights: filming public officials, attending protests, blocking streets. “It’s unclear if an employer that takes action based on the arrest would know the arrest is tied to First Amendment protected activity.”
Faulty Records
Outdated and incorrect criminal history information already leads to workers losing their jobs. Labor and privacy advocates fear that the national Rap Back program, which draws on a massive NGI database and depends on data sharing between several agencies, will only make these errors worse.
FBI and state databases are not known for their accuracy. As the National Employment Law Project reported in 2013, as many as 50 percent of the FBI’s arrest records fail to include information on the final disposition of a case — that is, whether a person was convicted, acquitted, or if charges against them were dropped. Because many people who are arrested are never charged or convicted, a high percentage of the FBI’s records incorrectly indicate a subject’s involvement with a crime.
“Often this is because states fail to update their own records, and the FBI does not proactively verify the accuracy of information coming from the states,” Lynch explained. “This has a much greater impact on communities of color because all criminal history systems include a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos, and immigrants.” An estimated 1.8 million workers a year are subject to FBI background checks, according to the National Employment Law Project.
An FBI spokesperson from the Rap Back program said that the program “works diligently with all agencies to maintain accurate Identity History Records” and that if discrepancies exist, teams are in place to assist subscribers and individuals.
Jay Stanley, of the ACLU, views the Rap Back program as part of a larger trend toward the monitoring and policing of everyday life. “The whole purpose of program,” he said, “is for people to be fired.”
Top photo: A demonstrator is arrested during a march in protest of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, Jan. 20, 2017, in Portland, Ore.
The Politics of the Possible: 150 Federal Prosecutors Denounce Trumps Muslim Ban
Stingrays Provide FBI NSA Informal Federal “Oversight” for members of the Congressional Committees Providing Formal Oversight of the FBI NSA , Hampton Homeowners, Gun Owners, Anti War Activists and Intercept readers.
“A New Frontier in Police Surveillance”
Featuring Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Chairman, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD), Ranking Member, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform; Adam Bates, Policy Analyst, Cato Institute; moderated by Julian Sanchez, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute.
https://www.cato.org/events/stingrays-new-frontier-police-surveillance
Although this sounds scary – it’s meaningless. By fbi standards that would elimate 75 – 80% of the adult population.
If an employer is bent on getting rid of someone, they do. Employment in many states is at-will, no justification needed.
Likewise, if you bring value no employer is going to sagotage their business after spending thousands on an employee that brings adds to the bottom line.
Faulty assumption that employers can accurately predict the value of an employee or even measure the employees value. So many companies fail because they use the wrong criteria for evaluating their employees and sabatoge themselves by firing the best workers while promoting those workers who focus more on creating for employers the perception of value. The fair concern is that this is a flawed indicator for predicting employee performance and also the kind of flaw that employers are proven historically not to be good at spotting and avoiding. In the long run, you’re right that these companies suffer a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace because of their flawed employee evaluation strategies. But, the long term can be a long long long time and in the short term these imbecile bosses are overlooking and discarding the best employees in favor of ones that appeal to their prejudices. What ends up happening is most large companies have some natural percent of poor management and hiring decisions based on their prejudice and there’s some competition for marginal advantage by inclusivity programs that re-capture some of the value foolishly discarded by inappropriate prejudice based on bad information.
But the success or failure of a company is usually based on more financial significant issues of product placement and differetiation not on the efficiency of their HR. So if GE has 12% of lost employee value due to prejudicial HR innefficiency and IBM has 14% of a lost employee value, then it doesn’t really matter much in the ROI big picture dollar value of business viability calculation because HR inneffiency is only a small part of the profit and loss calculations. What ends up happening is that bad HR practices act like the Aids virus or other other long term infection acts in the body. the HR runs inefficient process dragging down the whole company a little and if the rest of the company is healthy enough then the company survives despite the HR sabotage of the company done by misguided assessments of employee value.
So yes, employers HR routinely sabotage their own business and this new tool provided by the FBI seems likely to increase their opportunity and inclination and convenience of HR sabotaging the company even more than already happens.
Also, There’s the question of whether this is fair or just or right to the employees who also happen to be “people” and citizens and deserving in their own right for the concern of our society.
My first reaction is that it is illegal. If you have done time – that is paying your debt to society….and this program is saying the debt is never ending. therefore no-one other than lawyers or the elite get to walk away ( lawyers are quietly reinstated- quietly). that’s a constitutional equal protection issue.
I can say it is well meaning – but with the McCarthy era people were black-listed – I’m guessing also well meaning. . . WE have enough feel good laws to prove they are worthless – good intentions do not override the written law – and if the law is written for people to feel good about something they are worthless. I use the example of the law requiring truckers to clean the snow off the tops of the trucks (trailers) but no provision to how to climb up on a 13’6″ trailer to do it…
You might feel good but the stupidity doesn’t help anyone. . .
If a person is honest – there is no reason for checking and if they aren’t honest all the checking is illegally spying on people
The FBI has announced they’ll stop accepting all emailed requests in a month, will force the use of their #FOIA portal, max or snail mail only…
The fantasy world of Donald Trump – or Richard “Dick”Cheney are you safer today??
Is a dictatorship safer than a democracy? MAD MAX is crazy – but is he safer in an asylum?
Orwell’s little fantasy, however seemingly coming to pass, left out one thing he couldn’t have comprehended. . 300 million guns, and enough of their owners, starving, pissed off, and ready to drag every last one of these scumsucking cockroaches out of their granite palaces and burn them alive in the streets. Give it a few years and one Internet catastrophe where every supply chain to the food store shelves and access to money from coast to coast disintegrates. It’ll make the Walking Dead look like a children’s fairy tale.
Fake news like this! “Melania Trump has started Donald on a new diet. It’s called the “Spore Diet.” In the morning you get a Spore Smoothie and half a banana, for lunch you get a spore sandwich and some whiskey and the other half of that banana. But night time is the most exciting. You mix a packet of Manwich with spores and a cup of Lays crushed potato chips. MMMM…you’ll lose 100 in the first month.” Can’t wait to try it!
Hey, it works. I lost 500 lbs in just three weeks.
So now when an employee sues the employer for unfair termination, the employer can reach into the database for any unfavorable information (post-employment) to retroactively justify that termination in court, even if that information is old and unrelated to the termination.
And when socio-pathic employers wish to retaliate after terminating an employee, they can now make a false police report and claim, for example, that the employee talked about jihad and bombing something. Even a complete story on the database will likely interfere with that person getting a job, particularly if it involves business travel (via plane).
As for mission creep, I’ll bet that the FBI will soon realize that their database is incomplete without private medical data since this may hint at mental disorders, illegal drug use, or inability to perform optimally due to use of certain prescriptions. Certainly medical data is relevant at least as much as other background data. Besides, it should give the socio-pathic employer endless enjoyment by sharing that data with former coworkers.
Do workers also get access to look up thier company executives and directors on Rap Back? If it’s thier business to know this information then it’s certainly the the employee’s business too, or does the FBI only work for the bosses?
Coincidently I just found out my last employer is now walking around with an ankle bracelet for committing $8 million of fraud. Will the FBI notify the people whose livelihoods depend on this guy? Or will they only send out alerts if the receptionist goes to a demonstration.
Land of the free [sic]; home of the brave. RIP
This program has existed for many decades.
As a truck driver I have been unjustly fired from jobs for the last 30 years; on one occasion tried to get the HAZ-MAT endorsement in my New York licence the state falsely claimed that I had cheated , and revoked my licence for 1- year.
Requests for help to Senator Charles Schumer, and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney were ignored.
Who are the terrorists ?
I wonder if the child porn server that the cia operated would flag those agents in a job interview (lookup the reddit thread on that one). Probably not though. They would be protected like cops and prosecutors and the criminals they work with. It is so much bullshit. As if they want you to not work or build a life. When you go to jail in this country the cops and prosecutors do not want you to get rehabilitated they want you to pay and get hurt and get raped in jail. There isn’t some heart warming benevolence behind them saying oh he’ll learn his lesson. It’s more like I hope he’s going to fucking endure hardship.
Now if you work for the NSA CIA or law enforcement well then you can have sex with teenagers and do whatever you want and they’re protected They’ll pass any job interview criminal background check because after all we can’t have the real scumbags put away now can we.
Gonna need more than a vague “Check Reddit” on that, though I hardly doubt it.
HAHAHAHA.
“OperatED” as if it’s a past tense thang. Maybe you mean that UVA server? You know, the one operated by those nice Hillary Democrats.
Or the one in Maryland-and that one, part political tool, part ‘open secret’ that NSA supervisors refuse to shut down?
Or maybe that one in Britain? Moldova? Thailand? All the same Company, with help of course from the Goggle Eyed Nations Alliance, and the ‘nice NGO’s’ of the world.
So Elmer Fudd is in bed with the piggy bosses even more than before. No wonder so many Americans choose to operate their own businesses rather than work for someone else, even though operating a small business often earns people even less money and forces them to work even longer hours.
I have a new motto especially for the Government’s “Insider threat program.” Please be bland. Never write anything, never say anything, no ideas or originality please. You got the job but are only filling the chair.
In 99.9% of the responses to these kinds of articles, all I see is people regurgitating what is already known, whether it’s on The Intercept or other similar outlets, YouTube and so on.
We’ve known about this kind of spying/stalking for some years now. What I don’t see is people discussing what to do about it, how to change the laws or bring issues to courts to stop it, and hold those responsible to account.
The trick is gaining legal “standing” to sue, class action, individually or in a ‘mosaic’ of lawsuits – which is very difficult because proving the abuse is the first step to standing.
Then, many who could challenge it cop plea deals before their cases get to court, and they never even know their cases are part of the bigger picture ( the massive wiretapping rubber stamp operation out in Riverside/San Bernardino is one example)
Jewell -v- NSA is an example, and First Unitarian -v-NSA are the beginning of some action.
https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitarian-church-los-angeles-v-nsa
Small potatoes. My employer will fire you for asking someone out on a date.
Small potatoees? There might be a future for you in law enforcement.
In 2010, many publications reported on the Wikileaks revelation that the US government was instructing their diplomats to collect biometric data on their foreign counterparts. When coupled with the human intelligence (Humint) they were previously instructed to collect (e.g. credit card, cellphone and frequent flier numbers, as well as information on their Internet identities and telecommunications systems), one could plainly see that that was a chicken that would come home to roost. There are literally tens of millions of Americans who harbor little concern for the fact the that the feds and their corporate partners are sneaking into the most private areas of their lives and sniffing their underwear for the purpose of gathering trace evidence of wrong doing.
Electronic monitoring (AKA Stalking) in real time by governments and corporations has now been made possible by advancements in technology. Smart cars, smart meters, smart phones, RFID implants, directed energy devices, smart jewelry, electronic tracking devices, electronic biometric (medical) monitors, smart employee badges, smart student badges, WiFi cell phone tracking, WiFi hidden camera monitoring, image collection and tracking by stationary cameras in public venues, remote credit card tracking, remote passport readers, surreptitious infrared and microwave scanning, Remote Neural Monitoring, smart dust, insect sized camera drones, and a myriad of computer spy software are just a few of the tools available to those who have a mandate to track your every action.
Dr Barrie Trower SPEAKS WITH TARGETED INDIVIDUALS; MICROWAVE EFFECTS ON BODY & BRAIN EXPLAINED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hl7uaNvtbQ
“Smart” Dust…
https://m.phys.org/news/2011-01-algorithm-enables-faster-dissemination-self-organizing.html
Smart Dust (AKA neural dust)
Neural Dust: An Ultrasonic, Low Power Solution
for Chronic Brain-Machine Interfaces
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.2196v1.pdf
And then there is “Smart Water” that also has a dust equivalent that is more suited for the aerial spraying of crowds.
https://phys.org/news/2008-01-watermark-criminals-high.html
Yes that’s true.
Thank you Karl for this link
It is well worth watching the entire interview
Agency / Military pricks way out of control.
RF weaponry / DEW’S maim, torture and slow kill civilians covertly.
Law Enforcement only get credit for arrests not judications. That is one reason why the system is screwed up. When you find that incorrect or non posted judication , YOU have to go to COURT with a LAWYER to get those who wrote the report and those in RECORDS do their job by CORRECTLY entering the CORRECT final disposition of the case.
I lived through the Macarthy era which was backed by Hoover’s FBI. The FBI had a list of subversive people and organizations. The ACLU and the NAACP were at the top of that list. You think civil liberties have been taken away? You ain’t seen nothin yet.
The lawlessness of law enforcement….John Dillinger was shot an killed outside a theater . I have never read of them trying to take him alive… Bonnie & Clyde….with all the bullet holes in the car it would be hard to think of them trying to take them alive…
FBI told cops to recreate evidence obtained by illegal secret cell phone trackers (stingrays)
2014 official notice equipment is “for lead purposes” may not be used as primary evidence in any hearing or trial
Great article, except the ridiculous ‘this will get worse under Trump’ assertion, as if the Obama administration wasn’t steadily and furiously eroding civil liberties. So the Intercept ignored it up to now, but is suddenly concerned about the program now that Trump has inherited it? It was always a bad idea.
Another example of Democracy (the people govern the government) having been replaced by a plutocracy (the wealthiest govern the people) and the Deep State. Ignore the people, shred the Constitution. It is working and that cannot be denied.
What a horrible, shitty, oppressive system. Imagine that: the FBI teaming up with the nation’s employers to track and monitor your every encounter with the police. As if working in the USA is not already oppressive enough as one is treated like a wage slave to be booted around on temp and contingency work contracts. The FBI: doing its very best to ruin the livelihoods of working class Americans!
Imagine that.
And does this program fit into the SAME Catagory as taking a Polygraph Test prior to Employment! Or a National Regestry…
Getting blindsided by cointelpro is a trip and meant to neutralize. How it can remain a secret while happening now is amazing.
“How it can remain a secret while happening now is amazing.”
It’s mind-boggling. Many turn a blind eye.
Old School FBI Cointelpro 1.0 is every where and in the hands of the many in the private and public sectors. Pelosi, Chaffetz, Massie and Schumer know it. Even Feinstein complains about it.
JTRIGs no secret. It’s been hiding behind the beguiling grin of that brother from another mother Barak Hussein Obama and the aw shucks folksiness George Cheney Bush long enough to normalize it on background and then…
Most of the MIC NSA FBI SigInt “methods” and “techniques” that can “never be revealed for national security reasons” are HERE now http://www.cjfe.org/snowden
The electeds are as scared as anyone else.
The FBI said that traditional background checks aren’t that useful as new information becomes available, the employer doesn’t know (and if that’s important, maybe the employer should make addition checks). Ok, fair enough FBI.
Yes they don’t report the disposition of the arrests (i.e. charges dropped). So is is important to have updated information or not? Seems to be a contradiction here somewhere.
True story: I was a PR person for a restaurant that fed the poor back in 2008-2011, and also an underground activist.
While I was pursued in various nefarious ways across the internet a I wrote about how the local cops could be ‘at my elbow’ within minutes of logging on to a computer; and pursued across multiple jurisdictions as I probed this and other elements of what we now know as Edward Snowden’s reveals; and as I was pursued like a criminal for practicing the Constitution, eventually they wore down- and so, they began a concerted campaign of slander, targeting my friends and associates, and eventually using the local cops to infer that I was a deviant, a criminal, under investigation, etc; and that in my workplace.
Looking back, by the time I knew this was happening ( I had the business cards of the exact cops who did it, courtesy of an associate) I realized it had been going on much longer- many years longer, in what is called gas-lighting situations, and intrusions to my home and computers.
While the slander campaign alone wasn’t enough to destroy my health and livelihood, it eventually had a corrosive effect that cannot be fully explained herein. And it has been effective for them on many levels, not least of which is that I watched as some good friends willingly became little more than scared or easily manipulated rats, and ‘community informants.’ Some of them are officially on the FBI payroll, and in their CI files now.
These campaigns are inspired by the exact same scum that ran the East German Stasi. Michael Chertoff, and his gang of gangster zionists did the same thing all over Europe for centuries- it’s what they do.
The question is: how can the people rise up against it?
In this case above, and my own, they are cutting to the source of any one persons ability to protest- at the bread that goes in their mouth; and that bread fueling the speech that comes out thereafter; and the people we break it with.
USG’s type of police state is emulating and “improving” Zersetzung by the notorious East German stasi. it helps somewhat to know about that kind of cr@p
https://www.ted.com/talks/hubertus_knabe_the_dark_secrets_of_a_surveillance_state
Something else that helps me a lot spiritually and emotionally is being truly happy in my heart that I am not, nor will I ever be one of them . . . and yes, in that case I could wholeheartedly say and repeat “ever”
Also, there are ways (which you will be learning as you mind them) to not be a good “guinea pig” for their harassment, for example, stop using a cell phone or keeping it in a Faraday cage so they will have to employ so much so-called “humint” on you that they will eventually be bored. Once in a while take a picture of people gang stalking you and post it only to the four winds . . . Someone even used facebook’s face recog many years later to find a guy (a “Romeo” as the stasi used to call them) who appeared in her life, made her pregnant and then suddenly disappeared!
// __ Question Time 1 (Targeted Individuals) (Stop 007)
youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_SDzSyxmE
~
RCL
It sounds like the FBI was inspired by the good folks at the Canary Mission
Shttp://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/modern-day-mccarthyists-are-going-extremes-slime-activists-fighting-israel
This is absolutely horrifying. That is how it was in Romania during the Ceausescu years. That is Putin does. How can this happen in America? Why are we abdicating our rights with such ease?
THIS is absolutely insane. HE and his gangsters need to be LOCKED UP some where in Siberia!
Some states, like seen here in California, allow convicts who abuse elderly and disabled adults, to get their crimes “expunged.” Wonder if they will show up on this FBI RAP database then?
https://www.change.org/p/california-state-senate-stop-criminals-who-abuse-vulnerable-adults-from-hiding-criminal-past
It seems the only way we will get these gov. sob’s out of our lives is for the grid to go down, or getting off the electronic system, they’ve set it up in such a way you can’t survive without being in it unless you are homeless.
Truth be known: Governments across the country are sponsoring convicts to work for minimum wage jobs in healthcare to care for the sick and elderly.
The companies that hire these cons get subsidies and kickbacks.
Blame Government for its double standards.
TRUE.
link please
The OPM hack is worth reminding people of, via wikipedia.
People recruited into the U.S. Government – the broad class of apparatchiks and functionaries who are best classifed as Party Members as in the old Soviet Union – are subject to more intense scrutiny than the vast majority of average citizens (best classified as proles, as in George Orwell’s 1984). Of this group of Party Members, some 5 million have security clearances; of those 1.5 million have Top Secret clearances.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24/5-1-million-americans-have-security-clearances-thats-more-than-the-entire-population-of-norway/
And all that information was collected by some foreign entity via a back-door hack of the Office of Personnel and Management! Imagine if there was a publicly accessible database of all FBI and CIA employees, their home addresses, their personal and family relationships going back decades, their spending patterns and tastes in pornography, drugs and alcohol? Their favorite dining establishments, vacation locations, online news viewing records? They’d all freak out and the site would be raided and shut down immediately. Yet the general public is supposed to trust the 5 million people with security clearances, as well as local police, with these kinds of snooping capabilities – when they can’t even keep outsiders from hacking into their databases?
And of course, any trained spy would evade the system entirely by hiding in plain sight, constructing some plausible cover story complete with Facebook profile – as the 9/11 hijackers did, for example, by posing as wealthy Saudi playboys learning to pilot planes (with some assistance from Saudi intelligence operatives, as the 28 pages show).
What this means is the whole mass surveillance apparatus is essentially useless for catching spies and terrorists; it’s really just a system aimed at domestic political control, suppressing dissent, etc., as in 1984.
The muckity-mucks in the dumb&dumbers group that run the US gov, the upper echelon of them and the elected whores that is, were never quite right with being called servants of the public with their modest salaries – didnt suit their egos. After time the wallstreet thieves, corpo rats and mil war monsters began getting the idea how important they were thanks to the media (see THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE). And the money people showered them with buffets and support and told them how indespensible they were. Naturally these public servants felt much better with their secure jobs and secure health care and secure pensions and came to realise that these benefits were to ensure their viability because of their supreme importance. Soon these servants grew tired of being called servants and decided never to utter that horrible word again because they were more important than the population who serves them.
Still not convinced the NSA didn’t stage the massive OPM theft of personnel files on every prospective, current or former “insider threat” employed by each of 17 known US intelligence agencies as of April 15.
“Imagine if there was a publicly accessible database of all FBI and CIA employees, their home addresses, their personal and family relationships going back decades, their spending patterns and tastes in pornography, drugs and alcohol? Their favorite dining establishments, vacation locations, online news viewing records? They’d all freak out and the site would be raided and shut down immediately.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/01/06/stumping-earnest-say-why-didnt-obama-eject-china-diplomats-over-opm-hack/
However, the OPM hack in particular was much more damaging, and was conducted directly against the government of the United States. The hack went on for over a year and exposed the background-check files of anyone who applied for a security clearance. That included the raw data from those checks, which means that China’s intel agencies have their hands on a lot of very sensitive information they can use to potentially blackmail people in highly sensitive positions. At the very least, they know who all of those people are and where they and their families live, which is a huge head start on forcing people into becoming moles and double agents.
the NSA did NOT secretly arrange for the theft of this data. The NSA echelon are members of the DUMB&DUMBERS who run the US gov and are way too stupid to even come up with that.
Just as example of how stupid they are
https://www.rt.com/usa/346521-hackers-find-pentagon-bugs/
they offered from $100 to pay an expert to spend valuable time to help the dumb&dumbers who were too stupid to do the job correctly in the first place. Stupidity is a trademark with the dumb&dumbers who invade sovereign countries under false pretenses.
What scares the dumb&dumbers most is the population looking to fire or dismiss the dumb&dumbers for screwing everything up by their stupidity. The dumb&dumbers are seriously bent on keeping their employment and need administrative alerts as to what persons in the public may oppose their their almighty high on the horseness.
Perhaps their private sector counterparts then although Bill Binney isn’t convinced (absent any evidence to the contrary) that the NSA shouldn’t be on the list of possible DNC hackers as well.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/10/russia-hack-dnc-really.html
Barrabas. Willing to give CrowdStrike and the “hack attribution for a fee community” http://cybersecurityventures.com/cybersecurity-500/ a run for their money.
there are a lot of far better security cos than upstarts of former govvies with their ears glued to govvie propagandists. Kaspersky for one. thanks for link.
Yes to that. Switched to Kaspersky for pretty much everything the day after he outed and newly christened the Equation Group.
You are incorrect about the blackmail business. As the Gov is already aware of the material in the database, it cannot be used to blackmail people into committing espionage. You can only blackmail someone by threatening to release compromising information that is not known.
For instance, suppose I was approached by someone from Mossad, and told that they would tell my government client about my numerous speeding violations unless I cooperated with them, or about my prior use of grass and coke. I’d say, be my guest, go ahead! Because they already know.
That assumes the victims of the OPM debacle are unconcerned about the same information being released in the wild for everyone to see.
Your neighbors, family, friends, or primary political, civic or faith based groups. Your childrens’ schools PTA, their best friends parents and so on.
Additionally when it comes to intelligence positions background checks might well include compromising private material on those they love the most – immediate family members.
Adverse leverage is a many splendored thing.
What about information that the government already knows but is socially damaging?
Where was the F…B…I… when wallstreet was robbing the country? Oh that’s right, the f…b…i… works for the banksters and political whores who represent the banks (cough hellary). Naturally no business would want people who protest being robbed, or protest at the collateral consequences of having been robbed, working. This is wallstreet’s way of weeding out protesters who want something better than minimum wage or unemployment – forget about ownership, the real hurdle.
The STASI STATE has arrived. All hail the stasi state and if you dont solute the american flag, you get reported.
This is a workaround against the right of protest because the bankster thieves know the currency system is a fraud, a failure, a con, and destroyer of a good and free society, and will be opposed. The bankster thieves need to keep a watchful eye on protesters, like Jesus who turned the tables on them.
I tell you this – as protest is a right, it is illegal for a policeperson to arrest you for protesting. It is also illegal for police to record your participation in protest in any fashion so as to implicate you in any wrong doing. It is the police who should instead be arrested in that circumstance and lose their job. Until this is implemented, you are but cows for slaughter and America is a gonner.
“…It is also illegal for police to record your participation in protest in any fashion …”.
Perhaps why they use contractors, TLO’s (terrorism liaison officers), surveillance role players (SRP’s) for their HUMINT gathering of info (aka intel stalking and colloquially known as gang stalking).
One example, of many: one of “them” photographed me at a political rally in Alaska….and photographed my entire family while traveling on the Alaska Marine Ferry….they didn’t try to hide what they were doing…very overt.
Additionally, when doing a “wellness check” they can go in to your home, without notifying you and while you aren’t there (without a real warrant) and photograph the inside of your home and rifle thru your belongings…..under a “ruse” of health and public safety. Please see: f i g h t g a n g s t a l k i n g DOT com …and… truth-love-endurance.blogspot.com .
Orwell’s 1984 is finally arriving. It has dribbled in for years but with this jump to a police state and Trump’s foreign policies I believe it has arrived. Thankfully I am old and will not see it in full bloom.
What this article doesn’t say is quite an omission. This program was created and is only available to state governments to monitor people who are employed in state licensed facilities caring for vulnerable populations. This is leftist propaganda and fear mongering.
The idea of “innocent until proven guilty” is certainly looking like a quaint delusion nowadays.
A free society would distinguish the fact of an arrest (if they found they needed such a thing at all) from any preventative judicial sanction. In other words, it would take at least a judge and a hearing to decide whether the suspect’s right to bear arms or right to work should be revoked.
Now it’s just billy clubs and databases — law enforcement “tools.”
Speaking of tools …
“I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” — The Great Orange Patriot.
http://www.notetab.com
what algo did you use to place the ?s?
replace all ‘not space’ with same+?
notetab can do that!
gotit
Holy gibberish, Batman. what’s an email spyguy to do!?
J?u?s?t? b?e? c?a?r?e?f?u?l? B?a?t?b?o?y?.? S?o?o?n? a?s? y?o?u? d?o? s?o?m?e?t?h?i?n?g? l?i?k?e? t?h?a?t? t?h?e? d?u?m?b?&?d?u?m?b?e?r?s? a?r?e? g?o?i?n?g? t?o? p?u?t? y?o?u? o?n? t?h?e? n?o?-?f?l?y? l?i?s?t? j?u?s?t? f?o?r? a?c?t?i?n?g? s?u?s?p?i?c?i?o?u?s?l?y? a?g?a?i?n?s?t? t?h?e? s?t?a?t?e?.?
find on (\S)
replace with $1?
The biggest thieves issue our credit ratings.
Now their henchmen are issuing morality ratings.
“…Now their henchmen are issuing morality ratings…”.
Sadly, some of these henchmen claim to be “Christian”. Perhaps they should read whom it was that Christ chose to spend His time with…..hint= it wasn’t self righteous sadducees and pharisees. He chose to spend His time with those who had humility and those who did not accuse their peers…He spent His time with those who had compassion and did not keep records of wrongs.
For anyone to believe what the FBI says is a sign of mental weakness Or the feds in general for that matter. I want to thank The Intercept for their good work in exposing all the criminal activities of the US government. Anyway, everybody that has a picture ID, and that includes most all of us, will, for sure, be in some data base or other; you can bet on it. But now with the pervasive use of modern technology the powers have expanded the ability to gather information on whomever they might deem a threat to national security. The fact that employers can now access records adds a new layer of suppression to average working Americans. The fact that the records have many inaccuracies should alarm employees and employers alike. This will lead to what we’ve been heading to for a long time; only the top people in very upper management will be above the laws of the land, anyone else can essentially be a ward of the state which can do anything they want to do to anybody without any recourse to reverse the actions of the powers that be. I do wish it was different but the reality is that its here now and there isn’t a lot anyone can do about it.
World-Check Database ??
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/4q840n/terrorism_blacklist_i_have_a_copy_should_it_be/
+ all imports near 0 exports
+ borrowing money to fund the gov
+ increasing gov borrow every year
+ accelerating population
+ every lowering wages
+ jobs disappeared
+ home prices and rent out of reach
+ excessive costs for health and education
+ military budget at 57% of gov exp
+ wallstreet price jacking
+ consumer loan expansion, higher cc rates, more bk’s
==============================================
wont matter, America is dead broke and the toilet is flushing
Harvard Kennedy School, course DPI-684
New Media: Surveillance, Access, Propaganda and Democracy
… updates ought to include developments from DARPA and related orgs to include:
Total Information Awareness (TIA)
Stellar Wind
PRISM
Main Core
Magic Lantern
ICReach
DCSNet
Carnivore
NarusInsight
BullRun
Special Collection Service (SCS)
Tailored Access Operations
Dishfire
Boundless Informant
Optic Nerve
FASCIA
XKeyscore
….and a few other nifty programs.
the syllabus contains an extensive set of suggested readings.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/syllabus/2013/DPI-684.pdf
For a Beltway justification of the necessity of these measures and the legal constraints upon them, The Great Courses offers:
“The Surveillance State, Big Data, Freedom, and You” by Paul Rosenzweig, J.D., The George Washington University Law School; wherein Glenn Greenwald receives a personal rebuke (surpassing Snowden’s and Assange’s) regarding TI’s reporting upon the TSA’s technical capabilities.
…MKUltra
“CIA and NSA Dossiers Are Available to the FBI in the Absence of Any Crime”
How does your government intelligence dossier differ from the local Fusion Centers or the Private Corporate intelligence firms made to order dossiers on you?
Bureau Has Redacted Doubts About the Reliability of the Stingray and likely Constitutional Inadmissibility of Stingray Evidence and Has Adopted Bill Binneys Planned Programmed Perjury Policy.
DOJ and FBI Know Stingray Data Would Be Unreliable in Court: The FBI believes that Stingrays are very challenging to operate effectively — so much so that the bureau discourages the use of evidence obtained through them in court.
Local Law Enforcement Uses Parallel Construction to Fabricate Timelines for the Prosecution Based Using Stingray (Illegally Obtained) Evidence: Here the FBI instead recommends using other evidence that will “corroborate and verify” findings from Stingrays.
The Stingray guidance raises new concerns about a technology the bureau was previously believed to be keeping out of court due to a desire for secrecy, not over reliability concerns as well.
“The FBI is sending this sophisticated surveillance technology out into the field to be operated by people who don’t know how to use it … technology that by its very nature interferes with and tracks innocent people,” said Chris Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the guidance.
Do American’s know you can have your social security checks deposited and live outside the US at a place like Costa Rica where healthcare is $100/mo and $1000 living expenses cover everything. The US sucks!
Thank you Ava for this important article.
The old garbage in garbage out routine will just create more problems for the public than it will solve for law enforcement, but why should they care, it doesn’t cost them anything but their time that the public pays for anyway ! What a complete waist of time,money and effort ! ! !
More empire building & or Government BLOAT= WAIST ,FRAUD ,ABUSE of the taxpayer !
“just create more problems for the public”, you said?
in a police state “We the people” should self-police!
Being aware that your movements and their shadows’, what you say and to whom, exactly who is walking past you on the streets, what you eat, sh!t, your health, DNA … is being monitored 24×7 in excruciating details is not enough.
RCL
This is far worse than the article even imagines. You get mad at your neighbor get them arrested, If they lose their job and can’t pay the mortgage you get a new neighbor. Don’t like your supervisor, an anonymous tip could lead to a false arrest but since the chances are good they fact that the all charges were dropped is not part of the report. Want to silence thousands of protesters? Get them arrested for trumped up felony rioting charges and see big bunches of them lose their jobs. Then anyone else will get the message, you oppose us and you lose your job when their employers see they have been arrested, Guilt or innocence is not relevant.
Now the real pay off is when you use this database to purge voter registration rolls because people were arrested for a felony.
You could then expand the permanent underclass from just African Americans, Hispanics, religious minorities to a opposition white population. You could then add jobs to the things the underclass is not entitled to like food shelter, equal treatment under the law, decent schools, health care etc.
You can then divide the country in to 2 groups, the powerless majority of “proles” and the small political class that controls all the political and economic power.
Then we can finally have the country our forefathers wanted.
Those kinds of “databases” have always existed. They are only streamlining their usage, openly acknowledging, advertising them.
then?
RCL
What happens to the fascists when enough people have nothing to lose? History answers…
Give this man a prize. And this years award for Great Moments in Piketty’s Warning.
Any corporal (anyone) and corporate (public or private) citizen now has the means to discredit or destroy anybody economically disenfranchizing them
undermining past or future social mobility.
Unsuspecting African, Hispanic, Asian, white or spiritual persons (or other domestic adherents to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights) often can’t defend themselves because it can quietly happen on background. To never see it coming is always hardest on those with fewer economic resources or public visibility. COINTELPRO 1 is in the publics’ domain now.
Done in secret…with no due process…no right of redress…no ability to face your accusers (aka confidential human sources / informants/TLO’s/SRP’s). Colloquially called gang stalking.
NSA is working on a program to tap directly into every citizen’s brain:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5168026
That is b#llsh!t and not of a benign kind. Many people commit suicide and/or kill other people thinking that to be true.
RCL
May it never happen to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9bd-B2dqCM
Alohanonymous is Stasi excrement.
Actually, I know way more about that kind of cr@p than you may suspect:
https://ipsoscustodes.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/zersetzung-made-in-u-s-a/
RCL
Looks like the book by G. Orwell’s, 1984, stood the test of time throughout all these decades. That is, at least in predicting the present political system of The United States of America. Wow! What a mind this author must have had in his foreshadowing of the society that we now know today.
You wanna job, you wanna keep your job………………better walk in line…..cos if you don’t you’ll never, ever get one…..
State driven suppression of the population.
And Donald was right he was getting the lobbyists out of the government. He does so by getting the corporations directly involved.
Republicans, Democrats….they really stand for the people…….
Make Democracy Great Again
A nod to G. Orwell’s, his book, 1984, penned so many decades ago, has indeed truly become a reality in today’s United States of America.
O/T
CNN reporting Trumps latest tweet regarding the judge that imposed an injunction against the Muslim ban calling him a “so-called judge”.
The insidious nature of this comment should not be ignored with this president.
He’s implying the courts and/or this judge is not legitimate. Very Authoritarian!
That federal judge was appointed by George W. Bush. He’s not exactly a “bleeding heart liberal.”
Actually the 9th circuit represents most of the western states and is the most liberal in the country.
Fingerprint collection has expanded in event years. Traveling outside the country, you are asked to give your fingerprints passing through customs now.
Here in California, persons applying for new driver licenses are now required to give fingerprints.
So, the collection of fingerprints starts with minors and links your privacy to your privilege.
Event = recent.
Stoopid auto-correct.
Hmm, if so, this must be very recent.
that is why THE GOV paid big money for the development of faster micro processors in a joint effort between them, intel and i forget which other, in arizona as i recall.
As you mentioned to Truth Seeker above: “link please”.
yikes. tried to retrieve in searches, no luck
the info popped up years ago while watching cramer, years ago, maybe 2009. sorry about that.
I’m interested in this. Do you have a source?
This information was always there, what’s changed is that it is now democratically available to everybody. Where is the problem? Employees can also find out about their crooked employers, colleagues, spouses, dates, neighbors and just about anybody that’s not too powerful to hide behind security walls.
Democratically available? What the hell does that mean?
Not too powerful?
Are you trying to gloss over the fact that those with power and means are still one up on the rest of us? Good job!
Absolutely. When I think institutions most interested in promoting a democracy of information — and other equality and justice values — the FBI springs immediately to mind. J. Edgar was a one man ACLU.
Did you think this part through GH?
If your son or daughter (and a few of their friends) were arrested and taken in for questioning by police at a party where cocaine was being used 25 years ago but they were released and never charged with let alone convicted of any crime how should that be conveyed exactly in the FBI report to their potential employers?
“…as many as 50 percent of the FBI’s arrest records fail to include information on the final disposition of a case — that is, whether a person was convicted, acquitted, or if charges against them were dropped. Because many people who are arrested are never charged or convicted, a high percentage of the FBI’s records incorrectly indicate a subject’s involvement with a crime.’
At the end of the day all they will learn is that no one in the world is perfect, That is what we all know and we don’t need RAP BACK to tell us that for a fee.
So if any employer wants any employee at all he has to make do with imperfect people. In fact, the employee can also find out naughty stuff about his employer and post it on the office notice board for the benefit of all the other employees.
This is a normal part of the process of integrating every individual into the world wide web. Employers are no longer able to discriminate against employees on an arbitrary basis; they must discriminate on a rational basis. That requires data, and unfortunately, gathering data from employees at work is insufficient. How can an employer be expected to control their employees effectively if they don’t know everything about them? How can a government control its citizens if it doesn’t know everything about them?
The truth will enslave you.
Perhaps companies are preparing us for The New American Dream? We should all aspire corporate executive positions in order to delete our own file.
That’s “aspire to be in……”
I really need to finish that first cup of coffee. ;)
The complete truth sets some slaves free.
There are more important things we should care about.
How about the biggest scandal of the century about to break?
The series begins here, you will be shocked.
Bipartisan Criminality.
Day 53 – Where is Eric Braverman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
Whole Series
https://www.youtube.com/user/g…
The latest
Day 103 – DynCorp Harvest, Killing Is Good Business, Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…
This is VERY dangerous to all of us, regardless of politics.
PLEASE Share, everywhere. This tops every headline in the world right now.
I am sooooo happy that I no longer fall under US labour law.
In the 10 years since I left the country has spiralled into mouth breathing, drool on the chin insanity. Some thing is seriously wrong wit the food over there, the effects are ubiquitous and cover all sections of American society.