The NSA watches you poop.

In the latest indication of a growing libertarian wing of the GOP, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution Friday calling for an investigation into the "gross infringement" of Americans' rights by National Security Agency programs that were revealed by Edward Snowden.

The resolution also calls on on Republican members of Congress to enact amendments to the Section 215 program that currently allows the spy agency to collect records of almost every domestic telephone call. The amendment should make clear that "blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence - electronic, physical, and otherwise - of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court," the resolution reads.

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It will sweep away data protection restrictions that require information to be used only for the purpose it was taken, such as limiting access to health records to the Department of Health.
Even low-ranking officials working for Town Halls could lay their hands on the most sensitive personal information, such as incomes and details of any benefits received.

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Beginning in at least March 2008 and continuing through at least September 2012, USIS management devised and executed a scheme to deliberately circumvent contractually required quality reviews of completed background investigations in order to increase the company's revenues and profits. Specifically, USIS devised a practice referred to internally as "dumping" or "flushing," which involved releasing cases to OPM and representing them as complete when, in fact, not all ROIs comprising those cases had received a quality review as required by the Fieldwork Contracts.

USIS engaged in the practice of dumping in order to meet budgeted goals and, therefore, increase its revenues and profits. Given that USIS was paid by OPM for each completed case, the more cases USIS completed each month the more money it received from OPM. USIS's dumping practices also enabled the company to receive annual performance incentive payments that it would not otherwise have been entitled to receive absent the dumping

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Oh, and it became so profitable, they set up a computer program to help them defraud the government and not complete background checks. No joke.

Initially, USIS would dump cases manually. Soon after the dumping started, however, USIS began using a software program called Blue Zone to assist in the dumping practices. Through Blue Zone, USIS was able to identify a large number of background investigations, quickly make an electronic "Review Complete" notation indicating that the ROIs at issue had gone through the review process even if they had not, and then automatically release all of those ROIs to OPM with the "Review Complete" notation attached. By using Blue Zone, USIS was able to substantially increase the number of background investigations that could be dumped in a short time period.

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The division of GCHQ known as JTRIG responded to the surge in hacktivism. In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit's mission included computer network attacks, disruption, "Active Covert Internet Operations," and "Covert Technical Operations." Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts andmasquerading as an enemy in a "false flag" operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

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According to a former drone operator for the military's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target's identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
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What's more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.

"People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people," he says. "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people - we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy."
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he former JSOC drone operator estimates that the overwhelming majority of high-value target operations he worked on in Afghanistan relied on signals intelligence, known as SIGINT, based on the NSA's phone-tracking technology.

"Everything they turned into a kinetic strike or a night raid was almost 90 percent that," he says. "You could tell, because you'd go back to the mission reports and it will say 'this mission was triggered by SIGINT,' which means it was triggered by a geolocation cell."
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As the former drone operator explains, the process of tracking and ultimately killing a targeted person is known within the military as F3: Find, Fix, Finish. "Since there's almost zero HUMINT operations in Yemen - at least involving JSOC - every one of their strikes relies on signals and imagery for confirmation: signals being the cell phone lock, which is the 'find' and imagery being the 'unblinking eye' which is the 'fix.'" The "finish" is the strike itself.

"JSOC acknowledges that it would be completely helpless without the NSA conducting mass surveillance on an industrial level," the former drone operator says. "That is what creates those baseball cards you hear about," featuring potential targets for drone strikes or raids.

President Obama signs authorizations for "hits" that remain valid for 60 days. If a target cannot be located within that period, it must be reviewed and renewed. According to the former drone operator, it can take 18 months or longer to move from intelligence gathering to getting approval to actually carrying out a strike in Yemen. "What that tells me," he says, "is that commanders, once given the authorization needed to strike, are more likely to strike when they see an opportunity - even if there's a high chance of civilians being killed, too - because in their mind they might never get the chance to strike that target again."

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Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA's targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. "They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave," the former drone operator says. "That's how they confuse us."

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