XKeyscore- A New Level of Invasive NSA Data Spying, EXAMPLE: Googling 'Pressure Cookers' (Video)

But the NSA doesn’t collect data on Americans, so this certainly won’t happen to you.

Well if you were upset by the unlawful reach of the NSA spying program, PRISM, prepare yourself for XKeyscore, an even more invasive, all-encompassing program meant to keep tabs on people’s online activity.

But  Mainstream America would label you a “Conspiracy Theorist”, “Nut Job”, “Tin Foil Hat wearing”, “anti American”  if you even considered  that their Government, (Obama Administration) NSA, would monitor the internet use of every American in the United States.  Much less have the ability to do so?   ”Right”?

They would laugh at you if you ever mentioned that the government was monitoring your Facebook profile, your emails, your web searches, your every move online. “Right”?

Yet Civil Liberties Advocates challenged intelligence officials over claims about the limited scope of U.S. surveillance programs following a new report on a vast Internet data project — as lawmakers moved anew to rein in the National Security Agency. XKeyscore, a program eerily similar to Facebook search

The Guardian on Wednesday, citing documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, described a program known as XKeyscore, saying it allows a range of analysts to monitor everything from emails to browsing history to online chats. 

According to the piece, the XKeyscore program is the “widest-reaching” system the agency has and allows analysts without prior authorization to dig around the database by filling out an on-screen form giving a basic justification.

The Guardian published a series of detailed slides on how the program operates.

Next, As reported by The Atlanticwire  comes Michele Catalano, who was looking for information online about pressure cookers.

Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks.

Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which prompts the question: How’d the government know what they were Googling?

Update, 7:05 p.m.: Because the Googling happened at work.

The Suffolk County Police Department released a statement this evening that answers the great mystery of the day.

Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee.  The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.” 

After interviewing the company representatives, Suffolk County Police Detectives visited the subject’s home to ask about the suspicious internet searches. The incident was investigated by Suffolk County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Detectives and was determined to be non-criminal in nature.

Original article: Catalano (who is a professional writer) describes the tension of that visit.

[T]hey were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked. …

Have you ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? My husband, ever the oppositional kind, asked them if they themselves weren’t curious as to how a pressure cooker bomb works, if they ever looked it up. Two of them admitted they did.

The men identified themselves as members of the “joint terrorism task force.” The composition of such task forces depend on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, include a variety of federal agencies. (The photo above is from the door-to-door sweep in Watertown at that time.) Among those agencies: the FBI and Homeland Security.

As of this afternoon, it was still not clear which agency knocked on Catalano’s door. The Guardian reported that an FBI spokesperson said that Catalano “was visited by Nassau County police department … working in conjunction with Suffolk County police department.” (Catalano apparently lives on Long Island, most likely in Nassau County.)

Detective Garcia of the Nassau County Police, however, told The Atlantic Wire by phone that his department was “not involved in any way.” Similarly, FBI spokesperson Peter Donald confirmed with The Atlantic Wire that his agency wasn’t involved in the visit. He also stated that he could not answer whether or not the agency provided information that led to the visit, as he didn’t know.

Local and state authorities work jointly with federal officials on terror investigations similar to the one Catalano describes. Both Suffolk and Nassau County’s police departments are members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), Donald confirmed. Suffolk County is also home to a “fusion center,” a regionally located locus for terror investigations associated with the Department of Homeland Security. It wasn’t the JTTF that led to the visit at Catalano’s house, Donald told us. The task force deputizes local authorities as federal marshals, including some in Suffolk and Nassau, who can then act on its behalf. But, Donald said, “officers, agents, or other representatives of the JTTF did not visit that location.

Ever since details of the NSA’s surveillance infrastructure were leaked by Edward Snowden, the agency has been insistent on the boundaries of the information it collects. It is not, by law, allowed to spy on Americans — although there are exceptions of which it takes advantage. Its PRISM program, under which it collects internet content, does not include information from Americans unless those Americans are connected to terror suspects by no more than two other people. It collects metadata on phone calls made by Americans, but reportedly stopped collecting metadata on Americans’ internet use in 2011. So how, then, would the government know what Catalano and her husband were searching for?

Yet One Hundred Times A Week, groups of six armed men drive to houses in three black SUVs, conducting consented-if-casual searches of the property perhaps in part because of things people looked up online.

Tin Foil Hat, Nut Job, Don’t let it bother you, for the people who make these statements really believe themselves. It’s not their fault, they are a victim of government run mainstream media propaganda. They are part of the Matrix.

Critical Reads: More news Mainstream Media Chooses To Ignore By Josey Wales, Click Here!