Mass Surveillance Provocations and Justifications

Sundance, "Spygate -vs- Russiagate"

Barack Obama didn’t like Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama didn’t even care about Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign. Barack Obama would have liked nothing more than to watch Hillary Clinton go down in a ball of flames, until something happened in 2016 that changed the dynamic.

Suddenly, Barack Obama needed Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election…

That my friends, is the reason why so many people get lost in the story of the 2016 election and the eventual Trump-Russia conspiracy. However, once you understand what changed in those April and May 2016 moments, everything reconciles.

The U.S. government, under the President Obama administration, was spying on American citizens.

It started with Barack Obama and AG Eric Holder’s use of the IRS database in the 2010 midterm, against the primary threat of the Tea Party movement. However, an IRS whistleblower from the Cincinnati field office took the continued use of the IRS off the table.

From the period of mid-2012 to April-2016, the administration factually and demonstrably shifted to using the power of electronic surveillance to conduct political spying operations using the NSA database and the metadata captures within it.

However, once that NSA surveillance and spying was identified in April 2016, President Obama had a problem. That’s where the Obama alignment with the Clinton ‘dirty trick’ comes into play. After May 2016, Obama needed Hillary Clinton to win the election. The rest is “Russiagate” history.

Those who remember the 2015/2016 presidential race will remember President Obama never campaigned for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 primary. After all, Bernie Sanders was potentially going to upend Clinton until the DNC stepped heavily on the scales to assist her, and team Sanders was furious. Then suddenly, following the California primary, Barack went all in.

There is a distinct timeline shift during this period that most seem to overlook, because “Russiagate” was/is easily the shiniest thing for people to follow. However, it was the precursor scandal, ‘spygate’, that is more critical yet gets almost no attention.

Here it becomes critical for people to understand exactly what was taking place. Absolutely nothing had anything to do with: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, aka FISA – surveillance impacting Americans (FISA-702), the FISA Court, masking, minimizing or unmasking. None of those terms apply. What the Obama administration was doing was simply spying.

The only reason the aforementioned terms enter the discussion is through the method used by the NSA compliance officer to reveal the nature of how the database was being compromised. The only tool for the NSA to reveal the spying was to report it to the FISA Court which holds jurisdiction over the use of the database.

When FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer was made aware of the spying, in October 2016 by NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, she then interpreted the NSA admissions through the language of the FISA Court.

When Judge Collyer released her report in March 2017 [SOURCE], that’s how the FISA terminology entered the discussion. However, nothing about the use of the NSA database to conduct political surveillance or spying had anything to do with the Obama administration using the FISA-702 authority to exploit the system.

Collyer noted that 85% of the Obama administration’s searches of the database, from 2012 to 2016, had nothing to do with FISA inquires. No attempt at minimization or justification was being done, and further, only 15% of the use of the database was being done in compliance with the rules governing the use of the database.

Tens of thousands of searches were conducted by the Obama administration, as they used their access to the NSA database to spy on their targets. The NSA identified the spying culprits colloquially as “FBI Contractors,” but factually nothing was ever provided to verify that assertion.

In fact, the only attribution that could be associated with the “contractor” claim, is the workstations and user access IDs deployed to search the database. To this day, we do not know where those workstations were located, or who was behind the user IDs operating the searches.

What we do know is that massive spying operations were undertaken during the period from 2012 to 2016, and many of those searches were for the same people repeatedly; meaning the same people were under constant illegal surveillance, and all of their electronic information was being reviewed by the Obama administration.

♦ Again, just for emphasis, the Obama administration was spying on targeted Americans repeatedly, and absolutely none of the activity had anything to do with FISA authorities. It was the existence of the NSA captures, the database itself, which brought the Obama administration to a place where it became useful for their spying operation.

The use of the NSA database for domestic spying operations followed the moment when the use of the IRS database was no longer feasible. Once congress and the American people became aware of the IRS and DOJ’s collaborative “special research project,” a targeted surveillance mechanism that culminated in the IRS/DOJ agreeing to settle a class-action lawsuit, the Obama administration switched from using the IRS data to using the NSA data. It really is that simple.

Obviously, the existence of the NSA database itself is problematic. However, the problem expands exponentially when we realize the false sense of security, the FISA firewall, is nothing more than a ruse to keep gathering the data of Americans.

The American people are told the data captures and FISA searches are being done as part of the national security system, where searching the database is a critical tool for the various intelligence agencies to identify threats. However, as shown by President Obama’s activity in 2012 through 2016, only 15% of that activity was part of a national security effort.

The overwhelming amount of activity that takes place within the NSA database, is simply the U.S. government conducting electronic surveillance. That’s the issue highlighted by “Spygate,” President Barack Obama’s unlawful use of the data captures to monitor targets identified by the administration.

Just like the Cincinnati IRS whistleblower (’12), once the NSA compliance officer noticed what was happening (March ’16), the trail of spying became a risk to the Obama administration. That’s the moment when Hillary Clinton’s planned deployment of the vast Russian conspiracy became of value to Obama and the surveillance perpetrators.

The Clinton campaign had been planning to use Russia as a dirty trick tool against the winner of the GOP nomination. The testimony of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, even admitted it.

John Durham – Q: In the Summer of 2016, was Mr. Trump’s relationship with Russia something that the campaign focused on?

Robby Mook – A: Yes. I mean, it was frankly something we were focused on before that time. But absolutely.

Q: Mr. Mook, before the break you had testified that there was a conversation in which you told Ms. Clinton about the proposed plan to provide the Alfa-Bank allegations to the media; is that correct?

A: Correct.

Q: And what was her response?

A: All I remember is that she agreed with the decision.

[SOURCE]

What became known as “Russiagate” was the 2016 Clinton campaign smear that was directed at Republican candidate Donald Trump. However, “Spygate” preceded the deployment of the smear.

The Obama administration used Clinton’s Russiagate to hide Obama’s Spygate.

President Obama’s support for the dirty trick Hillary Clinton created, starts with his motive to hide the spying.