NSA Violates Rules Constantly

Do you think we can trust the NSA? Apparently, they violate the rules dozens of times a day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html?hpid=z1

On July 4, I published a novel about abuse of government surveillance, What Happens to Us, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5SU, only $3.99 to download.

An Enlightening Podcast on Government Surveillance

On the Sunday political talk shows, government officials have been denying that it was collecting data on ordinary Americans, only that it was collecting harmless li’l ol’ metadata. Now, we know that they were lying, because of an investigative article in The Guardian newspaper on Saturday: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

I was so outraged by this violation of American law that I wrote a novel about it, What Happens to Us, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5SU. Download for $3.99 onto your Kindle.

Here’s a podcast that gives some perspective on the subject, from NPR. It’s a must-hear.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/aug/02/?utm_source=local&utm_media=treatment&utm_campaign=daMost&utm_content=damostviewed

They Lied to Us Just Last Week

For the past couple months, government officials have been appearing on the airwaves proclaiming that the NSA collects only metadata. Oh, they’re saints! They’re saviours! They’re only protecting you!

Dianne Feinstein, Peter King, Michael Hayden, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and many others have been telling us what a liar Edward Snowden is. The government collects only metadata, they say. And that’s not really data at all! It’s just like the information on the outside of an envelope! Chill out, dudes!

Now, it turns out that they collect everything, with no oversight, no FISA approval required. Outrageous.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data

And on top of that, they’re passing that information on to the Drug Enforcement Agency and other local law enforcement, for them to act upon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/

It’s blatantly unconstitutional, so when they bring the cases to court, they cover it up by cooking up a whole other scenario about how the information came to light. In other words, they lie and cook up another story.

And other law-enforcement agencies are clamoring to get to that data. If they get their way, the information from our tapped phones will be used to combat all crimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Six years ago, I began writing a novel that is a demonstration of the worst that could happen under promiscuous surveillane. It’s Edward Snowden’s worst nightmare. Read What Happens to Us at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5SU. Download for only $3.99 on your Kindle or Nook.

Top 10 Reasons to Pardon Edward Snowden (with apologies to Letterman)

So that he can frolic shirtless in the Moscow Airport with Vladimir Putin.
He’s the only guy in government who has ever told the truth.
His girlfriend is hot!
Now you can be psychotically paranoid and have a damn good reason!
His girlfriend is hot!
He’s cute.
His car is parked in the white zone, and it’s for loading and unloading only.
His girlfriend is hot!
He did a good thing!
So that I can continue to sell my newly published novel, What Happens to Us, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5SU, with the tagline, “Edward Snowden’s Worst Nightmare.”

(This was not written by David Letterman & staff. It was written by David Groves.)

Snowden “Most Costly Leaker Ever”?! Puhleez.

Edward Snowden is “the mostly costly leaker of American secrets in the history of the republic,” according to former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden.

Really?! Really?! Then what do you call Aldrich Ames, who blew over 20 Western agents, the majority of whom were executed? What do you call the Los Alamos spies Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs, the Cohens, and Ted Hall, who passed atomic secrets to the Soviets in the late 1940s, opening the Pandora’s Box of atomic proliferation?

Hayden and others in the spy-industrial complex have a vested interest in keeping secret the extent to which Americans are being spied upon. Just this past week, they have done their best to keeping the money flowing. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/justin-amash-nsa-amendment-94716.html Because it really is all about money and power.

In my newly published novel, What Happens to Us, http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5S, an NSA employee uses his omniscient information to spy on an ex-girlfriend, which I call Edward Snowden’s worst nightmare. It’s frightening, but also, highly plausible. Download it for only $3.99.

Why I stand with Edward Snowden

People who aren’t bothered by global government surveillance say, “Hey, what could go wrong? I’m not a terrorist, so why should I worry?”

So much could go wrong. It all boils down to each individual NSA employee and contractor who has access to the collected information, and recent reports place that number at 500,000. You don’t have to be an evil person to want to listen in on someone else’s phone calls or monitor their emails. Good people do that all the time. Which teenage boy who’s been jilted by a girl hasn’t driven by her house, hoping to see her in the front yard? If given the chance, might that boy listen in on her phone calls, if just to hear her voice?

I’m sure the NSA and its contractors have written policies designed to protect Americans’ privacy, but which adult hasn’t violated a little policy at work? We swipe a few post-it packets or boxes of staples. If we’re in the banking industry, some of us engage in insider trading. If we’re journalists, we change a quote just a bit to make the story read better. And if we work in government surveillance, when the boss isn’t looking, we listen in on our hated neighbor’s phone call, just to see what he says about the hedge that you’re having a dispute about.

In 2003, when the original reports of warrantless surveillance first came out, I was so upset about it that I started writing a thriller based on this kind of situation. In the novel, an NSA operative with access to vast surveillance data has an obsession with a young San Francisco woman. As the novel opens, he attempts to kill her and she gets away. The police don’t believe her, since she is a recovering alcoholic who has given them trouble in the past. Thus begins a breathless chase from house to house, across the country, and eventually, off the grid.

This novel is about more than just a chase, though. It’s about the danger of allowing certain people omniscient power in the name of fighting terrorism. It’s about the innocent victims. It’s about her relationship with a young man who has no idea the trouble he’s in for. It’s about love in a time of hiding. It’s about what America should be. It’s ripped from the headlines.

Some people believe that good people would never step over the line, and that all NSA employees are screened to be good. Well, I consider myself a good person, and I must confess that I once stepped over the line 20 years ago. It had been a mistake to get romantically involved with someone who lived upstairs from me. We were together for a couple months, but when I realized that Haley had been molested as a child and her behaviors around intimacy and relationships were chaotic and maddening, I broke up with her.

But when she started bringing other men home past my front door, I began losing control. I found myself rushing to the front curtains whenever she walked past my door, peering up at her 2nd-floor window in the evenings. A tortuous two weeks passed before I realized that the only solution was to sell my condo and move. I shudder to think what I might have done if I’d had access to her phone calls, emails, and location information.

As Edward Snowden says, I don’t want to live in a country in which every phone call can be monitored without oversight. The reason is that people step over the line. A machinery like this must be scrupulously monitored, and as it stands, there seems to be very little oversight at all. The FISA court is a rubber stamp. No citizen or organization has judicial standing to sue. There are no government reports outlining excesses. Everything is done in high secrecy. Truly, this is a time bomb waiting to explode.

To download the ebook, What Happens to Us, go here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DSSN5SU

If you don’t own a Kindle, you can download the Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac software for free here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/pc/download