Tom Burghardt: ECHELON Today: The Evolution of an NSA Black Program - People are shocked by the scope of secret state spying on their private communications, especially in light of documentary evidence leaked to media outlets by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. ■ While the public is rightly angered by the illegal, unconstitutional nature of NSA programs which seize and store data for retrospective harvesting by intelligence and law enforcement officials, including the content of phone calls, emails, geolocational information, bank records, credit card purchases, travel itineraries, even medical records--in secret, and with little in the way of effective oversight--the historical context of how, and why, this vast spying apparatus came to be is often given short shrift. ■ Revelations about NSA spying didn't begin June 5, 2013 however, the day when The Guardian published a top secret FISA Court Order to Verizon, ordering the firm turn over the telephone records on millions of its customers "on an ongoing daily basis." ■ Before PRISM there was ECHELON: the top secret surveillance program whose all-encompassing "dictionaries" (high-speed computers powered by complex algorithms) ingest and sort key words and text scooped-up by a global network of satellites, from undersea cables and land-based microwave towers.

Tom Burghardt: New Documents Shed Light on NSA's Dragnet Surveillance

■ Newly released documents reveal the depth of collaboration between Microsoft and the National Security Agency in collecting data from the company’s users, including communications and documents sent or accessed over Outlook.com, SkyDrive and Skype. They also show that Microsoft worked with the NSA to break the company’s own encryption, ensuring the fullest possible access for the agency. ■ The latest files, provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in the Guardian, come from the the Special Source Operations (SSO) division. The SSO overseas all programs that target US telecommunications via corporate partnerships, of which Prism, exposed by Snowden last month, is just one. ■ What has been released so far reveals how Microsoft in particular worked with the US intelligence apparatus to provide full access to all documents and messages of the company’s users. The NSA referred to the program as a “team sport.”

Obama Demands Snowden's Capture - A report that whistleblower Edward Snowden is seeking temporary asylum in Russia has sparked a flurry of public warnings from US officials that Snowden is seeking a “propaganda platform” and that granting him asylum would do serious harm to US-Russian relations. President Obama also stepped up the rhetoric in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, reiterating US demands that Russia immediately capture Snowden and turn him over to the US. Russia is said to be in an awkward situation on the case, with officials saying that Russia doesn’t want Snowden to cast a pall over the September summit talks, but likely can’t afford to appear to be giving in to unreasonable US demands to abide by an extradition treaty that doesn’t exist. Russia has suggested they would offer Snowden conditional asylum assuming he didn’t do any more leaking of classified US data, and there are reports Snowden may accept the deal, though this is unlikely to change the Obama Administration’s bellicose position.

Russia Today: Asylum for Snowden won't stop Greenwald from publishing more leaks

At least ten people have been killed after American forces carried out an airstrike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Logar, Press TV reports. - Local officials said on Saturday that the attack took place in the Mohammad Agha District of the province late on Friday. The authorities identified the victims as Taliban militants, who were holed up at a house in the area when the air raid took place. The Taliban have not yet confirmed any casualties and made no comments on the airstrike. The US-led forces have increased their airstrikes against civilian areas of Afghanistan in recent months.

● At least two people were killed and one more injured on July 6, when US forces launched an airborne assault on the city of Gardez, situated some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Kabul.
● On July 3, twenty people were killed and nine others injured when foreign forces carried out an airstrike in the Musa Khel district of Afghanistan’s eastern province of Khost.
● It came a day after four people were killed in a US-led airstrike in the Miyanishin District of the southern province of Kandahar.
● On June 29, eight people were killed when US-led foreign forces launched two separate airstrikes in Paktia and Kandahar provinces.
● Also on June 22, at least 30 people lost their lives after US-led forces mounted an airstrike in Afghanistan’s southeastern province of Paktika. The incident took place at a border checkpoint in the province as Taliban militants were attacking the checkpoint.

Stephen Lendman: America's Permanent War Agenda

Questions surrounding 2011 triple murder point to government cover-up in Boston Marathon bombing:
■ "There has been no serious attempt to explain these staggering contradictions and anomalies. Instead, the same red herring used to cover up the role of US intelligence agencies in allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place—failure to “connect the dots” or “communicate”—has been trundled out once again before an incredulous public.
■ The official story — upheld by the Times — is the least likely explanation for the Boston bombing, an event that became the pretext for an unprecedented military-police lockdown of a major American city.
■ The most plausible explanation is that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a US intelligence asset working with the FBI and/or other agencies. He was protected because he was deemed useful, perhaps in furthering US covert operations in the North Caucasus or other criminal US imperialist operations. Chechen Islamist terrorists make up a significant contingent of the foreign forces funneled by the CIA into Syria to help wage the current US-backed war for regime-change."

This CBC report is coherent only if you strip away the American propaganda assumptions and realize that both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and William Plotnikov were working for the CIA, probably with the dual purpose of investigating Islamist networks and causing trouble in Russia. Todashev was murdered and his girlfriend is being quickly deported to cover up their knowledge of Tamerlan's government connections, the Waltham murders were given no real police investigation as Tamerlan was under CIA protection, the Russian repeated warnings about Tamerlan were ignored as Tamerlan was working for the Americans, and Tamerlan's trip to Dagestan and the Boston bombing were both official American government operations. Nothing else makes any sense.

Thomas Gaist & Barry Grey: Questions surrounding 2011 triple murder point to government cover-up in Boston Marathon bombing