Live Leak | The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life," Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday. "That's going to be very, very powerful," Waters said. "That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it's never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They're going to go down with that database and the concerns of those people because they can't get around it. And he's [President Obama] been very smart. It's very powerful what he's leaving in place.

Infowars.com | Authoritarian, anti-democratic power networks are being re-branded as trendy, philanthropic-style forums. The secretive Bilderberg Group is currently undergoing a major transformation that will see it and other high profile networks merge under the banner of Google as the elite accelerates its plan to consolidate its technocratic agenda. This past weekend, Infowars reporters Paul Joseph Watson and Jon Scobie visited the luxury Grove Hotel in Watford, UK, site of the 2013 Bilderberg Group conference set to take place June 6-9, a clandestine annual gathering of over 100 of the world’s most influential power brokers in the fields of politics, academia, technology, business and banking.

Guardian.co.uk | The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Salon | DoJ helps AT&T, other service providers evade wiretapping laws so government can conduct Internet surveillance. One of the major privacy concerns fueling opposition to CISPA is that the legislation would permit the private sector to acquire and search sensitive data relating to U.S. citizens between corporations and the government. However, according to government documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), such personal data sharing and surveillance is well underway already, while CISPA is yet to come up for a Senate vote.

ZD Net | Major technology and Web companies — not limited to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft — will not be allowed to promise to protect users' privacy should CISPA pass Congress. For those out of the loop, CISPA will allow private sector firms to search personal and sensitive user data of ordinary U.S. residents to identify this so-called "threat information", and to then share that information with each other and the US government — without the need for a court-ordered warrant.

Cnet | Rep. Alan Grayson unsuccessfully tried to require police to obtain a warrant before they could peruse CISPA-shared data. A controversial data-sharing bill being debated today in the U.S. House of Representatives authorizes federal agencies to conduct warrantless searches of information they obtain from e-mail and Internet providers.Rep. Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, proposed a one-sentence amendment (PDF) that would have required the National Security Agency, the FBI, Homeland Security, and other agencies to secure a "warrant obtained in accordance with the Fourth Amendment" before searching a database for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Tech Dirt | We've talked about various tech companies supporting CISPA, which is really shameful and short-sighted. Yes, it protects them from liability if they trample all over your privacy and provide your private info to the government -- which is why they support it. But if they were truly customer focused companies, they would know that violating your privacy is no way to build a loyal customer base. And, apparently, the right to violate your privacy and hand that info to the government is so important to IBM that it has sent 200 executives to Capital Hill today to lobby in favor of passing CISPA. CISPA is expected to go to a floor vote in the House either this Wednesday or Thursday.

LiveLeak.com | In July of this year it became apparent through a flood of mainstream media reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) was “desperate to hire new hacking talent to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure” yet the NSA is notorious for its surveillance programs on American digital activity. David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, said at a summit for In-Q-Tel, that he was speculating on the “internet of things” and that “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies . . . particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

Wired.com | In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.

Arstechnica | Suit over domestic surveillance will reveal state secrets, say DOJ lawyers. Warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency began as a Bush-era program in October 2001; in 2008, the government essentially allowed the practice in the FISA Amendments Act. The same year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed lawsuits challenging the surveillance.

RT | The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.

TheNewAmerican.com | The day of deployment is drawing nearer. Soon, thousands of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) unmanned aerial vehicle license holders will launch their drones into the skies over the United States. Despite the delay of lawmakers to establish constitutionally sound guidelines for the use of these eyes in the sky, a handful of congressmen are pushing to move forward the date of deployment.

Whowhatwhy.com | Following Barack Obama’s significant electoral victory, the ways in which the President will interpret his new “mandate” are still very much up for debate. While pundits, many of whom got the election seriously wrong, fumble to come up with new predictions, an analysis of Obama’s track record and statements on national security policy can be quite illuminating.

UK Progressive | Why is Mitt Romney so confident? In states where the winner will be decided by less than 10%, of the vote he already knows he will win. This is no tinfoil hat conspiracy. It’s a maths problem. And mathematics showed changes in actual raw voting data that had no statistical correlation other than programmable computer fraud. This computer fraud resulted in votes being flipped from Democrat to Republican in every federal, senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial election since 2008 (thus far) and in the 2012 primary contests from other Republicans to Mitt Romney.