The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cancelled its purchase order for surveillance equipment, which had included coffee trays with hidden cameras and cameras that could be hidden in plants.
The IRS issued the cancellation on Wednesday at 11:49 a.m.
CNSNews.com published an initial story about the IRS's purchase order on Monday afternoon--and that story was linked on The Drudge Report.
As CNSNews.com reported, the IRS had issued a rush order for the surveillance equipment last Thursday, June 6. That order originally carried a deadline of Monday, June 10. Among the items the IRS sought to purchase were four coffee trays with hidden cameras, four cameras that could be concealed in plants, and two "concealed clock radios."
The original purchase order said that IRS already had an "Undisclosed Corporation" that could provide the items and that any would-be competitor would need to demonstrate that it, too, could furnish the type of equipment the IRS was seeking. The order said its descriptions of the items the IRS wanted to buy was "vague due to the use and nature of the items."
Via Gabriel Malor at Ace’s, who laments that the misbehavior at the EPA has largely flown under the radar, overshadowed so far by the IRS, NSA, Rosen, and so many other stories. He collects them all in a handy post, but here’s a summary:
The Examiner has the following on an interesting question posed to AG holder, but it's an even more interesting (non)answer.
Attorney General Eric Holder refused to answer when asked if the Justice Department is spying on members of Congress, citing the need for a classified conversation, which lawmakers accepted while asking him to make sure that evidence of such surveillance is not destroyed.
“With all due respect, Senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss [this issue],” Holder replied during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing when Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., asked if the executive branch was conducting surveillance that would give “unique leverage” over lawmakers.
Kirk replied that “the correct answer would be, ‘No, we stayed within our lane, and we did not spy on members of Congress.’”
Holder assured Kirk that “there is no intention to do anything of that nature — that is, to spy on members of Congress or to spy on the Supreme Court.”
IMHO, it's pretty telling that he wouldn't, or couldn't, give a straight-up "no" to the question. If a classified conversation was needed for the answer, you can bet the DoJ is snooping in Congress' business.
The National Security Agency, the spy agency which does electronic surveillance for the U.S. government, has been directly tapping into the systems of Google, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, YouTube, Skype and other Internet organizations, according to a report today in The Guardian, a British newspaper.
The Guardian's report was based on a classified Powerpoint presentation on the program--called PRISM--through which the U.S. government has been covertly collecting information via massive surveillance of the Internet.
"The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation--classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies--which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program," the paper said. "The document claims 'collection directly from the servers' of major US service providers."
Internet companies contacted by the Guardian denied any knowledge of the secret program.
Google provided a statement to the newspaper that said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."
Maybe loyalty is more important than truth, eh? Read more at humanevents.com:
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, famed as the chief purveyor of the Obama Administration’s false talking points on the Benghazi attack, will become Barack Obama’s new National Security Adviser following the resignation of Tom Donilon. Obama previously tried to promote her to Secretary of State, but that required confirmation, so the effort collapsed.
I’d say that a more brazen insult to the American people from this President could not be imagined, but, hey, IRS.
This means the President who claims he learns about his Administration’s activities by watching the news will be advised on national security by a woman famous for lying to the media. That seems like a closed information loop. Rice’s defenders claimed she had nothing to do with preparing the phony talking points – she was just mindlessly reciting them. Is that really the sort of thing America wants on a national security adviser’s resume?
