Court affirmed 4th Amendment protections against NSA’s mass surveillance, defending “the right to be left alone.” pic.twitter.com/JSgf3vpEYb
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Snowden Vindicated as Judge Shuts Down NSA Bulk Spying in Epic Smackdown
Snowden Vindicated as Judge Shuts Down NSA Bulk Spying in Epic Smackdown
On Monday, a federal judge ordered a halt to the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program in a reiteration and confirmation of a previous ruling that found the practice “unconstitutional”— and even “Orwellian.”
“This court simply cannot, and will not, allow the government to trump the Constitution merely because it suits the exigencies of the moment,”stated Washington, D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon in his mordant 43-page ruling.
Edward Snowden immediately hailed the decision, pointing out significant passages from the court to his millions of Twitter followers. Of particular importance — and, indeed, at the heart of both known and potentially unknown domestic spy programs — remains the impossible reckoning between Fourth Amendment protections and the government’s claims of a national security imperative.
“Moved by whatever momentary evil has aroused their fears, officials — perhaps even supported by a majority of citizens — may be tempted to conduct searches that sacrifice the liberty of each citizen to assuage the perceived evil. But the Fourth Amendment rests on the principle that a true balance between the individual and society depends on the recognition of ‘the right to be let [sic] alone — the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,’” the ruling stated, with emphasis added by Snowden.
In another tweet, the whistleblower summarized the ruling: “Judge rejects government claim that so long as you aren’t targeted individually, dragnet searches of your life are OK.”
Judge rejects govt claim that so long as you aren’t targeted individually, dragnet searches of your life are ok. pic.twitter.com/1tscV1hEXT
US War Theories Target Dissenters
US War Theories Target Dissenters
When the U.S. Department of Defense published a new Law of War Manual (LOW) this past summer, editorialists at the New York Times sat up and took notice. Their concern was that the manual stated that journalists could be deemed “unprivileged belligerents.” The editorial explained that as a legal term “that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war.” In fact, it is far more insidious than that innocuous description.
Here is the manual’s definition: “‘Unlawful combatants’ or ‘unprivileged belligerents’ are persons who, by engaging in hostilities, have incurred one or more of the corresponding liabilities of combatant status (e.g., being made the object of attack and subject to detention), but who are not entitled to any of the distinct privileges of combatant status (e.g., combatant immunity and POW status).”
The key phrase here is “being made the object of attack.” For slow-witted New York Times editorialists, that means journalists can be killed as can any enemy soldier in wartime. “Subject to detention” means a journalist deemed an unprivileged belligerent will be put into military detention if captured. As with any enemy belligerent, however, if “capture is not feasible,” they would be killed if possible, by drone perhaps if in a foreign country.
Currently, most U.S. captives deemed “unprivileged belligerents” are imprisoned in Guantanamo although some may be held in Afghanistan. It must be noted that the United States deems as an “unprivileged belligerent” anyone they target for capture or choose to kill.
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New UN Privacy Chief Proclaims – UK Digital Surveillance is “Worse than Orwell”
New UN Privacy Chief Proclaims – UK Digital Surveillance is “Worse than Orwell”
Cannataci says we are dealing with a world even worse that anything Orwell could have foreseen. “It’s worse,” he said. “Because if you look at CCTV alone, at least Winston was able to go out in the countryside and go under a tree and expect there wouldn’t be any screen, as it was called. Whereas today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already.
– UN Privacy chief, Joseph Cannataci
The UN special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, pulls no punches when it comes to privacy. It’s hard to disagree with what he has to say.
From the Guardian:
The first UN privacy chief has said the world needs a Geneva convention style law for the internet to safeguard data and combat the threat of massive clandestine digital surveillance.
Speaking to the Guardian weeks after his appointment as the UN special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci described British surveillance oversight as being “a joke”, and said the situation is worse than anything George Orwell could have foreseen.
He added that he doesn’t use Facebook or Twitter, and said it was regrettable that vast numbers of people sign away their digital rights without thinking about it.
One thing that is certainly going to come up in my mandate is the business model that large corporations are using
“Some people were complaining because they couldn’t find me on Facebook. They couldn’t find me on Twitter. But since I believe in privacy, I’ve never felt the need for it,” Cannataci, a professor of technology law at University of Groningen in the Netherlands and head of the department of Information Policy & Governance at the University of Malta, said.
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FBI says that citizens should have no secrets that the government can’t access: the Orwellian cyber police state has arrived
FBI says that citizens should have no secrets that the government can’t access: the Orwellian cyber police state has arrived
The police and surveillance state predicted in the forward-looking 1940s classic “1984” by George Orwell, has slowly, but steadily, come to fruition. However, like a frog sitting idly in a pan of steadily-warming water, too many Americans still seem unaware that the slow boil of big government is killing their constitutional liberties.
The latest sign of this stealth takeover of civil rights and freedom was epitomized in recent Senate testimony by FBI Director James Comey, who voiced his objections to civilian use of encryption to protect personal data – information the government has no automatic right to obtain.
As reported by The New American, Comey testified that he believes the government’s spy and law enforcement agencies should have unfettered access to everything Americans may store or send in electronic format: On computer hard drives, in so-called i-clouds, in email and in text messaging – for our own safety and protection. Like many in government today, Comey believes that national security is more important than constitutional privacy protections or, apparently, due process. After all, aren’t criminals the only ones who really have anything to hide?
In testimony before a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee entitled “Going Dark: Encryption, Technology, and the Balance Between Public Safety and Privacy” Comey said that in order to stay one step ahead of terrorists, as well as international and domestic criminals, Uncle Sam’s various spy and law enforcement agencies should have access to available technology used to de-encrypt protected data. Also, he believes the government should be the final arbiter deciding when decryption is necessary.
What could go wrong there?
Find more articles on the police state at PoliceState.news
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050653_police_state_national_security_FBI.html#ixzz3i8PWQ4tC
Stephen Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence
Stephen Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence
An omnibus of sins, topping 50. Tell us ones we’ve missed, we’ll add to the PM’s rap sheet.
Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have racked up dozens of serious abuses of power since forming government in 2006. From scams to smears, monkey-wrenching opponents to intimidating public servants like an Orwellian gorilla, some offences are criminal, others just offend human decency.
To spare you abuse fatigue, we’ve divided our list into two parts. The second one runs Thursday. Please help us out. As you read, if any abuses we’ve forgotten come to mind, either make a note in the comments thread after this piece or send us an email at editor@thetyee.ca, subject line Harper Abuse List. We will fold what we get into a final version as a handy reference for the campaign.
A thanks, by the way, to a few friends of The Tyee who researched and helped with this list.
ELECTION ABUSES: SCAMS, SLIMES, STINGS AND CROOKED SPENDING
Stephen Harper having called an election, we enter familiar territory. In the Conservative gladiators’ arena just about anything goes — unless and until you are caught, that is. Kicking off The Tyee’s list of Harper abuses of power are 14 times his team violated election laws or ethics:
Conservative Convicted on Robocalls Scam
Tory operative Michael Sona was given jail time for his role in the robocalls scam. The judgeindicated more than one person was likely involved. In another court judgment in a case brought by the Council of Canadians, the ruling said the robocalls operation was widespread, not just limited to the Guelph riding. Donald Segretti who did dirty tricks for the Nixon White House told a Canadian reporter his skullduggery didn’t go so low as to run schemes sending voters to the wrong polling stations.
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The End of Freedom of Speech in Spain
The End of Freedom of Speech in Spain
Spain has shown that it is fully on board with the Brussels authoritarian direction of ending democracy. Those in power have simply convinced themselves that the people do not understand what is good for them so they must impose their will upon the people but raw force. How does this differ in any what from the justification of imposing communism? This is the death of all freedom and it is upon our doorstep.
Here are the new laws in Spain:
1. If you photograph security personnel and then share these images on social media: up to €30.000 fine (particularly if photo exposes violence used against a member of the public). This fine could increase depending on the number of Instagram or social media followers you have.
2. Tweet or retweet information or the “location of an organized protest” can now be interpreted as an act of terrorism as it incites others to “commit a crime” (now that “demonstrating” in many ways has become a crime). Sound “1984”-ish? Read about Orwell and his time in Spain.
3. Snowden-like whistle blowing is now defined as an act of terrorism. If you write for a local publication, be careful what you print, whom you speak to, and whether the government is listening.
4. Visiting or consulting terrorist websites – even for investigative purposes – can be interpreted as an act of terrorism. Make sure you use “Tor” browser, reject cookies, and don’t allow pop-ups. Not to mention, don’t post it on your Facebook timeline!
5. Be careful with the royal jokes! Any satirical comment against the royal family is a new crime “against the Crown”. For example, “What did Leticia and the Bishop have to say after they ––“ (SORRY CENSORED).
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The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death of Free Speech
The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death of Free Speech
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it…. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.” ― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
– See more at: https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_emergence_of_orwellian_newspeak_and_the_death_of_free_speech#sthash.cDulZM82.dpuf
Orwell’s Triumph: How Novels Tell the Truth of Surveillance
Orwell’s Triumph: How Novels Tell the Truth of Surveillance
When government agencies and private companies access and synthesize our data, they take on the power to novelize our lives. Their profiles of our behavior are semi-fictional stories, pieced together from the digital traces we leave as we go about our days. No matter how many articles we read about this process, grasping its significance is no easy thing. It turns out that to understand the weird experience of being the target of all this surveillance — how we are characters in semi-true narratives constructed by algorithms and data analysts — an actual novel can be the best medium.
Book of Numbers, released earlier this month, is the latest exhibit. Written by Joshua Cohen, the book has received enthusiastic notices from the New York Times and other outlets as an ambitious “Internet novel,” embedding the history of Silicon Valley in a dense narrative about a search engine called Tetration. Book of Numbers was written mostly in the wake of the emergence of WikiLeaks and was finished as a trove of NSA documents from Edward Snowden was coming to light. Cohen even adjusted last-minute details to better match XKeyscore, a secret NSA computer system that collects massive amounts of email and web data; in Book of Numbers,Tetration has a function secreted within it that automatically reports searches to the government. As Tetration’s founder puts it, “All who read us are read.”
Ben Wizner of the ACLU, who is Cohen’s friend and Snowden’s lawyer, has praised the novel’s depiction of the “surveillance economy,” as he puts it. “There’s a frustration on the law and advocacy side about how abstract some of these issues can seem to the public,” Wizner told the Times. “For some people, the novelist’s eye can show the power and the danger of these systems in ways that we can’t.”
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Orwell, Huxley and America’s Plunge into Authoritarianism
Orwell, Huxley and America’s Plunge into Authoritarianism
Legitimizing State Violence
While Neil Postman and other critical descendants have pitted Orwell and Huxley against each other because of their distinctively separate notions of a future dystopian society,[1] I believe that the dark shadow of authoritarianism that shrouds American society like a thick veil can be lifted by re-examining Orwell’s prescient dystopian fable 1984 as well as Huxley’s Brave New World in light of contemporary neoliberal ascendancy. Rather than pit their dystopian visions against each other, it might be more productive to see them as complementing each other, especially at a time when to quote Antonio Gramsci “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”[2]
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Orwellian Language – the Slide toward “Velvet Glove” Fascism Continues
Orwellian Language – the Slide toward “Velvet Glove” Fascism Continues
Sometimes we get the feeling the ruling elites are investing the laws they enact with a kind of impertinent, slap-in-your-face black humor. How else to explain the Orwellian names given to the liberty-crushing laws that have been put in place since the “war on terror” started?
The latest example is the misnamed “Freedom Act”, the purpose of which appears to be to make legal what was hitherto plainly illegal – inter alia whole-sale spying by the government on the citizenry. The legislation has been sold to the serfs as absolutely necessary to “prevent terror attacks”. As we have previously pointed out, the average US citizen is statistically far more likely to die from drowning in a bathtub or simply by falling from a chair rather than from a terror attack. No special laws have been proposed yet to save us from the evil of bathtubs and chairs, in spite of the danger evidently emanating from these deadly household furnishings.
Many people indeed begin to watch what they are saying once they are aware of being under constant surveillance. As we have previously argued, this undermines an important pillar of civilization.
Cartoon via Terrence Nowicki
Apart from the vanishingly small statistical likelihood of actually being harmed by terrorists, it is noteworthy that such laws – the true purpose of which is highly unlikely to be congruent with their stated purpose – are enacted even while the government engages in activities that are bound to worsen these statistics in the future. The so-called “war on terror” so far actually seems to be similarly successful as the “war on poverty” and the “war on drugs”. In fact, it appears to be ranking quite high on the list of the biggest government boondoggles.
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Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your Money–“Legally,” Of Course
Orwell and Kafka Do America: How the Government Steals Your Money–“Legally,” Of Course
Due process and rule of law have been replaced with “legalized” looting by government in America.
Did you know that the government of Iran steals your cash if they find more than loose change in your car? They don’t arrest you for any crime, for the simple reason you didn’t commit any crime; but it isn’t about crime and punishment–it’s about “legalizing” theft by the state.
So the government toadies don’t charge you with a crime or arrest you–they just steal your money.
Pity the poor Iranian people–clearly, there is no rule of law to protect them from their predatory, rapacious, fake-democracy, quasi-totalitarian government.
Did you also know that if you deposit too much money in modest sums, the government of Iran steals all your deposits? They will claim–oh, the twisted logic of Orwellian, repressive governments–that you are obviously a drug dealer who is avoiding laws that require banks to report large deposits to the government.
Once again, you won’t be charged with a crime–in true Orwellian fashion the suspicion that you may have committed a crime is sufficient reason to steal your cash. Pity the poor Iranian people, living in such a banana-republic kleptocracy.
Did you also know that if you are caught with any drug paraphernalia in your vehicle, the government of Iran steals your vehicle?The crime isn’t a drug crime–it’s a property crime: what are you doing with the government of Iran’s vehicle?
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ClubOrlov: Defeat is Victory
On the wall of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth from his novel1984 there were three slogans:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
It occurred to me that these apply just a little bit too well to the way the Washington, DC establishment operates.
War certainly is peace: just look at how peaceful Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine have become thanks to their peacemaking efforts. The only departures from absolute peacefulness which might be taking place there have to do with the fact that there are some people still alive there. This should resolve itself on its own, especially in the Ukraine, where the people now face the prospect of surviving a cold winter without heat or electricity.
Freedom is indeed slavery: to enjoy their “freedom,” Americans spend most of their lives working off debt, be it a mortgage, medical debt incurred due to an illness, or student loans. Alternatively, they can also enjoy it by rotting in jail. They also work longer hours with less time off and worse benefits than in any other developed country, and their wages haven’t increased in two generations.
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Forget Orwell and Rand, We’ve Gone to Full On Plato | First Rebuttal
Forget Orwell and Rand, We’ve Gone to Full On Plato | First Rebuttal.
Lately, we hear a lot about Orwell’s “1984″ and Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” but perhaps the best crystal ball to our current state of affairs is Plato’s Republic. You see both Rand and Orwell were describing a world outside of themselves. A world they couldn’t understand or accept. And while those works are brilliant and incredibly prophetic, I expect that to understand a world borne of narcissistic sociopathy one must examine the construct of such a world by a narcissistic sociopath. Fortunately Plato, perhaps the world’s most (in)famous narcissistic sociopath, provided us a vivid illustration and explanation of his ideal state in “Plato’s Republic”. Plato provides us the why to Orwell’s and Rand’s ‘unideal’ states.
Plato provides the arguments for the philosopher kings. He also describes various levels of reality, arguing that each societal demographic must live within the reality level delegated to them. He argues each demographic has a limited intellectual capacity and thus can only handle the reality level provided to them. With the philosopher kings being the only societal demographic with the right to and capacity for absolute truth. Likewise, the philosophers kings in the world we find ourselves today control each and every aspect of life including our subsequent perception of the world. There is no such thing as happenstance.
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The Rutherford Institute :: Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?
The Rutherford Institute :: Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots in the Digital Age?.
Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more appropriate for the age in which we live: useful hypocrites. That’s you and me, folks, and it’s how the masters of the digital universe see us. And they have pretty good reasons for seeing us that way. They hear us whingeing about privacy, security, surveillance, etc., but notice that despite our complaints and suspicions, we appear to do nothing about it. In other words, we say one thing and do another, which is as good a working definition of hypocrisy as one could hope for.—John Naughton,The Guardian
“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?”
In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse, all the while convincing ourselves that the prison walls enclosing us within the American police state are there for our protection.
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