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The Terrorism Pretext: Mass Surveillance is About Money and Power
The Terrorism Pretext: Mass Surveillance is About Money and Power
“We are under pressure from the Treasury to justify our budget, and commercial espionage is one way of making a direct contribution to the nation’s balance of payments”
-Sir Colin McColl, former MI6 Chief
For years public figures have condemned cyber espionage committed against the United States by intruders launching their attacks out of China. These same officials then turn around and justify America’s far-reaching surveillance apparatus in terms of preventing terrorist attacks. Yet classified documents published by WikiLeaks reveal just how empty these talking points are. Specifically, top-secret intercepts prove that economic spying by the United States is pervasive, that not even allies are safe, and that it’s wielded to benefit powerful corporate interests.
At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire Hillary Clinton accusedChina of “trying to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America.” Clinton’s hyperbole is redolent of similar claims from the American Deep State. For example, who could forget the statement made by former NSA director Keith Alexander that Chinese cyber espionage represents the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Alexander has obviously never heard of quantitative easing (QE) or the self-perpetuating “global war on terror” which has likewise eaten throughtrillions of dollars. Losses due to cyber espionage are a rounding error compared to the tidal wave of money channeled through QE and the war on terror.
When discussing the NSA’s surveillance programs Keith Alexander boldly asserted that they played a vital role with regard to preventing dozens of terrorist attacks, an argument that fell apart rapidly under scrutiny. Likewise, in the days preceding the passage of the USA Freedom Act of 2015 President Obama advised that bulk phone metadata collection was essential “to keep the American people safe and secure.” Never mind that decision makers have failed to provideany evidence that bulk collection of telephone records has prevented terrorist attacks.
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Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny
Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny
“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”—George Orwell
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all of the politically expedient things that are being said—about militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption—while the government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright tyranny.
Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite President Obama’s warning that the nation needs to do some “soul searching” about issues such as race, poverty and the strained relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him “manhandling, arresting and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party.”
Americans’ private communications and data are still being sucked up by government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change. As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic, points out, “The theater we’ve just witnessed allows decision makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while spies understand that what’s actually transpired ishardly major change.”
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Lies the Government Is Telling You—The Freedom Of Information Act Is A Fraud
Lies the Government Is Telling You—The Freedom Of Information Act Is A Fraud
Last week, Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined President Barack Obama in congratulating themselves for taming the National Security Agency’s voracious appetite for spying. By permitting one section of the Patriot Act to expire and by replacing it with the USA Freedom Act, the federal government is taking credit for taming beasts of its own creation.
In reality, nothing substantial has changed.
Under the Patriot Act, the NSA had access to and possessed digital versions of the content of all telephone conversations, emails and text messages sent between and among all people in America since 2009. Under the USA Freedom Act, it has the same. The USA Freedom Act changes slightly the mechanisms for acquiring this bulk data, but it does not change the amount or nature of the data the NSA acquires.
Under the Patriot Act, the NSA installed its computers in every main switching station of every telecom carrier and Internet service provider in the U.S. It did this by getting Congress to immunize the carriers and providers from liability for permitting the feds to snoop on their customers and by getting the Department of Justice to prosecute the only CEO of a carrier who had the courage to send the feds packing.
In order to operate its computers at these facilities, the NSA placed its own computer analysts physically at those computers 24/7. It then went to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and asked for search warrants directing the telecoms and Internet service providers to make available to it all the identifying metadata – the times, locations, durations, email addresses used and telephone numbers used – for all callers and email users in a given ZIP code or area code or on a customer list.
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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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One Small Step For NSA Reform, One Giant Leap for Congress
Exactly two years after journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras traveled to Hong Kong to meet an NSA whistleblower named Edward Snowden, Congress has finally brought itself to reform one surveillance program out of the multitude he revealed — a program so blatantly out of line that its end was a foregone conclusion as soon as it was exposed.
The USA Freedom Act passed the House in an overwhelming, bipartisan vote three weeks ago. After hardliner Republicans lost a prolonged game of legislative chicken, the Senate gave its approval Tuesday afternoon as well, by a 67 to 32 margin. The bill officially ends 14 years of unprecedented bulk collection of domestic phone records by the NSA, replacing it with a program that requires the government to make specific requests to the phone companies.
After Snowden’s leak of NSA documents revealed it, the program was repeatedly found to violate the law, first by legal experts and blue-ribbon panels, and just last month by a federal appellate court. Its rejection by Congress is hardly a radical act — it simply reasserts the meaning of the word “relevant” (the language of the statute) as distinct from “everything” (how the government interpreted it).
At the same time, the Freedom Act explicitly reauthorizes — or, rather, reinstates, since they technically expired at midnight May 31 — other programs involving the collection of business records that the Bush and Obama administrations claimed were authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. In fact, even the bulk collection of phone records, which was abruptly wound down last week in anticipation of a possible expiration, may wind up again, because the Freedom Act allows it to continue for a six-month transition period.
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Ron Paul Fears The CIA Is The Biggest Threat To Americans’ Liberty
Ron Paul Fears The CIA Is The Biggest Threat To Americans’ Liberty
As the Senate scrambled to pass the USA Freedom Act this evening, reinstating the agency’s ability to spy on Americans, Ron Paul points out that US intelligence organizations have always – and will continue – to operate outside the law; with Daniel McAdams noting the CIA “is sort of the President’s own Praetorian Guard.” As Sputnik News reports, before Americans applaud a minor step toward transparency, Paul warns that they should recognize the corrosive nature of the CIA, “They are a secret government,” operating way above the law, and are “way out of control.”
“[The CIA] is sort of the President’s own Praetorian Guard,” Daniel McAdams, from the Institute of Peace and Prosperity, said on the Ron Paul Liberty Report. “We know…that he sent assassination squads, he sent people to monitor Martin Luther King, and all sorts of things like this.”
“This is like his own personal army which is accountable to no one,” McAdams adds:
As Sputnik News reports, according to Paul, the CIA could be an even bigger threat to liberty than McAdams suggests. A covert army that doesn’t answer to Congress, the Supreme Court, or even the president.
“That, to me, was the most frightening experience in Washington, is there were black budgets. We never knew exactly how much money was spent,” Paul says.Those secret budgets have allowed the CIA to carry out some pretty shady practices over the years. Chiefly, assassinations.
…
“There are certainly a lot of theories about the CIA being involved in even domestic assassinations, and they certainly are now involved in presidential directed assassinations,” Paul says.
“The US has covertly and overtly influenced elections overseas a number of times,” McAdams says. “It’s a very open secret that the CIA infiltrates monitoring organizations like the OSCE with their personnel.”
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On Patriot Act Renewal and USA Freedom Act: Glenn Greenwald Talks With ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer
On Patriot Act Renewal and USA Freedom Act: Glenn Greenwald Talks With ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer
Even in the security-über alles climate that followed 9/11, the Patriot Act was recognized as an extreme and radical expansion of government surveillance powers. That’s why “sunset provisions” were attached to several of its key provisions: meaning they would expire automatically unless Congress renewed them every five years. But in 2005 and then again in 2010, the Bush and Obama administrations demanded their renewal, and Congress overwhelmingly complied with only token opposition from civil libertarians.
That has all changed in the post-Snowden era. The most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to “sunset” on June 1, and there is almost no chance for a straight-up, reform-free authorization. The Obama White House has endorsed the so-called “reform” bill called the USA Freedom Act, which passed the House by an overwhelming majority. Yet the bill fell three votes short in the Senate last week, rendering it very unclear what will happen as the deadline rapidly approaches.
Unlike many privacy and civil liberties groups, the ACLU has refrained from endorsing the USA Freedom Act and instead is advocating for allowing the Patriot Act provisions to sunset — i.e., to die a long overdue death rather than being “reformed.” Meanwhile, almost all of the 86 “no” votes in the House were based on the argument that the USA Freedom Act either does not go far enough in limiting the NSA or that it actually makes things worse.
I spoke yesterday with the ACLU’s Deputy Legal Director, Jameel Jaffer, about what is likely going to happen as the June 1 deadline approaches, whether the USA Freedom Act is a net positive for privacy supporters, and what all of this reform means for Edward Snowden’s status. The discussion is roughly 20 minutes and can be heard on the player below; a transcript is also provided.
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Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors
Many of the NSA’s Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors
The debate over the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records has reached a critical point after a federal appeals court last week ruled the practice illegal, dramatically raising the stakes for pending Congressional legislation that would fully or partially reinstate the program. An army of pundits promptly took to television screens, with many of them brushing off concerns about the surveillance.
The talking heads have been backstopping the NSA’s mass surveillance more or less continuously since it was revealed. They spoke out to support the agency when NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of its programs in 2013, and they’ve kept up their advocacy ever since — on television news shows, newspaper op-ed pages, online and at Congressional hearings. But it’s often unclear just how financially cozy these pundits are with the surveillance state they defend, since they’re typically identified with titles that give no clues about their conflicts of interest. Such conflicts have become particularly important, and worth pointing out, now that the debate about NSA surveillance has shifted from simple outrage to politically prominent legislative debates.
As one example of the opaque link between NSA money and punditry, take the words of Stewart Baker, who was general counsel to the NSA from 1992 through 1994. During a Senate committee hearing last summer on one of the reform bills now before Congress, the USA FREEDOM Act, whichwould partially limit mass surveillance of telephone metadata, Baker essentially said the bill would aid terrorists.
“First, I do not believe we should end the bulk collection program,” he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “It will put us at risk. It will, as Senator King strongly suggested, slow our responses to serious terrorist incidents. And it is a leap into the dark with respect to this data.”
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USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty
USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty
Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people.
While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is not a good thing, Headley’s case in no way justifies mass surveillance. For one thing, there is no “terrorist” exception in the Fourth Amendment. Saying a good end (capturing terrorists) justifies a bad means (mass surveillance) gives the government a blank check to violate our liberties.
Even if the Headley case somehow justified overturning the Fourth Amendment, it still would not justify mass surveillance and bulk data collection. This is because, according to an investigation by ProPublica, NSA surveillance played an insignificant role in catching Headley. One former counter-terrorism official said when he heard that NSA surveillance was responsible for Headley’s capture he “was trying to figure out how NSA played a role.”
The Headley case is not the only evidence that the PATRIOT Act and other post-9/11 sacrifices of our liberty have not increased our security. For example, the NSA’s claim that its surveillance programs thwarted 54 terrorist attacks has been widely discredited. Even the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies found that mass surveillance and bulk data collection was “not essential to preventing attacks.”
According to the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Commission, the powers granted the NSA by the PATRIOT Act would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Many intelligence experts have pointed out that, by increasing the size of the haystack government agencies must look through, mass surveillance makes it harder to find the needle of legitimate threats.
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NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER SNOWDEN, CONGRESS POISED TO DO SOMETHING — JUST NOT MUCH
NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER SNOWDEN, CONGRESS POISED TO DO SOMETHING — JUST NOT MUCH
Members of Congress appear ready to use a rare moment of leverage over the NSA to place modest limits on only one of the many mass surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden.
The USA Freedom Act of 2015, a long-awaited compromise bill negotiated by House and Senate Judiciary Committee members, was unveiled Tuesday. The bill calls for the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records by the National Security Agency to be replaced with a more selective approach in which the agency would collect from communications companies only records that match certain terms. The bill also requires more disclosure — and a public advocate — for the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
But nearly two years after Snowden gave the public a rare and extensive view into the U.S. surveillance state, Congress is doing nothing to limit NSA programs ostensibly targeted at foreigners that nonetheless collect vast amounts of American communications, nor to limit the agency’s mass surveillance of non-American communications. The limited reforms in the new bill affect only the one program explicitly aimed at Americans.
Congress had leverage for once because three provisions of the PATRIOT Act are set to expire on June 1. They include, most significantly, Section 215 of the act, which was intended to allow the government to obtain specific business records relevant to particular counterterror investigations, subject to review by a FISA court judge. Instead, the NSA used it to justify the wholesale seizure of American telephone records.
The USA Freedom Act would amend Section 215 so that the government, when seeking phone and other business records, would have to use a “specific selection term”.
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GOP Establishment Queen Mitch McConnell Introduces Patriot Act Reauthorization with Zero NSA Reforms
GOP Establishment Queen Mitch McConnell Introduces Patriot Act Reauthorization with Zero NSA Reforms
Late last week, I published a post about Patriot Act reauthorization that turned out to be extremely popular. It was titled, Congress is Attempting to Reauthorize Key Patriot Act Provisions by Sneaking it Into “USA Freedom Act.” Here’s an excerpt:
June 1, 2015 is a very important day for American civil liberties and the Constitution. On that day, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, one of the most egregious pieces of legislation passed in U.S. history, will expire automatically without reauthorization from Congress. Naturally, this is causing a panic attack within the heart of the NSA, FBI and all the authoritarian lackey legislators in Washington D.C. With the chances of a clean reauthorization next to none, these crafty “representatives” and their puppeteers need to figure out a way to sneak it into another piece of legislation. What better way to do this than making it a part of something that ostensibly appears to be reining in surveillance powers. Enter the USA Freedom Act.
As mentioned, it is widely believed that there isn’t enough support for straight reauthorization unaccompanied by some sort of NSA reform, but that won’t stop GOP establishment queen Mitch McConnell from trying.
McConnell is amongst the most freedom hating, constitution trampling Republican members in the Senate, sharing this distinction with John McCain and Lindsey Graham. What makes McConnell far more dangerous is his position as Senate Majority Leader. Today, the Washington Post informed us how he’s wielding such power:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night to extend through 2020 a controversial surveillance authority under the Patriot Act.
The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government’s spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
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