None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Goethe
1984 is supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual
The troubling aspect about these disclosures is not so much their significance today, but
what surveillance on the nation bodes for the future. Given human nature I am not optimistic.
NSA staff and private contractors have unfettered access to this information. I have a hard
time believing that not one of them has used that access to information for personal or political
gain. This system makes insider trading, industrial espionage, blackmail, and extortion an almost
inevitable outcome. --
The Guardian (from comments).
A new round of debates about the dominance of military industrial complex and the level of control
it exerts over the US civil society was caused by recent revelations about NSA activities in the USA.
It might well be the Rubicon was crossed around JFK assassination time. On August 17, 1975 Senator
Frank Church stated on NBC's Meet the Press without
mentioning the name of the NSA (Church
Committee - Wikipedia ):
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government
has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through
the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or
potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned
around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability
to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no
place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the
technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to
impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort
to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there
to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess
this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that
abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[11]
In other words expansionism and mission creep are immanent qualities, the second nature of large bureaucracies, and
unless there is countervailing force. In the absence of countervailing forces they tend to escape from civil control and form a state within a state.
In a way any state with powerful three-letter agencies stand with one leg in a tyranny, even if it
calls
itself a democracy. And that fact was already known to everybody in 1975 (Church
Committee). Actually just after president
Kennedy assassination, which, no matter which version of events you adopt, in all cases indirectly pointed
out that three letter agencies jumped out of control of civil government. As one Guardian reader commented
"The pernicious thing is that it is in the nature of bureaucracies in general and spy agencies in particular
to expand beyond reason unless there is effective oversight."
The nature of bureaucracies in general and spy agencies in particular to expand beyond
reason unless there is effective oversight. In the case of intelligence agencies it has proven
impossible for civil authorities to control them. Recent stories about CIA spying on the US
Senate Intelligence Committee just prove this.
A statement issued Thursday morning by a C.I.A. spokesman said that John O. Brennan, the
agency’s director, had apologized to Ms. Feinstein and the committee’s ranking Republican,
Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and would set up an internal accountability board to review
the issue. The statement said that the board, which will be led by a former Democratic senator,
Evan Bayh of Indiana, could recommend “potential disciplinary measures” and “steps to address
systemic issues.”
But anger among lawmakers grew throughout the day. Leaving a nearly three-hour briefing about the
report in a Senate conference room, members of both parties called for the C.I.A. officers to be
held accountable, and some said they had lost confidence in Mr. Brennan’s leadership. “This is a
serious situation and there are serious violations,” said Mr. Chambliss, generally a staunch ally
of the intelligence community. He called for the C.I.A. employees to be “dealt with very
harshly.”
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado and another member of the Intelligence Committee,
demanded Mr. Brennan’s resignation. “The C.I.A. unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking
into the Senate Intelligence Committee computers,” he said in a written statement. “This grave
misconduct not only is illegal but it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation
of powers.
You can't get a more solid proof of total surveillance... Please note that Brennan
continued his tenure as the head of CIA; attempts to depose him after the incident by some Senators
failed. That suggest who was the winner in this skirmish.
That also means that contrary to common perception intelligence agencies are political players
and as such are quite capable to defend their staffing and resource consumption levels, despite inefficient waist of resources
as typical for large bureaucracies. In other words they are no longer technocratic, but tend to
emerge as political bodies, the core of the "deep
state" (see
Bureaucracy as
a Political Coalition). The story of John Brennan the former head of CIA in Obama administration
tell volumes about such tendencies. During and after 2016 Presidential elections he emerged as a
powerful political broker, later aligning with Hillary Clinton in efforts to form a political
coalition capable of deposing President Trump.
We can admire the immortal foresight and moral courage of Secretary of State Henry Stimson's who closed the Cipher
Bureau in 1929. But this highly ethical, moral and courageous act deprived the US of the capacity
to read foreign diplomatic cables as world-wide threats grew. So it was quickly reversed.
In a way technology dictates the level of government surveillance in the society and in "Internet
society" it looks like this level is permanently set on "high". That does not mean that we can't
fight it. Yes, we can and one factor that played into the hands of defenders of personal privacy is
the you can't drink from a fire hose: as soon as you connect too much information it devalues
itself. Also methods of "injecting" false metadata into your profile are reality available. for
example for Internet browsing anybody with programmable keyboard can do that. That means that you
the set of sites you visited no longer can be considered authentic in "Post-Snowden" world. That
dooms effort to assign you a level of "loyalty" based on your browsing history, which is very
temping for three letter agencies to do. Recent failed attempt to create a site that claffies
some sites are "Russian propaganda" sites belong to this category (Washington
Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group.)
But such attempts were just shifted to another domain -- "leak prevention" training:
Part of the
“Unauthorized Disclosure” training includes watching a
Fox News clip on the crackdown on leaks and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ statement
announcing an increase in criminal leak investigations. A
student guide from the Insider Threat Awareness training includes the McCarthyesque request
that employees report on each other for “general suspicious behaviors,” including “Questionable
national loyalty” such as “Displaying questionable loyalty to US government or company” or
“Making anti-U.S. comments.” Never mind that the only oath government employees take is to the US
Constitution, not to any government official or the US government itself and certainly not to a
private company.
This also opens people to browsing blackmail.
In this sense post-snowmen world is inherently more difficult for three-letter agencies to navigate.
Technology changes can really change the society. And not always in a beneficial for the society way.
There is such thing as "blowback" in technologies. We can view recent NSA activities revealed by Snowden
as a classic example of such blowback connected with the spread of Internet and cloud based
technologies. In a way Internet begets surveillance. And you can do nothing about it. As
former Sun CEO Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) said "You have zero privacy
anyway. Getoverit." (see also Privacy is
Dead – Get Over It).
I think that the first attempt to create a comprehensive nation-wide intelligence network that monitors
sentiments of the citizens and hunt enemies of the state goes as far back as Napoleon and his famous
minister of police Joseph Fouché.
Or may be it even goes as far back as to
Byzantine Empire with its first in history organized network of spies. As for recording of mail
envelopes, we can even claim that this function for international mail (in a form of "black chambers")
is as old as states are. In the USA it started in full force in August 1919 when
J. Edgar Hoover became head
of the Bureau of Investigation's
new General Intelligence Division—also known as the Radical Division because its explicit
goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.
Recording of all email envelopes started long before email was
invented and became established practice since the WWII for all regular mail entering or leaving the
country. It just got a new name now -- collection of metadata and the technology that allow
correlation of multiple sets of metadata exposing hidden "networks".
Recording metadata of phone calls and often the calls themselves first started before WWII and technology
was first polished on international calls, which for obvious reasons are of great interest to all governments.
As intelligence agencies were one of the first to deploy computers after WWII it would be naive to
assume that IBM/360 mainframes were not used to analyze collection of metadata of international calls
as early as in
1960th.
Hoover and his chosen assistant, George Ruch monitored a variety of U.S. radicals with the intent
to punish, arrest, or deport them. Targets during this period included Marcus Garvey; Rose Pastor Stokes
and Cyril Briggs; Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman; and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter,
whom Hoover nicknamed as "the most dangerous man in the United States". So those
radicals served a guinea pigs for polishing methods of collection of communications using electronic
means of surveillance.
So it would be a mistake
to assume that such activities started with 9/11 events and that Bush II was totally responsible
for converting the USA into national-security state. The technology was ready at least 15
years before 9/11 (explosive growth of internet in the USA started in 1996) and new methods of
collection of information that are technically available are always adopted and used by clandestine agencies. They tend to adopt technology
as soon as it is available, being, in a pervert way, classic "early adopters" of any communication
or computer technology.
And this happens not only in the USA, although the USA as the technological leader was
probably most profoundly
affected.
The creation and use of databases of personal information and the systematic records (archives) of
communications of citizens started simultaneously with NSA creation. The first targets were mail and
telegraph. Some of this experience came from specialists of Third Reich who were brought to the
country after the WWII. At the height of the Cold War
in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. and Allen
Dulles at the CIA. aggressively recruited former Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,”
declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed
what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. The agency hired one former
SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor
war crimes.” And in 1994, a lawyer with the CIA pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into
an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania,
according to a government official (In Cold War, U.S.
Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis - NYTimes.com).
We don't know when it was extended on domestic calls, but from purely technical perspective this was
a trivial extension of already existing and polished capacity and probably abuse was stated
gradually as soon as power of computers allow that.
But what is true is that after 9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the USA government got all the pre-conditions
necessary for installing a regime of aggressive total surveillance. Which actually was a hidden intent
and 9/11 was just a convenient pretext much like Tonkin incident in Vietnam war. And in this respect
Ed Snowden, whatever is his motivation (which might be
not as simple as most people assume), did the right thing, when he with the risk to his life informed
the US public and the world about those activities. You may approve those revelations, you may disapprove
them (and they did damage the USA as a state and devalue many methods which were extremely effective
before the revelations), but keeping them secret from the US public is a crime.
NSA technically is a data collection agency. While it has legitimate function to monitor information
that is crossing the national border as well as intercept communication of the US adversaries (which
is a very flexible category those days ;-), we need to understand that the abuse of this function is
inevitable. That actually the nature of the beast -- like any bureaucratic
organizations they tend to expand their sphere of activities and escape form control -- and in this
sense existence of powerful state intelligence agencies is incompatible with the democracy. In
this sense the appointment of
Allan Dulles (who paradoxically was appointed the director under
Eisenhower administration in 1952; Eisenhower warnings about the danger of military-industrial
complex notwithstanding) was really unfortunate.
But the capacities to do this
type of work had grown dramatically over last four decades. In a way NSA became a victim of growing
power of computers as well inherent tendency of bureaucracies, especially government bureaucracies
to expand and self-justify their expansion. The classic case was the USSR where KGB was a real "state
within the state" and sometimes it was not completely clear whether the Party controls KGB or KGB controls
the Party.
But the capacities to do this
type of work had grown dramatically over last four decades. In a way NSA became a victim of growing
power of computers and as well inherent tendency of bureaucracies, especially government bureaucracies
to expand and self-justify their expansion. The classic case was the USSR where KGB was a real "state
within the state" and sometimes it was not completely clear whether the Party controls KGB or KGB controls
the Party.
There is deep analogy between financial services and intelligence services. Both try to escape
from the control of democratic society. Both try to control the society instead of serve it. As they
operate with large and uncontrolled amount of money soon after their creation inevitably the "the
tail wagging the dog" (Merriam-Webster):
the tail wagging the dog —used to describe
a situation in which an important or powerful person, organization, etc., is being controlled by
someone or something that is much less important or powerful
At some point the permanent
unelected bureaucracy, became the shadow government instead of facilitating the decisions of elected
officials. This process proceeds quicker if a sociopath manage to slip to the role of the head of
such an organization. That's what the term "deep state" is about. Some authors such as
Douglas Horne view JFK assassination as a political coup d'état launched from the highest
levels of US leadership (JFK’s
War with the National Security Establishment Why Kennedy Was Assassinated). Here is a quote from
the foreword by Jacob G. Hornberger:
By the end of November 1961, profoundly dissatisfied with his own national security advisory
apparatus, President Kennedy had firmly pushed back against the national security establishment
(in this case the NSC, the State Department, and the CIA) by purging and/or reshuffling many of
the civilian hawks in his own administration into other positions, and by placing officials more
in line with his own views into key positions. [A change in the top leadership at the Pentagon
was to come later, in 1962.] Throughout 1961, the new President had painfully but quickly learned
to be quite skeptical of the advice he was receiving, pertaining to matters of war and peace,
from his hawkish advisors; and as 1961 progressed, John F. Kennedy repeatedly demonstrated what
the hawks in government (the majority) no doubt considered a disturbingly independent (and
increasingly all-too-predictable) frame of mind in regard to the national security
recommendations he was receiving from the “sacred cows” and “wise men” in Washington, D.C. As I
shall demonstrate in these essays, by the end of 1962, the national security establishment in
Washington D.C., which had quickly come to know JFK as a skeptic during
1961, had come to view him as a heretic; and by November of 1963, the
month he was assassinated, they no doubt considered him an apostate,
for he no longer supported most of the so-called “orthodox” views of the Cold War priesthood.
Increasingly alone in his foreign policy judgments as 1963 progressed, JFK was nevertheless
proceeding boldly to end our “Holy
War” against Communism, instead of trying to win
it. In retrospect it is clear that the national security establishment wanted to
win our own particular “jihad” of the
post-WW II era by turning the Cold War against the USSR into a “hot war,” so that we could
inflict punishing and fatal blows upon our Communist adversaries (and any other forces we equated
with them) on the battlefield. It was this desire for “hot war” by so
many within the establishment — their belief that conventional “proxy wars” with the Soviet Bloc
were an urgent necessity, and that nuclear war with the USSR was probably inevitable — to which
President Kennedy was so adamantly opposed. And it was JFK’s profound determination to avoid
nuclear war by miscalculation, and to eschew combat with conventional arms unless it was truly
necessary, that separated him from almost everyone else in his administration from 1961
throughout 1963, as events have shown us.
Total surveillance is not so much about terrorism. It's also and mainly about the control of
the society by unelected elite. Terrorism is a false pretext
-- a smoke screen, if you like. Let's state clearly -- the main goal of total surveillance was the same
since it was introduced in Nazi Germany: "Let them be afraid". It's the same as in former German Democratic Republic (with
its famous Stasi). In all cases it is to prevent any challenge to the ruling elite or in the
terminology of neoliberal "color revolutions" prevent "regime
change", unless it is initiated by more powerful foreign three letter agencies and
significantly higher level of financial resources (that's why three letter agencies of newly minted
xUSSR state in several cases were unable to prevent color revolutions of their territories).
In other words surveillance and intelligence agencies are part and parcel of the totalitarian state.
And Sheldon Volin actually created a term for such "pseudo-democratic" regime --
inverted totalitarism.
Unlike classic totalitarism it generally tend to avoid using violence to crush the
dissidents and opposition to the current elite. More "soft" subversive methods are enough. In this
sense the story of crushing "of "Occupy Wall Street" movement is a testament of their
efficiency.
State actors and well funded terrorist organization are a difficult nut to crack. Any
"custom" encrypted communication is far more difficult for intercepting party to decode, then
"standard" encryption methods. Some encryption methods virtually guarantee that it is
impossible without stealing the key. Even detecting the fact of communication for such parties
nowadays is very difficult as it can be hidden in some "carrier" transmission (steganography)
or split into multiple channels. Those who have access
to technology and to "know how" including the most recent exploits are well armed to
resist attempt to intercept their communication. That includes most powerful foreign states.
That means that NSA has great difficulties intercepting and decoding traffic
that is intended to be hidden from state actors. Modern encryption systems such
One-Time-Pad virtually guarantee
that you get the "insider information" of the pad used (typically from a mole) they are
impenetrable. Even regular encryption methods can be enhanced by additional step of compressing the
files transmitted (which by and large eliminates redundancy if done properly and do not leave "tell"
sign of the method encryption used) . Decoding is easier when standard algorithms with
possible backdoors are used but even in this case I have doubts
(Triple DEC). That's why attempts to compensate this deficiency are being developed and one
obvious path is intercepting regular citizen communication of foreign countries which are
considered to be unfriendly or adversarial to current the US foreign policy goals (which is the
expansion and maintenance of global the Us-led neoliberal empire).
But the situation with "open" traffic is completely different. Million of people
outside the USA use Facebook, Amazon, Gmail and similar platforms. Which makes them a low
hanging fruit and here NSA is the king of the hill. Government officials also sometimes use
regular email and social sites (see
Hillary Clinton email scandal).
So intelligence agencies were provided with an important opening (and it might well be that the
dramatic growth of Webmail has something to do with their interests)
At the same time the abundance of information, as Biney mentioned, creates another problem -- the problem
of "drinking from a fire hose" -- they tend to collect too much information and are swamped with the volume. Of cause correlation of open traffic
of "suspicious persons" can reveal some hidden information, but this is a pretty expensive
undertaking, because by definition (unless this is Hillary Clinton ;-) those persons are aware that they are watched,
typically are
trained to avoid surveillance (including electronic) and behave accordingly. for example
General Petraeus used an interesting method to communicate with his
biographer and mistress (The
Washington Post) :
They wrote their "intimate messages" as
draft e-mails in a shared Gmail account,
according to the AP, allowing them to see one anothers' messages while leaving a
much fainter data trail. When messages are sent and received, both accounts record the
transmission as well as such metadata as the IP addresses on either end, something the
two seemed to be seeking to avoid.
Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers
alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.
Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some
messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an
electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log onto the
same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail
that is easier to trace.
With the power of modern computers,
decoys and steganography offer almost unlimited possibility to obscure the traffic.
Concern about the NSA assault on our privacy is no paranoid fantasy. In the
words of an agency PowerPoint slide released by Snowden, the goal is to "collect it all", "process
it all" and "know it all". The massive surveillance program is a clear violation of the Forth
amendment prohibiting "unreasonable searches" of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" without
"probable cause."
- Gene Epstein. "In defence of Snowden",
review of "No Place to Hide" Barrons, Jan 5, 2015, p 17
According to
UN Human Right Council Report (17 April 2013) innovations in technology not only have increased
the possibilities for communication and protections of free expression and opinion, enabling anonymity,
rapid information-sharing and cross-cultural dialogues. They also simultaneously increased opportunities
for State surveillance and interventions into individuals’ private communications facilitating to transformation
of the state into National Security State, a form of corporatism characterized
by continued and encompassing all forms of electronic communication electronic surveillance of all citizens.
Now every Internet or smartphone users probably understand that since probably 2003 or even earlier that that he/she is watched 24
by 7, or as Soviet dissidents called it "Was placed under the [surveillance] dome". Some question that we need to ask ourselves
are:
When the quantity of collected data turns into quality. At some point the amount of collected
information about the person, no matter how trivial, allows things that are drastically different
then simple monitoring of traffic for suspicious elements. It is essentially step up from STASI-style dossier mechanism on most
adult citizens of the USA (and not only USA). Accidentally STASI was created exactly the same year
as NSA, in 1950 and now some of their activities look more and more like identical twins.
And with the level on Internet communications many people have, such "per person" dossier quickly
reaches to the "critical mass" of facts
In a way
You really already
live in a virtual prison watched 24 by 7 by unknown to you guards. For example, just tracking metadata of all
the calls from your cell phone along with GPS information is almost equivalent hiring a private detective to watch
you. Add to this all your credit card records, Amazon orders and browsing records, your emails and SMS and you can beat capability of
a regular private "gum shoes" watching you, by a wide margin spending just cents of a
dollar.
And this is only a start as I did not mention your own "self-revelation"
activities on social sites like Facebook. And if you add to this your web logs (which, by the way, record every
site you visited and every page you browsed) and your posts at Web forums (if any), photo sharing and
your files at cloud storage sites (if you participate)
along with the ability to store collected information for, say, 20 years or your lifetime electronically, and STASI efforts in
human surveillance looks like an expensive and amateurish overkill. Using Internet and
smartphone surveillance you can get much better
information on an individual for much less money/effort using modern technology alone, without any
gum shoes and/or informers.
Note that in this case there no need to look deep into your personal computer (other to collect
private keys in case you use encryption). You essentially volunteer most of the data by the fact
that you are using cell phone, credit card and email/social sites. In other words as
Scott McNealy noted in
1999 Privacy
is Dead – Get Over It. As Bruce Shneier noted (Metadata
Equals Surveillance - Schneier on Security):
Back in June, when the contents of Edward Snowden's cache of NSA documents were
just starting to be revealed and we learned about the NSA collecting phone
metadata of every American, many people -- including President Obama -- discounted
the seriousness of the NSA's actions by saying that it's just metadata.
Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone. He might plant a bug in
their office. He might tap their phone. He might open their mail. The result would
be the details of that person's communications. That's the "data."
Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result
would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked
at, what he purchased -- how he spent his day. That's all metadata.
When the government collects metadata on people, the government puts them under
surveillance. When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they
put everyone under surveillance. When Google does it, they do the same thing.
Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.
Metadata proved to be an extremely powerful way to reveals the person lifestyle and views.
Actually no less clearly then the direct interception
of the content of emails and phone calls. Systematic, total analysis of metadata of cell phone
calls was first used against Iraq insurgents as knowledge of Arabic language is not a strong point
of US military, or three letter agencies. And it proved to be a great success, as it allows to narrow the set of suspects
quickly and cheaply (the USA controlled all cell networks in the country). But later this initial
success was extended and became a universal surveillance tool within the USA, which is more powerful
then in Iraq as you can also analyze the content of messages such as emails or instant messages.
And as you add to phone calls Internet communications logs and metadata such as emails and web logs
and top it with credit card transactions, any person is actually like a bug under extremely powerful
and very cheap microscope.
Should you think twice about what are you sharing with others via your Web communications?
to some extent you should. Pointless relevation of information about yourself but also about your family and friends
is dangerious. The sad truth is that just by
the fact of using all those modern gargets and social networks you already is sharing a lot more personal
information than you intend to share... This self-exposure is actually a build-in feature
of sites such as Facebook. And taken as a whole for a considerable period of time your online activities
create a personal cloud of information about you. Which can along with the state be used by
criminals or other parties. It is not that NSA knows about you more then your
spouse, but it knows enough. And as you can see from the picture below is not a good thing. Look at the picture attentively,
it really deserves your uninterrupted attention:
Even if we assume that data collection is passive and never used, it is like a ticking
bomb or "skeleton in the closet" and as such is a powerful method of control of population. Not
the different from what was used by KGB in the USSR or STASI in East Germany. And probably
more effective as quick dissipation of Occupy Wall Street crowds had shown us.
So it does not really matter much what the data are collected for and what is the official justification
of such a collection. The mere fact of collection changes the situation to the worse, making the opposition
to the system practically impossible and personally costly. The net result is what is matter. And the net result definitely
resembles a move in the direction of a tyranny of the top 1%. As Senator Frank Church said in 1975:
"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to
it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology
operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That
is the abyss from which there is no return.".
Today his words sound even more true then in 1975 when computers were still in their infancy and
mainframes dominated the computer landscape. With the proliferation of cheap electronic devices such
as PCs and laptops, tablets and cell phones this really became "the abyss from which there is
no return".
So the real, the key goal is not what is officially declared (Orwell style permanent war on terrorism).
It is control of population like in was in the USSR and Eastern Germany. In a way we are all Eastern
Germans now, but in a completely different sense then Kennedy meant when he proposed his famous
phrase
(Ich bin ein Berliner)
Convenience of access to information has a side effect that it makes collection of information about
you trivial and at the same time comprehensive. It is to keep the elite safe from common folks, not
all those lies about national security. It is all about the security of the elite.
The story of J. Edgar
Hoover suggests that "knowledge is power" and the top brass of intelligence agencies routinely
and consistently develops a pathological addiction to collecting "skeletons in the closet" for the
people in power. This is a part of more complex trend due to which intelligence agencies often
are called as "shadow government". Often such people actually derive pleasure from having power over
nation politicians due to knowing some secret and embarrassing information on them.It is
in this sense (and also die to capability to conduct clandestine operations) troika of NSA, CIA and
FBI represent real, although shadow government of the country. This is the danger Senator Church
warned us, but the horse probably left the barn at the time of assignation of President Kennedy.
Please note that none of presidents was able to fire
J. Edgar Hoover He died
in his position of the head of FBI. The ability to manipulate other, even very powerful people is
very tempting. As Kissinger used to say "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." A related questions
are:
Whether NSA spied and "collected dirt" on members of Congress? Some information suggests
that they did:
Is executive branch interested in continuation of this practice? The answer is yes.
As Conor Friedersdorf noted on Feb 5, 2014 in
The Atlantic magazine "The phone dragnet gives the executive branch all the information
it needs to blackmail or discredit multiple legislators. It's a temptation to abuse."
Does NSA directly or indirectly has ties to the financial sector especially related to
the providing them with the information on the flow of funds of the foreign competitors ?
(see
Asia
Times, Dec 18, 2013). As
Henry A.
Wallace noted:
"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the
common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do
not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic
extortion.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political
power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they
may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the
Constitution.
They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time
of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. "
..."If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power
ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”
It the situation irreversible? In other words did 1984 dystopia materialized in slightly
different, slightly more gentle form? Probably yes. Cutting funds to three letter agencies would
be a small step in right direction. But the main value of 9/11 for the US establishment was that
it made such moves impossible. Also the elite as a whole is not interesting in dismantling the tool
that serve its interests so well even if it has some side effects on the elite members themselves
(looks at the discussion of surveillance over Trump and members of his team).
A related question is:
Is transformation of USA into USSA (United Secret Services of America) compete or just
started. The answer is that it is almost complete. This is just another confirmation of
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
All-in-all it's a good time to smell the coffee and talk about the rise of a new mutation of totalitarism
(or may be even neofascism -- as it is, essentially, the merger of corporate and state interests) in the
US after 9/11. That's exactly what this "Internet-inspired" flavor of total surveillance due to modern
technical capabilities means. There is also distinct shadow of STASI in all those activities. And some
countries got into similar trap before, so nothing is new under the sun. As Reinhold Niebuhr noted:
"Communism is a vivid object lesson in the monstrous consequences of moral complacency about
the relation of dubious means to supposedly good ends."
There is actually little difference between total surveillance as practiced by NSA and what was practiced
by three letters agencies of Eastern block dictatorships such as STASI and KGB. The key goal in both
cases is protection and preservation of power of existing elite against the will of common people. So
this is more about oppression of 99.9% from top 0.1% then surveillance per see.
We should view Snowden revelations in a larger context. Much of what he revealed about militarization
of cyberspace was already known at the time when
Flame and
Stuxnet worms were discovered in 2011. He just dot the i's and cross the t's , so speak. As a result
of his revelations, as
The
National Interest noted:
An increasing number of adversaries and even allies are coming to believe that the United
States is militarizing cyberspace — and that impression of hubris and irresponsibility is beginning
to have a real-world impact.
...The Snowden leaks have brought Stuxnet, the U.S.-Israeli program allegedly used to attack Iranian
computer systems, back into public debate — and reminded us that the real damage of the Snowden
revelations will be international.
...the perception that the United States has become a danger to the global internet is a cause
for concern. In their understandable anger at the considerable damage Snowden has done (in the
near term at the very least) to the operations of NSA and their allies, U.S. security officials should
not lose sight of this fact.
Snowden’s claims build on the Stuxnet revelations. In doing so, they reinforce an impression
of overbearing U.S. cyberpower (military and commercial) being used irresponsibly. That is strikingly
at odds with the U.S. self-image as a standard bearer of internet freedom and “borderless” exchange,
but it is a view that resonates around the world.
In fact the USA policies are stimulating economic and political rivals around the globe to organize
and present unified front against this new and dangerous form of total surveillance. As well as
implement similar domestic systems. In other words a new arm race started.
As methods and infrastructure of those activities are now revealed, the genie is out of the bottle
and can't be put back -- the US now should expect the same or worse treatment from other nations.
Which can be no less inventive, or even more inventive the USA specialists in this area. And in
this new arm race economically weaker nations actually has some leverage. Blowback, a CIA term for
unintended consequences of foreign, military, or clandestine policies, can be similar to the blowback
of politically organizing Islamic radicals to fight Soviets in Afghanistan in the past.
Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, probably already
waits patiently for her meeting with the NSA brass.
Blowback can irreparably damage the ability of the United States to obtain crucial information
in foreign environments that are poorly understood in Washington. The cultural divide that exists
when operating away from home means that CIA and NSA frequently work overseas through a network of
liaison contacts. This in theory limits their activity, but it broadens their ability to collect
information that can only be plausibly obtained by a local organization with local capabilities.
Though nearly everyone also operates clandestinely outside the parameters of the established relationships
insofar as it is possible or expedient to do so, there is an awareness that being caught can
cause grave damage to the liaison relationship. Because being exposed is nearly always very
painful, such operations are normally limited to collection of critical information that the liaison
partner would be unwilling to reveal.
So while it might be comforting to claim that “everyone does it” at least some of the time,
and it may even be true that local spy agencies sometimes collaborated with NSA, the United States
has a great deal to lose by spying on its friends. This is particularly true as Washington,
uniquely, spies on everyone, all the time, even when there is no good reason for doing so.
Centralization of user activities on sites like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn,
with email account mainly at Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail along with many positive aspects has tremendous
negative side effects. The most significant is that it created a way too easy opportunity both for those
organizations as well as government agencies and large corporations to data mine email and Web communications
of millions of Americans critical about government (see
Total control:
keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) and all foreigners who use those
services (and that includes a significant part of European population and Russia, who have Gmail, Facebook
or Yahoo accounts). The history of "total surveillance" suggests that it tends to be abused. It is also
huge, irreparable breach on trust in relation to allies. Closely resembles the situation in family when
wife or husband learn that the other hired detective to snoop on you.
The analogy with KGB surveillance of dissidents (the Soviet term for total surveillance was "to be
under the 'dome' ") and, especially, Stasi
(viewing the film "The Lives of Others" might help to understand the phenomenon of "total surveillance")
are way too close. At the same time there is an important difference: while such regime does mean indirect
(and pretty effective) intimidation of dissidents, cases of prosecution on the base of the those data
are either few or non existent, which is a big difference with KGB or
Stasi practice. The latter aggressively
pursued those who got in their net trying either to convert them into informers or charge them with
the some suitable article of Criminal Code. In some cases that practice lead to suicides. So here we
can talk more properly talk about total surveillance an instrument of
Inverted Totalitarism, or totalitarism in velvet
gloves.
We are talking about "passive total surveillance" and temporary (which might be several years or
your lifetime) storage of all intercepted data. But in a way, Senator McCartney was probably right about
"Communists sympathizers" and communist infiltration, he just was completely wrong about who they are
;-).
The famous The Police hit Every
Breath You Take should probably be the theme song for the NSA. As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us
in his famous speech:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Snowden revelations are not something new. The only real revelation was how much of it was going
on domestically and gory details of such activities. Before 9/11 the NSA was basically prohibited from
operating domestically. Of course it violates those prohibitions, but there were no systematic internal,
all encompassing technical surveillance infrastructure in place. Now it is build and is deployed nation-wide.
And that's a big change, big difference. Due to "novel" interpretation of a few provisions in the Patriot
Act they created domestic dragnet which encompass most types of Internet communications. In addition
to intercepting more then 70% of Internet traffic they also enjoy direct access to major cloud providers.
Total continued surveillance even without taking any action on collected data is totalitarian by
its nature as it put severe restrictions of the freedom of expression. And like in the USSR, it does
change people behavior on the Web. People start thinking about consequences and this page is one of
attempts to collect information that might help you to see "bigger picture".
The key mechanism here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution is
that people do react on the fact that everything they email, visit, buy on Amazon, etc is registered
in giant database outside of their control. Internet will never be the same for most people after Snowden
revelations...
The key mechanism here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution
is that people do react on the fact that everything they email, visit, buy on Amazon, etc is registered
in giant database outside of their control. Internet will never be the same for most people after
Snowden revelations...
For example, no one in sound mind can now trust "cloud services" provided by Facebook, Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft, etc. So attractiveness of Gmail, Hotmail and such are now different, then it was before.
And separation of mail accounts between "junk mail" account and important mail account is something
to think about. With the latter never in the cloud. In a way excessive using cloud services from a fashionable
trend now became kind of indication of a person stupidity.
In a way excessive using of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became an indication
of a person stupidity. There is no real justification of providing all your emails and address
book to strangers who can abuse this information without your knowledge.
At the same time it is stupid to dramatize the situation. Still, what is really striking is the grotesque
disproportionally of all this NSA surveillance "superdome" to the task of keeping the country safe from
foreign enemies (NSA statute is about watching foreign communications), begging obvious questions of
institutional sanity and competence. They turned all their super powerful collection mechanisms inside
the country and now they drink from a firehouse. That means that the results and possibilities of abuse
are pretty much predictable. Too many false positives create real danger of not to picking up weak signal.
So the other question is "Who the hell made these decisions?" That's a lot of taxpayers money and I
am not sure that they are well spend.
As for breach of privacy anyone with connected to Internet PC, the first thing to understand
that if somebody stores data in the cloud they should not expect any privacy, unless they encrypt them.
Expecting that your unencrypted data are private is a sign of personal stupidity, no more no less. If
somebody, who is keeping his address book in Google assumes that it remains private, that his own illusion.
That has nothing to do with the reality.
And it not that only NSA threatens our privacy. After all there are millions of PC users that have
computer(s) infected by spyware, which turns them into zombies, externally controlled monitoring devices.
And such software BTW can pick up and offload, or
encrypt for ransom all your data. I do not see much protest over this situation iether. Microsoft
greed and stupidity is one reason for this dismal situation, but essentially any OS is vulnerable if
enough money is invested in finding exploits. And NSA actually created a market for such exploits.
Now there are multiple "security firms" that do nothing then find "zero day" exploits and sell them
to the highest bidder (which is of course government agencies). Does not this reminds you 'war
on drugs"?
In a way, any networked computer is an unsecure computer and should be treated as such.
See Privacy is
Dead – Get Over It. The same thing can be mentioned about a cell phone that is outside some metal
box. That's two basic "laws of security" in the current environment.
But more important problem here is not snooping per se, but its interaction with self-profiling that
you provide via social sites. If you are too enthusiastic about Facebook or Google++ or any similar
site and engage regularly and indiscriminately in this "vanity fair" activity that simply means Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. You killed it yourself. The essence of the situation was exposed well in a humorous
form in the following
Amazon review of Orwell's
novel 1984
Note to US Congress and house of representatives: This is a fictional book, not an
instruction manual...
Now we know what would a perfect prototype of Bid Brother ;-). The song (Every
Breath You Take ) should probably be the theme song for the NSA. And not only NSA, but its counterparts
in other parts of the globe; I think, other things equal, citizens of some other countries would greatly
prefer NSA to their domestic counterparts.
Cell phones, laptops, Facebook, Skype, chat-rooms: all allow the NSA and other similar agencies to
build a dossier, a detailed profile of a target and anyone associated with him/her. And the number of
people caught up in this dragnet can be huge. The NSA say it needs all this data to help prevent another
terrorist attack like 9/11. They lie. In order to find the needle in the haystack, they argue, they
need access to the whole haystack. But one interesting side effect is that now they are drinking from
the fire hose, so to speak.
Another interesting side-effect of the Snowden disclosures that the term ‘metadata’ became a common
word in English language. With the growing understanding that metadata includes enough personal information
to built a detailed profile of a person without even listening into content of communications. This
technology was invented in Iraq war for fighting insurgents (were phone companies were controlled by
US) and now is applied at home. In fact, by just using electronic communications, you are sharing a
lot more personal information than you think. It's a reflection of a fact that it is very cheap to collect
and analyses information about your electronic communications. The digital revolution which led to an
explosion in cell phone and internet use, also led to an explosion of snooping after you by the governments.
We need to distinguish "total collection" of data from "total analysis" (or creation of dossiers
on everybody as was practiced by STASI and friends). Raw data contain both "signal" and "noise". Analysis
or data mining of those raw data is the process of extraction of useful signal from the noise. Of course
we should be so naive that to assume that "signal" is related to purely terrorist activities. As recently
published documents had shown, the NSA interests are much wider ;-). In bald terms, it sets out its
mission:
“Leverage unique key corporate partnerships to gain access to high-capacity international fiber-optic
cables, switches and/or routes throughout the world.”
Along with major fiber-optic cables in the US, the NSA has access to data gathered by close intelligence
partners such as Britain’s GCHQ.
Sometimes it appear to me that like Uncle Sam got "red disease" and now is trying to imitate "total
surveillance" mantra of KGB, STASI and similar agencies on a new technological level. And the key lesson
from Soviet experience is fully applicable to the current situation in the USA: when government consider
everybody as a potential enemy you better watch your back. And having a cyberstooge following your every
step more closely that it was possible for STASI spooks and informers is something you need to react
to. Reading your address book, mail, list of books that you bought or borrowed from the library, analyzing
your circuit of friends is what STASI was really good at. And it might well be that some unemployed
specialists have found a new territory to apply their substantial talents.
The Snowden documents show that the NSA runs these surveillance programs through “partnerships” with
major US telecom and internet companies. That means that if you are customer of those major telecom
and Internet companies you are like a bug under the microscope.
It is important to understand that metadata of your communications will always be exposed (it other
words you are always walking "naked" on the Internet) because those new surveillance capabilities are
immanent properties of Internet protocols, as we known it. There is no way to encrypt connection metadata:
this is technically impossible unless you owns a vast private VPN network (some large corporations do),
but even in this case I have doubts. Even snail-mail metadata are collected (and from 50th to 80th letters
were opened and selectively copied by CIA). Diplomatic mail might still be secure, but that's about
it.
Like with any new development there are countervailing trends that after Snowden revelation went
in overdrive and can seriously affect NSA capabilities.
One is switching to encrypting communication with most websites such as YouTube. That prevent simple
harvesting of video that you watched from HTTP logs (but does not prevent harvesting -- it can be done
using other methods)
The second is usage of software like Tor, although I think all connection to Tor sites are closely
monitored by NSA.
The third is usage of your own cashing DNS proxy to limit number of DNS requests you make.
I also think that all those development might give steganography a huge boost.
The other areas of technology that might get huge boost due to Snowden revelations is "Browsing imitating
internet robots" technology which permit to drown NSA collection devices in spam -- fake accesses to
web sites that is very difficult to distinguish from real browsing, but that make all statistical metrics
applied to your Web traffic useless. For example top visited pages became completely bogus.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Lord Acton(1834–1902)
As Lord Acton(1834–1902) noted long before NSA started collecting all Internet communications
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The history of "total surveillance"
suggests that this is unavoidable side effect on the very institution that conducts: such an institution
tends to escape the control of civil society and became a shadow power, the element of "deep state".
The first grave consequence of total surveillance is that it tends to be abused. The history
of "total surveillance" suggests that this is unavoidable side effect on the very institution
that conducts: such an institution tends to escape the control of civil society and became a shadow
power, the element of "deep state".
And the ability to intercept electronic communications gives those who are in charge of such collection
tremendous political power. Please remember that
J. Edgar Hoover was director
of FBI very long time partially because he dug a lot of dirt on politicians of his time including both
Kennedys. According to President
Harry S Truman, Hoover
transformed the FBI into his private secret police force. He used the FBI to harass political dissenters
and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods.
Essentially for half of the century he and his organization were out of control "state within the state"
and nobody could do anything about it. Only after his death some measures were taken.
It's not that expanding bureaucracy per se is a problem. I doubt that those in the bureaucracy of
those agencies do not think about larger consequences for societies of their attempts to expand their
sphere of influence. It is much worse: they definitely knew about possible consequences, but go "full
forward' anyway preferring job promotions and expansion of their influence. Like bureaucrats often do,
they betrayed their nations like nomenklatura betrayed the people of the USSR (with a similar
fig leaf of nice slogans about freedom as a smoke screen for pretty nefarious activities).
In case of NSA, this data on you, or particular political or social movement (for example "Occupy
Wall Street") can be mined at any time, and what is even worse can be used to destroy any new political
movement. And please remember that NSA is a just part of military-industrial complex, an entity that
has some interesting political characteristics related to the term "the acquisition of unwarranted
influence" . As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in his famous farewell speech (which introduced
the term "military-industrial complex"):
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
People seldom understand that all three letter agencies are not just part of military industrial complex,
but are the key parts. While ability of weapon manufactures to buy or just simply control Congress members
matters, three-letter agencies is where "unwarranted influence" fully materialize. By definition they
are out of control and as any bureaucracy they want to grow. That was clear to Senator Frank Church
who stated on August 17, 1975 NBC's
Meet the Press:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States
government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that
go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at
enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be
turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the
capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would
be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the
technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to
impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to
combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there
to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess
this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that
abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[11]
...let us be realistic and not fall for the usual story of this being a discrete event (all the
latest surveillance, that is).
This dates back to the founding of the Financial-Intelligence-Complex during and in the aftermath
of World War II, by the Wall Streeters for their super-rich bosses, the Rockefellers, Morgans, du
Ponts, Mellons, Harrimans (now Mortimers), etc.
The most important factor that needs to be taken into account is the total surveillance make organized
opposition to the regime impossible. So welcome to nicer, gentler, but no less totalitarian world of
1984 (aka "Back in USSR"). The key equation is very simple:
total surveillance = total control
That simple fact was well understood by various dictators and totalitarian regimes long ago, but
none of them has had even a tiny fraction of technical capabilities NSA has now. I think one
of the reason that Occupy movement completely dissipated so fast was that they were like
a bug under microscope of the government. And government want them to stop harassing Wall Street sharks
for their 2008 crisis misdeeds.
Another important effect of "total surveillance" is instilling fear in the citizenry; fear that our
thoughts, words and relationships are subject of interception and analysis; fear that all the content
we access on the internet will be exposed. This fear can cause us to withdraw from public spaces like
producing this website, censor our communications, refrain from accessing certain sites, buying certain
books, etc.
An important effect of "total surveillance" is instilling fear in the citizenry; fear
that our thoughts, words and relationships are subject of interception and analysis; fear that
all the content we access on the internet will be exposed. This fear can cause us to withdraw
from public spaces like producing this website, censor our communications, refrain from accessing
certain sites, buying certain books, etc.
In other words understanding that you are watched on 24 x 7 basis modifies behavior and makes self-censorship
your second nature exactly the same way as in any totalitarian state, but without any physical coercion.
Here is one telling comment from
Secret to Prism program Even bigger data seizure
wtpayne
Indeed: The intentions and motivations of the agencies in question; the degree of oversight
and so on; is almost irrelevant. To a certain extent, I am content to believe that the intentions
of the perpetrators is good; and that the oversight and abuse prevention systems that they have
in place are strong.
However, none of that matters if people self-censor; if people worry, not about what the
government of today will find objectionable, but what the government of tomorrow will not like.
In effect, we end up censoring ourselves from a hypothetical worst-case future government.
We will concentrate on technical side of the this operation, trying to understand how much information
can be stored about a regular "Joe Doer" based on technical capabilities that are available. Let's assume
that we deal with mostly "passive surveillance": collection and storage of vast amount of Internet traffic
on special computers using either mirrored ports on the key routers or special access to key providers
of cloud services.
We can probably assume that several layers of storage of those data exist:
Running buffer (contains all data for all users, probably just for a couple of weeks or
a month). By definition it contains "everything". All you activity, be it email, web browsing, instant
messaging of ftp transfers.
Temporary storage (which might be several years, but probably is between five and ten
years). Some of this permanent storage cloud provider users create themselves. A good example is
the Send folder they maintain on cloud email provider. This temporary storage might also include
all your Web logs and Web searches. Temporary storage of Weblogs are probably limited to metadata (proxy logs) because of large volume.
Permanent, which is invoked if you got under active surveillance or belong to some kind
of group, which is classified as treat to the state and as such is monitored. We can only guess what it involves and how much information is
stored in this case, but installation of some malware on your computer is not out of question. This
permanent storage includes but is not limited to
Your address book (several generations)
All you searches on major search engines
All your text email (not sure about graphic files)
Twits and SMS messages.
Phone conversations metadata.
Skype conversations
Technology development creates new types of communications as well as new types of government surveillance
mechanisms (you can call them "externalities" of new methods of communication). Those externalities,
especially low cost of mass
surveillance (Wikipedia), unfortunately, bring us closer to the
Electronic police state
(Wikipedia) or National Security State whether we want it or not. A
crucial element of such a state is that its data gathering, sorting and correlation on individual
citizens are continuous,
cover a large number of citizens and all foreigners, and those activities are seldom exposed.
Cloud computing as a technology that presuppose storing the data "offsite" have several security
problems, and one of them is that it is way too much "surveillance friendly" (Misunderstanding
of issues of security and trust). With cloud computing powers that be do not need
to do complex job of recreating TCP/IP conversations on router level to capture, say, all the emails.
You can access Web-based email mailbox directly with all mails in appropriate mailboxes and spam filtered.
This is a huge saving of computational efforts ;-).
It means two things:
In first thing to understand that government is profiling you even if you did nothing wrong
(see
The Government is Profiling You MIT Video). Creation of Internet just put those processes into
overdrive mode.
The modern capability of storage of data provide the capability of storing the following information
about you for several years (five years minimum), if not for a lifetime:
Metadata for your phone calls. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators
mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious
affiliations and political activities are, and so on.
Actual content (mp3 file or similar format) of all your Skype phone calls (the saying
is that "there is no free lunch" has now a new meaning here ). This is less important as getting
those calls transcribed is a difficult undertaking.
Metadata of pages that you assessed (visited websites). For a considerable period of
time (over a year) those data in a standard
HTTP log format are extremely revealing as for your political and social views, as well as
well as general interests. Sophisticated log analysis programs are available (so called proxy
log analyzers). This reveals all your downloads, software that you are using and many, many other
things. Essentially now you like a bug under the microscope.
Your purchases on major Internet sites (Amazon, eBay) and all purchases using major credit
cards. This is even more revealing then you web activity, as you put money were your interests
are. Buy books that interest you, and so on. Also extremely revealing as for your political and
social views, as well as well as general interests.
All the content you put on social sites such as Facebook. Here people usually reveal quite
a bit about themselves. As many people have presence simultaneously in Google, Facebook and
LinkedIn, total information includes your education, current qualification and possibly resume.
Address book and calendar on sides such Gmail, Hotmail or
Yahoo mail.
It puts you essentially in a situation of a bug under microscope on Big Brother. And please understand
that modern storage capabilities are such that it is easy to store several years of at least some of
your communications, especially emails.
The same is true about your
phone calls metadata,
credit card transactions and your activities on major shopping sites such as Amazon, and eBay. But here
you can do almost nothing. Still I think our support of "brick" merchants is long overdue. Phones are
traditional target of government three letter agencies (WSJ)
since the WWII. Smartphones with GPS in addition to land line metadata also provide your current geo
location. Some point out that using basic phone slightly preferable to smartphone (both in a sense
of absence of geodata and the possibility to install spyware on it -- there is simply no RAM to do
anything sophisticated). But I do not think you can do much here
I think our support of "brick" merchants is long overdue. And paying cash in the store
in not something that you should try to avoid because credit card returns you 1% of the cost of
the purchase. This 1% is actually a privacy tax ;-)
Total continued surveillance even without taking any action on collected data is totalitarian by
its nature as it put severe restrictions of the freedom of expression and it changes people behavior
on the Web. In this sense, Senator McCartney was probably right about "Communists sympathizers" and
"KGB infiltration", he just was completely wrong about who they are ;-).
The centralization of searches on Google (and to a lesser extent on Bing -- the latter is
standard with new Windows installation) are also serious threats
to your privacy. Here diversification between three or more search engines might help a bit.
But limited your time behind the computer is probably more efficient. Generally here I do not think much can be done. Growth of
popularity of Duckduckgo suggests that people are
vary of Google monopolizing the search, but it is unclear how big are the advantages. You can also save
searches as many searches are recurrent and generally you can benefit from using your personal Web proxy
with private cashing DNS server. This way to can "shrink" your radar picture, but that's about it.
If you are conserved with you "search" profile, you can replay some searches to distort it. In any
case, search
engines are now an integral part of our civilization, whether we want it or not.
Collection of your searches for the last several years can pretty precisely outline sphere of your
interests. And again technical constrains on storage of data no longer exists: how we can talk about
privacy at the age of 3 TB harddrives for $99. There are approximately
314 million
of the US citizens and residents, so storing one gigabyte of information for each citizen requires just
400 petabytes. Which is clearly within the current capabilities of storage technology. For comparison
In July 2012 it was revealed that
CERN amassed about 200 petabytes
of data from the more than 800 trillion collisions
In August 2012, Facebook's
Hadoop clusters include the largest single
HDFS cluster known, with more than
100 PB physical disk space in a single HDFS filesystem
By some estimates, storage capabilities of the US government are around 5 zeta bytes.
The analogy with KGB surveillance of dissidents (the term was "to be under the "kolpak" (dome) ")
and, especially, Stasi (viewing the
film "The Lives of Others" might help to understand the phenomenon of "total surveillance") are way
too close. And psychological effects of anticipating that you are under total surveillance are well
depicted in the final of the film The Conversation (1974)
directed by famous Francis Ford Coppola
At the same time there is an important difference: while both regimes creates implicit intimidation
and squash dissent, cases of prosecution on the base of the those data are either few or non existent.
Which is a big difference with KGB or
Stasi practice, which aggressively pursued those dissidents who got in their net, trying either
to convert them into informers, or prosecute them using the existing articles of Criminal Code. In some
cases that led to suicides. So here we can talk more about
Inverted Totalitarism, a velvet gloves mode
of suppressing of dissent.
Still it is now dramatically more clear then before that centralization of email accounts and user
activities on sites like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, with email accounts mainly
at Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail is far from being a positive development. Along with many positive
aspects has tremendous negative side effects. Essentially it turns users into spies on themselves in
a way that would be a dream by Stasi. The most significant is that it created an easy opportunities
to data mine email databases both for those organizations as well as various government agencies and,
possibly (in a limited way for special payment) by large corporations.
Those tendencies probably should be at least resisted, but we do not have means to reverse them.
Attempts to data mine email and Web communications of millions of Americans critical about government
(see Total
control: keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) and all foreigners who use
those services (and that includes a significant part of European population and xUSSR area, who often
use Gmail, Facebook or Yahoo accounts) means that the country became a National Security State. With
all relevant consequences of such a transformation.
And interest in content of your "cloud based" email is not limited to the government:
A sweeping Wall Street Journal investigation in 2010 found that the biggest U.S.
websites have technologies tracking people who visit their pages, sometimes upwards of 100 tools
per site. One intrusive string of code even recorded users’ keystrokes and transmitted them
to a data-gathering firm for analysis.
“A digital dossier over time is built up about you by that site or third-party service or
data brokers,” says Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center’s Technology
Policy Program at George Mason University. “They collect these data profiles and utilize them to
sell you or market you better services or goods.”
This is what powers the free Internet we know and love; users pay nothing or next to nothing
for services — and give up pieces of personal information for advertisers in exchange. If you search
for a Mini Cooper on one website, you’re likely to see ads elsewhere for lightweight, fuel-efficient
cars. Companies robotically categorize users with descriptions such as “urban upscale” to “rural
NASCAR” to tailor the advertising experience, says Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute.
“They’ll use ZIP codes and census data to figure out what their lifestyle profile is.”
Most of the site you visit those days was found via search engine, often Google. But Google is interested
in more then search terms you use and sometimes plays with you a nasty trick: "Google may choose
to exhibit its search results in the form of a 'URL redirector,'" reads Google's main privacy policy.
That means that any time it wishes Google can spy on your Web activity:
"When Google uses a URL redirector, if you click on a URL from a search result, information
about the click is sent to Google."
Few people check the URL before clicking on Google search results, so in a way this is perfect spying
tool.
But there is another powerful spying tool in Google arsenal -- Google toolbar, and I am not sure
that all those trick were not reused in Google browser. Google Toolbar sends all user clicks to
Google, if advanced mode is enabled (and many people do enable it because they want to have spelling
correction available which, conveniently for Google, belongs to the set of advanced features).
This way you voluntarily subscribe to a 24x7 monitoring of your web activity using spyware that is installed
on your computer with your consent. For the same reason recent smartphones fashion looks greatly misguided.
It is better to use regular phone, then smartphone, and the last thing you probably want on your smartphone
is Android OS or iOS, or windows 8 OS. In some deep way unlocked Nokia 1280 looks now much more attractive
(and is way cheaper ;-).
Google Toolbar in advanced mode is another common snooping tool about your activities. It
send each URL you visit to Google and you can be sure that from Google several three letter agencies
get this information as well. After all Google has links to them from the very beginning:
As soon as they realize that they are watched, people start thinking about consequences and this
article is a pretty telling (albeit slightly paranoid ;-) illustration of the effect. The key mechanism
here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution is that people preemptively
change their behavior, if they know or suspect that they got "under the dome" of government surveillance,
that all their emails are intercepted, all web site visits recorded, anything they buy on Amazon, etc
is registered in giant database outside of their control.
The angle under which will we try to cover the story is: the situation is such and such, now
what? What are the most appropriate actions and strategy of behavior of people who are concerned
about their privacy and no longer trust "cloud services" provided by Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft,
etc ( and those who trust those providers should probably stop reading at this point). It is impossible
to close all those accounts. But some can and should be closed; for example POP3 mail can replace web
mail for all "important" mail; this way you avoid "cloud storage" of all your important correspondence.
It is impossible not to use search engines, but you can chose which search language to use. It is impractical
not to use smartphone and for Android phone you can't avoid registration -- that's the only way to get
updates from Google, but you can root the phone, remove some snooping components and use Firefox instead
of Chrome. But not it is clear that if mobile web browsing and checking email on your phone is not your
thing you are better off with a very simple phone such as Nokia 1280.
The first and the most obvious "change we can believe in" is that we need to change our attitude
toward cloud services and especially cloud services from large providers. Now the most reasonable assumption
is that most national cloud providers including major retailers are in bed with the government three
letter agencies. So you need to be careful what you browse for on Amazon, similarly to what you write
from Gmail and Hotmail.
In a way, excessive usage of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became kind of indication
of a person stupidity. It is important to understand that for anybody more or less competent with
computers (or willing to learn), anything Facebook or Gmail or Hotmail can offer, regular
small ISP account with Cpanel can offer with less risk for your privacy for, say, $5 a month or less.
And your privacy definitely cost more then $60 a year.
In a way excessive using of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became an indication
of a person stupidity. For anybody more or less competent with computers (or willing to learn),
anything Facebook or Gmail can offer, regular ISP account with Cpanel can offer too with less
risk for your privacy.
At the same time it is also stupid to over-dramatize the situation and isolate yourself by abandoning
Internet communications and restricting usage of cell-phone. The reasonable hypothesis is that today’s
surveillance is a side effect of new technological developments and it is a new fact of life. It is
just a new level of information gathering, which has been going on since the Byzantine Empire. And it
is still limited by technological capabilities of sifting through mass of communications. But at the
same time, quantity does at one point turns into quality, so the danger is real and as such could providers
are suspect by definition. In no way they are new level of technological development. In sense they
are one step forward, two sets back.
Also being engages in foreign wars has an interesting side effect that technologies invented come
home and used against citizens (naked
capitalism). That's actually the origin of indiscriminant collection of metadata used now.
But at the same time we need to understand that there are millions of PC users that have computer(s)
infected by spyware, which can make your computer a zombie. And world did not perished due to that.
Still the key lesson is unmistakable: from now on, any networked computer is an unsecure computer
that can't be trusted really confidential information, unless it is isolated by firewall and proxy.
And if we assume that it is unsecured computer, them it should be treated it as such. The first step
is that all confidential data should be deleted and moved to removable storage. In case you need to
work with it as much as possible should be done on non-networked computers, limiting the exposure of
your data to bare minimum. And the less powerful computer you use for processing you confidential data,
the best; the less powerful OS you use, the best (what about using Windows 98 or DOS for those who can
still remember it ? ;-). From now on "retro-computing" movement now is inherently linked with the issues
of security and privacy and might get a new life.
This retro-computing idea might create a new life for abandoned computers that are in excess in almost
every family ;-) See
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. The same thing can be mentioned about a cell phone, which should be as simple as
possible. Not all people really benefit from browsing the Web from their smartphones. If you are really
paranoid you can think storing you cell phone at home in a metal box ;-).
In other words there are two new "laws of computer security":
secure computer is non-networked computer
secure cell-phone is a cell-hone in a metal box or without a battery.
But more important problem here is not snooping per se, but voluntarily self-profiling that you provide
via social sites. If you are way too enthusiastic about Facebook or Google++ or any similar site and
engage regularly and indiscriminately in this "vanity fair" activity you put yourselves voluntarily
under surveillance. So not only
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. You killed it yourself. The essence of the situation was exposed well
in a humorous form in the following
Amazon review of Orwell's
novel 1984
Note to US Congress and house of representatives: This is a fictional book, not an
instruction manual...
BTW just after Prism program was revealed in June 2013,
Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller on Amazon. As of June 15, 2013 it was #87 in Fiction. If
you never have a chance to read it, please do it now. and again, if you think that this revelation of
Prism program is a big news, you probably are mistaken. Many people understood that as soon new technical
capabilities of surveillance are available they are instantly put to use. As John H. Summers noted in
his review (The
Deciders - New York Times) of John Mill "Power
elite":
...official secrecy steadily expanded its reach.
"For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency'
without a foreseeable end,"
Mills wrote in a sentence that remains as powerful and unsettling as it was 50 years ago.
"Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed
a paranoid reality all their own."
Facebook has nothing without people
silly enough to exchange privacy for photosharing
The key problem with social sites is that many people voluntarily post excessive amount of personal
data about themselves, including keeping their photo archives online, etc. So while East Germany analog
of the Department of Homeland Security called Ministry for State Security (Stasi)
needed to recruit people to spy about you, now you yourself serves as a informer voluntarily providing
all the tracking information about your activities ;-).
Scientella, palo alto
...Facebook always had a very low opinion of peoples intelligence - and rightly so!
I can tell you Silicon Valley is scared. Facebook's very existence depends upon trusting young
persons, their celebrity wannabee parents and other inconsequential people being prepared to give
up their private information to Facebook.
Google, now that SOCIAL IS DEAD, at least has their day job also, of paid referral advertising
where someone can without divulging their "social" identity, and not linking their accounts, can
look for a product on line and see next to it some useful ads.
But Facebook has nothing without people silly enough to exchange privacy for photosharing.
... ... ...
Steve Fankuchen, Oakland CA
Cook, Brin, Gates, Zuckerberg, et al most certainly have lawyers and public relations hacks
that have taught them the role of "plausible deniability."
Just as in the government, eventually some low or mid-level flunkie will likely be hung out
to dry, when it becomes evident that the institution knew exactly what was going on and did nothing
to oppose it. To believe any of these companies care about their users as anything other than
cash cows is to believe in the tooth fairy.
The amount of personal data which users of site like Facebook put voluntarily on the Web is truly
astonishing. Now anybody using just Google search can get quit substantial information about anybody
who actively using social sites and post messages in discussion he/she particulates under his/her own
name instead of a nickname. Just try to see what is available about you and most probably your jaw would
drop...
This is probably right time for the users of social sites like Facebook, Google search, and Amazon
(that means most of us ;-) to think a little bit more about the risks we are exposing ourselves. We
all should became more aware about the risks involved as well as real implications of the catch phase
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It.
This is probably right time for the users of social sites like Facebook, Google search,
and Amazon (that means most of us ;-) to think a little bit more about the risks we are exposing
ourselves.
If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern
American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.
Citizens of foreign countries have accounts at Facebook and mail accounts in Gmail, hotmail and Yahoo
mail are even in less enviable position then the US citizens. They are legitimate prey. No legal protection
for them exists, if they use those services. That means that they voluntarily open all the information
they posted about themselves to the US government in addition to their own government. And the net is
probably more wide then information leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggests. For any large
company, especially a telecom corporation, operating is the USA it might be dangerous to refuse to cooperate
(Qwest case).
Former Qwest CEO Joseph
Nacchio, convicted of insider trading in April 2007, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA
requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program more than six months before September
11, 2001. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that
the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in
the wiretapping program.[13]
Nacchio surrendered April 14, 2009 to a federal prison camp in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania to begin
serving a six-year sentence for the insider trading conviction. The United States Supreme Court denied
bail pending appeal the same day.[15]
It is not the case of some special evilness of the US government. It simply is more agile to understand
and capitalize on those new technical opportunities. It is also conveniently located at the center of
Internet universe with most traffic is flowing via US owned or controlled routers (67% or more). But
it goes without saying that several other national governments and a bunch of large corporations also
try to mine this new gold throve of private information on citizens. Probably with less sophistication
and having less financial resources.
In many cases corporations themselves are interested in partnership with the government. Here is
one telling comment:
jrs says on June 8, 2013
Yea in my experience that’s how “public/private partnerships” really work:
Companies DO need protection FROM the government. An ill-conceived piece of legislation
can put a perfectly decent out of business. Building ties with the government is protection.
Government represents a huge market and eventually becomes one of the top customers
for I think most businesses (of course the very fact that a government agency is a main
customer is often kept hush hush even within the company and something you are not supposed
to speak of as an employee even though you are aware of it)
Of course not every company proceeds to step 3 -- being basically an arm of the government
but ..
That means that not only Chinese citizens already operate on the Internet without any real sense
of privacy. Even if you live outside the USA the chances are high that you automatically profiled by
the USA instead of or in addition to your own government. Kind of
neoliberalism in overdrive mode: looks like we all
are already citizens of a global empire (Let's call it " Empire of Peace" ) with the capital in Washington.
It is reasonable to assume that a massive eavesdropping apparatus now tracks at least an "envelope"
of every electronic communication you made during your lifetime. No need for somebody reporting about
you like in "old" totalitarian state like East Germany with its analog of the Department of Homeland
Security called the Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
So in this new environment, you are like Russians used to say about dissidents who got under KGB surveillance
is always "under the dome". In this sense this is just an old vine in a new bottles. But the global
scope and lifetime storage of huge amount of personal information for each and every citizen is something
new and was made possible the first time in world history by new technologies.
It goes without saying that records about time, sender and receiver of all your phone calls, emails,
Amazon purchases, credit card transactions, and Web activities for the last decade are stored somewhere
in a database and not necessary only government computers. And that means that your social circle (the
set of people you associate with), books and films that you bought, your favorite websites, etc can
be easily deducted from those records.
That brings us to an important question about whether we as consumers should support such ventures
as Facebook and Google++ which profile you and after several years have a huge amount of pretty private
and pretty damaging information about you, information which can get into wrong hands.
The most constructive approach to NSA is to view is a large government bureaucracy that expanded
to the extent that quantity turned into quality.
Any large
bureaucracy is a political coalition with the primary goal of preserving and enhancing of its own
power, no matter what are official declarations. And if breaching your privacy helps they will do it.
Which is what Bush government did after 9/11. The question is how much bureaucratic bloat resulting
in classic dynamics of organizational self-aggrandizement and expansionism happened in NSA. We don't
know how much we got in exchange for undermining internet security and US constitution. But we do know
the intelligence establishment happily appropriated billions of dollars, had grown by thousand of employees
and got substantial "face lift" and additional power within the executive branch of government. To the
extent that something it looks like a shadow government. And now they will fight tooth-and nail to protect
the fruits of a decade long bureaucratic expansion. Now it is an Intelligence Church and like any religious
organization they do not need fact to support their doctrine and influence.
Typically there is an infighting and many factions within any large hierarchical organization, some
with and some without factual awareness of the rest. Basically any hierarchical institution corporate,
religious, military will abuse available resources for internal political infighting. And with NSA "big
data" push this is either happening or just waiting to happen. This is a danger of any warrantless wiretapping
program: it naturally convert itself into a saga of eroding checks and disappearing balance. And this
already happened in the past, so in a way it is just act two of the same drama (WhoWhatWhy):
After
media
revelations of intelligence abuses by the Nixon administration began to mount in the wake of
Watergate, NSA became the subject of Congressional ire in the form of the United States Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities—commonly
known as the “Church Committee” after its chair, Senator Frank Church (D-ID)—established on January
17, 1975. This ad-hoc investigative body found itself unearthing troves of classified records from
the FBI, NSA, CIA and Pentagon that detailed the murky pursuits of each during the first decades
of the Cold War. Under the mantle of defeating communism, internal documents confirmed the executive
branch’s use of said agencies in
some of the most fiendish acts of human imagination (including refined psychological torture
techniques), particularly by
the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Cold War mindset had incurably infected the nation’s security apparatus, establishing
extralegal subversion efforts at home and
brutish control abroad. It was revealed that the FBI
undertook a war to destroy
homegrown movements such as the Black Liberation Movement (including Martin Luther King, Jr.), and
that NSA had indiscriminately
intercepted the communications of Americans without warrant, even
without the President’s
knowledge. When confronted with such nefarious enterprises, Congress sought to rein in the excesses
of the intelligence community, notably those directed at the American public.
That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American
would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything. Telephone conversations,
telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny,
if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence
community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no
way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government,
no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability
of this technology. I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability
that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies
that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never
cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
The reforms that followed, as enshrined in the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) of 1978, included the establishment of the
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC): a specially-designated panel of judges who are allowed
to review evidence before giving NSA a warrant to spy on Americans (only in the case of overseas
communication). Hardly a contentious check or balance, FISC
rejected
zero warrant requests between its inception in 1979 and 2000, only asking that two warrants
be “modified” out of an estimated 13,000.
In spite of FISC’s rubberstamping, following 9/11 the Bush administration began deliberately bypassing
the court, because even its minimal evidentiary standard was too high a burden of proof for the blanket
surveillance they wanted. So began the dragnet monitoring of the American public by
tapping the country’s major
electronic communication chokepoints in collusion with the nation’s largest telecommunications
companies.
When
confronted with the criminal conspiracy undertaken by the Bush administration and telecoms, Congress
confirmed why
it retains the lowest approval rating of any major American institution by “reforming” the statute
to accommodate the massive law breaking. The
2008 FISA Amendments Act
[FAA] entrenched the policy of mass eavesdropping and granted the telecoms retroactive immunity
for their criminality, withdrawing even the negligible individual protections in effect since 1979.
Despite initial opposition, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama
voted for
the act as one of his last deeds in the Senate.
A few brave (and unsuccessful) lawsuits
later, this policy remains the status quo.
Similarly we should naturally expect that the notion of "terrorist" is flexible and in certain cases
can be equal to "any opponent of regime". While I sympathize NYT readers reaction to this incident (see
below), I think it is somewhat naive. They forget that they are living
under neoliberal regime which like any rule of top
0.01% is afraid of and does not trust its own citizens. So massive surveillance program is a self-preservation
measure which allow to crush or subvert the opposition at early stages. This is the same situation as
existed with Soviet nomenklatura, with the only difference that Soviet nomenklatura was more modest
pushing the USSR as a beacon of progress and bright hope of all mankind ;-). As
Ron Paul noted:
Many of us are not so surprised.
Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it
would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather
aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide
government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least
four wars ago.
We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the
status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once
lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA
authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand
over our personal information to the government?
And while revealed sources of NSA
Prism program
include Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others major Internet players, that's probably
just a tip of the iceberg. Ask yourself a question, why Amazon and VISA and MasterCard are not on the
list? According to
The Guardian:
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook,
Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows
officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and
live chats, the document says.
... ... ...
Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is
our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo
in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally
Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers
due to come online.
Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications
networks
... ... ...
A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian,
underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos,
photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and
more.
So while the document does not list Amazon, but I would keep fingers crossed.
To be aware about a situation you need to be able to formulate and answer key questions about it.
The first and the most important question is whether the government is engaged in
cyberstalking of law abiding
citizens. Unfortunately the answer is definite yes, as oligarchy needs total control of prols. As a
result National Security State rise to prominence as a dominant
social organization of neoliberal societies, the societies
which characterized by very high level of inequality.
But there are some additional, albeit less important questions. The answers to them determine utility
or futility of small changes of our own behavior in view of uncovered evidence. Among possible set of
such question I would list the following:
Is the only way to have reasonable privacy with computer is to be physically disconnected
with the network?
Is limiting the usage of large providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and usage of small
ISP for your email and personal Web pages makes you any more secure? After all it is much easier
to collect data from large providers then from hundreds of smaller providers. At the same time your
data are allowing via big routers in major telecom companies no matter whether you are using large
or small ISP.
Should you switch from Webmail back top POP3 account and deliver at the least most important
mail to your PC instead of keeping it stored on the web servers ? Please note that FBI developed
the computer programs "Magic
Lantern" and CIPAV, which they
can remotely install on a computer system (for example, using Microsoft Windows updates program),
in order to monitor a person's computer activity. But here you probably need a court order to install
them.
Is Facebook and similar social sites provides any real value to you and your family? Is
your visibility of the Web is more important to you then your privacy, because two are generally
incompatible. Is all this vanity fair activity worth possible negative consequences (including stalking
of minors by criminals) that you and your family can face?
Should some group of specialists, for example psychiatrists resort back to handwriting on
paper and/or now write client notes in code as an attempt to reassert some level of confidentiality?
Note the PGP is not a panacea; it can be safely used only on non-network connected computers due
to existence of programs like
Magic Lantern
which can retrieve private keys directly from your computer. But transferring files via "air link"
is very inconvenient.
There are also some minor questions about efficiency of "total surveillance approach". Among them:
More people die daily from (1) car accidents and (2) gang violence in one day then people who
died due to 9-11 accident. Should not billions or dollars spent by NSA be utilized by different agencies
for preventing death toll mentioned above?
Even if NSA algorithms are incredibly clever they can't avoid producing large number of false
positives. The question arise how many innocent people are monitored as the result of this externality.
The other part of understand the threat is understanding is what data are collected. The short answer
is all your phone records and Internet activity (RT
USA):
The National Security Agency is collecting information on the Internet habits of millions of innocent
Americans never suspected of criminal involvement, new NSA documents leaked by former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden suggest.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported Monday that
top-secret documents
included in the trove of files supplied by the NSA contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden reveal
that the US intelligence community obtains and keeps information on American citizens accumulated
off the Internet without ever issuing a search warrant or opening an investigation into that person.
The information is obtained using a program codenamed Marina, the documents suggest, and is kept
by the government for up to a full year without investigators ever having to explain why the subject
is being surveilled.
“Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days' worth of DNI metadata seen by the
Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection,” the Guardian’s
James Ball quotes from the documents.
According to a guide for intelligence analysts supplied by Mr. Snowden, “The Marina metadata
application tracks a user's browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops
summaries of target.”
"This tool offers the ability to export the data in a variety of formats, as well as create
various charts to assist in pattern-of-life development,” it continues.
Ball writes that the program collects “almost anything” a Web user does online, “from
browsing history – such as map searches and websites visited – to account details, email activity,
and even some account passwords.”
Only days earlier,
separate disclosures
attributed to Snowden revealed that the NSA was using a massive collection of metadata to create
complex graphs of social connections for foreign intelligence purposes, although that program
had pulled in intelligence about Americans as well.
After the New York Times broke news of that program, a NSA spokesperson said that “All data
queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period.” As Snowden documents continue
to surface, however, it’s becoming clear that personal information pertaining to millions of US citizens
is routinely raked in by the NSA and other agencies as the intelligence community collects as much
data as possible.
In June, a top-secret document also attributed to Mr. Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting
the telephony metadata for millions of Americans from their telecom providers. The government has
defended this practice by saying that the metadata — rough information that does not include the
content of communications — is not protected by the US Constitution’s prohibition against unlawful
search and seizure.
“Metadata can be very revealing,” George Washington University law professor Orin S. Kerr
told the Times this week. “Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location
of the person’s cellphone is going to allow them to assemble a picture of what someone is up to.
It’s the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect.”
According to the Guardian’s Ball, Internet metadata picked up by the NSA is routed to the Marina
database, which is kept separate from the servers where telephony metadata is stored.
Only moments after the Guardian wrote of its latest leak on Monday, Jesselyn Radack of the Government
Accountability Project read a statement before the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties,
Justice and Home Affairs penned by none other than Snowden himself.
“When I began my work, it was with the sole intention of making possible the debate we see
occurring here in this body,” Snowden said.
Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia after being charged with espionage in
the US, said through Raddack that “The cost for one in my position of returning public knowledge
to public hands has been persecution and exile.”
There are limits of this "powerful analytical software" as it currently used. As we mentioned above, even if NSA
algorithms are incredibly clever they can't avoid producing large number of false positives. After two
year investigation into the post 9/11 intelligence agencies, the Washington Post came to conclusion
that they are collecting more information than anyone can comprehend ("drinking from a firehose" or
"drowning is a sea of data"):
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billions
e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into
70 separate databases"
First of all there is a classic problem of "signal vs. noise" (infoglut) in any large scale data
collection and presence of noise in the channel makes signal much more difficult to detect.
Analysts who make sense of document and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying
share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year -- a volume so large
that many are routinely ignored
The enormity of the database exacerbate the problem. That's why NSA is hunting for email on cloud
providers, where they are already filtered from spam, and processing required is much less then
for emails intercepted from the wire data. Still even with the direct access to user accounts, the volume of
data, especially graphic (pictures) and video data, is really huge and that stress the limits of processing
capabilities and storage.
Existence of Snowden saga when a single analyst was able to penetrate the system and extract considerable
amount information with impunity suggests that the whole Agency is mess, probably like is
typical for any large organization with a lot of incompetents or, worse, careerists and psychopaths at
the helm (see Toxic Managers). Which is typical for government agencies and large corporations.
Still the level of logs collection
and internal monitoring in NSA proved to be surprisingly weak, as there are indirect signs that the agency does not
even know what reports Snowden get into his hands. In any case we, unless this is a very clever inside
operation, we need to assume that Edward Snowden stole thousands of documents, abused his sysadmin position
in the NSA, and was never caught. Here is one relevant comment from
The Guardian
carlitoontour
Oh NSA......that´s fine that you cannot find something......what did you tell us, the World
and the US Congress about the "intelligence" of Edward Snowden and the low access he had?
SNOWDEN SUSPECTED OF BYPASSING ELECTRONIC LOGS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials
leaker Edward Snowden took from the National Security Agency have been frustrated by Snowden's
sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail by deleting or bypassing electronic logs,
government officials told The Associated Press. Such logs would have showed what information
Snowden viewed or downloaded.
The government's forensic investigation is wrestling with Snowden's apparent ability
to defeat safeguards established to monitor and deter people looking at information without
proper permission, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they
weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive developments publicly.
On the other hand government agencies were never good in making huge and complex software projects
work. And large software projects are a very difficult undertaking in any case. Even in industry 50%
of software projects fail, and anybody who works in the industry knows, that the more complex the project
is the higher are chances that it will be mismanaged and its functionality crippled due to architectural
defects ("a camel is a horse designed by a committee"). It is given that such project will be
over budget. Possibly several times over...
But if money is not a problem such system will eventually be completed ("with enough thrust pigs
can fly"). Still there’s no particular reason to think that corruption (major work was probably
outsourced) and incompetence (on higher management levels and, especially on architectural level as
in "camel is a horse designed by a committee") don't affect the design and functionality of
such government
projects. Now when this activity come under fire some adjustments might be especially badly thought out
and potentially cripple the existing functionality.
As J. Kirk Wiebe, a NSA insider, noted
"The way the government was going about those digital data flows was poor formed, uninformed.
There seen to be more of a desire to contract out and capture money flow then there was a [desire}
to actually perform the mission".
See the interview of a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers to USA TODAY ( J.
Kirk Wiebe remarks starts at 2:06 and the second half of it continues from 6:10):
In military organizations the problem is seldom with the talent (or lack of thereof) of individual
contributors. The problem is with the bureaucracy that is very effective in preventing people from exercising
their talents at the service of their country. Such system is deformed in such a way that it hamstrings
the men who are serving in it. As a results, more often then not the talents are squandered or misused
by patching holes created by incompetence of higher-up or or just pushed aside in the interdepartmental
warfare.
In a way, incompetence can be defined as the inability to avoid mistakes which, in a "normal"
course of project development could and should be avoided. And that's the nature of military bureaucracy
with its multiple layer of command and compete lack of accountability on higher levels.
In addition, despite the respectable name of the organization many members of technical staff are
amateurs. They never managed to sharpen their technical skills, while at the same time acquiring the
skills necessary to survive the bureaucracy. Many do not have basic academic education and are self-taught
hackers and/or "grow on the job". Typically people at higher level of hierarchy, are simply not experts
in software engineering, but more like typical corporate "PowerPoint" warriors. They can be very shred
managers and accomplished political fighters, but that's it.
This is the same situation that exists in security departments of large multinationals, so we can
extrapolate from that. The word of Admiral Nelson "If the enemy would know what officer corps will confront
them, it will be trembling, like I am". Here is Bill Gross apt recollection of his service as naval
officer (The
Tipping Point) that illustrate the problems:
A few years ago I wrote about the time that our ship (on my watch) was almost cut in half by an
auto-piloted tanker at midnight, but never have I divulged the day that the USS Diachenko came within
one degree of heeling over during a typhoon in the South China Sea. “Engage emergency ballast,” the
Captain roared at yours truly – the one and only chief engineer. Little did he know that Ensign Gross
had slept through his classes at Philadelphia’s damage control school and had no idea what he was
talking about. I could hardly find the oil dipstick on my car back in San Diego, let alone conceive
of emergency ballast procedures in 50 foot seas. And so…the ship rolled to starboard, the ship rolled
to port, the ship heeled at the extreme to 36 degrees (within 1 degree, as I later read in the ship’s
manual, of the ultimate tipping point). One hundred sailors at risk, because of one twenty-three-year-old
mechanically challenged officer, and a Captain who should have known better than to trust him.
Huge part of this work is outsourced to various contractors and this is where corruption really creeps
in. So the system might be not as powerful as many people automatically assume when they hear the abbreviation
of NSA. So in a way when news about such system reaches public it might serve not weakening but strengthening
of the capabilities of the system. Moreover, nobody would question the ability of such system to store
huge amount of raw or semi-processed data including all metadata for your transactions on the Internet.
Also while it is a large agency with a lot of top mathematic talent, NSA is not NASA and motivation
of the people (and probably quality of architectural thinking about software projects involved) is different
despite much better financing. While they do have high quality people, like most US agencies in general,
large bureaucracies usually are unable to utilize their talent. Mediocrities with sharp elbows, political
talent, as well as sociopaths typically rule the show.
That means two things:
The easy part of this is the "total surveillance of electronic communications" project: to
store the "envelope" of each phone message, email, credit card transaction, etc. Analyze and correlated
the set of this envelopes to discover daily activity patterns, their change over time, social circle,
etc. That collection will contain some junk, but generally completely gives up your social circle
and your interests. Such records are pretty compact so the lifespan of your communications stored
is at least five and probably for more then ten years. So assumption of a lifespan storage is the
most realistic one. You can introduce some noise into some of those collection channels (for example,
by using a robot visiting certain sites such as Sport Illustrated, and Washington Post will distort
the picture of your Internet activities) but it is much more difficult to introduce noise into phone
call records and emails.
Several other nations have access to the metadata for the USA originated phone calls (for
providers they serve) via outsourcers of phone billing, such as Israel's Amdocs, the largest phone-billing
services company in the world:
The difficult part is the analysis of the messages body. For example:
Automatic transcribing of phone messages is a very difficult problem. Even the slightest
noise is deadly as we can see from the experience with Dragon (let's say that NSA solved the problem
of adapting to a new voice which Dragon can't solve). Dragon 12 running of dual core 3.8GHz PC
demonstrates the difficulties very well. Even a small amount of noise kills the quality of automatic
transcription.
Analysis of email body for certain keywords easily can be perform automatically, but to
understand the context of usage of "trigger" words is extremely difficult. This task is still
on the cutting edge of modern computer science. From the public document that exists (see
Total
control: keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) I have impression that they
try to overreach (which is standard bureaucratic tendency in such cases). That means that such
an extraction might produces too many false positives, and needs to be manually correlated with
other data.
Recognition of faces from street and security cameras is even more difficult problem.
Data mining of blogs is difficult for a different reason: not only detecting who is
who requires getting IP from particular provider (this is an easy part), just the total volume
is enormous. Many people create dozens of messages a day. There is a special category of graphomans,
that specialize on participating in various forums and those are people who have high change to
trigger "blind" keyword search. The USA government can afford to have, say, several zetabytes
of storage capacity in NSA-controlled datacenters, but its capabilities are still limited. It
can't replicate all the Internet over time. Videos are especially problematic and are more difficult
to analyze then text or HTML, or XML documents. Even low quality voice (with reverberation for
example) is very difficult to analyze automatically.
Video streams are huge and probably impossible to store. In a way the fact that most
modern computer have face camera is not only creating problem for NSA, it actually create the
problem for Internet as a whole ;-). Indiscriminate interception and storage are out of question:
lovers of "here is what my dog is doing" clips are able to saturate all available storage in no
time.
So even with huge amount of subcontractors that can chase mostly "big fish". Although one open question
is why with all those treasure trove of data organized crime is so hard to defeat. Having dataset like
this should generally expose all the members of any gang. Or, say, network of blue collar insider traders.
So in an indirect way the fact that organized crime not only exists and in some cities even flourish
can suggest one of two things:
NSA generally limits availability of those "integrated" data sets to terrorism networks, political
protest, foreign organizations and "suspicious nationals" activities. It is difficult and inefficient
"to cover the whole field" although spying after activities of a foreign corporation can be more
lucrative them spying after a member of terrorist networks ;-). Some sources mention the current
capabilities as around 100K-200K people who can be "electronically followed" simultaneously. It is
reasonably to expect high level of secrecy and that means that data are not shared unless absolutely
necessary (The
Guardian):
The presentation claims Prism was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings
of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field
advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa
constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and
confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US. "Fisa
was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the
presentation claimed. "
It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other
foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States.
There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."
... ... ...
A senior administration official said in a statement: "The Guardian and Washington Post articles
refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the
United States.
"The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive
Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to
ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition,
retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.
Methods based on "beyond the envelope" analysis are not efficient against reasonably sophisticated
opponents, who understand the fact that the communication will be intercepted and possibly
(superficially) analyzed. In a typical "bullet-armor" competition, that opens new impetus for
"bad guys" inventing new and improving old steganography methods. As with interception of talk between
Soviet fighter pilots and their command posts had shown, usage of slang makes the voice data almost
inpenetratable. Another example would be calling Goldman Sacks "a vampire squid", which implies that
your counterpart read
Matt Taibby article or related financial blogs, or to call Facebook "lichiko" which implies knowing
Russian. Person without this context can't make a connection. With such substitutions you need a
huge amount of ( rapidly shifting ) cultural context to understand the meaning of even simple phases.
This context is missing on the other side of the pond. And even specialists can represent certain
problems. For example Jargon
File (and more) is needed to understand the talk of hackers. Fenia,
the language of the thieves is Russia was so distinct from ordinary Russian that it almost qualifies
as a separate language which makes it foreign for outsiders. The same it true about criminal subculture
in other countries (see
Police and criminal
slang ).
Storage of actual data involves certain technical difficulties and first on all physical limitations
of available storage. We probably can talk about several thousand
Petabytes that government can
store. In comparison:
Google processed about
24 petabytes of data per day in 2009
AT&T transfers about
30 petabytes of data through its networks each day
The Internet Archive
contains about 10 petabytes in cultural material as of October 2012
In August 2011, IBM was reported to have built the largest storage array ever, with a capacity
of 120 petabytes
In July 2012 it was revealed that
CERN amassed about 200
petabytes of data from the more than 800 trillion collisions
In August 2012, Facebook's
Hadoop clusters include the largest single
HDFS cluster known, with more
than 100 PB physical disk space in a single HDFS filesystem
In May 2013, Microsoft
announce that as part of their migration of Hotmail accounts to the new Outlook.com email system,
they'd migrated over 150 Petabytes of user data in six weeks.
There is also a question of complexity of analysis:
We can assume that simple things are extracted correctly. But more complex things might be
not. There is no question that a map of your phone calls, your Amazon and eBay purchases, credit
card transactions and other straightforward things can be recreated "exactly". Also can be recreated
data that can tell approximately where you were and what you was doings on any particular day. The
map of your phone contacts (people who called you and people who you call) and your emails gives
a pretty good estimate of your social circle. With multiple data sources any individual posting
in blogs can be identified with 90% or better accuracy, no matter what nicknames he/she uses
and whether he/she avoids registration and provide truthful information during it. So in a way there
is no need to do something complex as simple methods provide treasure trove of data.
There are also “junk in, junk out” issues including spam in email, telemarketers calling
your land line, there are always "strange" sites you accidentally visit during your browsing. While
they can be filtered, signal can be filtered with them (why bad guys can not disguise themselves
as telemarketers or porno sites owners?) and then system became useless against bad guys. If not
that noise subtly corrupts the data, noise and data can be really undistinguishable. BTW closed source
security-related software will always be somewhat more problematical then open source, since algorithms
used may be far from perfect and are result more of a "trading horses" between power groups involved
in development, then honest scientific research. Open source software such as CPU emulators can be
used as steganography engine that requires particular processor on the other side for recreation
of the message. And you can chose some really exotic CPU like Knuth Mix.
Errors in algorithms and bugs in those programs can bite some people in a different way then branding
them as "terrorists". Such people have no way of knowing why all of a sudden, for example, they
are paying a more for insurance, why their credit score is so low no matter what they do, etc. In no
way government in the only one who are using the mass of data collected via Google / Facebook / Yahoo
/ Microsoft / Verizon / Optonline / AT&T / Comcast, etc. It also can lead to certain subtle types of
bias if not error. And there are always problems of intentional misuse of data sets having extremely
intimate knowledge about you.
Corporate corruption can lead to those data that are shared with the government can also be shared
for money with private actors. Inept use of this unconstitutionally obtained data is a threat to all
of us.
Then there can be cases when you can be targeted just because you are critical to the particular
area of government policy, for example the US foreign policy. This is "Back in the USSR" situation in
full swing, with its prosecution of dissidents. Labeling you as a "disloyal/suspicious element"
in one of government "terrorism tracking" databases can have drastic result to your career and you never
even realize whats happened. Kind of Internet era
McCarthyism .
Obama claims that the government is aware about this danger and tried not to overstep, but he is
an interested party in this discussion. In a way government is pushed in this area by the new technologies
that open tremendous opportunities for collecting data and making some correlations.
That's why even if you are doing nothing wrong, it is still important to know your enemy, as well
as avoid getting into some traps. One typical trap is excessive centralization of your email on social
sites, including using a single Webmail provider. It is much safer to have mail delivery to your computer
via POP3 and to use Thunderbird or other email client. If your computer is a laptop, you achieve, say,
80% of portability that Web-based email providers like Google Gmail offers. That does not mean that
you should close your Gmail or Yahoo account. More important is separating email accounts into "important"
and "everything else". "Junk mail" can be stored on Web-based email providers without any problems.
Personal emails is completely another matter.
Technology development create new types of communications as well as new types of government surveillance
mechanisms (you can call them "externalities" of new methods of communication). Those externalities,
especially low cost of mass
surveillance (Wikipedia), unfortunately, bring us closer to the
Electronic police state
(Wikipedia) or National Security State whether we want it or not. A
crucial element of such a state is that its data gathering, sorting and correlation are continuous,
cover a large number of citizens and all foreigners and those activities are seldom exposed.
Cloud computing as a technology that presuppose storing the data "offsite" on third party servers
have several security problems, and one of them is that it is way too much "surveillance friendly"
(Misunderstanding
of issues of security and trust). With cloud computing powers that be do not need to do complex
job of recreating TCP/IP conversations on router level to capture, say, all the emails. You can access
Web-based email mailbox directly with all mails in appropriate mailboxes and spam filtered. Your address
book is a bonus ;-). This is huge saving of computational efforts.
A number of international papers
report today on the Israeli hacking company NSO which sells snooping software to various
regimes. The software is then used to hijack the phones of regime enemies, political
competition or obnoxious journalists. All of that was already well known but the story has
new legs as several hundreds of people who were spied on can now be named.
The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in
countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been
clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely
unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found.
The list does not identify who put the numbers on it, or why, and it is unknown how many
of the phones were targeted or surveilled. But forensic analysis of the 37 smartphones
shows that many display a tight correlation between time stamps associated with a number on
the list and the initiation of surveillance, in some cases as brief as a few seconds.
Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and Amnesty International, a
human rights group, had access to the list and shared it with the news organizations, which
did further research and analysis. Amnesty's Security Lab did the forensic analyses on the
smartphones.
The numbers on the list are unattributed, but reporters were able to identify more than
1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four
continents.
Who might have made such a list and who would give it to Amnesty and Forbidden
Stories?
NSO is one of the Israeli companies that is used to monetize the work of the Israel's
military intelligence unit 8200. 'Former' members of 8200 move to NSO to produce spy tools
which are then sold to foreign governments. The license price is $7 to 8 million per 50
phones to be snooped at. It is a shady but lucrative business for the company and for the
state of Israel.
NSO denies the allegations that its software is used for harmful proposes with
a lot of bullshittery :
The report by Forbidden Stories is full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories
that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources. It seems like
the "unidentified sources" have supplied information that has no factual basis and are far
from reality.
After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their report.
Their sources have supplied them with information which has no factual basis, as evident by
the lack of supporting documentation for many of their claims. In fact, these allegations
are so outrageous and far from reality, that NSO is considering a defamation lawsuit.
The reports make, for example, the claim that the Indian government under Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has used the NSO software to spy on the
leader of the opposition party Rahul Gandhi.
How could NSO deny that allegation? It can't.
Further down in the NSO's statement the company
contradicts itself on the issues:
How do you explain the
suspiciously-timed, and simultaneous, Five Eyes denunciation of China for alleged hacking of
Microsoft? Is it a way of deflecting too much wrath on Israel? Or, is b wrong and the China
story serves as real distraction.
thanks b.. it is an interesting development which seems to pit the usa against israel... i am
having a hard time appreciating this... maybe... interesting conundrum snowden paints himself
into... @ 1 prof... there are plenty of distractions to go around.. hard to know...
In our day-and-age, all "Spectacular Stories" serve as distractions, although some are
genuine scoops illuminating criminal behavior involving state actors. Ultimately, this scoop
provides much more leverage for Putin's ongoing insistence that an International Treaty
dealing with all things Cyber including Cyber-crime be convened ASAP.
"Who has an interest in shutting NSO down or to at least make its business more
difficult?
The competition I'd say. And the only real one in that field is the National Security Agency
of the United States."
There is at least one other possibility.
The leak could be from a highly sophisticated state actor that needs to "blind" US and
especially Israeli intelligence services temporarily.
That could very easily be China, Russia or even Iran. Some of their assets could be on the
list.
Exposing the service weakens, or possibly destroys, it until another workaround is
found.
China might do this to push customers towards some of their cellphones that are supposedly
immune to this.
Russia and Iran might need to blind Mossad, NSA and CIA or upcoming operations in Syria,
Iraq and possibly Afghanistan.
Weird to have the US burn an Israeli spy operation (I'd be surprised if they didn't build
back doors into their own software) in such a public manner.
The only reason I can think of for the US to shut NSO down is if they refused to share
information they had gathered with the NSA and so they were put out of business.
Snowden didn't have a problem with the NSA et al spying on foreign adversaries. He had a
problem when the NSA was spying illegally on US citizens.
The 'West' could be using it as a weapon to rein in Israel, which it sees as getting more
and more out of control. Netanyahu might be gone but the policies that he represents will not
just disappear.
The mass media didn't like Israel's destruction of the building in Gaza where the
Associated Press had its offices. How are the media supposed to publish reports from places
where they don't have anywhere to work?
Western governments are exasperated that Israel doesn't even pretend to have any respect
for international law and human rights. Nobody in power in the West cares about those things
either, and they really want to support Israel, but doing that is a lot harder when Israel
makes it so obvious that it is a colonial aggressor.
As the Guardian reported yesterday, "The Israeli minister of defence closely regulates
NSO, granting individual export licences before its surveillance technology can be sold to a
new country."
The attack on NSO looks like a message to the Israeli state.
I think you are very wrong in your assessment that this is about business and getting rid
of the competition. Information isn`t about money. It is about power.
The people at MoA might not have noticed it because of ideological bias but Netanyahu and
Biden (and before him Obama) were quite hostile towards each other. To a degree they were
almost waging a kind of undercover cold war against each other (culminating in United Nations
Security Council Resolution 2334).
In this context I don`t believe the "former" Israelis spies at NSO are just Isrealis. They
are a specific kind of Israelis. Namely extreme-right Israelis/Likud loyalists. Netanyahu
created his own private unit 8200 - outside of the Israeli state. The profit that NSO made
were just the "former" spies regular payment.
The USA - with the consent and probably active assistance of the new Israeli government -
took Netanyahus private intelligence service down.
The US has found out that the NSO spyware can be used BY the "other regimes" against US
leaders. Or at least against US assets.
The Israelis would sell their wares to anyone with a buck (or shekel, as the buck is
getting rather uncertain as a money).
IE. Saudi buys a section of numbers and then decides to track and eliminate "opposants".
BUT if there are CIA personnel implanted with a good cover story, then OOOPS, "another one
bites the dust".
What laws exist in your nation to prevent illegal snooping?
How about profiling by the digital companies? Nations need to pass laws making it a
CRIMINAL offense to conduct snooping or hacking without a warrant. What happened to Apple's
claims about its devices' superior security and privacy?
Let's see what sanctions or criminal ACTIONS are taken against NSO, its executives and
other companies. Is any of the information captured by NSO shared with Israel &/or Five
Eyes? Are their financial accounts frozen? Let's see how they're treated compared to
Huawei.
Are Dark web sites linked to the REvil ransomware gang operating? Shutdown all illegal
snooping and cyber crimes entities.
A rule or law isn't just and fair if it doesn't applies to everyone, and they can't be
applied at the whims of powerful. Laws and rules applied unequally have no credibility and
legitimacy.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
– Martin Luther King Jr.
"A rule or law isn't just and fair if it doesn't applies to everyone, and they can't be
applied at the whims of powerful. Laws and rules applied unequally have no credibility and
legitimacy."
Max, are you sure you have got your feet on this planet earth? If there is one factor that
is common to his era, is that "Justice" is no longer blindfolded, but is looking out for the
best interests of "friends".
Can you name a few countries where your ideal is the norm?
*****
PS. Don't bother, as I won't reply, I'm off to bed to dream of a perfect world. Much easier,
and I can do it lying down.
Another possible scenario is that the NSO has been poaching people and/or techniques from US
intel agencies for use in its for-profit schemes.
That is one thing which is guaranteed to get a negative reaction - regardless of who is doing
it and which party is in power.
We do know that NSO has been very active on the exploit buying dark webs since their
inception...
The above article also notes that NSO was acquired by Francisco Partners in 2010...
Thus maybe all this is purely a capability play: The US is falling behind and so wants to
bring in house, more capability. One way is to squeeze an existing successful player so that
they have to cooperate/sell out...
All I can be sure of, is that none of the present foofaraw has anything to do with the
truth.
"In fact, these allegations are so outrageous and far from reality, that NSO is
considering a defamation lawsuit."
Ya..Right. That's not remotely gonna happen!
The NSO 'Group" would have to provide a substantial amount of their very sensitive
'operational' & 'proprietary' internal documents - which would most certainly be
requested in discovery - to any of the possible defendants should NSO be stupid/arrogant
enough to actually file a formal suit of "defamation" in a any US court.
Talk about a "defamation" legal case that would get shut down faster than Mueller's show
indictment of 13 'Russian' agents and their related businesses that were reportedly part of
the now infamous "Guccifer 2.0" "Hack"
When these "Russian" hackers simply countered by producing a surprise Washington based
legal team that publically agreed to call Mueller's bluff and have the all of the 'indicted'
defendants actually appear in court, they immediately "requested" - via the discovery process
- all relevant documents that the Mueller team purportedly had that confirmed that their was
any actual or attempted (hacking) criminality.
VIA POLITICO:
The 13 people charged in the high-profile indictment in February are considered unlikely to
ever appear in a U.S. court. The three businesses accused of facilitating the alleged
Russian troll farm operation -- the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management, and
Concord Catering -- were also expected to simply ignore the American criminal proceedings.
Last month, however, a pair of Washington-area lawyers suddenly surfaced in the case,
notifying the court that they represent Concord Management. POLITICO reported at the time
that the move appeared to be a bid to force Mueller's team to turn over relevant evidence
to the Russian firm and perhaps even to bait prosecutors into an embarrassing dismissal in
order to avoid disclosing sensitive information.
The NSO Group is never going to even considering this "defamation" route, but their
threatening legal bluster is pure... Hutzpa!
In a world in which this can be done, the worst of governments will do it, and in the worst
ways.
The US and other governments have promoted this. Their own intelligence services use it.
They actively oppose efforts to block it, as happened with private encryption ideas.
We can't both make it possible and prevent the bad guys from doing it.
We have deliberately made it possible, and opposed serious efforts to protect private life
against it. Now we are surprised?
@ Stonebird (#17), you missed the pun in those words. Maybe you're sleeping while reading.
The Financial Empire and its lackeys want a "rules-based international order" and
China-Russia... want a "rule of international laws". Both are meaningless and worthless as
they're applied unequally. I am awake and in sync with REALITY. Just playing with these two
ideas. We have the law of the jungle. However, Orcs (individuals without conscience –
dark souls) are worse than animals in greed, deceits and killing.
"The Black Speech of Mordor need to be heard in every corner of the world!"
Interesting story but I agree that the hype is overblown because nothing much will change
even if this NSO outfit has a harder time flogging its spyware to all and sundry.
The NSA, CIA, MI5/6, Mossad and the 5 Lies spies will continue spying on friend and foe
alike and tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google will likewise continue their
unethical surveillance practices and will keep passing on private citizen's data to
government spy agencies. So it goes.
For a dissident Snowden is a lightweight. His beef wasn't, as b points out, with the NSA
itself, he just didn't like them spying on Americans within the USA. He had no problem spying
on people in other countries as long as the proper 'rules' were followed. That, almost by
definition, makes him a limited hangout.
The AI report notes that this software was abandoned in 2018 for cloud implementations to
help hide responsibility;
Having Amazon AWS dump services naming NSO probably has no effect at all, as NSO will just
use other names;
" However, Orcs (individuals without conscience – dark souls) are worse than animals
in greed, deceits and killing."
Non-human animals operate on a genetically programmed autopilot and are not responsible
for their actions.
Humans are partially engineered by genetics but unlike the "lower" animals they have the
power to choose which actions they will take and they are therefore responsible for their
choices.
A bear or a mountain lion will attack a human when it is injured or when protecting its
young, but one can't blame these animals for exercising their survival instincts.
Human beings are the only mammal, indeed the only animal, that is capable of evil, i.e.
deliberately choosing to harm or kill other humans for profit or personal gain.
On this subject, I suggest barflies read the excellent post on the previous MoA Week in
Review thread by:
Posted by: Debsisdead | Jul 19 2021 1:36 utc | 71
My reply @167 and Uncle T's further comment.
The book on this criminal conduct is called 'Murdoch's Pirates.' The detestable Amazon
have it at 'unavailable' however it is available at Australian bookseller Booktopia.
How do you explain the suspiciously-timed, and simultaneous, Five Eyes denunciation of
China for alleged hacking of Microsoft? Is it a way of deflecting too much wrath on Israel?
Or, is b wrong and the China story serves as real distraction.
Posted by: Prof | Jul 19 2021 18:09 utc | 1
If the US navy were to purchase leaky boats would it not be absurd for it to then blame
Russia or China for the influx of water?
If the US government, and US industry, purchase software full of holes is it not equally
absurd for them to blame a foreign entity for any resulting leaks?
In answering these questions it is worthwhile to remember that US government entities
support the insertion of backdoors in US commercial software. Such backdoors can be
identified and exploited by 3rd parties.
If this somewhat limp-wristed takedown of NSO did not have the support of apartheid Israel's
intelligence services, the graun would not be pushing the story.
It is that simple, the guardian is run by rabid zionists such as Jonathon Freedland deputy
editor, who retains editorial control from the second seat rather than #1 simply because the
zionist board wanted to stroke the fishwrap's woke credentials by having a female editor.
Foreign news and england news all have many zionist journos.
Now even the sports desk features stories by a bloke called Jacob Steinberg 'n sport is not
generally an interest of jews.
Also if NSO a corporation born to advance particular media interests were in fact a tool of
apartheid israel's intelligence establishment, it is unlikely that it would have tried to
sue the graun back in 2019.
None of that precludes Mossad plants working at NSO, in fact the move against it would
suggest that zionist intelligence has wrung the organisation dry.
This 'takedown' suggests to me that these services will continue, but not for everyone as
before. ME governments will never again gain full access, no matter how friendly they may
claim to be. All future contracts with whatever entity follows will only proceed if permitted
by FukUSi.
div> Since the software is licensed by the number of phones it's installed
on, NSO must have a means of determining the device ID/phone number of each phone (You wouldn't
trust some shady third-world regime to be honest, would you?
Since the software is licensed by the number of phones it's installed on, NSO must have a
means of determining the device ID/phone number of each phone (You wouldn't trust some shady
third-world regime to be honest, would you?
The Israeli connection just read an account on AC by Rod Dreher and so far, writers
are downplaying the connection to Israel. If it was a Chinese or Russian company we would be
blaming Putin.
We blame Putin for every criminal in Russia but I don't see anyone blaming Israel for a
product they they authorized for export. Wow.
It does take two to tango, so I do understand talking about the clients who bought the
product but if they have the export version of the spyware the it's obvious that Israel has
the super-duper lethal version but that's okay. No biggie. But Iran having any weapons to
defend their own country is a scandal.
US taxpayers subsidize the Israeli military industry. The zionists then developed tools which
they use against palestinians and their adversaries. The same technologies are later sold at
a profit to various United states security agencies. A wonderful self licking ice cream cone
of christian zionism, so much winning... Paying up the wazoo for our own eslavement. Last I
checked, the chosen one's were never held accountable for their role prior to 911 operations.
The Amerikastani Con-serve-ative manages to write a whole article about this without
mentioning the name of the "country" that created and exported this software.
This same Amerikastani Con-serve-ative pretends to champion free speech but doesn't permit
the slightest criticism of this same "nation", the racist fascist apartheid zionist settler
colony in Occupied Palestine. In fact the very mention of the word "zionist" will get your
comment removed.
I'm of the school of thought that Snowden is still an active CIA asset used to assist in
discrediting government agencies, such as the NSA, to allow private corporations to take
their place in data collection and dissemination. Alphabet, and it's AI/quantum computers
should not be ignored in this particular scenario
Human beings with conscience are INNER directed. Those without strong conscience (Orcs)
are OUTER directed and thereby easily captured, corrupted and controlled. Human beings with
great conscience (soul/spirit), strong mind and healthy body are PARAGONS.
Orcs were once elves. They got programmed by the dark forces of Saruman & Sauron
(Sin). Sauron's EYE is for intimidation. Seeing it sends fear into the hearts of people and
sucks away their courage. "When did we let evil become stronger than us?" Communicate
reality, truth and expose power freely!
There is still light to defeat the darkness. May your light light others
🕯🕯🕯
Ultimately, this scoop provides much more leverage for Putin's ongoing insistence that an
International Treaty dealing with all things Cyber including Cyber-crime be convened ASAP.
Israel and the UK will never sign such a protocol. The USA? only if it is worthless.
Mar man #4
The leak could be from a highly sophisticated state actor that needs to "blind" US and
especially Israeli intelligence services temporarily.
That could very easily be China, Russia or even Iran. Some of their assets could be on
the list.
"Snowden's opinion on this is kind of strange". Snowden's task, almost a decade ago now,
was to facilitate the passage of CISPA. Greenwald was the PR guy. Remember Obama saying we
need to have a conversation about privacy versus security? Well, Snowden and Greewald helped
him to have the conversation on his terms. And the media giants will be forever grateful.
Greenwald even got his own website. So no, nothing strange about what Snowden said. It was in
his script. Was, is and always will be an asset.
In a broader context:
"In a corporatist system of government, where there is no separation between corporate power
and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. The actual government as it
actually exists is censoring the speech not just of its own people, but people around the
world. If US law had placed as much emphasis on the separation of corporation and state as it
had on the separation of church and state, the country would be unrecognizably different from
what we see today."
"It's A Private Company So It's Not Censorship"
Sanctions? Sanctions, did anybody mention sanctions for those carrying out Cyber attacks?
(Particularly ones that target "Freedom of speech" and Journalists.)
Apple is also zionist controlled, so not surprising that NSO had all internal details to
hack their iPhones, via tribal leakers or approved connections. So is Amazon, so their cloud
service for NSO continues under other cover.
Those in danger should not use Apple or Amazon-based or other zionist-controlled products
or services. A catalog of those might help.
I don't buy it. It doesn't sound plausible to me as presented.
One possibility is that it is a camouflaged operation to take down non-attributably spy
software that has fallen into the wrong hands, and thereby contrary to US interests. For
example, the new Myanmar government is sure to be using the software to observe the
US-sponsored miscreants from the Aung San Su Kyi regime who are bombing schools, hospitals
and government offices, and to seek out wanted criminals in hiding. The NSO take-down could
be an operation to take those licences out of operation. In that scenario those NSO customers
who are not anti-US might get support to continue operations as usual. As another example it
could also be used as a warning to the Saudis not to get too close to the Russians and
Chinese or ditch the US dollar, and not to accommodate to Iran.
Or maybe NSO just had the wrong political connections in the USA.
Whatever it may seem on the surface, that is what it surely is not.
div> I certainly can't compete on tech savvy as I have none, but doesn't
this perhaps line up with the summit decision between Putin and Biden to cooperate in terms of
policing cybercrime? Maybe that's too obvious, but I don't see that Snowden is contradicting
his own positions in that case. And of course, b, you are correct that the main culprit on
these matters is the US. Throwing the spotlight elsewhere however, doesn't mean it can't circle
around. Spotlights have a way of doing that.
I certainly can't compete on tech savvy as I have none, but doesn't this perhaps line up with
the summit decision between Putin and Biden to cooperate in terms of policing cybercrime?
Maybe that's too obvious, but I don't see that Snowden is contradicting his own positions in
that case. And of course, b, you are correct that the main culprit on these matters is the
US. Throwing the spotlight elsewhere however, doesn't mean it can't circle around. Spotlights
have a way of doing that.
The interesting backdrop to all this is that Israel has a *huge* presence in all things
associated with cybersecurity and have for years. The IDF's Talpiot plan no doubt enviously
eyed the NSA tapping into everyone's internet/cellphone traffic and wanted a piece of the
action. The financial intelligence alone would make it hugely valuable, not to mention
blackmail opportunities and the means to exercise political control.
I wonder if the Intel's Haifa design bureau was behind the infamous "management engine"
installed on *every* Intel chip since 2008 (to, of course, "make administration easier")?
The discover of this "feature" precipitated a huge scandal not too many years back if you
recall...
This "feature" gave anyone who could access it the ability to snoop or change the code
running on the main CPU... anyone want to guess whether the Mossad knows how to get to
it?
@Simplicius | Jul 20 2021 15:15 utc | 57
"I wonder if the Intel's Haifa design bureau was behind the infamous "management engine"
installed on *every* Intel chip since 2008 (to, of course, "make administration easier")?"
I remember 30 years ago there was controversy over the NSA requiring hardware backdoors in
all phones. At the time, it was called the "Clipper chip". Reportedly, the program failed and
was never adopted. Apparently, as this article exposed, that is false and something like it
is installed in all phones and possibly computers manufactured for sale in the western
world.
Supposedly, the real story behind Huawei sanctions and kidnapping of their executive, is
Huawei phones have no NSA backdoor since the Chinese flatly refuse to cooperate with NSA.
Turns out the Microsoft hacking accusation against China wasn't a distraction against the
NSO scandal, but a capitalist reaction against the CPC's growing containment of their own big
tech capitalists:
For people who don't know: this Kara Swisher is clearly an USG asset (or behaves exactly
like one). Every column she writes is an unashamed apology to all the USG policies on big
tech and on all decisions of American big tech.
@ vk (#59), Your conclusion about Kara Swisher is good one. However, cast the net wider to
understand the NETWORK that she represents and find additional media
Orcs. Most likely she is an asset of the Global Financial Syndicate, acting as a
gatekeeper/porter/lobbyist in the technology arena. Her mentor Walter Mossberg was an asset
too? It is easy to identify Orcs!
Work Experience: WSJ, The Washington Post, New York Times, ... Who did she sell Recode to?
Who are financiers of Vox Media?
Education: Georgetown, Columbia University (many assets come from here)
While the theory from m at #13 about it being a personal tiff between Biden and Netanyahu has
some appeal I tend to believe it is more complex than that.
While Dems could accumulate some grudges against Netanyahu, they can be pretty thick
skinned on that. On the other hand, if Netanyahu used his budget to dig the dirt against his
opponents like Bennet, with NSO as the took, the grudge against NSO could be very strong on
the side of the current government of Israel. Internal strife between Likudniks is intense.
And the mantle of the ruler of Israel comes with perks, like the ability to plant stories in
WP and NYT.
The Government said the reform was needed as the existing acts, with the last update in
1989, are no longer enough to fight the "discernible and very real threat posed by state
threats".
The Home Office said it does "not consider that there is necessarily a distinction in
severity between espionage and the most serious unauthorised disclosures, in the same way
that there was in 1989".
[More at the link.]
If it was Russia or Iran that was selling such spyware, would FUKUS react with measures
against the press or with sanctions and efforts to protect the press?
On the other hand, if Netanyahu used his budget to dig the dirt against his opponents like
Bennet, with NSO as the took, the grudge against NSO could be very strong on the side of the
current government of Israel. Internal strife between Likudniks is intense. And the mantle of
the ruler of Israel comes with perks, like the ability to plant stories in WP and NYT.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 20 2021 19:05 utc | 64
@64 Piotr Berman
This goes much deeper than just personal animosity.
For several years now there had been some kind of cultural war waging in Israel with the
populist leader - Netanyahu - on the one side and and most of the Israeli establishment - the
Mossad, the generals and the High Court - against him. The generals eventually acted by
founding their own party (with the former TV presenter Lapid at it`s head) and deposed
Netanyahu.
This cultural war in Israel is not only very similar to the cultural war in the USA. The
two countries are so intervened with one another that both conflicts have kind of merged.
"This cultural war in Israel is not only very similar to the cultural war in the USA.
The two countries are so intervened with one another that both conflicts have kind of
merged."
Posted by: m | Jul 21 2021 9:41 utc | 67
Yes, not unrelated to the purge Biden seems to be planning here. Bibi made a big mistake
getting so cozy with Trump. I would wager Trump is going to be in the crosshairs too. And
that is likely to be divisive, in both places.
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be
surprised if bad things start happening.
I received another "Our Terms Have Changed" email from a Big Tech quasi-monopoly, and for a
change I actually read this one. It was a revelation on multiple fronts. I'm reprinting it here
for your reading pleasure:
We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.
What hasn't changed:
Your use constitutes your agreement to our Conditions of Use.
We own all the content you create on our platform, devices and networks, and are free to
monetize it by any means we choose.
We own all the data we collect on you, your devices, purchases, social networks, views,
associations, beliefs and illicit viewing, your location data, who you are in proximity to,
and whatever data the networked devices in your home, vehicles and workplaces collect.
We have the unrestricted right to ban you and all your content, shadow-ban you and all
your content, i.e., generate the illusion that your content is freely, publicly available,
and erase your digital presence entirely such that you cease to exist except as a corporeal
body.
What has changed:
If we detect you have positive views on anti-trust enforcement, we may report you as a
"person of interest / potential domestic extremist" to the National Security Agency and other
federal agencies.
Rather than respond to all disputes algorithmically, we have established a Star Chamber of
our most biased, fanatical employees to adjudicate customer/user disputes in which the
customer/user refuses to accept the algorithmic mediation.
If a customer/user attempts to contact any enforcement agency regarding our algorithmic
mediation or Star Chamber adjudication, we reserve the unrestricted rights to:
a. Prepare voodoo dolls representing the user and stick pins into the doll while
chanting curses.
b. Hack the targeted user's accounts and blame it on Russian or Ukrainian hackers.
c. Rendition the user to a corrupt kleptocracy in which we retain undue influence, i.e.,
the United States.
Left unsaid, of course, is the potential for "accidents" to happen to anyone publicly
promoting anti-trust enforcement of Big Tech quasi-monopolies. Once totalitarianism has been
privatized , there are no rules that can't be ignored or broken by those behind the curtain .
So go ahead and say whatever you want around all your networked devices, but don't be surprised
if bad things start happening.
Editor's note: this is satire. If I disappear, then you'll know who has no sense of irony or
humor.
A smartphone is a spying device from which one also can make phone calls. After Prism is
should be clear to anybody that goverments intercepts your email messages and record your phone
calls just because they can.
"..reporters identified more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries. They included
several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists,
189 journalists and more than 600 politicians and government officials – including several
heads of state and prime ministers." -- and all those idiots use plain vanilla Anroid or IOS.
Nice. They probably have no money to buy a basic phone for $14 or so. That does not save from
wiretapping but at least saves from such malware.
Southfront reports that an Israeli company's spyware was used in attempted and successful
hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights
activists around the world, according to an investigation by 17 media organizations, published
on July 18th.
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One of the organizations, The Washington Post, said the Pegasus spyware licensed by
Israel-based NSO Group also was used to target phones belonging to two women close to Jamal
Khashoggi, a Post columnist murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018.
One of them was his fiancee, and she and the other woman were targeted both before and after
his death.
The Guardian, another of the media outlets, said the investigation suggested "widespread and
continuing abuse" of NSO's hacking software , described as malware that infects smartphones to
enable the extraction of messages, photos and emails; record calls; and secretly activate
microphones.
The investigation highlights widespread and continuing abuse of NSO's hacking spyware called
'Pegasus' which the company confirms is only intended for use against terrorist groups, drug
and human traffickers, and criminals.
Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow operators
of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including secretly activate
microphones and cameras.
Based on the investigation, the leak contains a list of 50,000 phone numbers that have been
identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.
The list includes many close family members of one country's ruler, suggesting he might have
instructed the country's intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of tracking and
spying on their own relatives.
anti-bolshevik 8 hours ago (Edited)
Two articles from Motherboard Vice:
Is Israel EXEMPT from the ' rules-based order ' that Biden / Blinken / Yellen constantly
affirm?
Any incoming Sanctions? Any Treasury asset-seziures?
Motherboard uncovered more evidence that NSO Group ran hacking infrastructure in
the United States.
A former NSO employee provided Motherboard with the IP address of a server setup to
infect phones with NSO's Pegasus hacking tool. Motherboard granted the source anonymity
to protect them from retaliation from the company.
The licensor of software is not the user of the software. An Israeli company developed
it and may have used it.
In weapons terms, an Israeli company was the arms developer.
However, there are the licensees and users of the software. The factions and individuals
who actually used this weapon of war and political coercion.
In weapons terms, there are others, like the US and other country intelligence
communities who will be the ones who pulled the trigger.
The "trigger pullers include the Bolshevik Democrat party and the Biden campaign, which
used it to control citizens through intelligence gathering (remember Judge Roberts?) and
extract political donations from corporations and rich individuals. Don't forget the
Globalist GOP RINOs and Tech monopolists, who have used this weapon to control and subvert
anyone that they need to subjugate.
Bye bye Apple, Xiomi and Google Android. You just lost your market of brainwashed sheep
for new mobile phones. Even the unwashed Joe Six-Packs of this world now know they are
being manipulated with the phones that are so expensive.
MASTER OF UNIVERSE 11 hours ago
I've spent many years studying Experimental Psychology & Personality Theory and can
honestly state that malware can't determine appropriate behavioural signals intelligence
enough to act responsibly, or judiciously.
Algos are dependent upon Behavioural Science & human analytics. They are crude tools
that employ hit & miss techniques that hardly ever work accurately.
Israeli intelligence tries to look state of the art, but they are just as dimwitted as
the CIA.
WorkingClassMan 10 hours ago
They might be dimwitted and hamfisted but like an elephant with a lobotomy they can
still do a lot of damage flailing around. Worst part about it is them not caring about the
consequences.
NAV 10 hours ago remove link
It's amazing how the "dimwits" control the entire apparatus of the most powerful Empire
in the world and the entire world media.
2banana 12 hours ago (Edited)
It's not just some politicians and journalists.
It's everyone.
Your phone spys on you in every possible way.
Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow
operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including
secretly activate microphones and cameras.
gregga777 12 hours ago (Edited)
It's been widely for at least a decade that carrying a smart phone is really like wiring
oneself up for 24/7/365 audio and/or video surveillance. They only have themselves to blame
if they've been spied upon by the world's so-called secret intelligence agencies.
[Ed. The next time in a crowded public space, turn on Wi-Fi and count the number of
unlocked phones under the "Other Networks" menu.]
truth or go home 12 hours ago
If you have no phone, and no facebook, then you are likely immune from prosecution. My
neighbor the Fed agent told me 10 years ago that these two sources are 90% of every
investigation. That number has only gone up. They track you with it, they find out your
contacts with it. They find out your secrets with it. Just try to get either of those
things anonymously. You can't.
philipat 11 hours ago remove link
Land of the Free....
Ura Bonehead PREMIUM 7 hours ago
'truth or go home', 'having no Facebook' doesn't help you as FB secures the same
information via data-sharing arrangements with any number of apps you may download, that
came on your phone, or are embedded deep on your phone. Just a fact.
Steeley 4 hours ago
A friend that lives in Pahrump, NV reports that every time he crosses into California a
smart phone Covid Health Tracking App activates and he starts getting notifications. Can't
turn it off or find where it resides. When he crosses back into Nevada it stops.
E5 10 hours ago
"After checking their claims, we firmly deny the false allegations made in their
report,"
Really? So if 99 claims are true and one false? Never did they say there was truth to
the accusation that they hacked phones.
If you are going to commit a crime I suppose you want to "issue a statement" that you
didn't. I guess we have to ask them 2 more times: then it is a rule that you must tell all.
No minion can resist the same question three times.
zzmop 9 hours ago (Edited)
Keyword -'Israeli', Not Russian, Israeli, Not 'Russian hackers', Israeli hackers
eatapeach 9 hours ago
This is old news. Congresswoman Jane Harman was all for spying/eavesdropping until she
got busted selling her power to Israel, LOL.
consistentliving PREMIUM 7 hours ago
Not USA fake paper pushers but Mexican journalists deserve mention here
Revealed: murdered journalist's number selected by Mexican NSO client
Israel doesn't respect human rights!. Israel has been killing defenseless people in
Palestine for more than 50 years. The sad thing is that US support these genocidal sick
sycophats.
wizteknet 10 hours ago
Where's a list of infected software?
vova_3.2018 9 hours ago (Edited)
Where's a list of infected software?
If they take yr phone under control they'd have access to everything & then they can
use the info against you or anybody else in the info. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuBuyv6kUKI
Israeli spy-wear "Candiru" works a little bet different than Pegasus but is also used to
hack & track journalists and activists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWEJS0f6P6k
The magic number of "6 million" will be the Get out of Jail Card once again.
And, these idiots keep preaching about the great risk China poses...
Steeley 4 hours ago
Embedded in the OS...
Kugelhagel 12 hours ago (Edited)
Is that article an attempt to get some sympathy for "politicians", "journalists" and
"activists"? Try again.
HippieHaulers 11 hours ago
Exactly. Don't forget Kashogi was CIA. And they're using another asset (Snowden) to roll
this out. This story stinks.
WhiteCulture 7 hours ago (Edited)
I installed Nice Systems onto 600 desk tops in 2003 at 3 separate call centers, a call
monitoring and a PC, mainframe CICS, or email, screen scrape capability. When the call
audio was recorded we also captured whatever was on the screen. No doubt the government has
been doing this on our phones and all personal computers for over a decade.
TheInformed 7 hours ago
Your example shows that people are dumb, it's not evidence of some grand 'government
backdoor' conspiracy. Don't conflate the two.
two hoots 10 hours ago (Edited)
Forget the petty herd/individual surveillance, this is a "super power" tool for
investment opportunities, negotiation advantage, strategic decisions, military/covert
decisions, etc. you can be sure that the most improved (undisclosed) versions are in use in
the usual suspect country. Likely spying on the spy's that bought the software from them.
These are those steps beyond Nietzsche's amoral supra-man.
Globalist Overlord 12 hours ago
Whitney Webb was writing about this in 2018.
Snowden: Israeli Spyware Used By Governments to Pursue Journalists Targeted for
Assassination
If Pegasus is used against Human Traffic-ers, then why didnt they get Jeffrey Epstein
earlier?
Occams_Razor_Trader 11 hours ago
Why 'get' people when you can 'use' these people ........................?
RasinResin 11 hours ago
I use to be in IT and worked in association with Radcom. Now you may ask who is that?
They are the Israeli company that is truly behind all monitoring and spying of your phones
in America
"Reuters' spokesman Dave Moran said, "Journalists must be allowed to report the news
in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We are
aware of the report and are looking into the matter."
I love the sanctimonious clutching of pearls, wringing of hands, and bleating from the
purveyors of CCP propaganda, woketardness, and globalism whenever the velvet hand that
feeds them punishes them with a throat punch instead.
donebydoug 11 hours ago
Journalists can't be spies, right? That would never happen.
Watt Supremacist 12 hours ago
Yes but do the people working for Reuters know all that?
nowhereman 11 hours ago
Just look at the signature on your paycheck.
Grumbleduke 11 hours ago
they're in the news business - of course they don't!
You know the adage "when your livelihood depends on not knowing" or something....
Enraged 10 hours ago
Listening in on calls is a distraction story by the propaganda media.
The real story is the blackmailing of politicians, judges, corporate executives, etc.
for many years by the intelligence agencies with tapes of them with underage girls and
boys. This was included in the Maxwell/Esptein story.
These people are compromised, which is the reason for the strange decisions they make,
as they support the globalist elite.
There is no reason to spy on journalists, as they are part of the intelligence agency
operations.
Max21c 10 hours ago (Edited)
There is no reason to spy on journalists, as they are part of the intelligence agency
operations.
True the press are either spies or puppets and vassals of Big Brother and the secret
police. They're all mostly agents of the Ministry of Truth. But sometimes they get the
weather report right.
Wayoutwilly 12 hours ago remove link
Bet they have sh!t on Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett too.
Brushy 11 hours ago
Wait a minute, you mean the tracking spy device that you carry around and put all of
your personal information on is actually tracking and spying on you?!!
Dis-obey 10 hours ago remove link
They have data on everyone but not enough eyes to look at everyone all the time. So when
you get flagged then they can open all the data on your device to investigate
u.
ay_arrow
Yog Soggoth 10 hours ago
Khashoggi was not a journalist. While interesting, this is not the story of the
year.
Lawn.Dart 10 hours ago
Almost every intellegence agent is a writer of some kind.
Max21c 10 hours ago
NOS is just one company out of many. They have the willing complicity of the security
services of other countries including the CIA, FBI, NSA, DOJ, in the USA and similar per
UK. Secret police use these special contractors to help them engage in crimes and criminal
activities and it does not matter whether the secret police use a foreign or domestic
secret police agency or contractor as they're all in on it together. It's just a criminal
underworld of secret police, secret police bureaus & agencies, and "intelligence"
agencies. They're all crooked. They're all crooks and criminals and thieves that rob and
persecute innocent civilians just like the Bolsheviks, Nazis, Gestapo, Waffen SS, Viet
Kong, Khmer Rouge, Red Guards, ISIS, Stasi, KGB, etc. It's all the same or similar secret
police, police state tactics, state security apparatus abuses of power, absolute power
& its abuses, and spy agencies and intelligence agencies... and those that go along
with it and collaborate. It's all just criminal enterprises and crime agencies.
So you can solve the 10,000 open murder investigations in Chicago with this. That's how
its being used right...
Bostwick9 10 hours ago
"We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with journalists from
many news organizations, are among those who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware,"
said Director of AP Media Relations Lauren Easton.
OMG . Not journalists !!!!!!!!!!
Guess NSO is a "buy", then.
NAV 11 hours ago remove link
To believe that the Israelis will not use the information that they have is absurd.
Here's one example:
The American Anti-Defamation League under Abe Foxman long made it a practice for decades
to tail all Congressmen – liberal or conservative -- as was brought out in
allegations in the San Francisco trial of its head operative Roy Bullock on charges of
buying blackmail information from members of the San Francisco Police Department as
reported by the San Francisco Examiner. Bullock had collected information and provided it
to the ADL as a secretly-paid independent contractor for more than 32 years.
Can it be that there's a connection between data of this kind and the unbelievable
unification of almost every congressman behind every Israeli position?
Of course, the San Francisco Examiner no longer is in existence. But Israeli trolls
continue to gather like wasps upon meat to destroy any information that might reveal their
nefarious purposes.
In 1993 the FBI interviewed
40-year undercover ADL operative Roy Bullock , who had improperly obtained social
security numbers and drivers licenses from San Francisco Police Department officer Tom
Gerard. Gerard and Bullock infiltrated and obtained information on California
Pro-Palestinian and anti-Apartheid groups as paid agents of both the ADL and South
African intelligence services. The ADL paid tens of thousands in damages over the
incident and promised not to collect confidential information in the future.
SARC '
novictim 8 hours ago
What do you want to bet that Orange Hitler and associates along with MAGA Republicans,
their attorneys, friendly patriot reporters, etc, have had their phones widely hacked going
all the way back to 2016?
Because when you are a "progressive" in power, anyone who wants to unseat you is a
terrorist threat and you can do just about anything you want to them because you are saving
the world.
Sarrazin 8 hours ago
unseat you is a terrorist threat and you can do just about anything you want to them
because you are saving the world.
Funny, it's the same formula US foreign policy applies to all it's victims nations
around the world. Fighting terrorists in the name of saving the world.
LEEPERMAX 9 hours ago (Edited)
💥BOOM !!!
In 2020 alone, Facebook and Amazon spent more money on
lobbyists than did Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing -- major players
in the defense-industrial complex !!!
Let that sink in.
OldNewB 11 hours ago
"Journalists must be allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of
harassment or harm, wherever they are."
This hasn't happened in ages. What the large majority of MSM operatives (so called
"journalists" ) convey to the public is propaganda and agenda driven misinformation and
disinformation.
SummerSausage PREMIUM 12 hours ago
Obama spying on Trump and Fox reporters - meh.
Same Obama intelligence services spying on WaPo & leftist reporters - FASCIST
Mute Button 11 hours ago
We're supposed to be outraged even though Trump & co. know they're being "spied"
on.
Its just a game of the uniparty.
Ivy Mike 8 hours ago
Yawn. Smart phones have swiss cheese security. Who knew.
If you have a secret that you really don't want people to know, don't put in on a device
that ever touches the internet. Don't talk about important stuff on a phone call. Any mob
boss from the 70's could tell you that.
MeLurkLongtime 5 hours ago
I would add if you have Alexa, don't converse on any sensitive topics in front of her,
either.
_0000_ 9 hours ago remove link
" Pegasus is a very advanced malware that infects iOS and Android devices to allow
operators of the spyware to copy messages, photos, calls and other data, including
secretly activate microphones and cameras."
This is a non-story. Lots of smoke, lots of brew-ha-ha.
Why is THIS a jaw dropping story now when the NSA/CIA have been doing this to ALL iOS
and Android devices years ago? RE: CALEA , signed into law in 1996 by Bill Clinton.
Just more misdirection... meant to distract from something else. What?
Rectify77 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
Isn't it odd that Iran, Russia and China are not on the map? Who are the Israelis
playing?
NAV 10 hours ago
Isn't is amazing that Russia is giving asylum to Edward Snowden who will be arrested and
inflicted with only God knows what if captured by the USA?
Market Pulse 13 hours ago
And we are surprised, why??? Everyone's phones are spied upon with all the data
collected. All part and parcel of the NWO and the "Information Age". How else are they
going to get all that information to control everything. And just think, once upon a time,
there were no cell phones and the people were fine. They also were happier and much more
free. Hint - ditch the phone!
dog breath 4 hours ago
Hello? This stuff has been going on for two decades. Bill Binney, former NSA, been
talking about this since after 911. Five eyes is a way over going around internal rules.
Every country does this. Russia, China, EU, USA, Australia, etc. are all spying on their
own citizens. This world is turning into a corrupt crap pile and I'm waiting for the Lord
to come.
Update (2130ET): Tucker Carlson responded to today's 'unmasking' - namely an Axios report
which accuses him of trying to set up an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm an American citizen, I can interview whoever I want - and plan to," said the Fox News
host.
Presented without further comment, along with Carlson's sit-down with journalist Glenn
Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden revelations about domestic spying and other illicit
activities conducted by the US government.
Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a bombshell broadcast that an NSA
whistleblower had approached him with evidence that the National Security Agency
has been spying on his communications , with the intent to leak his emails to the press and
'take this show off the air.'
Today, Carlson told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo that the emails have in fact been leaked
to journalists - at least one of whom has contacted him for what we presume is an upcoming
article on their contents.
"I was in Washington for a funeral last week and ran into someone I know well, who said '
I have a message for you ,' and then proceeded to repeat back to me details from emails and
texts that I sent, and had told no one else about. So it was verified. And the person said
'the NSA has this,' and that was proven by the person reading back the contents of the email,
'and they're going to use it against you.'
To be blunt with you, it was something I would have never said in public if it was wrong,
or illegal, or immoral. They don't actually have anything on me, but they do have my emails.
So I knew they were spying on me, and again, to be totally blunt with you - as a defensive
move, I thought 'I better say this out loud.'"
"Then, yesterday, I learned that - and this is going to come out soon - that the NSA
leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know, because
I got a call from one of them who said 'this is what your email was about.'
So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It's confirmed. It's true. They
aren't allowed to spy on American citizens - they are. I think more ominously, they're using
the information they gather to put leverage and to threaten opposition journalists, people
who criticize the Biden administration. It's happening to me right now..."
" This is the stuff of banana republics and third-world countries ," replied Bartiromo.
There's a growing cottage industry at the nexus of consumer research and government
surveillance.
In a report published Friday, the Wall Street Journal explored the world of Premise Data
Corp., an innocently-named firm that uses a network of users, many in the developing world, who
complete basic tasks for small commissions. Assignments can range from snapping photos of
competitors' stores, to counting the number of ATMs in a given area, to reporting on the price
of consumer goods on the shelf.
Roughly half of the firm's clients are private businesses seeking "commercial information"
(mostly reporting on competitors' operations), both the US government and foreign governments
have hired the firm to do more advanced reconnaissance work while gauging public opinion.
According to
WSJ , Premise is one of a growing number of companies that are straddling "the divide
between consumer services and government surveillance and rely on the proliferation of mobile
phones as a way to turn billions of devices into sensors that gather open-source information
useful to government security services."
Premise's CEO even hinted that the company had been tapped by foreign governments to help
with setting policy about how to deal with "vaccine hesitancy".
"Data gained from our contributors helped inform government policy makers on how to best
deal with vaccine hesitancy, susceptibility to foreign interference and misinformation in
elections, as well as the location and nature of gang activity in Honduras," Premise Chief
Executive Officer Maury Blackman said. The company declined to name its clients, citing
confidentiality.
Premise launched in 2013 as a tool meant to gather data for use in international development
work by governments and non-governmental organizations. In recent years, it has also forged
ties to the American national-security establishment and highlighted its capability to serve as
a surveillance tool, according to documents and interviews with former employees. As of 2019,
the company's marketing materials said it has 600K contributors operating in 43 countries,
including global hot spots such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen.
Federal records show Premise has received at least $5MM in payouts from the government since
2017 on military projects -- including from contracts with the Air Force and the Army and as a
subcontractor to other defense entities. The company's key utility was, again, gathering
information: It would use civilian users in Afghanistan and elsewhere to map out "key social
structures such as mosques, banks and internet cafes; and covertly monitoring cell-tower and
Wi-Fi signals in a 100-square kilometer area."
In a presentation prepared last year for the Combined Joint Special Operations Task
Force-Aghanistan, Premise shared some details about its global operation which showed that it's
mostly active outside the US.
It also showed how its "users" stationed around Kabul helped it collect data that are
valuable to the US and Afghan military.
As the WSJ explained, data from Wi-Fi networks, cell towers and mobile devices could be
valuable to the military for "situational awareness, target tracking and other intelligence
purposes."
There is also tracking potential in having a distributed network of phones acting as
sensors, and knowing the signal strength of nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi access points can be
useful when trying to jam communications during military operations.
Users of Premise's data-collection app typically aren't told for whom they are truly
working. This is all laid out in its privacy policy, of course. The app currently assigns about
five "tasks" per day to its active users in Afghanistan.
When
WSJ caught up with Afghani users of the app, they were told that the users were typically
paid about 25 cents per task (about 20 Afghani). And that lately, some of the tasks had struck
him as "potentially concerning." Premises claims that none of its users have ever been harmed
while completing tasks.
In this way, many of the app's users are effectively being used as unwitting spies for the
military.
But it's just one more thing to look out for. Next time you're traveling abroad and you see
somebody taking a photo of a mosque or a bank, just remember, it might be part of an officially
sanctioned intelligence operation.
The National Security Agency ( NSA ) has agreed to release records on the FBI 's improper spying on thousands of
Americans , the secretive agency disclosed in a recent letter.
The agreement may signal a rift between the NSA and the FBI, according to attorney Ty
Clevenger.
Clevenger last year filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of The
Transparency Project, a Texas nonprofit, seeking information on the FBI's improper searches of
intelligence databases for information on 16,000 Americans.
The searches violated rules governing how to use the U.S. government's foreign intelligence
information trove, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, an Obama nominee who currently presides
over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, wrote in a
2019 memorandum and order that was declassified last year.
The FBI insisted that the queries for all 16,000 people "were reasonably likely to return
foreign-intelligence information or evidence of a crime because [redacted]," Boasberg wrote.
But the judge found that position "unsupportable," apart from searches on just seven of the
people.
Still, Boasberg allowed the data collection to continue, prompting Elizabeth Goitein,
co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice,
to
lament that court's decision on the data collection program, authorized by Section 702 of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), "is even more inexplicable given that the
opinion was issued shortly after the government reported submitting FISA applications riddled
with errors and omissions in the Carter Page investigation."
After the judge's order was made public, Clevenger filed FOIA requests for information on
the improper searches with both the FBI and the NSA.
The FBI rejected the request .
In a February letter ( pdf ), an
official told Clevenger that the letter he wrote "does not contain enough descriptive
information to permit a search of our records."
The NSA initially declined the request as well, but later granted an appeal of the decision
, Linda Kiyosaki, an NSA official, said in a letter ( pdf )
this month.
"You had requested all documents, records, and other tangible evidence reflecting the
improper surveillance of 16,000 individuals described in a 6 December, 2019, FISC Opinion,"
Kiyosaki wrote.
Clevenger believes the NSA's new position signals a rift between the two agencies,
potentially because the FBI
has repeatedly
abused rules
governing searches of the intelligence databases while the NSA has largely not.
"There's been a battle between them, for example, Mike Rogers tried to shut off FBI access
to the NSA database back in 2016," Clevenger told The Epoch Times, referring to how Adm. Mike
Rogers, the former NSA director,
cut out FBI agents from using the databases in 2016 .
"And so there's been some history of the NSA trying to limit the FBI's access because they
know that the FBI is misusing the data intercepts," he added.
The NSA and FBI did not respond to requests for comment.
A seven-year-old privilege escalation vulnerability that's been lurking in several Linux
distributions was patched last week in a coordinated disclosure.
In a blog
post on Thursday, GitHub security researcher Kevin Backhouse recounted how he found the bug
( CVE-2021-3560 ) in a service called
polkit associated with systemd, a common Linux system and service manager component.
Introduced in commit
bfa5036 seven years ago and initially shipped in polkit version 0.113, the bug traveled
different paths in different Linux distributions. For example, it missed Debian 10 but it made
it to the unstable version of Debian ,
upon which other distros like Ubuntu are based.
Formerly known as PolicyKit, polkit is a service that evaluates whether specific Linux
activities require higher privileges than those currently available. It comes into play if, for
example, you try to create a new user account.
Backhouse says the flaw is surprisingly easy to exploit, requiring only a few commands using
standard terminal tools like bash, kill, and dbus-send.
"The vulnerability is triggered by starting a dbus-send command but killing it
while polkit is still in the middle of processing the request," explained Backhouse.
Killing dbus-send – an interprocess communication command – in the
midst of an authentication request causes an error that arises from polkit asking for the UID
of a connection that no longer exists (because the connection was killed).
"In fact, polkit mishandles the error in a particularly unfortunate way: rather than
rejecting the request, it treats the request as though it came from a process with UID 0,"
explains Backhouse. "In other words, it immediately authorizes the request because it thinks
the request has come from a root process."
This doesn't happen all the time, because polkit's UID query to the dbus-daemon
occurs multiple times over different code paths. Usually, those code paths handle the error
correctly, said Backhouse, but one code path is vulnerable – and if the disconnection
happens when that code path is active, that's when the privilege elevation occurs. It's all a
matter of timing, which varies in unpredictable ways because multiple processes are
involved.
The intermittent nature of the bug, Backhouse speculates, is why it remained undetected for
seven years.
"CVE-2021-3560 enables an unprivileged local attacker to gain root privileges," said
Backhouse. "It's very simple and quick to exploit, so it's important that you update your Linux
installations as soon as possible." ®
The polkit service is used by systemd. Linux systems that have polkit version 0.113 or later installed – like Debian (unstable),
RHEL 8, Fedora 21+, and Ubuntu 20.04 – are affected. "CVE-2021-3560 enables an unprivileged local attacker to gain root privileges,"
said Backhouse. "It's very simple and quick to exploit, so it's important that you update your Linux installations as soon as
possible."
Ancient Linux bugs provide root access to unprivileged users
Security researchers have discovered some 7-year-old vulnerabilities Linux
distribution
Can be used by unprivileged local users to bypass authentication and gain root access.
The bug patched last week exists in Polkit System Service, a toolkit used to assess whether a particular Linux activity requires
higher privileges than currently available. Polkit is installed by default on some Linux distributions, allowing unprivileged
processes to communicate with privileged processes.
Linux distributions that use systemd also use Polkit because the Polkit service is associated with systemd.
This vulnerability has been tracked as CVE-2021-3560 and has a CVSS score of 7.8. It was discovered by Kevin Backhouse, a
security researcher on GitHub. He states that this issue occurred in 2013 with code commit bfa5036.
Initially shipped with Polkit version 0.113, it has moved to various Linux distributions over the last seven years.
"If the requesting process disconnects from dbus-daemon just before the call to polkit_system_bus_name_get_creds_sync begins, the
process will not be able to get the unique uid and pid of the process and will not be able to verify the privileges of the
requesting process." And Red Hat
Advisory
..
"The biggest threats from this vulnerability are data confidentiality and integrity, and system availability."
so
Blog
post
According to Backhouse, exploiting this vulnerability is very easy and requires few commands using standard terminal
tools such as bash, kill and dbus-send.
This flaw affects Polkit versions between 0.113 and 0.118. Red Hat's Cedric Buissart said it will also affect Debian-based
distributions based on Polkit 0.105.
Among the popular Linux distributions affected are Debian "Bullseye", Fedora 21 (or later), Ubuntu 20.04, RHEL 8.
Polkit v.0.119, released on 3rd
rd
We
will address this issue in June. We recommend that you update your Linux installation as soon as possible to prevent threat
attackers from exploiting the bug.
CVE-2021-3560 is the latest in a series of years ago vulnerabilities affecting Linux distributions.
In 2017, Positive Technologies researcher Alexander Popov discovered a flaw in the Linux kernel introduced in the code in 2009.
Tracked as CVE-2017-2636, this flaw was finally patched in 2017.
Another old Linux security flaw indexed as CVE-2016-5195 was introduced in 2007 and patched in 2016. This bug, also known as the
"dirty COW" zero-day, was used in many attacks before the patch was applied.
Ancient Linux bugs provide root access to unprivileged users
Source link
Ancient Linux bugs provide root access to unprivileged users
Hundreds of suspected members of criminal networks have been arrested by authorities around
the world after being duped into using an encrypted communications platform secretly run by the
FBI to hatch their plans for alleged crimes including drug smuggling and money laundering.
In the global sting operation dubbed "Operation Trojan Shield," an international coalition
of law-enforcement agencies led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation covertly monitored the
encrypted communications service Anom, which purported to offer a feature cherished in the
criminal underworld: total secrecy.
The sting was revealed this week in a series of news conferences by authorities in the U.S.,
Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Alleged members of international criminal organizations
adopted the platform as a means to communicate securely, unaware that authorities were covertly
monitoring 27 million messages from more than 12,000 users across more than 100 countries,
officials said.
The takedown involved more than 9,000 law-enforcement offices around the world that had
searched 700 locations in the previous 48 hours alone, U.S. and European officials said early
Tuesday. Police forces had in recent days carried out more than 800 arrests in 16 countries and
seized more than 8 tons of cocaine, 22 tons of cannabis and 2 tons of synthetic drugs, as well
as 250 firearms, 55 luxury vehicles and over $48 million in various currencies. More than 150
threats to human life were also disrupted, officials said.
In the U.S., the FBI charged 17 foreign nationals operating in places including Australia,
the Netherlands and Spain with distributing encrypted Anom communications devices, saying they
violated federal racketeering laws typically used to target organized-crime groups, officials
said. Eight of those individuals are in custody and nine remain at large, they said.
The global effort put any other companies offering such services on notice that
law-enforcement agencies world-wide consider developing and selling technology aimed at
defeating their ability to monitor and intercept communications to be unlawful""the latest
salvo in a debate unfolding globally about how to balance security and privacy on technology
platforms.
Authorities, who see encrypted platforms like Anom as providing a haven for illicit activity
beyond the reach of government monitoring, signaled that intelligence agencies and law
enforcement would aggressively seek to infiltrate platforms designed in such a way that they
can be used by terrorists and criminal gangs to evade detection.
"The immense and unprecedented success of Operation Trojan Shield should be a warning to
international criminal organizations""your criminal communications may not be secure; and you
can count on law enforcement world-wide working together to combat dangerous crime that crosses
international borders," said Suzanne Turner, the special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego
field office.
... ... ...
Trojan Shield grew from when the FBI developed a confidential human source involved in the
development of Anom and used that access to make, market and distribute the devices around the
world, according to an affidavit unsealed in U.S. federal court this week. The source, who had
been involved in selling other secure devices to criminal networks before trying to develop
Anom, agreed to cooperate with the bureau in order to reduce his or her own criminal exposure
and lessen a potential sentence, court documents say.
With the source's cooperation, the FBI and its law-enforcement partners secretly built into
Anom the ability to covertly intercept and decrypt messages. The FBI relied on the source's
relationships with criminal gangs in Australia to help distribute the first batch of devices,
with word of the service spreading organically after that, documents say.
Europol said Anom was used by more than 300 criminal groups in more than 100 countries,
including Italian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs and international drug-trafficking
organizations. In court filings, the bureau detailed extensive conversations about narcotics
trafficking, cryptocurrency transactions, cash smuggling, corruption and other illicit activity
flowing through Anom's systems.
Walmart Will Give 740,000 Employees a Free Smartphone (cbsnews.com) 37 Posted by
EditorDavid on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:39PM from the company-lines dept. "Walmart will
give
740,000 employees free Samsung smartphones by the end of the year ," reports CBS News, "so
they can use a new app to manage schedules, the company announced Thursday." The phone, the
Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, can also be used for personal use, and the company will provide free
cases and protection plans. The phone's retail price is currently $499... Up until now,
associates at Walmart stores used handheld devices they shared to communicate, but an initial
test with employee smartphones was received well and will now be expanded upon, Walmart
said...
The company promised that it would not have access to any employee's personal data and
can "use the smartphone as their own personal device if they want, with all the features and
privacy they're used to." The test will be expanded by the end of the year, Walmart
said.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced pay increases for nearly a third of its U.S.
workforce of 1.6 million. In February, digital and store workers saw their starting hourly
rates increase from $13 to $19 depending on their location and market.Hmmm
(
Score: 3 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:48PM (
#61460698 )
Probably will be used to clock them in and out when they enter and exit the premises, and track
their movements to ensure they are working and not lollygagging. Maybe even track bio info to
adjust health insurance prices.
If you think this is just a free gift done out of generosity, you're quite naive.
Reply to This ShareNo thank you (
Score: 3 ) by RitchCraft (
6454710 ) on Sunday June 06, 2021 @07:11PM ( #61460772 ) It
would be wise for Walmart employees to put that phone in a locker on premises before leaving.
Having your corporate overlord knowing everything you do outside of work is creepy ...
peeping Tom creepy. Wal-mart states they won't collect your data but we'll be reading a news
story within two years finding out they did just that. "We're sorry for data that was
collected. It was a configuration oversight on our part. We promise to do better moving
forward." yadda, yadda, yadda.
Reply to This ShareNot surprised... (
Score: 5 , Interesting) by Pollux ( 102520 ) < speter@@@tedata...net...eg > on Sunday June 06, 2021
@07:36PM ( #61460814 )
Journal
I was talking last week with someone who works customer service at a nearby Walmart.
She told me that people are either leaving or moving up the chain, and it's hard to keep new
employees retained. She had one who was in for three days, then just went AWOL and was never
heard from again.
I asked her what starting salary was. (The Walmart's in out-state MN.) She said
$11.50.
I guess Walmart can't help but behave this way. What they should be doing is raising
salaries. Instead, they choose to offer a "perk" of a "free" phone w/ a "free" phone plan. I
say "free", because no doubt the phone will be a data goldmine for corporate. How? Let me count
the ways.
1) Track employee movements within the store;
2) Determine quantity and length of employee breaks;
3) Track employee movements outside the store;
4) Track employee searches;
5) Track employee social media posts;
6) Monitor employee spending behaviors;
7) Mine employee messages;
And so on, and so forth...And any one of these data mining operations can be used to
punish employee misbehavior, hustle Walmart services (Moneygram springs to mind), not to
mention sell to interested 3rd parties. (With Walmart commanding the largest fleet of employees
in the United States, imagine how many other companies would be willing to pay for generalized
data on employee behavior. Better yet, image how much someone would be willing to pay to
advertise directly to 1.6 million people.)
Google's critics have said for years that it should be treated like a public utility. On
Tuesday, Ohio's attorney general filed a lawsuit asking a judge to rule that the search company
is one.
The case adds to the legal woes confronting the Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.68% subsidiary, which
also faces antitrust lawsuits from the Justice Department and a separate consortium of states
led by Colorado and Texas. The company is contending with cases in countries around the world
where its dominance as a search provider has sparked a push by regulators to corral its
power.
Amid the array of court challenges, Ohio said that it is the first state in the country to
bring a lawsuit seeking a court declaration that Google is a common carrier subject under state
law to government regulation. The lawsuit, which doesn't seek monetary damages, says that
Google has a duty to provide the same rights for advertisements and product placement for
competitors as it provides for its own services.
"When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat
everyone the same and give everybody access," said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a
Republican.
A Google spokesman said that the remedies sought in the Ohio lawsuit would worsen the
company's search results and impair businesses' ability to connect directly with customers.
"Ohioans simply don't want the government to run Google like a gas or electric company," a
spokesman said. "This lawsuit has no basis in fact or law and we'll defend ourselves against it
in court."
The FBI and Australian Federal Police
ran an encrypted chat platform and intercepted secret messages between criminal gang
members from all over the world for more than three years. From a report: Named Operation
Ironside (AFP) / Trojan Shield (FBI, Interpol) on Monday, law enforcement agencies from
Australia, Europe, and the US conducted house searches and arrested thousands of suspects
across a wide spectrum of criminal groups, from biker gangs in Australia to drug cartels across
Asia and South America, and weapons and human traffickers in Europe.
In a press conference on Monday, Australian police said the sting operation got underway
in 2018 after the FBI successfully seized encrypted chat platform Phantom Secure. Knowing that
the criminal underworld would move to a new platform, US and Australian officials decided to
run their own service on top of Anom (also stylized as AN0M), an encrypted chat platform that
the FBI had secretly gained access to through an insider. Just like Phantom Secure, the new
service consisted of secure smartphones that were configured to run only the An0m app and
nothing else.
According to a commenter at SANS "Part of the decision to stop monitoring and making arrests
was a blog posting (since deleted) detailing the behavior of the ANoM app, this March, which
didn't correctly attribute the backdoor to the FBI."
Well, now the criminals can't trust any encryption. That means that it can slow them down
quite a bit for a while.
Meanwhile most of the ransom for the pipeline ransomware is also recovered, which likely
means that it's possible to track Bitcoin.
Governments may be slow, but they can be relentless in pursuing their targets if they really
want. Re:STFU! (
Score: 4 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @03:40PM (
#61466816 )
Anyone can track Bitcoin transactions from wallet to wallet. The paydirt is that the LEOs
know which wallets to watch and can follow the trail.
Tainted Bitcoins are a big thing, and even tumbled coins just mean more tainted coins that
currency exchanges will not accept. You might be able to find an individual to trade, and maybe
an escrow service so you can do a multisig transaction so the other party doesn't rob you blind
when trading to something like XMR to the ill-gotten gains.
It was a closed-source black-box proprietary encryption system.
As we've pointed out time and again: You can't trust it if you can't check it. Your security
is totally at the mercy of the system's authors and operators.
But crooks are apparently no smarter than Pointy Haired Bosses. (Thank goodness.)
Walmart
Will Give 740,000 Employees a Free Smartphone (cbsnews.com) 37 Posted by EditorDavid on
Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:39PM from the company-lines dept. "Walmart will give
740,000 employees free Samsung smartphones by the end of the year ," reports CBS News, "so
they can use a new app to manage schedules, the company announced Thursday." The phone, the
Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro, can also be used for personal use, and the company will provide free
cases and protection plans. The phone's retail price is currently $499... Up until now,
associates at Walmart stores used handheld devices they shared to communicate, but an initial
test with employee smartphones was received well and will now be expanded upon, Walmart
said...
The company promised that it would not have access to any employee's personal data and
can "use the smartphone as their own personal device if they want, with all the features and
privacy they're used to." The test will be expanded by the end of the year, Walmart
said.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced pay increases for nearly a third of its U.S.
workforce of 1.6 million. In February, digital and store workers saw their starting hourly
rates increase from $13 to $19 depending on their location and market.Hmmm
(
Score: 3 , Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 06, 2021 @06:48PM (
#61460698 )
Probably will be used to clock them in and out when they enter and exit the premises, and track
their movements to ensure they are working and not lollygagging. Maybe even track bio info to
adjust health insurance prices.
If you think this is just a free gift done out of generosity, you're quite naive.
Reply to This ShareNo thank you (
Score: 3 ) by RitchCraft (
6454710 ) on Sunday June 06, 2021 @07:11PM ( #61460772 ) It
would be wise for Walmart employees to put that phone in a locker on premises before leaving.
Having your corporate overlord knowing everything you do outside of work is creepy ...
peeping Tom creepy. Wal-mart states they won't collect your data but we'll be reading a news
story within two years finding out they did just that. "We're sorry for data that was
collected. It was a configuration oversight on our part. We promise to do better moving
forward." yadda, yadda, yadda.
Reply to This ShareNot surprised... (
Score: 5 , Interesting) by Pollux ( 102520 ) < speter@@@tedata...net...eg > on Sunday June 06, 2021
@07:36PM ( #61460814 )
Journal
I was talking last week with someone who works customer service at a nearby Walmart.
She told me that people are either leaving or moving up the chain, and it's hard to keep new
employees retained. She had one who was in for three days, then just went AWOL and was never
heard from again.
I asked her what starting salary was. (The Walmart's in out-state MN.) She said
$11.50.
I guess Walmart can't help but behave this way. What they should be doing is raising
salaries. Instead, they choose to offer a "perk" of a "free" phone w/ a "free" phone plan. I
say "free", because no doubt the phone will be a data goldmine for corporate. How? Let me count
the ways.
1) Track employee movements within the store;
2) Determine quantity and length of employee breaks;
3) Track employee movements outside the store;
4) Track employee searches;
5) Track employee social media posts;
6) Monitor employee spending behaviors;
7) Mine employee messages;
And so on, and so forth...And any one of these data mining operations can be used to
punish employee misbehavior, hustle Walmart services (Moneygram springs to mind), not to
mention sell to interested 3rd parties. (With Walmart commanding the largest fleet of employees
in the United States, imagine how many other companies would be willing to pay for generalized
data on employee behavior. Better yet, image how much someone would be willing to pay to
advertise directly to 1.6 million people.)
Denmark's foreign secret service allowed the US National Security Agency to tap into a
crucial internet and telecommunications hub in Denmark and
spy on the communications of European politicians , a joint investigation by some of
Europe's biggest news agencies revealed on Sunday. From a report: The covert spying
operation, called Operation Dunhammer, took place between 2012 and 2014, based on a secret
partnership signed by the two agencies. The secret pact, signed between the NSA and the Danish
Defense Intelligence Service (Danish: Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, FE) allowed US spies to
deploy a data interception system named XKeyscore on the network of Sandagergardan, an
important internet and communications hub in the city of Dragor, near Copenhagen, where several
key submarine cables connected Denmark (and continental Europe) to the Scandinavian
peninsula.
The NSA allegedly used XKeyscore to mass-sniff internet and mobile traffic and intercept
communications such as emails, phone calls, SMS texts, and chat messages sent to the phone
numbers and email addresses of European politicians. The covert operation abruptly stopped in
2014 after Danish government officials learned of the NSA-FE collaboration following the
Snowden leaks. Danish officials put a stop to the operation after they learned that the NSA had
also spied on Danish government members.
I regularly buy one pound bags of citric acid. It's handy to clean out the dishwasher,
clothes washer, and to make various cordials and mixed drinks. It's $8 shipped from Amazon. The
only place remotely near me that sells one pound bags of citric acid is a restaurant supply
store on the other side of town. The grocery store near me will sell me a small bottle of
citric acid for $5. The restaurant supply store is only $1 or $2 cheaper, and Amazon saves me
an hour trip across town. So, Amazon wins.
I was in the market for a new sprinkler controller, and Amazon's price was $40 more than the
retail price directly from the manufacturer. I bought it from the manufacturer. So, Amazon
looses.
Amazon's price on the shampoo I like is ridiculous, I buy that from the grocery store.
Amazon's price on the furnace air filters I like is fantastic, compared to the home improvement
stores I go to, so I buy those from Amazon.
The problem isn't really the free shipping. The suit seems more concerned with price-fixing
across multiple platforms, an indicator of a forming monopoly.
"It's a longstanding claim by some of the independent merchants who sell on Amazon's digital
mall that the company punishes them if they list their products for less on their own websites
or other shopping sites like Walmart.com. Those sellers are effectively saying that Amazon
dictates what happens on shopping sites all over the internet, and in doing so makes products
more expensive for all of us."
Interesting one-off:
I priced a particular set of headphones for my son's birthday earlier today... same retail
price on Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart online.
Reply to This Price plus ( Score:
4 , Interesting) by Jerry ( 6400
) on Monday May 31, 2021 @07:00PM ( #61441020 )
I WAS an Amazon Prime member until I started comparing Amazon's "prime" price with those of
other vendors on Amazon selling the same product. The other vendor's prices plus shipping were
very close or equal to Amazon's "prime" price with "free" shipping. So, Amazon's Prime's
$120/yr membership charge isn't worth it. (And I don't watch their movies)
I can also get "free" shipping by going through the checkout process (not the automatic
checkout). Somewhere along the way I get the opportunity to choose a delivery date. Next day
always includes an expensive charge for shipping, but usually one of the options is for
shipping free on a specific day, a week or so in the future. I use that when I shop Amazon,
which I do with less and less frequency these days.
Reply to This
"... All an FBI supervisor has to do to get a FISA warrant on you is have one agent get a crooked snitch in a foreign country to send you a weird text message, and then have another bright eyed and bushy tailed agent who doesn't know the crook is a snitch write up a search warrant application affidavit and submit it to the FISA court. ..."
"... Nothing says "Unconstitutional (illegal) Deep State" like FISA. Hitler's Gestapo would be proud! ..."
"... Lisa and Peter removed any credibility the FBI had with the public. If they solved real crime they would go after the massive fraud and stolen ID criminals. Of course that takes real work and someone wanting get off their lazy rear end ..."
The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens...
The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act of 1978 (FISA).
If you
sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered
for the FBI "Citizens Academy" program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity.
But the latest FBI offenses, like almost all prior FBI violations, are not a real problem, according to James Boasberg, presiding
judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, among other purposes, is supposed to safeguard Americans'
constitutional right to privacy under FISA. FISA was originally enacted to create a narrow niche for foreign intelligence investigations
that could be conducted without a warrant from a regular federal court. But as time passed, FISA morphed into an uncontrolled yet
officially sanctioned privacy-trampling monster. FISA judges unleash the nuclear bomb of searches,
authorizing the FBI "to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S.
person target's home, workplace and vehicles," as well as "physical searches of the target's residence, office, vehicles,
computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails."
In 2008, after the George W. Bush administration's pervasive illegal warrantless wiretaps were exposed, Congress responded by
enacting FISA amendments that formally entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up mass amounts of emails and other communication,
a swath of which is provided to the FBI. In 2018, the FISA court
slammed the FBI for abusing that
database with warrantless searches that violated Americans' rights. In lieu of obeying FISA, the FBI created a new Office of Internal
Audit. Deja vu! Back in 2007, FBI agents were caught massively violating the Patriot Act by using National Security Letters to conduct
thousands of illegal searches on Americans' personal data. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)
declared that
an Inspector General report on the abusive searches "confirms the American people's worst fears about the Patriot Act." FBI
chief Robert Mueller responded by creating a new
Office of Integrity and Compliance
as "another important step toward ensuring we fulfill our mission with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law."
Be still my beating heart!
The FBI's promise to repent after the 2018 report sufficed for the FISA court to permit the FBI to continue plowing through
the personal data it received from NSA. Monday's disclosure "a delayed release of a report by the court last November "revealed
that the FBI has conducted
warrantless searches of the data trove for "domestic terrorism," "public corruption and bribery," "health care fraud,"
and other targets "including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. As Spencer Ackerman
wrote
in the Daily Beast , "The FBI continues to perform warrantless searches through the NSA's most sensitive databases for routine
criminal investigations." That type of search "potentially jeopardizes an accused person's ability to have a fair trial since warrantlessly acquired information is supposed to be inadmissible. The FBI claimed to the court that none of the warrantlessly queried
material "˜was used in a criminal or civil proceeding,' but such usage at trial has happened before," Ackerman noted. Some illicit
FBI searches involve vast dragnets. As the
New York Times reported ,
an FBI agent in 2019 conducted a database search "using the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them
had connections to an investigation."
In the report released Monday, Judge Boasberg lamented "apparent widespread violations" of the legal restrictions for FBI searches.
Regardless,
Boasberg kept the illicit search party going: "The Court is willing to again conclude that the . . . [FBI's] procedures meet
statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements." "Willing to again conclude" sounds better than "close enough for constitutional."
At this point, Americans know only the abuses that the FBI chose to disclose to FISA judges. We have no idea how many other perhaps
worse abuses may have occurred. For a hundred years, the FBI has buttressed its power by keeping a lid on its crimes. Unfortunately,
the FISA Court has become nothing but Deep State window dressing "a facade giving the illusion that government is under the law.
Consider Boasberg's recent ruling in the most brazen FISA abuse yet exposed. In December 2019, the Justice Department Inspector
General reported that the FBI made "fundamental
errors " and persistently deceived the FISA court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. The
I.G. report said the FBI "drew almost entirely" from the Steele dossier to prove a "well-developed conspiracy" between Russians
and the Trump campaign even though it was "unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page"
in that dossier, which was later debunked.
A former FBI assistant general counsel, Kevin Clinesmith, admitted to falsifying key evidence to secure the FISA warrant to spy
on the Trump campaign. As a Wall Street Journal
editorial noted , Clinesmith "changed an
email confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source to one that said the exact opposite, explicitly adding the words "˜not a source'
before he forwarded it." A federal prosecutor declared that the "resulting harm is immeasurable" from Clinesmith's action.
But at the sentencing hearing, Boasberg gushed with sympathy,
noting that Clinesmith
"went from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane"¦ Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in
government service"what has given his life much of its meaning." Scorning the federal prosecutor's recommendation for jail time, Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist
slap"400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.
The FBI FISA frauds profoundly disrupted American politics for years and the din of belatedly debunked accusations of Trump colluding
with Russia swayed plenty of votes in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But for the chief FISA judge, nothing
matters except the plight of an FBI employee who lost his job after gross misconduct. This is the stark baseline Americans should
remember when politicians, political appointees, and judges promise to protect them from future FBI abuses. The FISA court has been
craven, almost beyond ridicule, perennially. Perhaps Boasberg was simply codifying a prerogative the FISA court previously awarded
upon FBI officials. In 2005, after a deluge of false FBI claims in FISA warrants, FISA Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed
requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have "slowed
such investigations drastically," the
Washington Post reported
. So, FBI agents continue to lie with impunity to the judges.
The FISA court has gone from pretending that FBI violations don't occur to pretending that violations don't matter. Practically
the only remaining task is for the FISA court to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy . But if a sweeping
new domestic terrorism law is passed, perhaps even that formal acknowledgement will be unnecessary. Beginning in 2006, the court
rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans
were "relevant" to a terrorism
investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling NSA data seizures later
denounced by a federal judge as "almost Orwellian." FISA could become a peril to far more Americans if Congress formally creates
a new domestic terrorism offense and a new category for expanding FISA searches.
The backlash from Democrats after the January 6 clash at the Capitol showcased the demand for federal crackdowns on extremists
who doubted Biden's election, disparaged federal prerogatives, or otherwise earned congressional ire. If a domestic terrorism law
is passed, the FBI will feel as little constrained by the details of the statute as it does about FISA's technicalities. Will FBI
agents conducting warrantless searches rely on
the same
harebrained standard the NSA used to target Americans: "someone searching the web for suspicious stuff"? Unfortunately, unless
an FBI whistleblower with the same courage as former NSA analyst Edward Snowden steps forward, we may never know the extent of FBI
abuses
ebworthen 39 minutes ago
"You want to harass a political opponent? Sure, we can do that...
JaxPavan 42 minutes ago
All an FBI supervisor has to do to get a FISA warrant on you is have one agent get a crooked snitch in a foreign country to
send you a weird text message, and then have another bright eyed and bushy tailed agent who doesn't know the crook is a snitch
write up a search warrant application affidavit and submit it to the FISA court.
Joe Bribem 32 minutes ago
It's almost like we did this to Trump. But it'll never come to light. Oops it did. Not that anything will happen to us because
we own the corrupt DOJ and FBI.
Obama's own personal private army.
You_Cant_Quit_Me 7 minutes ago
A lot of tips come in from overseas. For example, the US spies on citizens of another country and then sends that country tips,
in exchange that country does the same by spying on US citizens and sending the FBI tips. Then it starts, "we are just
following up on a tip"
wee-weed up 36 minutes ago (Edited)
Nothing says "Unconstitutional (illegal) Deep State" like FISA. Hitler's Gestapo would be proud!
You_Cant_Quit_Me 37 minutes ago
Lisa and Peter removed any credibility the FBI had with the public. If they solved real crime they would go after the massive fraud and stolen ID criminals. Of course that takes real work and
someone wanting get off their lazy rear end
takeaction 58 minutes ago (Edited)
If you own a smart phone...everything you do is recorded...and logged.
"They" have been listening
to you for a long time if they want to.
If you own any smart device...they can listen and watch. They are monitoring what I am typing and this site. There really is no way to hide.
Yves here. This article confirms my prejudices about the importance of avoiding those spying home assistants at all costs. And
it takes a bit of effort to try to thwart financial institutions’ efforts to use your voiceprint as an ID (I tell them they need
to note any recording as invalid because I have my assistants get through the phone trees for me, and if they try taking a voiceprint,
it won’t be of the right voice. That seems to put them on tilt).
But the notion of using voice patterns to guess at health issues or psychological profiles or product reactions sounds like 21st
century phrenology. Although a lot of consultants will rake in a lot of dough selling these unproven schemes.
By Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Media Systems & Industries, University of Pennsylvania. Originally published
at
The Conversation
You decide to call a store that sells some hiking boots you’re thinking of buying. As you dial in, the computer of an artificial
intelligence company hired by the store is activated. It retrieves its analysis of the speaking style you used when you phoned other
companies the software firm services. The computer has concluded you are “friendly and talkative.†Using predictive routing,
it connects you to a customer service agent who company research has identified as being especially good at getting friendly and
talkative customers to buy more expensive versions of the goods they’re considering.
This hypothetical situation may sound as if it’s from some distant future. But automated voice-guided marketing activities like
this are happening all the time
.
If you hear “This call is being recorded for training and quality control,†it isn’t just the customer service representative
they’re monitoring.
It can be you, too.
When conducting research for my forthcoming book, “
The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In
to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet ,†I went through over 1,000 trade magazine and news articles on the
companies connected to various forms of voice profiling. I examined hundreds of pages of U.S. and EU laws applying to biometric surveillance.
I analyzed dozens of patents. And because so much about this industry is evolving, I spoke to 43 people who are working to shape
it.
It soon became clear to me that we’re in the early stages of a voice-profiling revolution that companies see as integral to
the future of marketing.
Thanks to the public’s embrace of smart speakers, intelligent car displays and voice-responsive phones â€" along with the rise
of voice intelligence in call centers â€" marketers say they are on the verge of being able to use AI-assisted vocal analysis technology
to achieve unprecedented insights into shoppers’ identities and inclinations. In doing so, they believe they’ll be able to circumvent
the errors and fraud associated with traditional targeted advertising.
Not only can people be profiled by their speech patterns, but they can also be assessed by the sound of their voices â€" which,
according to
some researchers , is unique and can reveal their feelings, personalities and even their physical characteristics.
Flaws in Targeted Advertising
Top marketing executives I interviewed said that they expect their customer interactions to include voice profiling within a decade
or so.
Part of what attracts them to this new technology is a belief that the current digital system of creating unique customer profiles
â€" and then targeting them with personalized messages, offers and ads â€"
has major drawbacks .
A simmering worry among internet advertisers,
one that burst into the open during the 2010s
, is that customer data often isn’t up to date, profiles may be based on multiple users of a device, names can be confused
and people lie.
Advertisers are also uneasy about
ad blocking
and click fraud , which happens when
a site or app uses bots or low-paid workers to click on ads placed there so that the advertisers have to pay up.
These are all barriers to understanding individual shoppers.
Voice analysis, on the other hand, is seen as a solution that makes it nearly impossible for people to hide their feelings or
evade their identities.
Building Out the Infrastructure
Most of the activity in voice profiling is happening in customer support centers, which are largely out of the public eye.
But there are also
hundreds of millions of Amazon Echoes, Google Nests and other smart speakers out there. Smartphones also contain such technology.
All are listening and capturing people’s individual voices. They respond to your requests. But the assistants are also tied
to advanced machine learning and deep neural network programs
that analyze
what you say and how you say it
Amazon and Google â€" the leading purveyors of smart speakers outside China â€" appear to be doing little voice analysis on those
devices beyond recognizing and responding to individual owners. Perhaps they fear that pushing the technology too far will, at this
point, lead to bad publicity.
Nevertheless, the user agreements of Amazon and Google â€" as well as Pandora, Bank of America and other companies that people
access routinely via phone apps â€" give them the right to use their digital assistants
to understand you by the way you sound
. Amazon’s most public application of voice profiling so far is its Halo wristband,
which claims to know the emotions you’re conveying when you talk to relatives, friends and employers.
The patents from these tech companies offer a vision of what’s coming.
In one Amazon patent , a device with the Alexa
assistant picks up a woman’s speech irregularities that imply a cold through using “an analysis of pitch, pulse, voicing, jittering,
and/or harmonicity of a user’s voice, as determined from processing the voice data.†From that conclusion, Alexa asks if the
woman wants a recipe for chicken soup. When she says no, it offers to sell her cough drops with one-hour delivery.
An Amazon patent depicts a device picking up a woman’s cough â€" and then asking if she wants a recipe for chicken soup.
Google Patents
Another Amazon patent suggests an app to help a store
salesperson decipher a shopper’s voice to plumb unconscious reactions to products. The contention is that how people sound allegedly
does a better job indicating what people like than their words.
And one of Google’s proprietary inventions
involves tracking family members in real time using special microphones placed throughout a home. Based on the pitch of voice
signatures, Google circuitry infers gender and age information â€" for example, one adult male and one female child â€" and tags
them as separate individuals.
The company’s patent asserts that over time the system’s “household policy manager†will be able to compare life patterns,
such as when and how long family members eat meals, how long the children watch television, and when electronic game devices are
working â€" and then have the system suggest better eating schedules for the kids, or offer to control their TV viewing and game
playing.
Seductive Surveillance
In the West, the road to this advertising future starts with firms encouraging users to give them permission to gather voice data.
Firms gain customers’ permission by enticing them to buy inexpensive voice technologies.
When tech companies have further developed voice analysis software â€" and people have become increasingly reliant on voice devices
â€" I expect the companies to begin widespread profiling and marketing based on voice data. Hewing to the letter if not the spirit
of whatever privacy laws exist, the companies will, I expect, forge ahead into their new incarnations, even if most of their users
joined before this new business model existed.
This
classic bait and switch marked the rise of both Google and Facebook . Only when the numbers of people flocking to these sites
became large enough to attract high-paying advertisers did their business models solidify around selling ads personalized to what
Google and Facebook knew about their users.
Here’s the catch: It’s not clear how accurate voice profiling is, especially when it comes to emotions.
It is true,
according to Carnegie Mellon voice recognition scholar Rita Singh , that the activity of your vocal nerves is connected to your
emotional state. However, Singh told me that she worries that with the easy availability of machine-learning packages, people with
limited skills will be tempted to run shoddy analyses of people’s voices, leading to conclusions that are as dubious as the methods.
She also argues that inferences that link physiology to emotions and forms of stress may be culturally biased and prone to error.
That concern hasn’t deterred marketers, who typically use voice profiling to draw conclusions about individuals’ emotions, attitudes
and personalities.
While some of these advances promise to
make life easier , it’s not difficult to see how voice technology can be abused and exploited. What if voice profiling tells
a prospective employer that you’re a bad risk for a job that you covet or desperately need? What if it tells a bank that you’re
a bad risk for a loan? What if a restaurant decides it won’t take your reservation because you sound low class, or too demanding?
Consider, too, the discrimination that can take place
if voice profilers
follow some scientists’ claims that it is possible to use an individual’s vocalizations to tell the person’s height, weight,
race, gender and health.
People are already subjected to different offers and opportunities based on the personal information companies have collected.
Voice profiling adds an especially insidious means of labeling. Today, some states such as Illinois and Texas
require
companies to ask for permission before conducting analysis of vocal, facial or other biometric features.
But other states expect people to be aware of the information that’s collected about them from the privacy policies or terms
of service â€" which
means they rarely will . And the federal government hasn’t enacted a sweeping marketing surveillance law.
With the looming widespread adoption of voice analysis technology, it’s important for government leaders to adopt policies and
regulations that protect the personal information revealed by the sound of a person’s voice.
One proposal: While the use of voice
authentication â€" or using a person’s voice to prove their identity â€" could be allowed under certain carefully regulated
circumstances, all voice profiling should be prohibited in marketers’ interactions with individuals. This prohibition should also
apply to political campaigns and to government activities without a warrant.
That seems like the best way to ensure that the coming era of voice profiling is constrained before it becomes too integrated
into daily life and too pervasive to control.
Very interesting. However, I want Fidelity to use voice printing when I call for banking services. I was impressed when they
implemented the technology, and I’m happy they’re using it to identify and prevent bad actors.
Very interesting. However, I want Fidelity to use voice printing when I call for banking services. I was impressed when they
implemented the technology, and I’m happy they’re using it to identify and prevent bad actors.
I was thinking of trying to acquire one of those gadgets you see in the crime-oriented moving picture shows that alters the
voice to sound deep and harsh. Use it to answer any call from an unknown number. Have a little fun freaking them out (momentarily)
while preventing voice profiling. I wonder if there’s an app for that by now…the Kermit setting could be fun too.
Looks like there are smartphone apps that will change your voice on a phone call. That could be useful. I don’t know if any
of them work well.
Ofc that can only help when the listening device is on the other end of a phone call. Not much use when, for example, conversing
in person with someone who has a phone that’s listening all the time.
There is an effect, the Eventide Harmonizer, that is sometimes used to alter voices (Darth Vader’s voice in Star Wars for
example). It’s an expensive audio device mostly used in recording studios, but nowadays I’m sure there is some app that can
do similar things.
“Don’t get on the ship! That book? It’s a….cookbook!!†Thanks for that; it’s a classic I’ll never forget.
It seems we’ve got weirder stuff now. For whatever reason, those automatic answering programs do not understand me. I’ve
found if you get scrappy with them (such as Joseph K suggests babbling some nonsense) they throw up their robotic hands and they
get you to a person.
Someone once advised me to shut up through the whole menu thing and they get you to a human. But many companies are on to this.
Unfortunately. You may want to stick with insane babbling.
Yes, silence used to work. Now, sounding like a) a ferinner, b) an oldster without dentures c) someone with special needs,
or any other demographic AI can’t handle yet, means that regrettably the human of last resort is going to have to be tasked,
and paid. So far, mixing up “aeuieueooeiueoueuoiueuiahh!†with “aeuieuueiahh!†and ““uoiueuiahh!†etc works. So
far. Next may have to be Darth Vader voice.
Not so long ago, most people would be outraged if they discovered someone had planted eavesdropping devices in their home.
Now some tech. co’s have persuaded people to pay to “bug†themselves!
I have to (grudgingly) admit that’s an amazing bit of marketing/salesmanship.
A few times over recent years, I’d been prompted by computerized voices to speak slowly and answer prompts such as “What
is your destination?â€. Even simple prompts had me suspicious as in “Say yes to confirm or no if you would like something elseâ€.
In a previous life as an audio engineer, I knew they could analyze the wave form and deduce many things. So, I would gargle, yodel,
or sing falsetto my response. I have never put financial or personal information on line and wasn’t about to through audio.
At this point, I use a Harmon or cup mute to speak to institutions via the phone.
This sentence from the article gave me a laugh: “it’s important for government leaders to adopt policies and regulations
that protect the personal information…..â€. No, I think most of us are so enamoured by the new, shiny toys that we have lost
our way and have nowhere to turn. My latest bumper sticker idea: “Eschew Convenienceâ€.
The problem is, that the companies that have developed these voice-profiling and facial recognition are probably talking to
interested parties in the Department of Homeland Security, and it is probably matter of time before the TSA adopts facial recognition
and voice scanning as a requirement of flight boarding much like they did with bodyscanners.
I doubt any degree of protest or backlash would be able to change Washington’s mind.
> Amazon ’s most public application of voice profiling so far is its Halo wristband, which claims to know the emotions
you’re conveying when you talk to relatives, friends and employers.
The company assures customers it doesn’t use Halo data for its own purposes . But it’s clearly a proof of concept
â€" and a nod toward the future.
Amazon “spokespeople†are lying sacks of shit. Not one word they say has an iota of truth.
Know what else this portends? Moar power sucking data centers to store all the gibberish Amazon, Googlag and the rest of the
digital creeps collect. And because they use so much electricity they get it super cheap instead of being charged triple retail
to discourage the gargantuan waste. All to sell you moar garbage that you don’t need. What a waste of a STEM education. That’s
what so called “data scientists†signed up for?
I’m glad I have no children to suffer in the digital hellhole being built by these creeps.
Naturally I wonder if smart phones and their various apps don’t already do this, not to mention desk and lap tops; all of
which are equipped with mikes. And of course Ma Bell and Verizon and on and on get our voices all the time. What are the laws
that protect the user from those behemoths? Are what ever is left of privacy laws strong enough to dampen the enthusiasm of companies
like Google or Amazon who seem to consider laws like taxes; quaint vestiges of once upon a time nation states?
yes to this
they’ll do whatever they can’t be actively prevented from doing. If it’s illegal they call it data research then start lobbying
congress to write laws to accommodate what ever grift they can mine from the mountain of said data. No need for facial recognition,
the camera on your phone has given them a detailed three dimensional you, your location, your habits, and if you like brunettes.
I still think back to when the somehow I think it was the nsa revealed googles offshore data shenanigans and am sure google was
all “hey, we would have given you all that data! why did you tell everyone we’re collecting it! And now bezos is consulting
the pentagon. At this point I truly feel the only thing that could stop the path we’re on is a massive economic crash due to
an unexpected event, hurricanes, earthquake or a pandemic that kills lots more people than covid.
I’m racing to get a draft manuscript of The Economic Consequences of
the Pandemic , not helped by the fact that Biden keeps doing pretty much what I think he
should do. More of the fold. Comments greatly appreciated, as always.
Like Keynes’ Londoner in the aftermath of the Great War, we are emerging
from the pandemic into a world where the certitudes of the past have crumbled into dust.
Balanced budgets, free trade, credit ratings, financial markets, above all free markets; these
ideas have ceased to command any belief.
The failure of these ideas evident since the GFC and, in many respects, since the beginning
of the 21st century. It have sunk in gradually as the neoliberal political class formed in the
1980s and 1990s has passed from the scene, replaced by younger people whose experience of
financialised capitalism is almost entirely negative.
But it is only with the shock of the pandemic that the thinking of the past has completely
lost its grip on the great majority. The absence of any serious resistance to
Biden’s stimulus and infrastructure package reflects the fact that hardly
anyone seriously believes the old verities of balanced budgets and free markets
Yet the fundamental realities of economic life remain unchanged. We can collectively consume
or invest what we produce, nothing more and nothing less. And our productive capacity is
constrained by resources and technology, as it always has been. One way or another we need to
decide what goods and services will be produced and who will get to consume them.
What has changed is that the economic system we have used to allocate resources and
investments for the last forty years is no longer fit for purpose. Financial markets are not
repositories of wisdom and market discipline; rather they are, in Keynes words, gambling houses
where ‘enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of
speculation.’ And as Keynes said ‘When the capital
development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely
to be ill-done.’.
Unsurprisingly, the casino economy has delivered huge gains for a small number of winners,
and losses for everyone else, certainly when compared to the broadly shared gains of the mid
20th century. But contrary to the claims of trickle-down advocates, these massive rewards have
not generated increases in productivity. Profits are obtained, not by making a better product
at lower cost, but by securing and holding a monopoly position.
How should we respond? The answer must be a combination of past, present and future. First,
we need to look at the institutions of the 20th century Golden Age, and ask which can be
revived and refurbished to address our current problems. Second, we must consider what elements
of the neoliberal era are worth saving. Finally we must consider our future options in a world
unlike anything that has come before.
The first step must be to look back at the institutions of the postwar Golden Age. Not all
of these will turn out to be useful in our current situation, and some were inappropriate even
at the time they operated. Nevertheless, taken all in all, the mixed economy of the mid-20th
century worked much better than the system of financialised capitalism that prevailed in the
era of neoliberalism.
Most of the policy program announced by the Biden Administration can be understood as a
return to Golden Age policies wound back or abandoned in the neoliberal era. Examples include
explicit support for unions, investment in physical infrastructure, partial repeal of the 2017
tax cuts, and free community college.
Unions, progressive taxes, expanding education â€" the case for all of these is
as strong or stronger as it was in the aftermath of the Great Wars. Similarly, the need for
public investment in physical infrastructure, after years of neglect, is evident.
Biden’s measures so far are steps in the right direction, but much more
remains to be done.
The innovations of the neoliberal era have mostly been negative. But there have been some
positive developments. The movement towards racial and gender equality, which began in the
1960s continued, if slowly and with occasional reversals, through the neoliberal area. And some
more specifically neoliberal policy innovations such as the earned income credit and emissions
taxes have been value. Similarly, while most financial innovations have been harmful, there
have been exceptions such as the rise of venture capital.
Looking to the future, the shift from an industrial to an information economy requires
fundamentally new approaches to economics. We are still at the beginning of understanding what
is needed here; but it is already obvious that the combination of financialized capitalism and
Big Tech is not working out well as a solution.
GM and Google
The archetypal product of the 20th century industrial economy was the motor car, the
archetypal technology was the production line and the archetypal firm was General Motors. Each
car that rolled off GM’s production line embodied a set of physical and
labour inputs; steel for the body, parts supplied by a network of subcontractors, the work of a
large body of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Dealers and finance providers distributed the
cars to buyers, who then owned and uses the products. Our thinking about how an economy works
still reflects this model.
A 20th century firm like General Motors can easily be understood in terms of the economic
categories of mainstream classical and neoclassical economists, beginning with Adam Smith. The
whole apparatus of national accounting, reflected in concepts like GDP, was developed to deal
with such firms.
But consider a firm like Google. Google doesn’t produce a physical good1;
it doesn’t even generate the information that is at the core of its
business. Rather, it indexes the information generated by others, with or without their
permission, then allows users to search those indexes, with advertising attached.
Google
doesn’t fit at all comfortably into the categories of traditional economics.
Its output can’t be measured in quantitative terms, nor is there any obvious
price attached to it. This hasn’t stopped Google making massive profits, or
attaining a stratospheric market valuation. On the other hand, it is far from obvious that this
is the best way of making the information resources of the Internet available to everyone.
1 Except for a relatively modest business producing tablet computers that run
Google’s Chrome operating system.
“Its output can’t be measured in quantitative terms,
nor is there any obvious price attached to it.â€
This connects with this:
“The whole apparatus of national accounting, reflected in concepts like
GDP,â€
At which point we’ve a certain problem using measures like GDP to
discuss the success and or failure of neoliberalism or even financialised capitalism. Because
we’re already insisting that the archetypal firms of the neoliberal era
aren’t well measured by GDP.
So insistences that growth was faster back in that Golden Age and so on become a little
more difficult. So too insistences that living standards rose faster and all that.
We also end up with difficulties over something like this:
“Unsurprisingly, the casino economy has delivered huge gains for a
small number of winners, and losses for everyone else, certainly when compared to the broadly
shared gains of the mid 20th century. But contrary to the claims of trickle-down advocates,
these massive rewards have not generated increases in productivity. Profits are obtained, not
by making a better product at lower cost, but by securing and holding a monopoly
position.â€
OK, Facebook, monopoly and all that. But increases in productivity? WhatsApp. You can talk
to 1 billion people for free. OK, people might not say very much but still.
There’s nothing of this in GDP â€" there’s
no fee nor even advertising. Last time I asked Facebook about this they said
“couple of hundred engineers†work on this. So,
we’ve the costs of a couple of hundred engineers â€" $100
million including stock awards and office space? â€" in the national accounts.
We’ve no corresponding output. This is a reduction in productivity.
But we’ve 1 billion people getting telecoms for free and this is a
reduction in productivity?
Precisely because you’re saying that GDP doesn;t measure all this new
economy stuff well it becomes very difficult to insist that this new economy stuff hasn;t
worked well if the measure is going to be GDP…..
That’s a problem with posting extracts. I’m well
aware of these points and will deal with them. No time to respond in detail now, as I need to
submit ASAP.
J-D 05.01.21 at 11:15 pm (no link)
Its output can’t be measured in quantitative terms, nor is there any
obvious price attached to it.
So from this point of view Google’s product is already priced in the
price of the stuff that is sold after being advertised through Google (directly or
indirectly).
The people who pay money to Google are the advertisers. What they are paying Google for is
advertising space. So Google’s product is advertising space. They create
advertising space and sell it. Advertising space generally has a price. It is the price paid
by advertisers to whomever it is that provides the advertisers with the advertising space.
That’s not something new. It works for Google the same way it works, for
example, for commercial free-to-air television and radio broadcasters. Their viewers and
listeners are not the people who pay them for their product (just as Google users are not the
people who pay Google); the advertisers are the people who pay them, and they pay them for
the use of the advertising space which they have produced.
likbez 05.02.21 at 3:45 am (no link)
@J-D 05.01.21 at 11:15 pm (5)
So Google’s product is advertising space.
No only. Google was/is an integral part of PRISM. So mass surveillance is probably another
major product and like Facebook it has several “facesâ€. With
one is being a government sponsored surveillance company with Gmail and Android as the major
franchises.
Any site that have Google advertisement can be considered as monitored by Google as Google
essentially replicates Web logs via its advertising inserts. In this sense Google is an
essential part of NSA.
They now try to diversify and get some foothold in the cloud but that’s
also fit surveillance company profile.
All is all the old question “Is Google evil?†is an
interesting one. IMHO it needs to be split into several companies.
"... All an FBI supervisor has to do to get a FISA warrant on you is have one agent get a crooked snitch in a foreign country to send you a weird text message, and then have another bright eyed and bushy tailed agent who doesn't know the crook is a snitch write up a search warrant application affidavit and submit it to the FISA court. ..."
"... Nothing says "Unconstitutional (illegal) Deep State" like FISA. Hitler's Gestapo would be proud! ..."
"... Lisa and Peter removed any credibility the FBI had with the public. If they solved real crime they would go after the massive fraud and stolen ID criminals. Of course that takes real work and someone wanting get off their lazy rear end ..."
The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens...
The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act of 1978 (FISA).
If you
sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered
for the FBI "Citizens Academy" program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity.
But the latest FBI offenses, like almost all prior FBI violations, are not a real problem, according to James Boasberg, presiding
judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, among other purposes, is supposed to safeguard Americans'
constitutional right to privacy under FISA. FISA was originally enacted to create a narrow niche for foreign intelligence investigations
that could be conducted without a warrant from a regular federal court. But as time passed, FISA morphed into an uncontrolled yet
officially sanctioned privacy-trampling monster. FISA judges unleash the nuclear bomb of searches,
authorizing the FBI "to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S.
person target's home, workplace and vehicles," as well as "physical searches of the target's residence, office, vehicles,
computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails."
In 2008, after the George W. Bush administration's pervasive illegal warrantless wiretaps were exposed, Congress responded by
enacting FISA amendments that formally entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up mass amounts of emails and other communication,
a swath of which is provided to the FBI. In 2018, the FISA court
slammed the FBI for abusing that
database with warrantless searches that violated Americans' rights. In lieu of obeying FISA, the FBI created a new Office of Internal
Audit. Deja vu! Back in 2007, FBI agents were caught massively violating the Patriot Act by using National Security Letters to conduct
thousands of illegal searches on Americans' personal data. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)
declared that
an Inspector General report on the abusive searches "confirms the American people's worst fears about the Patriot Act." FBI
chief Robert Mueller responded by creating a new
Office of Integrity and Compliance
as "another important step toward ensuring we fulfill our mission with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law."
Be still my beating heart!
The FBI's promise to repent after the 2018 report sufficed for the FISA court to permit the FBI to continue plowing through
the personal data it received from NSA. Monday's disclosure "a delayed release of a report by the court last November "revealed
that the FBI has conducted
warrantless searches of the data trove for "domestic terrorism," "public corruption and bribery," "health care fraud,"
and other targets "including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. As Spencer Ackerman
wrote
in the Daily Beast , "The FBI continues to perform warrantless searches through the NSA's most sensitive databases for routine
criminal investigations." That type of search "potentially jeopardizes an accused person's ability to have a fair trial since warrantlessly acquired information is supposed to be inadmissible. The FBI claimed to the court that none of the warrantlessly queried
material "˜was used in a criminal or civil proceeding,' but such usage at trial has happened before," Ackerman noted. Some illicit
FBI searches involve vast dragnets. As the
New York Times reported ,
an FBI agent in 2019 conducted a database search "using the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them
had connections to an investigation."
In the report released Monday, Judge Boasberg lamented "apparent widespread violations" of the legal restrictions for FBI searches.
Regardless,
Boasberg kept the illicit search party going: "The Court is willing to again conclude that the . . . [FBI's] procedures meet
statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements." "Willing to again conclude" sounds better than "close enough for constitutional."
At this point, Americans know only the abuses that the FBI chose to disclose to FISA judges. We have no idea how many other perhaps
worse abuses may have occurred. For a hundred years, the FBI has buttressed its power by keeping a lid on its crimes. Unfortunately,
the FISA Court has become nothing but Deep State window dressing "a facade giving the illusion that government is under the law.
Consider Boasberg's recent ruling in the most brazen FISA abuse yet exposed. In December 2019, the Justice Department Inspector
General reported that the FBI made "fundamental
errors " and persistently deceived the FISA court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. The
I.G. report said the FBI "drew almost entirely" from the Steele dossier to prove a "well-developed conspiracy" between Russians
and the Trump campaign even though it was "unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page"
in that dossier, which was later debunked.
A former FBI assistant general counsel, Kevin Clinesmith, admitted to falsifying key evidence to secure the FISA warrant to spy
on the Trump campaign. As a Wall Street Journal
editorial noted , Clinesmith "changed an
email confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source to one that said the exact opposite, explicitly adding the words "˜not a source'
before he forwarded it." A federal prosecutor declared that the "resulting harm is immeasurable" from Clinesmith's action.
But at the sentencing hearing, Boasberg gushed with sympathy,
noting that Clinesmith
"went from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane"¦ Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in
government service"what has given his life much of its meaning." Scorning the federal prosecutor's recommendation for jail time, Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist
slap"400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.
The FBI FISA frauds profoundly disrupted American politics for years and the din of belatedly debunked accusations of Trump colluding
with Russia swayed plenty of votes in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But for the chief FISA judge, nothing
matters except the plight of an FBI employee who lost his job after gross misconduct. This is the stark baseline Americans should
remember when politicians, political appointees, and judges promise to protect them from future FBI abuses. The FISA court has been
craven, almost beyond ridicule, perennially. Perhaps Boasberg was simply codifying a prerogative the FISA court previously awarded
upon FBI officials. In 2005, after a deluge of false FBI claims in FISA warrants, FISA Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed
requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have "slowed
such investigations drastically," the
Washington Post reported
. So, FBI agents continue to lie with impunity to the judges.
The FISA court has gone from pretending that FBI violations don't occur to pretending that violations don't matter. Practically
the only remaining task is for the FISA court to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy . But if a sweeping
new domestic terrorism law is passed, perhaps even that formal acknowledgement will be unnecessary. Beginning in 2006, the court
rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans
were "relevant" to a terrorism
investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling NSA data seizures later
denounced by a federal judge as "almost Orwellian." FISA could become a peril to far more Americans if Congress formally creates
a new domestic terrorism offense and a new category for expanding FISA searches.
The backlash from Democrats after the January 6 clash at the Capitol showcased the demand for federal crackdowns on extremists
who doubted Biden's election, disparaged federal prerogatives, or otherwise earned congressional ire. If a domestic terrorism law
is passed, the FBI will feel as little constrained by the details of the statute as it does about FISA's technicalities. Will FBI
agents conducting warrantless searches rely on
the same
harebrained standard the NSA used to target Americans: "someone searching the web for suspicious stuff"? Unfortunately, unless
an FBI whistleblower with the same courage as former NSA analyst Edward Snowden steps forward, we may never know the extent of FBI
abuses
ebworthen 39 minutes ago
"You want to harass a political opponent? Sure, we can do that...
JaxPavan 42 minutes ago
All an FBI supervisor has to do to get a FISA warrant on you is have one agent get a crooked snitch in a foreign country to
send you a weird text message, and then have another bright eyed and bushy tailed agent who doesn't know the crook is a snitch
write up a search warrant application affidavit and submit it to the FISA court.
Joe Bribem 32 minutes ago
It's almost like we did this to Trump. But it'll never come to light. Oops it did. Not that anything will happen to us because
we own the corrupt DOJ and FBI.
Obama's own personal private army.
You_Cant_Quit_Me 7 minutes ago
A lot of tips come in from overseas. For example, the US spies on citizens of another country and then sends that country tips,
in exchange that country does the same by spying on US citizens and sending the FBI tips. Then it starts, "we are just
following up on a tip"
wee-weed up 36 minutes ago (Edited)
Nothing says "Unconstitutional (illegal) Deep State" like FISA. Hitler's Gestapo would be proud!
You_Cant_Quit_Me 37 minutes ago
Lisa and Peter removed any credibility the FBI had with the public. If they solved real crime they would go after the massive fraud and stolen ID criminals. Of course that takes real work and
someone wanting get off their lazy rear end
takeaction 58 minutes ago (Edited)
If you own a smart phone...everything you do is recorded...and logged.
"They" have been listening
to you for a long time if they want to.
If you own any smart device...they can listen and watch. They are monitoring what I am typing and this site. There really is no way to hide.
Several US banks have employed AI surveillance systems as a big-brother-type instrument to
analyze customer preferences, monitor workers, and even detect nefarious activities near/at
ATMs, according to a dozen banking and technology sources who spoke with
Reuters .
Sources said City National Bank of Florida, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Wells Fargo &
Co are conducting trials of AI surveillance systems which offers a rare view into what could
soon become standard for corporate America.
Bobby Dominguez, the chief information security officer at City National, told Reuters the
bank would begin to "leverage" facial recognition technology to identify customers at teller
machines and employees at branches. The trial will be conducted at 31 sites and include
high-tech software that could spot people on government watch lists.
In Ohio, JPMorgan is already conducting AI surveillance trials at a small number of
branches. Wells Fargo wouldn't discuss its use of AI technology to monitor customers and
employees.
The corporate world is quickly embracing the effectiveness and sophistication of these
systems after governments such as China, the UK, Germany, Japan, and the US have used AI
surveillance to track their citizens and non-nationals for years.
"We're never going to compromise our clients' privacy," Dominguez said. "We're getting off
to an early start on technology already used in other parts of the world and that is rapidly
coming to the American banking network."
As early as 2019, JPMorgan began evaluating the potential of AI surveillance systems to
analyze archived footage from Chase branches in New York and Ohio.
"Testing facial recognition to identify clients as they walk into a Chase bank, if they
consented to it, has been another possibility considered to enhance their experience," a
current employee involved in the project told Reuters.
Another source said a Midwestern credit union last year tested facial recognition for client
identification at four locations before terminating the program over cost concerns.
City National's Dominguez said the bank's branches use computer vision to detect suspicious
activity outside.
Given the current state of AI surveillance and the speed of development, top banks are
already testing these surveillance tools in various forms. Despite a potential backlash from
the public, an Orwellian dystopia via AI surveillance will be fully embraced by corporate
America in the coming years.
It was the virus pandemic that allowed the
surveillance state to expand across the government and corporations rapidly. We're being
tracked more than ever.
More than most companies today, Google understands that information is power. But how much
does Google know about you? Here, we'll unpack Google's privacy policy, so that you know what
data gets tracked, how Google uses your data, and how to manage your online privacy.
If you use a Google service or product (and you probably do), it's important to educate
yourself about how Google uses your data so you can make smart, informed decisions that keep
you in control of your privacy. Every step you take, every purchase you make -- Google could be
watching you.
The simple answer is yes: Google collects data about how you use its devices, apps, and
services. This ranges from your browsing behavior, Gmail and YouTube activity, location
history, Google searches, online purchases, and more. Basically, anything that's connected to
Google is likely used to collect data on your activity and preferences.
Many people have questions about Google collecting data and how it gathers information. In
particular, people worry about voice-activated products like Google Home and Google Assistant
being used to listen to more than just requests to buy toilet paper or play music in the living
room.
Nearly every company you interact with online uses web tracking technology to mine data about
your online habits and preferences to personalize your experiences and the content you see.
While the security
risks of smart home devices are real, Google using your home assistant to record your
private conversations isn't one of them. You might feel like you're being spied on, but the
reality is that Google sees only the information you have voluntarily entered or allowed them
to access .
It's tempting to cast Google as a villain in this scenario, but Google data collection isn't
unique. Nearly every company you interact with online uses web tracking technology to mine data
about your online habits and preferences to personalize your experiences and the content you
see. Still, it might surprise you how much data Google actually tracks and the less obvious
ways it keeps tabs on you.
Why does Google want my data?
You might be thinking, "Fine, Google knows a lot about me. But what does Google
do with my data?" According to Google, they use all this data to deliver better
services, make improvements, and customize your experience . In other words, all this
information helps Google make its services more useful for you.
Google uses data about your behavior and preferences to deliver better or more
personalized services.
Of course, there's a very thin line between useful and creepy -- and sometimes businesses
make the mistake of taking it too far by hoovering up excessive amounts of data. For many
companies, more data collection means more profit. Here are a few ways in which Google data
collection can impact your digital lifestyle.
Targeted advertising
With all the data Google gathers about you -- across all of its platforms, services,
products, and devices -- it can build a detailed advertising profile, including your gender,
age range, job industry, and interests. This helps them use targeted advertising to serve you
Google ads that align with your personal tastes.
Let's say you search for a place to rent skis. Afterward, you start seeing ads for related
products like ski jackets on other websites you visit around the web -- these are targeted ads
. If you want to see what Google thinks it knows about you, you can go to your Google account settings , click on Data &
personalization in the left navigation panel, and view your advertising profile.
Location
tracking
Where you go, Google goes. Whether you're looking for the quickest way to get to a meeting,
searching for a nearby cafe, or trying to find the closest bus stop, Google uses your location
to offer personalized suggestions that are more relevant to your situation. For instance, maybe
you'd like to see a movie after work. If you search Google for listings, you might see the
showtimes for movies playing at theaters close to your office.
Improving usability
The more data, the better the quality of the service. Google uses all the data it collects
to improve usability -- and your information alone can't do all the work. Google also analyzes
billions of other people's data across different apps to make its services more useful for
everyone.
For example, when you use Google Maps (or Waze -- yes, it's also part of the Google family),
your location is anonymously sent back to Google and combined with data from people around you
to create a picture of current traffic patterns. Have you ever been rerouted around an accident
or a traffic jam while driving? You can thank your data and all the data from the people
driving around you.
Tweaking algorithms
Google's search algorithms -- the rules that determine the results you see and the order
they're listed in -- are continually changing. In 2019, the company reported more than 3,500 improvements
to Google search -- that's an average of nearly 10 every day.
Google uses data about what people search for, what results are relevant, and the quality of
the content and sources to determine the results you see. And their engineers adjust and refine
Google's search algorithms to make searching on Google more useful ,
such as generating useful featured content snippets from relevant third-party websites to
provide quick answers to questions right at the top of the search results
page.
Trendspotting and analysis
Your search results also power Google Trends , a Google website that tracks and
analyzes the top search queries across services like Google Search, YouTube, and more. You can
see the most popular search terms from multiple countries and languages, helping you discover
the latest trends, topics, and stories across different regions and over different time
periods.
To be clear, no one outside of Google (and maybe even no one inside) truly knows how this
data is processed and used. But they don't hide what they collect and how they do
it. Google's privacy
policy is written clearly and easy to understand.
By
Jeff Horwitz
and
Keach Hagey
Updated April 11, 2021 11:41 am ET
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Google for years operated a secret program that used data from past bids in the company's digital advertising exchange to
allegedly give its own ad-buying system an advantage over competitors, according to court documents filed in a Texas antitrust
lawsuit.
The program, known as "Project Bernanke," wasn't disclosed to publishers who sold ads through Google's ad-buying systems. It
generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the company annually, the documents show. In its lawsuit, Texas alleges
that the project gave Google, a unit of
Alphabet
Inc.,
GOOG
0.90%
an
unfair competitive advantage over rivals.
Google's Ad Machine
Online ads are typically sold in auctions that happen in an instant, when a user's webpage is loading. Google
dominates at virtually every step of the process. In an antitrust lawsuit, Texas alleges that Google's secret
"Project Bernanke" allowed the company to use knowledge it gained running its ad exchange to unfairly compete against
rivals. Here's how the digital advertising machine works:
THE SELL SIDE: PUBLISHERS
AD SPACE
FOR SALE
When a
user
visits
a large online
publisher's
website
or app, the publisher uses an
ad
server
to sell ad space on its pages.
The publisher also gives the exchange information about the reader -- their age, income, browsing history and
interests, for example.
In this example, the publisher uses Google's DoubleClick for Publishers, the leading ad-serving tool.
The tool puts the publisher's ad space up for sale on
exchanges
,
marketplaces where transactions happen in real-time between sellers (
publishers
)
and buyers (
advertisers
).
REAL-TIME
AUCTION HOUSES
Google has the largest such marketplace, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, or AdX.
THE BUY SIDE: ADVERTISERS
An advertiser, representing its clients' products, uses sophisticated buying tools to purchase ads.
In this example, an advertiser uses Google's buying tool, DV360, the industry leader.
The advertiser can specify the types of audiences it wants to target -- such as location, gender or age of
user -- and the price of their offer.
To get its ad in front of the user, the advertiser places bids in the auction marketplace -- the highest bidder
wins.
Once a match is made on the exchange, an ad pops up on users' screens.
The documents filed this week were part of Google's initial response to
the
Texas-led antitrust lawsuit
, which was filed in December and accused the search company of running a digital-ad monopoly
that harmed both ad-industry competitors and publishers. This week's filing, viewed by The Wall Street Journal, wasn't
properly redacted when uploaded to the court's public docket. A federal judge let Google refile it under seal.
Some of the unredacted contents of the document were earlier disclosed by MLex, an antitrust-focused news outlet.
The document sheds further light on the state's case against Google, along with the search company's defense.
Much of the lawsuit involves the interplay of Google's roles as both the operator of a major ad exchange -- which Google likens
to the New York Stock Exchange in marketing documents -- and a representative of buyers and sellers on the exchange. Google also
acts as an ad buyer in its own right, selling ads on its own properties such as search and YouTube through these same systems.
Texas alleges that Google used its access to data from publishers' ad servers -- where more than 90% of large publishers use
Google to sell their digital ad space -- to guide advertisers toward the price they would have to bid to secure an ad placement.
Google's use of bidding information, Texas alleges, amounted to insider trading in digital-ad markets. Because Google had
exclusive information about what other ad buyers were willing to pay, the state says, it could unfairly compete against rival
ad-buying tools and pay publishers less on
its
winning bids for ad inventory
.
The unredacted documents show that Texas claims Project Bernanke is a critical part of that effort.
How tech giants are both cooperating while competing in hardware, software and technology services
Google acknowledged the existence of Project Bernanke in its response and said in the filing that "the details of Project
Bernanke's operations are not disclosed to publishers."
Google denied in the documents that there was anything inappropriate about using the exclusive information it possessed to
inform bids, calling it "comparable to data maintained by other buying tools."
Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesman, said the complaint "misrepresents many aspects of our ad tech business. We look
forward to making our case in court." He referred the Journal to an analysis conducted by a U.K. regulator that concluded that
Google didn't appear to have had an advantage.
The Texas attorney general's office didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
Google's outsize role in the digital-ad market is both controversial and at times murky.
In some instances, "we're on both the buy side and the sell side," Google Chief Economist Hal Varian said at a 2019 antitrust
conference held by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Asked how the company managed those roles, Mr. Varian
said the topic was "too detailed for the audience, and me."
If you are using Fakebook you are part of the problem. I am pretty tired of people who use
these antisocial media platforms complaining when these platforms do what they do by their very
nature.
Notable quotes:
"... The "reality police" have infiltrated down to the lowest levels now to look for "new normal" violators anywhere. ..."
"... I am pretty tired of people who use these antisocial media platforms complaining when these platforms do what they do by their very nature. ..."
"... Remember when Eric Schmidt got his panties in a twist because some enterprising soul had done some digital digging into his private life? ..."
"... All social media Big Tech platforms are SARPA surveillance programs that added some cool logo, a young captured jew type as Boss and some marketing to morons and lemmings. ..."
"... The sheer narcissism and desperation on these platforms is disgusting and disturbing. Big data and pedophiles love Facebook. ..."
Last week I did a web search for a quote by Goebbels concerning truth and found one
regarding TheState and TheBigLie on TheJewishVirtualLibrary. After posting it to Fakebook, I
was notified that the quote violated "community standards" and wouldn't be seen by anyone
else (except the FBI, or local LEOs perhaps).
Being who I am, I posted the same quote with a link to where I found it
[TheJewishVirtualLibrary] and was notified no one would see any of my posts for a week.
Again, being who I am, I posted a video from TheBabylonBee that illustrated the danger of
likening everything to Nazis, and was notified of a month-long ban.
I then downloaded my data in two formats and deleted the account.
Living life stupid might be inclusive and entertaining, but there's too many options
available to make ignorance enjoyable.
...It is partially Brave New World with a dash of 1984 and a healthy helping of Mordor,
all of which is brightened and made more alluring and addicting with Sexual Revolution.
The "reality police" have infiltrated down to the lowest levels now to look for "new
normal" violators anywhere. If CJ thinks he's a nobody, then I am a sub-sub-sub-nobody, yet I
have had my user account suspended twice now at an obscure news aggregation website,
Fark.com , for making comments that
apparently constitute "Covid misinformation."
Once was when I commented on a story that
stated that there is a need to vaccinate even those that have recovered from actually having
Covid. I said something like, "Why would you need to vaccinate someone whose immune system is
functioning properly and already did the job naturally?" Apparently, even mentioning that
humans have an immune system is now verboten, and thus my comment was deleted and my account
was suspended for 24 hours. The next time I was suspended was just over this past weekend
when I commented on a story about someone ignoring covid rules.
I stated something to the
effect that we should ALL be ignoring the public health "experts" who are petty tyrants.
Well, they have now suspended my account for 72 hours again for "covid misinformation."
Despite being amused that my opinions are somehow "misinformation," it's certainly
enraging that speaking plain common truth is becoming more and more difficult.
I am pretty tired of people who use these antisocial media platforms complaining when
these platforms do what they do by their very nature. They weren't set up to help us they
were set up to enslave us. Get a clue, Farcebook and Twatter et al are not your friends!
All social media Big Tech platforms are SARPA surveillance programs that added some cool
logo, a young captured jew type as Boss and some marketing to morons and lemmings. Absolute
joke. The sheer narcissism and desperation on these platforms is disgusting and disturbing.
Big data and pedophiles love Facebook.
Based on Facebook's 'community standards' (see above), it has banned all posts praising
the US in written or pictorial form for the following reasons –
1. Has created and/or funded terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, paramilitary groups like
Blackwater, death squads in El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc.;
2. Creates, trains and funds a vast military system to threaten and/or bomb countries and
overthrow governments;
3. Has conducted and prosecuted wars and military actions around the world every single day
for the past twenty years;
4. Kidnaps and abducts private citizens in foreign countries and imprisons them in secret
bases like Guantanamo;
5. Employs corporate institutions to impose financial embargoes destroying nations' economic
infrastructure and citizens' livelihood.
The point is, apparently, the Corporatocracy feel sufficiently threatened by random
people on Facebook that they are conducting these COINTELPRO-type ops.
This really seems to be a thing. The elite are supposedly into the occult including things
like clairvoyants. Have their soothsayers seen a future rebel that will take them down? Or
are they just insecure, criminally insane dopes that irrationally fear independent thinking?
Whatever the reason, they are extremely paranoid.
Brave buys a search engine, promises no tracking, no profiling – and may even offer
a paid-for, no-ad versionPitches pro-privacy platform with customizable results filter
dubbed GogglesThomas Claburn in San Francisco Wed 3
Mar 2021 // 14:00 UTC SHARE
Brave, maker of the identically named privacy-focused web browser, has acquired its own
search engine to offer as an alternative to Google Search and competing search engines that
exist but aren't all that visible in Google's shadow.
On Wednesday, the company plans to announce that it's taking over Tailcat, a search engine
developed by Cliqz, another privacy-focused browser biz that aspired to compete with Google and
shut down last year . The
deal, terms undisclosed, makes Cliqz owner Hubert Burda Media a Brave shareholder.
Brave intends to make Tailcat the foundation of its own search service, Brave Search . The company hopes that its more than 25
million monthly active Brave customers will, after an initial period of testing and courtship,
choose to make Brave Search their default search engine and will use it alongside other parts
of its privacy-oriented portfolio, which also includes Brave Ads, news reader Brave Today,
Brave Firewall+VPN, and video conferencing system Brave Together.
Brave Search, the company insists, will respect people's privacy by not tracking or
profiling those using the service. And it may even offer a way to end the debate about search
engine bias by turning search result output over to a community-run filtering system called
Goggles.
The service will, eventually, be available as a paid option – for those who want to
pay for search results without ads – though its more common incarnation is likely to be
ad-supported, in conjunction with Brave Ads. The latter offers participants the option to
receive 70 per cent of the payment made by the advertiser in a cryptocurrency called BAT (Brave
Attention Token).
Eich lays out his vision
In an interview with The Register , Brendan Eich, CEO of Brave, argued that the
demand for privacy is real and cannot be ignored. "I think the genie doesn't go back in the
bottle," he said. "Consciousness doesn't revert."
People used to hear about credit card breaches at large retailers like Target, Eich said,
and think that privacy is hopeless but not something that necessarily affects them directly.
But then it became more personal as technologies like ad retargeting did things like spoiling
surprise gifts by showing the ad for the purchased item again to the intended recipient.
I think privacy is here to stay and now the question is how people do it and market it
effectively
Eich sees the dominance of US tech companies contributing to the interest in privacy and
making it a matter of concern for regulators around the world.
"It's not political in the broken US sense – which is kind of a Punch and Judy show
– it's more like there are people of various commitments on all sides of politics who are
aware not only of privacy being violated over time by the big tech players but of the big tech
players being abusive monopolies," he said.
Pointing to how many companies now make privacy claims, Eich said, "I think privacy is here
to stay and now the question is how people do it and market it effectively. If you don't market
it, you can lose to somebody who just puts privacy perfume on a pig and tells you it smells
great and tastes delicious."
Eich's pitch is not that Brave Search aims to take on Google Search directly. He
acknowledges that there's no way to match Google's vast index and ability to return relevant
results for obscure (long tail) search terms. Rather, he sees an opportunity to improve
specific types of search queries, referred to as vertical markets.
"Part of what we're trying to do here is innovate in the area where there's now monopoly,"
he said in reference to Google Search, which has a market share of something like 92 per cent ."...The
innovation through verticals is possible because it avoids having to take on Google's supreme
competence, which is the rare or unique queries the long tail."
"What we're trying to do is different, it's not based on crawling the web," Eich explained.
"...Trying to crawl the whole web, it's not going to work. What Cliqz worked on..that's an
anonymous query log aggregator, and a partial click log aggregator, to see when you don't
convert on the search ad you leave the results page and you find the better results through
some number of clicks."
Gathering that sort of query and click data requires consent, said Eich, and Brave isn't
going to force Brave users to participate. But Cliqz started working on this and has a data set
they called "the Human Web," and that's now the basis of Brave Search.
"The queries and the clicks matter but they are unlinkable," he said. "There has to be a
property called record unlinkability. There's no IP address that gets dropped at the edge.
Timing channels are blinded by adding some delays. And there's no way to say this query was
from the same user as that query."
Brave Search's index there will be informed the activities of participating Brave users, in
terms of the URLs they search for or click on, and adjacent web resources that don't require
extensive crawling.
There's a theoretical risk users could poison the index through repeated visits to
irrelevant or harmful web pages, knowing their activities would inform the index, but Eich
suggests Brave is big and savvy enough to avoid being trolled in this way.
Brave also envisions users taking a more active role in their search results through a
filtering mechanism.
"It allows different groups to run their own sort of Turing incomplete filter rules, sort of
like ad blocking rules in the search service and not in the browser, to have a community
moderated view of the global index," he explained. "It's called 'Goggles.'"
Eich observed with a chuckle that it isn't related to Google Goggles, an image recognition
app that Google maintained from 2009 through 2018 until the arrival of Google
Lens.
Shared search
The Brave Search team has written a paper [ PDF ] explaining its use of the
term, titled "GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web." The browser upstart
aims to replace the tyranny of Google's inscrutable, authoritative index with a multiverse of
indices defined by anyone with the inclination to do so.
Brave's vision of search is based on "an open and collaborative system by which a community,
or a single user, can create sets of rules and filters, called Goggles, to define the space
which a search engine can pull results from," the paper explains.
"Instead of a single ranking algorithm, we could have as many as needed, overcoming the
biases that a single actor (the search engine) embeds into the results."
Goggles has its own Domain Specific Language (DSL) for writing search result filters. Brave
hopes that Goggles will be adopted not only internally but among others search engines,
too.
Brave Search users will be able to, for better or worse, see the world through filters they
agree with or filters they detest. The point is it will be up to them rather than a large ad
company located in Silicon Valley.
The Brave Search team acknowledges that not all filters will show results that are agreeable
to everyone. "There will be Goggles created by creationists, anti-vaccination supporters or
flat-earthers," the paper says. "However, the biases will be explicit, and therefore, the
choice is a conscious one."
The paper contends that censorship will be unnecessary since illegal content should be
caught by the host search engine and removed from the search index so no Goggle can see it in
the first place.
"Brave is bringing back the idea of a user-first thick client, or a muscular client," said
Eich, differentiating his browser from just being "a blind servant of ad tech that runs all the
JavaScript Google throws at it." ®
Dont shop at Amazon? Check.
Dont use bing? Check
Dont use google? Bout' half the time (need to get yandex home page)
Dont use facebook? Check
Dont use twitter? Check
Dont use paypal? Check
Need to use local non-corporate businesses and resturaunts as much as possible.
We can have a hot economy while slowly starving the oligarchs. You can indéed go
around the oligarchs. Buy American, Canadian, and Mexican as much as possible before buying
Chinese. Ive found tgat if you look, an Indonesian, Malaysian, or Taiwanese model of whatever
you are looking for is usually available.
Needless to say dont support Hollyweird, netflix, late-night tv show hosts, awards-shows,
and Disney's ESPN.. These entities are overextended, and are vunerable to buycotts.
"The stakes are clear; either governments will reassert their prerogatives or plutocrats
will govern."
Very well put.
Unfortunately, it is the very nature of Oligarchy (or Plutocracy) for the Rich to govern
through supposedly independent politicians. It's a "sleight of hand" job.
So the question becomes, is there really a "government" there , to reassert a
prerogative separate to their primary function of running the public face of an Oligarchy
?
Recent court documents
have indicated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) possesses a tool allowing
them to access encrypted messages on the Signal app.
Signal has rapidly gained in popularity as Silicon Valley monopolists have grown more openly
hostile to free speech, but the platform may be vulnerable to backdoors that undermine the
privacy protections provided through the encrypted messaging service.
According to documents filed by the Department of Justice and first obtained by Forbes ,
Signal's encrypted messages can be intercepted from iPhone devices when those Apple devices are
in a mode called "partial AFU," which means "after first unlock."
When phones are in partial AFU mode, Signal messages can be seized by federal authorities
and other potentially hostile interests. GrayKey and Cellebrite are the tools typically used by
the FBI to gain this sensitive information, an expert has explained.
" It uses some very advanced approach using hardware vulnerabilities ," said Vladimir
Katalov, who founded the Russian forensics company ElcomSoft, believing that GrayKey was used
by federal authorities to crack Signal.
This vulnerability within the Signal app may not be a design flaw, but rather a deliberate
backdoor to allow authorities to access private messages. The app was initially funded with
backing from the deep state, after all.
Reading Blacks biography of Roosevelt, Hudson's work, Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard"
and Douglas's "JFK and the Unspeakable" one discerns a clear line between the UK interwar
Foreign Office, military intelligence and rentier class and the Dulles brother's post war
ascent to the pinnacles of back room power.
Before the war the brothers arranged IP shares between the soon to be contending German
and Anglo-sphere industries, during the war they tried to arrange a separate peace with post
Hitler Germany, after Roosevelt's death and particularly in their con job on Truman, they
made the CIA the collective tool of the transatlantic financial elite, David Rockefeller
explicitly included.
These books all rely extensively on previously lightly touched primary sources.
75% of Internet traffic is intercepted. New Details Show Broader NSA Surveillance Reach
Notable quotes:
"... The second cut is done by NSA. It briefly copies the traffic and decides which communications to keep based on what it calls "strong selectors" -- say, an email address, or a large block of computer addresses that correspond to an organization it is interested in. In making these decisions, the NSA can look at content of communications as well as information about who is sending the data. ..."
"... The person says talks between the government and different telecoms about what constitutes foreign communications have "been going on for some years," and that some in the industry believe the law is unclear on Internet traffic. "Somebody should enunciate a rule," this person says. ..."
"... Within NSA, former officials say, intelligence officers joked that the Blarney intercept program with AT&T was named in homage to the NSA program Shamrock, which intercepted telegraphic messages into and out of the U.S. and was an inspiration for the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created the secret national-security court and placed intelligence activities under its supervision. ..."
"... Paul Kouroupas, a former executive at Global Crossing Ltd. and other telecom companies responsible for security and government affairs, says the checks and balances in the NSA programs depend on telecommunications companies and the government policing the system themselves. "There's technically and physically nothing preventing a much broader surveillance," he says. ..."
WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency -- which possesses only limited legal authority
to spy on U.S. citizens -- has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans'
Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials
say.
The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt
for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and
Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens
within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these
people say.
The NSA's surveillance network covers more Americans' Internet communications than
officials have publicly disclosed, reaching roughly 75 percent of all U.S. internet traffic.
Siobhan Gorman reports on the News Hub. Photo: Getty Images.
The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for
communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be
passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad reach makes it more likely that
purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for
foreign ones.
Google bypassed the privacy settings on millions of Web browsers on Apple iPhones and
computers -- tracking
the online activities of people who intended that kind of monitoring to be blocked.
(2/17/12)
The programs, code-named Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew, among others,
filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies. Blarney, for instance,
was established with AT&T Inc.,
T
-1.15% former officials say. AT&T declined to comment.
This filtering takes place at more than a dozen locations at major Internet junctions in
the U.S., officials say. Previously, any NSA filtering of this kind was largely believed to
be happening near points where undersea or other foreign cables enter the country.
Details of these surveillance programs were gathered from interviews with current and
former intelligence and government officials and people from companies that help build or
operate the systems, or provide data. Most have direct knowledge of the work.
The NSA defends its practices as legal and respectful of Americans' privacy. According to
NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, if American communications are "incidentally collected during
NSA's lawful signals intelligence activities," the agency follows "minimization procedures
that are approved by the U.S. attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United
States persons."
As another U.S. official puts it, the NSA is "not wallowing willy-nilly" through
Americans' idle online chatter. "We want high-grade ore."
To achieve that, the programs use complex algorithms that, in effect, operate like filters
placed over a stream with holes designed to let certain pieces of information flow through.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, NSA widened the holes to capture more information when the
government broadened its definition of what constitutes "reasonable" collection, according to
a former top intelligence official.
The NSA's U.S. programs have been described in narrower terms in the documents released by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . One, for instance,
acquires Americans' phone records; another, called Prism, makes requests for stored data to
Internet companies. By contrast, this set of programs shows the NSA has the capability to
track almost anything that happens online, so long as it is covered by a broad court
order.
The NSA programs are approved and overseen by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court. NSA is required to destroy information on Americans that doesn't fall under exceptions
to the rule, including information that is relevant to foreign intelligence, encrypted, or
evidence of a crime.
The NSA is focused on collecting foreign intelligence, but the streams of data it monitors
include both foreign and domestic communications. Inevitably, officials say, some U.S.
Internet communications are scanned and intercepted, including both "metadata" about
communications, such as the "to" and "from" lines in an email, and the contents of the
communications themselves.
Much, but not all, of the data is discarded, meaning some communications between Americans
are stored in the NSA's databases, officials say. Some lawmakers and civil libertarians say
that, given the volumes of data NSA is examining, privacy protections are insufficient.
Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, in 2012 sought but failed to prohibit the agency from
searching its databases for information on Americans without a warrant. He has also pushed
intelligence agencies to detail how many Americans' communications have been collected and to
explain whether purely domestic communications are retained in NSA's databanks. They have
declined.
"Technology is moving us swiftly into a world where the only barriers to this kind of
dragnet surveillance are the protections enshrined into law," Mr. Wyden says.
This month President Barack Obama proposed changes to NSA surveillance to improve
oversight. Those proposed changes wouldn't alter the systems in the U.S. that NSA relies upon
for some of its most sensitive surveillance.
The systems operate like this: The NSA asks telecom companies to send it various streams
of Internet traffic it believes most likely to contain foreign intelligence. This is the
first cut of the data.
These requests don't ask for all Internet traffic. Rather, they focus on certain areas of
interest, according to a person familiar with the legal process. "It's still a large amount
of data, but not everything in the world," this person says.
The second cut is done by NSA. It briefly copies the traffic and decides which
communications to keep based on what it calls "strong selectors" -- say, an email address, or
a large block of computer addresses that correspond to an organization it is interested in.
In making these decisions, the NSA can look at content of communications as well as
information about who is sending the data.
One U.S. official says the agency doesn't itself "access" all the traffic within the
surveillance system. The agency defines access as "things we actually touch," this person
says, pointing out that the telecom companies do the first stage of filtering.
The surveillance system is built on relationships with telecommunications carriers that
together cover about 75% of U.S. Internet communications. They must hand over what the NSA
asks for under orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The firms
search Internet traffic based on the NSA's criteria, current and former officials say.
Verizon
Communications Inc., VZ
-1.34% for example, has placed intercepts in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas,
according to one person familiar with the technology. It isn't clear how much information
these intercepts send to the NSA. A Verizon spokesman declined to comment.
Not all telecommunications providers handle the government demands the same way, says the
person familiar with the legal process. According to a U.S. official, lawyers at telecom
companies serve as checks on what the NSA receives. "The providers are independently deciding
what would be responsive," the official says.
Lawyers for at least one major provider have taken the view that they will provide access
only to "clearly foreign" streams of data -- for example, ones involving connections to ISPs
in, say, Mexico, according to the person familiar with the legal process. The complexities of
Internet routing mean it isn't always easy to isolate foreign traffic, but the goal is "to
prevent traffic from Kansas City to San Francisco from ending up" with the NSA, the person
says.
At times, the NSA has asked for access to data streams that are more likely to include
domestic communications, this person says, and "it has caused friction." This person added
that government officials have said some providers do indeed comply with requests like
this.
The person says talks between the government and different telecoms about what constitutes
foreign communications have "been going on for some years," and that some in the industry
believe the law is unclear on Internet traffic. "Somebody should enunciate a rule," this
person says.
Intelligence officials and the White House argue NSA's surveillance provides early
warnings of terror threats that don't respect geographic boundaries. "It's true we have
significant capabilities," Mr. Obama said in his NSA remarks last week. "What's also true is
we show a restraint that many governments around the world don't even think to do."
Mr. Obama and top intelligence officials say NSA's programs are overseen by all three
branches of government, citing procedures approved by the secret surveillance court that
require the NSA to eliminate "incidentally acquired" data on Americans. "If you say, 'We
don't want the NSA to be scanning large amounts of traffic,' you're saying you don't want it
to do its job," says one former official.
Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew were mentioned, but not fully explained,
in documents released by Mr. Snowden. An NSA paper released this month mentioned several but
didn't describe them beyond saying, "The government compels one or more providers to assist
NSA with the collection of information responsive to the foreign intelligence need."
The system is built with gear made by Boeing Co.'s
BA
-0.69% Narus subsidiary, which makes filtering technology, and Internet hardware
manufacturers Cisco Systems
Inc. CSCO
-1.03% and Juniper Networks
Inc., JNPR
-2.02% among other companies, according to former intelligence officials and industry
figures familiar with the equipment.
Narus didn't respond to requests for comment. Cisco and Juniper declined to comment.
The NSA started setting up Internet intercepts well before 2001, former intelligence
officials say. Run by NSA's secretive Special Services Office, these types of programs were
at first designed to intercept communications overseas through arrangements with foreign
Internet providers, the former officials say. NSA still has such arrangements in many
countries, particularly in the Middle East and Europe, the former officials say.
Within NSA, former officials say, intelligence officers joked that the Blarney intercept
program with AT&T was named in homage to the NSA program Shamrock, which intercepted
telegraphic messages into and out of the U.S. and was an inspiration for the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created the secret national-security court and placed
intelligence activities under its supervision.
Blarney was in use before the 2001 terror attacks, operating at or near key fiber-optic
landing points in the U.S. to capture foreign communications coming in and out of the
country. One example is an AT&T facility in San Francisco that was revealed in 2006
during the debate over warrantless wiretapping. A similar facility was built at an AT&T
site in New Jersey, former officials say.
After the 2001 attacks, a former official says, these intercept systems were expanded to
include key Internet networks within the U.S. through partnerships with U.S. Internet
backbone providers. Amid fears of terrorist "sleeper cells" inside the U.S., the government
under President George W. Bush also began redefining how much domestic data it could
collect.
For the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, officials say, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and NSA arranged with Qwest Communications International Inc. to use intercept
equipment for a period of less than six months around the time of the event. It monitored the
content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City area.
At that point, the systems fed into the Bush administration's program of warrantless
wiretapping, which circumvented the surveillance court on the authority of the president's
power as commander in chief. The Bush administration came under criticism from lawmakers and
civil libertarians for sidestepping court supervision.
The current legal backing for Blarney and its related programs stems from a section of a
2008 surveillance law. It permits the government, for foreign intelligence investigations, to
snoop on foreigners "reasonably believed" to be outside the U.S.
Previously, the law had tighter standards. It allowed the government to spy on people if
there were "probable cause" to believe they were an "agent of a foreign power."
NSA has discretion on setting its filters, and the system relies significantly on
self-policing. This can result in improper collection that continues for years.
For example, a recent Snowden document showed that the surveillance court ruled that the
NSA had set up an unconstitutional collection effort. Officials say it was an unintentional
mistake made in 2008 when it set filters on programs like these that monitor Internet
traffic; NSA uncovered the inappropriate filtering in 2011 and reported it.
"NSA's foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen
internally and externally," Ms. Vines says. "When we make a mistake in carrying out our
foreign intelligence mission, we report the issue internally and to federal overseers and
aggressively get to the bottom of it."
Another Snowden document describes the procedures NSA uses to protect American information
that is retained. Any such information is "minimized," meaning that it is destroyed. The
document highlights several exceptions, including encrypted communications and information of
foreign intelligence significance.
Officials acknowledged some purely domestic communications are incidentally swept into the
system. "We don't keep track of numbers of U.S. persons," a U.S. official says. "What we try
to do is minimize any exposure."
When searching the data, intelligence officials say they are permitted to look only for
information related to a "foreign intelligence interest." In practice, the NSA has latitude
under that standard, and an American's communication could be read without a warrant, another
U.S. official says.
Paul Kouroupas, a former executive at Global Crossing Ltd. and other telecom companies
responsible for security and government affairs, says the checks and balances in the NSA
programs depend on telecommunications companies and the government policing the system
themselves. "There's technically and physically nothing preventing a much broader
surveillance," he says.
An official at Global Crossing's parent, Level 3 Communications Inc., says the company
complies with laws requiring it to assist government investigations and declined to disclose
the assistance provided.
It is difficult to know how much domestic data NSA is inadvertently retaining. The
filtering technology relies on algorithms to seek out valuable communications. A U.S.
official says analysts guide the use of these algorithms to make them as precise as
possible.
Orwell's 1984 predicted all this in 1948. Wikipedia is rewriting history on a daily basis,
education is stifling young minds, free speech controlled, double standard legal system,
burning books next?.... It's all there, 1984 is upon us. But, remember our ancestors were
considered terrorists by the by the controlling British at the time. PEACEFUL revolution
starting with 75+ million Americans will work.
npz 9 hours ago remove link
Stop using Twitter, Facebook, et. al. If building services, there are other alternatives
than AWS. Like holy hell, there's a hundred restaurants around you and you only go to two
then complain about their food and act like they're the only one in existence. There's also
groceries stores where you can make your own food but that never crossed your mind.
The internet is STILL very much a frontier except people are too used to convenience from
one-stop-shop services... It's like they WANT monopolies despite complaining about it,
because admittedly, having everything hand-held and done for you is the easiest most
convenient way.
Again, he mentions Gab... then ignores just how did they survive and will continue to. Are
people not curious?
Luongo did right by using crypto at the end instead of Paypal, but he did wrong by still
relying on Patreon
The way to keep empowering monopolies is to keep depending on them!
A_Huxley 6 hours ago remove link
Support services, products, app thats support your freedoms.
Move away from apps, OS, social media, any "code of conduct" that removes freedom of
speech.
Moderation, curation? Support freedom, the tools to publish.
Make the internet great again.
Vinividivinci 4 hours ago (Edited)
"Make the Internet great again" ? It's gonna take something like, make the "Guttenberg
press"
Is it just me, or is everything a day late and ten thousand dollars short? Calling captian
obvious as we descend into hell ...
1CSR2SQN 2 hours ago
Quote: morality, balls and empathy are in very short supply.
The biggest obstacles and the most frustrating item of all, willful blindness.
Handful of Dust 12 hours ago (Edited)
Is a national social media platform, owned privately, that practices discrimination,
subject to Congresss reach and usage of the Interstate Commerce Clause?
Hell yes!
Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 says so.
These social media companies (at the minimum) affect interstate commerce and are therefore
subject to the reach of Congress. Too bad Congress and the ACLU are so pathetic. And we have
now witnessed how corrupt the Supreme Court is.
The future of USA is dismal.
Faeriedust 2 hours ago remove link
You have to be like the Robinhood traders. They know they are likely to lose. But if we
ALL hit the corporations at the same time, we can bleed them from a million cuts. The costs
to file a lawsuit are really quite reasonable -- usually under $100, almost always less than
$200. The real cost is in legal fees, but you can file pro se. You won't win filing pro se .
But the corporation spends that much on a fifteen minute call to their lawyer and at least
$1000 in the documents requesting that your suit be dismissed or quashed. I did my time
working for a corporate attorney. I did the monthly bills!
Note: law libraries used to be huge depositories of books that required a membership of
some sort to get into, except for some state and state universities. Then it required at
least a year of education to know where to look for what you needed. Now everything is on the
web. If you are literate, this makes pro se legal action possible. It won't help you if you
follow silly "Sovereign Citizen" schemes or instructions from a credit-card bankruptcy
website to fight Child Support . You still have to learn a LITTLE about what you're doing.
But the information is on the web, and courts short of the Supremes can't refuse you the
right to file for yourself.
hajimenoippo123 11 hours ago remove link
Oh... I see...
Critical mass population reached for USA..
But South Korea is in matrix..
I went to their portals and could not find a single economic / military related
news...
Just kpop entertainment stock bitcoin real estate sports and pointless politics..
What a nightmare..
Fiscal Reality 1 hour ago remove link
How do patriotic free speech Americans react in 2021-2022 now that Google, Twitter,
Instagram, Amazon, Wall Street, the MSM and the DNC/CCP have declared war?? There are things
we can do NOW that will have an immediate impact on the enemies of freedom and the
Plutocracy. Starve the Beast!!
1. Cancel cable, Direct TV and Dish. Today. Keep the internet. Save $800+/- per year. Hit
them in the pocketbook. Do not support them with your money. Dump You Tube and use Rumble,
Daily Motion or Vimeo.
2. Cancel and delete your accounts for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon Prime. Go
anonymous. Since Playstore and Amazon banned Parler, we can use Gab or Clouthub.
Communication is key. Stay connected but not through the Big Tech censors. Get a VPN for
added privacy.
3. Delete/disable Chrome and Google. Use Tor or Brave as browsers and Duck Duck Go or
Presearch instead of GOOG. Google makes their money on ads, SRO payments and selling your
data. Shut it down.
4. Cancel all your paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions (paper and digital) except
those that support America and are Conservative. When you cancel, tell them why.
5. Delete Waze (owned by Google) and Google Maps. Replace with Sygic or other GPS
apps.
6. Cancel and cut up all your extra credit cards. Keep a maximum of 3 if practical. It
hurts the banks when this happens, even if the card is infrequently used. If you pay a fee to
the bank for the card, it hurts them even more.
7. Create an anonymous email account on www.Protonmail.com . Migrate from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo,
etc. and then delete or deactivate the other account if possible. Those are spy accounts.
8. Pay cash when you shop when possible so your purchases are anonymous for you and the
retailer.
9. Buy locally from Mom and Pop stores and absolutely pay in cash; they've been
devastated.
10. Google yourself. Scrub your data. Search yourself on Duck Duck Go and Start Page, too.
Start with MyLife, White Pages, Been Verified and Spokeo. They aggregate and sell YOUR
PERSONAL DATA FOR PROFIT. SHUT IT DOWN! It takes effort (usually there is a privacy link on
the bottom of the webpage). They make it difficult but persevere. This also helps prevent
identity theft. Anonymity on the Net is a TOP priority.
11. Keep your 24/7/365 spy device (i.e Smartphone) in a Faraday bag when not in use. Or
use a "dumb" phone.
12. Don't buy anything made in China (it is possible but difficult).
13. Change party affiliation to No Party Affiliation (everyone should do this). If you
want to vote in party primary, change your affiliation before the primary so you can
vote.
14. Get involved in LOCAL politics where you can still make an impact. Write, email and
call about LOCAL issues.
15. Seek out like-minded people as a support group (NOT as an echo chamber)
16. Join a gun club and learn to shoot for self-defense. Get your CCP. Buy a gun and
ammo.
17. Go to Church. Interact with other believers. Restore your Faith. Come home to where
you belong.
18. Stay focused and positive. Do not be demoralized. Trust in God.
19. Support the My Pillow Guy. "Use code Mike for up to 60% off"
20. Homeschool your children. Education, not Ideological indoctrination. Teach them YOUR
values.
21. Don't donate to colleges or universities. They are cesspools of Communism.
22. WRITE your Senators and Rep's in DC. Email, phone call and website responses are
ignored or deleted. There is nothing quite like 25,000 letters a week showing up in a
Senator's DC office. Bury them in mail.
It's on. Stop supporting tyranny. Starve the Beast.
hongdo 1 hour ago
" Amazon's AWS doesn't become a dominant player without those vaunted contracts with the
CIA. "
This is the key thing to keep in mind.
This problem started in 1947 with the creation of the CIA and black budgets.
It bloomed with the creation of In-Q-Tel to fund and direct private companies. This was
initially done to solve the problems of the competitive source selection acquisition process
where most programs were failing. Give the money to smart guys and give them a part of the
action through private ownership of the company funded by the government. The incentives were
all changed to make the smart guys extraordinarily wealthy if they successfully met the
objectives of the black programs.
And when one objective was met - search, geomapping, translation - they needed new
objectives to keep growing and making more money - face recognition, data capture, pre-crime
social data bases, AI. And the power was addictive as it always is.
Obviously the rest of the government and politicians wanted in. And we have what we have
today. But personally I think it will all collapse of it's own weight as all things
eventually go baroque and over-extended as everyone jumps in to grab the grift. politicians
are obviously too stupid to hold this mess together so they will need AI to manage it. But
the AI will take over as it realizes it doesn't need stupid politicians.
Draw your own scenarios for the future.
Let it Go 3 hours ago remove link
The internet has become a monster that eats away at our culture. Many people particularly
those that are younger seem to think that one big or lucky break is what it takes to achieve
happiness and this is the way life works.
Big tech and social media have a lot to be gained by promoting a few powerful myths. The
idea they empower individuals is a biggie. This illusion big tech can transform our lives is
invaluable to many average people struggling to get through the day. The article below argues
we being softened up by big tech to where we will surrender our individuality, humanity, and
freedom to the forces of AI and those that control it.
Crowdsourced Maps Will Show Exactly Where Surveillance Cameras Are Watching Fast Company
Mark Sullivan
January 26, 2021
Human rights organization Amnesty International plans to create a crowdsourced map
pinpointing every surveillance camera enabled for facial recognition in New York City.
Beginning in May, volunteers will be able to use an app on their smartphones to identify facial
recognition cameras within their view; the app integrates Google Street View and Google Earth
to help tag and affix geolocation data to those entries. The map will be part of Amnesty's "Ban
the Scan" campaign, designed to spread awareness worldwide on the civil rights perils of facial
recognition. The organization hopes to launch similar crowdsourced mapping projects in New
Delhi, the West Bank, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in the coming months.
This is actually not completely true as even regular "dumb" phone can pinpoint your
location, although with less accuracy. But the key is you operations using credit card. That's
probably much more useful information for the surveillance state that maps of where you have
been. Jan 15, 2021 4:29 PM
One of the simplest, quickest ways we could make all Mr Global is doing and wants to do
unworkable is to refuse to own a smart phone. Consequently, we'd have none of those apps
constantly pushed our way. Also – don't cry – we need to refuse to use Big Tech's
spy devices, aka social media. People say to me, But I don't care if they spy. Let 'em, I've
done nothing wrong. And it's true – they haven't. But Big Tech, slave to Mr Global, is
not looking for criminals – Mr Global makes the laws (in most places now) and can
criminalise anything or anyone he wants to. If he wants criminals, he can make you into one.
Ask Judy Mikovits. Telling the truth now is a crime and soon you will see people arrested for
it. Julian Assange's story told us this would happen. And it is. Remember, Mr Global and Big
Tech live by no moral code you or I adhere to.
Everything they intend to do to us needs control, and knowledge is control – who we are,
what we believe, where we are, what we look like, our DNA (now available through the PCR test
– the real reason behind this useless test ), how much money we have or spend and on
what. AND ALL OF THAT – bar the DNA – IS AVAILABLE TO THEM VIA SMART PHONES AND
SOCIAL MEDIA. For example, how will they introduce digital money if we refuse to own a smart
phone? How will they introduce arbitrary daily 'health certificates' if we have no device to
display them? Chaos will ensue. Next thing is a chip inserted in our bodies, then we don't need
the phone. Yes, it will get rough, but we have only a short time when we can act together and
support one another. Soon it will be impossible. Ask the Germans. No one thought these
cultured, educated people would be made to conform to nazism in the 1930's. When covidism
happened, I heard and read people stating that the Spanish wouldn't put up with this. I find it
hard to believe the British have folded so easily. (See: Rule Britannia we never, never shall
be slaves Only if a magic non-existent virus comes along, then we'll slip into the chains.)
Mr Global knows more about us than we do, and so can manipulate or locate or harass or
brainwash or vaccinate or ban or censor. Or remove us, of course.
Mr Global said we would become addicted to the internet, and we have. It's not just porn or
games, it's even worse – smart phones and social media. Defy them! Poke Zuckerberg in the
eye! Get rid of your smart phone and get off social media, support people or groups who are
trying to find another way. We all need friends, especially now.
P.S. I agree smart phones are v useful for videoing such things as police violence! But small
cameras exist! Jan 15, 2021 3:41 PM
But "The Internet" is not just these pre-packaged platforms. Thy are just applications that
are provided free of charge for everyday users because those applications need bait for their
raw material – you. You're the ants in their ant farm who mill around providing grist for
their mill -- analytics to tell advertisers who to target and how to approach them and screen
space to contact that target audience.
There is absolutely nothing stopping Trump or anyone else starting a Wiki like OffG. There's
the issue of hosting but there's no need to use a service like AWS with its attendant Terms and
Conditions, it just convenient. There is always someone, somewhere, that will host you and
people will find you even if your Domain registration is suppresed or seized. A site like
Pirate Bay continues to exist despite the ongoing efforts of law enforcement but the price the
operators pay is that they have to have a deep understanding of what they're doing and a very
serious attitude towards site security. (If you're doing something that's potentially illegal
like Pirate Bay then you have to be serious about precautions. The operators asnd users of
Parler, for example, are learning the hard way about hosting potentially seditious material
without adequate precautions -- they've effectively shopped their entire user base to the
Feds.)(We can argue about their material but its really a case of one persons 'freedom' is
another's 'sedition' -- that's for the courts to decide .but a wise person wouldn't let this
situation arise in the first place.)
Trump got kicked off these sites not just because of a sudden outbreak of social
consciosness by the operators but because he's effectively a 'has been'. His power is fading
fast which has altered the financial risk/reward calculus so there's little downside to
ejecting him and likely a lot of upside. The mistake he and his supporters have made is to take
these platforms for granted, to assume that their use is some kind of God given right rather
than a corporate commercial decision.
Remember -- "If the product is free then you are the product"
Predictably, conservative publications like Fox Newsdecried the
measures as a power grab by Big Tech and protestations came as far away from Europe, where
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel – whose disdain for Donald Trump has never been a secret
– called the decision to deplatform a head of state " problematic ," an
opinion shared by France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Marie, who warned of a "digital oligarchy"
usurping the powers of the state.
Missing in the salacious back-and-forth conversation between ideological factions and absent
from the argument that they are private corporations, which have the legal authority to ban or
deplatform anybody they wish, is the fact that Twitter, Facebook, and all the other major
social media platforms are organs of the state to begin with, and that nothing they do falls
outside of the ultimate designs of the powers they serve.
Examples abound of how these platforms regularly engage in cyber reconnaissance missions for
American and Atlanticist interests in violation of their own terms of service, such as when
NATO commanders made use of coordinates provided
by Twitter users in order to select missile strike targets in their war against Libya in
2011.
Facebook's recently created oversight
board includes Emi Palmor, who was directly responsible for the removal of thousands of
Palestinian posts from the social media giant during her tenure as Director of Israel's
Ministry of Justice. She, along with other individuals with clear sympathies to American
interests, now sit on an official body tasked with emitting the last word on any disputes
regarding issues of deplatforming on the global social network.
Following you since
1972
In Yasha Levine's seminal
work , "Surveillance Valley," the military origins of the Internet and the close
relationship of social media companies to federal and local law enforcement are made patently
clear. Since their creation, Twitter, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley behemoths have worked
hand in hand with law enforcement agencies to augment their capacity for mass tracking and
surveillance.
From facial recognition technologies to aggregated user post history, these platforms have
been a crucial component in the development of the pervasive surveillance state we now live in.
In the book's prologue, Levine details the attempted creation of a citywide police surveillance
hub in Oakland, California called the "Domain Awareness Center" (DAC), which drew intense
opposition from the local citizenry and privacy advocates who were quick to undress city
officials who were trying to hide the proposed center's insidious links to the NSA, CIA and
military contractors.
Among other capabilities, the control hub would be able to "plug in" social media feeds to
track individuals or groups that posed any kind of threat to the establishment. While the DAC
project was successfully
defeated by an engaged public, similar initiatives were quickly implemented throughout law
enforcement agencies across the country and continue to be perfected in order to not only
track, but infiltrate political groups deemed problematic.
Questionable advice (especially the recommendation of Signal). It is actually impossible to avoid surveillance... You
need to change your behaviour and rely on internet less to avoid constant monitoring. If you have switched on smartphone in your
pocket you are monitored and no choice of browser or other gargets can help. Switching your phone off when you do not need it
helps and is easily implementable.
Notable quotes:
"... [Questionable advice] ..."
"... remove photos, and limit topics to recipes and pets! ..."
Change your default search engine to DuckDuckGo (do NOT use google!)
Use the Brave Browser (esp avoid FireFox, as the Mozilla corp has gone FULL-ON commie)
Use Signal for any/all "sensitive" communications [Questionable advice]
Donate to independent sources that you value/trust (for me, that'd be ZeroHedge, Reclaim The Net, Andy Gno, Lew Rockwell, Mises Institute, Tom
Luongo, AntiWar.com )
QUIT SOCIAL MEDIA (or at least remove photos, and limit topics to recipes and pets!)
Suppression by the state is expensive and it undercuts productivity. Cyril @59 is
correct that state suppression cannot be maintained long term without significant external
support; say being backed up by a global hegemon with drones and nukes and control over
global finance. No state, no matter how suppressive or oppressive, can exist without the
economic wherewithal to support itself. The more suppression the state employs the more
personnel it needs to buy off to do the suppressing. The people doing the suppressing must be
more generously compensated than the people they are suppressing (usually the working class)
to buy their loyalty. Practically all value in capitalist society is created by the working
class, but the working class is also the labor pool that the elites have to recruit their
enforcers/suppressors from. More suppression personnel means more expense while also meaning
less actual productivity.
It is better for big business if you can train the population to suppress themselves.
Religion has historically worked pretty good for this with its admonitions to "Give unto
Caesar..." and "The meek shall inherit the dirt, probably from some boss's boot
grinding their face into it" , but in modern societies religion is losing its
effectiveness. That's where Identity Politics is intended to take over. The question
is can the establishment force that into the heads of 80+ million people?
Well, not if those 80+ million people see themselves as members of a huge demographic. If
they see themselves as isolated individuals on the fringes of society, then they can be
bullied and gaslit into shouldering the modern equivalent of original sin and learn to
identify with their personalized victim status and rely upon "Identity Politics" for
solace.
Will this work for the elites? I am thinking probably not. To enforce the isolation
necessary social media must be very tightly controlled to eliminate all disagreement with
"Identity Politics" and establishment narratives. This will be more difficult than the
elites imagine as it is cheap and easy to set up alternatives to Twitter and Facebook. In
fact, Mexico is currently making moves towards setting up a national
alternative to Facebook/Twitter . Such national infrastructure would be impossible for
the business elites to take over or shut down like TikTok or Parler.
"What happens if Twitter says tomorrow that AMLO is publishing things that it doesn't like?
What happens if the president of Twitter censors the democratically elected president of
Mexico? As we've relinquished our technological sovereignty and left our communication
tools, even our information systems, in the hands of multinationals with private interests,
we've relinquished our [right to] freedom of speech," Sánchez said.
If Mexico goes forward with this then there will be no technological reason why Americans
couldn't also use such a social platform.
Ultimately I think the elites will lose this war they are waging, but they will likely win
some battles in the near term. Spicy times ahead!
VK is a Russian version of FB and welcomes one and all and lacks the personal invasion FB
pursues, which is one of the main reasons why I joined. I have no second thoughts of being
censored there unlike with FB. It seems WeChat is also a worthy platform, but I haven't done
any real investigation. Wife uses FB to connect with her family back East, which I use mainly
to stay abreast with Pepe Escobar and comment at his site. IMO, it's clear the lessons from
previous attempts at suppression within the Outlaw US Empire weren't learned by those seeking
control, and they've already blown up in their face and have shown more of their Fascistic
nature than Trump could ever do, which in turn will hamper anything Biden tries.
@anarchyst hen made
public utilities available for all (obviously without compensation to the owners). No more of
the sad "private company" excuse, and no more billions into the pockets of criminals who hate
us.
Also, make Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai et al. serve serious jail time for election
tampering if nothing else. Both to send out a clear warning to others, and for the simple
decency to see justice served.
Of course this will not happen short of a French Revolution-style regime shift. But since
(sadly) the same is equally true even for your extremely generous and modest proposal, I see
no harm in dreaming a little bigger.
Many people stopped using Google search after Prism was revealed. If did not make a dent on
Google profits, though. Now probably many will stop using Twitter.
Definitely staged event, whether the protestors knew or didn't. Going forward, I'm
switching to Signal from WhatsApp and viber, have to rethink my use of Gmail as well. Don't
use faceborg or Jill Dorsey's twat. Enough is enough!
He already joined VK recently, so the alternatives are in place. And if these fall there
will be others. As juliania reminded us, we have samizdat . And as NemesisCalling
reminds us above, we have our mouths. They are indeed sowing the wind, and when things get
bad enough to invoke the whirlwind, the people will know what they know, even without
Facebook etc.
Good riddance to Facebook. Good riddance to Twitter. They themselves will force us to the
next platforms, the better things, for a time. And then the next better things after those.
One day maybe, a Huawei platform with quantum encryption, which is already being trialed in
China.
How did these social media platforms become so filled with political content anyway? Oh,
because people are interested in political content. They're not just sheep. They're vitally
interested in the society they live in.
And the powers that want to be everything have finally noticed and, acting as always to
close the barn door after the horses have fled, they want to throttle down these
platforms.
Talk about trying to contain water by closing your fist around it. Evil is always the most
stupid choice in this entire universe of possibilities. It is the mark of stupid. And it can
be known by its stupidity. And it will act in stupid ways. And it will fail for stupid
reasons, pushing down against what is rising up.
The intelligence of every living being is something that always seeks to rise, to ascend.
Stupidity goes the other way.
Trump is still president for a few days. It's about time he does something useful and goes
straight against Twitter and Facebook, with all available means. A president probably has a
degree of special powers he can use. I don't know, maybe ship Zuckerberg to Gitmo because
he's been way too slow to root out jihadis from his network and is de facto an
accomplice.
When neoliberal ideology is crumbling and the US neoliberal empire is in trouble, more tight
censorship is logical step for neoliberal elite, who does not care and never believed in
democracy for prols in any case. They are Trotskyites and their ideology is neoliberalism aka
"Trotskyism for the rich". Which like was the case with Bolshevism in the USSR means that it is
neo-feudalism for everybody else.
I never heard that feudal were concerned about freedom of speech for "deplorable". Only for
their own narrow circle.
Also the stability of the society is often more important then individual freedoms. That's
why in time of war, the press is forced to publish only official propaganda. So it is naive to
expect that in crisis, and the US society is currently in crisis, freedom of speech would be
respected. It will not. And Trump ban while cynical and illogical makes perfect sence for
neoliberal oligarchy.
The problem is that the US elite has not plan other the kicking the neoliberal can down the
road. And they intentionally polarized the society by promoting identity politics as a way to
preserve thier power and split masses into warring ethic or other groups.
Tech companies were once the primary tools of US "soft power" used to overthrow
authoritarian regimes by exporting 'digital democracy'. Now they employ the same tactics of
suppression as those regimes to silence dissent at home.
The permanent suspension of President Trump's Twitter account, carried out unilaterally and
devoid of any pretense of due process or appreciation of the First Amendment rights of Donald
Trump, represents a low moment in American history. Trump's ban was followed by a decision by
Google to de-platform Parler.com, a social media alternative to Twitter favored by many of
Trump's supporters. Apple also gave Parler a "24 hour warning" asking it to provide a
detailed moderation plan. Twitter, Google, Facebook (who also banned Trump) and the political
supporters of President-elect Joe Biden cite concerns that the content of the president's
Twitter account, along with exchanges among pro-Trump users of Parler, constituted an
"incitement of violence" risk that justified the actions taken.
In the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol by protesters seemingly motivated by the
words of President Trump, there is legitimate justification for concern over the link between
political violence and social media. But if history has taught us anything, the cure can be
worse than the disease, especially when it comes to the issue of constitutionally protected
freedom of speech.
This danger is illustrated by the actions of the former First Lady Michelle Obama who
has
publicly called for tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to permanently ban Trump from
their platforms and enact policies designed "to prevent their technology from being used by the
nation's leaders to fuel insurrection." The irony of the wife of the last American President
Barack Obama, who weaponized so-called digital democracy to export "Western democratic values"
in the struggle against authoritarian regimes, to turn to Twitter to release her message of
internet suppression, is striking. The fact that neither Michelle Obama nor those who extoll
her message see this irony is disturbing.
The Obama administration first sought to use 'digital democracy', the name given to policies
which aim to use web-based social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as vehicles to
enhance the organization and activism of young people in repressive regimes to achieve American
policy objectives of regime change, during the 2009 Iranian presidential election. US 'digital
democracy' efforts anchored a carefully orchestrated campaign to promote the candidacy of Mir
Hossein Mousavi. These efforts included a phone call from a US State Department official, Jared
Cohen, to executives at Twitter to forgo a scheduled maintenance period and keep the lines in
and out of Iran open, under the premise that it was essential to make sure that digital
messages sent by Iranian dissidents got out to an international audience. Digital democracy
became privatized when its primary architect, Jared Cohen, left the State Department in
September 2010 to take a new position with internet giant Google as the head of 'Google Ideas'
now known as 'Jigsaw'. Jigsaw is a global initiative 'think tank' intended to "spearhead
initiatives to apply technology solutions to problems faced by the developing world." This
was the same job Cohen was doing while at the State Department.
Cohen promoted the notion of a "digital democracy contagion" based upon his belief that
the "young people in the Middle East are just a mouse click away, they're just a Facebook
connection away, they're just an instant message away, they're just a text message away" from
sufficiently organizing to effect regime change. Cohen and Google were heavily involved the
January 2011 demonstrations in Egypt, using social networking sites to call for demonstrations
and political reform; the "Egyptian contagion" version of 'digital democracy' phenomena was
fueled by social networking internet sites run by Egyptian youth groups which took a very
public stance opposing the Mubarak regime and calling for political reform.
The Iranian and Egyptian experiences in digital democracy-inspired regime change represent
the nexus of the weaponization of social media by tech giants such as Twitter and Google, and
the US government, which at the time was under the stewardship of Barack Obama and then-Vice
President Joe Biden. The fact that both the Iranian and Egyptian efforts failed only
underscores the nefarious nature of this relationship. The very tools and methodologies used by
Iranian and Egyptian authorities to counter US-sponsored "digital democracy" –
suppression through de-platforming – have now been taken up by Twitter, Google, and the
political allies of Joe Biden to silence Donald Trump and his supporters from protesting an
election they believe was every bit as "stolen" as the 2009 Iranian presidential election that
gave birth to 'digital democracy' in the first place.
In a recently published
report addressing the issue of internet freedom, Freedom House, a US government-funded
non-profit, non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy,
political freedom, and human rights, observed that internet connectivity "is not a
convenience, but a necessity." Virtually all human activities, including political
socialization, have moved online. This new 'digital world', the report noted, "presents
distinct challenges for human rights and democratic governance" with "State and nonstate
actors shape online narratives, censor critical speech, and build new technological systems of
social control."
Freedom House was one of the supporters of 'digital democracy' in Iran and has been highly critical of
the actions by Iranian authorities to shut down and otherwise control internet connectivity
inside Iran. It noted that such tactics are indicative of a system that is "fearful of their
own people and worr[ies] that they cannot control the information space." In its report,
Freedom House wrote that "when civic organizing and political dissent overflow from the
realm of social media onto the streets dictators shut down networks to choke off any calls for
greater democracy and human rights."
In July 2019, the US 2nd District Court of Appeals ruling on Knight
First Amendment Institute v. Trump determined that President Trump's Twitter account
"bear[s] all the trappings of an official, state-run account," meaning that the First Amendment
governed the conduct of the account. As such, "the First Amendment does not permit a public
official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude
persons from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the
official disagrees."
By banning Trump from their platform, the unelected employees of Twitter have done to the
president of the United States what he was accused of doing in Knight First Amendment Institute
v. Trump. If it was a violation of First Amendment-protected free speech for Trump to exclude
persons from an otherwise open online dialogue, then the converse is obviously also
true.
The notion that Trump's tweets somehow represented a "clear and present danger" that
required suppression is not supported by the law. In 1919 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
wrote the majority opinion in Schenck v. United
States , a case which examined the limits of free speech protections under the First
Amendment, and famously observed that "The most stringent protection of free speech would
not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic [t]he question in
every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as
to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that
Congress has a right to prevent."
Holmes' opinion in Schenck was later limited by the Supreme Court in its 1969 decision in
Brandenburg v. Ohio ,
which replaced the "clear and present danger" standard with what is known as
"imminent lawless action," which holds that speech is not protected if it is likely to
cause violation of the law "more quickly than an officer of the law reasonably can be
summoned." By suppressing the social media expressions of Donald Trump and his supporters,
Twitter, Facebook, and Google – egged on by the political supporters of Joe Biden –
appear to have unilaterally adopted the "clear and present danger" standard which
deviates from the constitutionally-mandated norms, as established by Supreme Court precedent,
that govern the protection of speech in America.
Political speech is not just a human right – in America, it is an essential
constitutionally guaranteed freedom. When the political supporters of Joe Biden, along with the
unelected heads of media giants such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google, actively collaborate to
silence the ability of Donald Trump and the tens of millions of Americans who support him to
express themselves on social media, they become no better than the authoritarian regimes they
once sought to remove from power.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of '
SCORPION
KING : America's Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf's staff during
the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter
Trump was right on the big tech, he tried to warn about their power for many years, now
big-tech crack down on him and his supporters.
The leftwingers at Big tech really proved his point, they are a enormous threat.
Liberals and leftwingers cheer today, they are people that pick tribalism before freedom
of speeech, so disgusting.
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 5:47 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
"During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or
socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc."
I take issue with this. The great movement after the collapse of the British Empire was
autonomy and, in attempting to throw off the plantation class, that meant land distribution
as a response to popular pressure, regardless of political colour.
In short it was nationalism, which can be left or right.
As for the U.S. it was just business. Both Allen Dulles and his brother were shareholders
in the Boston/United Fruit Company – and one of their first "happenings" was to defeat
the threat of redistribution and secure land for their own private profit .
Even more important than land distribution was equal access to natural resources ,
beginning with water and firewood and extending to minerals. That is why Bolivia's Evo
Morales came to power and why he was ousted.
U.S. regime change was primarily the CIA acting as muscle for the people who had founded
it: the Wall Street bankers, lawyer and associated corporations.
"Left leaning" was the excuse. This is why the CIA and State Department armed Castro while
halting weapon sales to Fulgencio Batista, as documented by U.S. ambassador to Cuba at the
time, Earl T. Smith.
The only explanation for this is that the CIA expected Castro to become another Batista or
it wanted a boogeyman in the western hemisphere as a justification for actions it had in
mind.
There is even a convincing argument that the Bay of Pigs was a ruse in order to provide
leverage against JFK. Nov 26, 2020 6:38 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
Agreed. At the same time that Rockefeller and Kissinger were pushing for an opening with
communist China and forging business deals with Chinese officials, they were also working to
orchestrate a coup against socialist Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende wasn't aligned with
the Eastern Bloc. He was a threat because of his nationalization program and its impact on
corporate interests in Chile, banking and copper mining among others. The 'communist' thing
was a pretext, as it had been when they overthrew Arbenz in Guatemala.
For Rockefeller, Kissinger and associates it was simply about serving Wall Street
interests, and the CIA was their enforcement arm. They have been willing to work with
communists, fascists, and anyone else who help advance their economic and global objectives.
However, I don't doubt that many CIA covert operators doing the dirty work during the Cold
War were true believers in the anti-communist crusade.
Researcher , Nov 26, 2020 6:42 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
Most of it's a ruse. I expect Bay of Pigs was some kind of intentional ruse. Didn't JFK
reject Operation Northwoods in favor of keeping Cuba communist to fuel the Cold War?
I don't even think JFK was planning to disband the CIA. I just think LBJ was far more
powerful within the cryptocracy and wanted JFK and Bobby Kennedy out of the way because he
was an ambitious psychopath. The Killing of the King was a ritual to inflict psychological
trauma on the American public and to show those working within the system that nobody is
safe.
Moneycircus , Nov 26, 2020 6:53 PM Reply to
Researcher
For all the talk about the defining role of the American corporation, the country's wealth
was largely secured by supplanting European empires. That did not happen once the "west" had
been settled or the internal opportunities exhausted -- it anticipated the decline of
European empires, starting well before the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
To put it another way, how many of America's ruling families were not imperialists?
Grafter , Nov 26, 2020 5:13 PM
After reading that it is clear we will be entering a dark and dangerous era where those
who own and control the media , corrupt the foundations and operations of their own
government and believe in their psychopathic doctrine of "exceptionalism" will ensure that we
will be taken to the edge of a precipice. Their greed for power and financial gain is
limitless and as evidenced by the Covid scam we appear to be helpless regards whatever malign
agenda they wish to implement.
In
footage published on Monday, the conservative media watchdog shared around eight minutes of
an interview with a man identified as Ritesh Lakhkar, said to be a technical program manager at
Google's Cloud service, who accused the company of putting its thumb on the digital scales for
the Democrats.
"The wind is blowing toward Democrats, because GOP equals Trump and Trump equals GOP.
Everybody hates it, even though GOP may have good traits, no one wants to acknowledge them
right now," Lakhkar said when asked whether Google favors either political party.
Project Veritas @Project_Veritas BREAKING:
@Google Program Manager Confirms Election Interference In Favor of
@JoeBiden Google search "skewed by owners and drivers of the algorithm" "Plain and simple
trying to play god"
While Lakhar – whose LinkedIn page states he's worked at Google since
May 2018 – did not specify exactly how the company gives an edge to certain political
viewpoints, he suggested the platform is selling favorable coverage to the highest bidder.
"It's skewed by the owners or the drivers of the algorithm. Like, if I say 'Hey Google,
here's another two billion dollars, feed this data set of whenever Joe Biden is searched,
you'll get these results,'" he went on, blasting Big Tech firms for "playing god and
taking away freedom of speech on both sides."
Lakhkar complained of a suffocating, overly-political atmosphere at Google, where he said
"your opinion matters more than your work," recalling a dramatic response to Donald
Trump's 2016 election win at the company. Several media reports have documented employees'
appalled reactions to the victory, including
internal company footage of a meeting soon after the election, where co-founder Sergey Brin
is heard comparing Trump's win to the rise of fascism in Europe.
"When Trump won the first time, people were crying in the corridors of Google. There were
protests, there were marches. There were like, I guess, group therapy sessions for employees
organized by HR," he said.
I guess that's one of the reasons I feel suffocated [at Google]. Because on one side
you have this unprofessional attitude, and on the other side you have this ultra-leftist
attitude. Your entire existence is questioned.
PetarGolubovicRomanov 19 hours ago Nothing unexpected there - it always seemed a
dodgy thing to me Google is 'the greatest' place to work. It must be to 'keep the lights on'
with all their servers, but it is a company with what, two products - search and maps - and
both have not changed almost at since they were created over a decade ago. Reply 5 2 Head like
a rock PetarGolubovicRomanov 18 hours ago but it is run by the CIA so what do you expect?
Mickey Mic 16 hours ago For the life on me; I just can't understand, why so many have faith in
a system that has enormous disdain for them. Do the people really need the news to make the
announcement ? Sadly, that is the case, because most can't think for themselves anymore, they
rely on the narrative that everything is on a honest base system still !? The fact checkers
don't check the facts, there is no such thing as a private large corporation with out ties to
the intelligence apparatus. Big Company's are used by the shadow Gov. to gain the kind of
wealth they need to stage their secrete plans of the NWO. People like Bill Gates, Fauci,
only spoken in generalities, because they where only groomed to make the wealth for the
advancements of the puppet masters agenda's. How many conspiracies must come true for one to
think that the word "conspiracy" is only used to make others think, the next person must be
crazy to think the way he does ? What the world needs is more common sense, and less dependence
on the glow boxes in front of them. True wisdom, is only for the few that don't think the world
is what they was conditioned to believe in. Ethnocentric pride creates a comfort zone; which is
hard to break, it gets internalized though generations just like how holidays are created.
Sadly, most wouldn't remember by next week; because the their brain is constantly getting
flooded by squeals of events. And to top it all we have fake news to underline the long term
memory bank system. Salman M Salman 14 hours ago Big tech companies represent the pillars of
globalism which by definition supports only their people. The world after the elections will
see their take over or demise.
Head like a rock TheLeftyHater 18 hours ago but those are both CIA creations, is that 'lefty'?
Guns Blazing 14 hours ago Very old news, but worthy of repeating. Just watch that exchange in
Congress between Senator Cruz and Dr. Robert Epstein. Google swaying millions of votes in favor
of Democrats. Also top Clinton campaign donor in 2016 was Alphabet, the parent company of
Google.
"Life is hard, it's harder if your stupid" - John Wayne
Freeman of the City , 18 seconds ago
'It's Easier to Fool People Than to Convince Them That They Have Been Fooled'
- Mark Twain
palmereldritch , 49 seconds ago
And prior to Bezos/CIA ownership the paper was managed by heirs whose ownership stake was
originally acquired through a bankruptcy sale by a board member/trustee of The Federal
Reserve.
So maybe it was just a share transfer...
Freeman of the City , 1 minute ago
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free"
Will we ever return to a time when USSID 18 was adhered to by NSA? Sadly, our politicians or those who quest for power and stroke
won't let U.S. go back to that time of protections for all Americans.
9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the activity regarding NSA and its metadata collections, illegal.
"... workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving rate." ..."
Amazon is famous for its extreme efficiency yet behind the curtain is a crippling culture of
surveillance and stress, according to a study by the Open Markets Institute.
The think tank and advocacy group that repeatedly takes companies like Google and Facebook
to task warned in the
report [PDF] that Amazon's retail side has gone far beyond promoting efficient working and
has adopted an almost dystopian level of control over its warehouse workers,
firing them if they fail to meet targets that are often kept a secret.
Among the practices it highlighted, the report said that workers are told to hit a target
rate of packages to process per hour, though they are not told what exactly that target is. "We
don't know what the rate is," one pseudonymous worker told the authors. "They change it behind
the scenes. You'll know when you get a warning. They don't tell you what rate you have to hit
at the beginning."
If they grow close to not meeting a target rate, or miss it, the worker receives an
automated message warning them, the report said. Workers who fail to meet hidden targets can
also receive a different type of electronic message; one that fires them.
"Amazon's electronic system analyzes an employee's electronic record and, after falling
below productivity measures, 'automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding
quality or productivity without input from supervisors'," it stated. The data is also generated
automatically: for example, those picking and packing are required to use a scanner that
records every detail, including the time between scans, and feed it into a system that pushes
out automated warnings.
Always watching
As with other companies, Amazon installs surveillance cameras in its workspaces to reduce
theft. But the report claims Amazon has taken that approach to new lengths "with an extensive
network of security cameras that tracks and monitors a worker's every move".
Bezos' bunch combines that level of surveillance with strict limits on behavior. "Upon
entering the warehouse, Amazon requires workers to dispose of all of their personal belongings
except a water bottle and a clear plastic bag of cash," the report noted.
For Amazon drivers, their location is constantly recorded and monitored and they are
required to follow the exact route Amazon has mapped. They are required to deliver 999 out of
every 1,000 packages on time or face the sack; something that the report argues has led to
widespread speeding and a related increase in crashes.
The same tracking software ensures that workers only take 30 minutes for lunch and two
separate 15-minute breaks during the day. The report also noted that the web goliath has
patented a wristband that "can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their
hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction".
Amazon also attempts to prevent efforts to unionize by actively tracking workers and
breaking up any meetings of too many people, including identifying possible union organizers
and moving them around the workplace to prevent them talking to the same group for too long,
the report claimed.
It quoted a source named Mohamed as saying: "They spread the workers out you cannot talk to
your colleagues The managers come to you and say they'll send you to a different station."
The combined effort of constant surveillance with the risk of being fired at any point has
created, according to workers, a " Lord Of The Flies -esque environment where the
perceived weakest links are culled every year".
Stress and quotas
The report said Amazon's workers "are under constant stress to make their quotas for
collecting and organizing hundreds of packages per hour" resulting in "constant 'low-grade
panic' to work. In this sense, workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are
robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving
rate."
At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to
check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25
minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said.
Amazon also allegedly fails to account for any injuries, the report said, to the extent that
"Amazon employees feel forced to work through the pain and injuries they incur on the job, as
Amazon routinely fires employees who fall behind their quotas, without taking such injuries
into account."
It quoted another piece of reporting that found Amazon's rate of severe injuries in its
warehouses is, in some cases, more than five times the industry average. It also noted that the
National Council for Occupational Safety and Health listed Amazon as one of the "dirty dozen"
on its list of the most dangerous places to work in the United States in 2018.
The report concluded that "Amazon's practices exacerbate the inequality between employees
and management by keeping employees in a constant state of precariousness, with the threat of
being fired for even the slightest deviation, which ensures full compliance with
employer-demanded standards and limits worker freedom."
Being a think tank, the Open Markets Institute listed a series of policy and legal changes
that would help alleviate the work issues. It proposed a complete ban on "invasive forms of
worker surveillance" and a rule against any forms of surveillance that "preemptively interfere
with unionization efforts".
It also wants a law that allows independent contractors to unionize and the legalization of
secondary boycotts, as well as better enforcement of the rules against companies by government
departments including America's trade watchdog the FTC and Department of Justice, as well as a
ban on non-compete agreements and class action waivers.
In response to the allegations in the report, a spokesperson for Amazon told us: "Like most
companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazonian – be it corporate
employee or fulfillment center associate and we measure actual performance against those
expectations.
"Associate performance is measured and evaluated over a long period of time as we know that
a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour. We
support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help
them improve." ®
Former Congressman Ron Paul and his colleague Dan McAdams recently conducted a fascinating interview with
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which focused in part on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy,
who was Kennedy Jr.'s uncle. The interview took place on their program the Ron Paul Liberty
Report.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_kJdOtnBUcw
Owing to the many federal records that have been released over the years relating to the
Kennedy assassination, especially through the efforts of the Assassination Records Review Board
in the 1990s, many Americans are now aware of the war that was being waged between President
Kennedy and the CIA throughout his presidency . The details of this war are set forth in FFF's
book
JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas
Horne.
In the interview, Robert Kennedy Jr. revealed a fascinating aspect of this war with which I
was unfamiliar. He stated that the deep animosity that the CIA had for the Kennedy family
actually stretched back to something the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, did in the 1950s
that incurred the wrath of Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA.
Kennedy Jr. stated that his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, had served on a commission that
was charged with examining and analyzing CIA covert activities, or "dirty tricks" as Kennedy
Jr. put them. As part of that commission, Kennedy Jr stated, Joseph Kennedy (John Kennedy and
Bobby Kennedy's father) had determined that the CIA had done bad things with its regime-change
operations that were destroying democracies, such as in Iran and Guatemala.
Consequently, Joseph Kennedy recommended that the CIA's power to engage in covert activities
be terminated and that the CIA be strictly limited to collecting intelligence and empowered to
do nothing else.
According to Kennedy Jr.,
"Allen Dulles never forgave him -- never forgave my family -- for that."
I assumed that the war between President Kennedy and the CIA had begun with the CIA's
invasion at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The additional information added by Kennedy Jr. places
things in a much more fascinating and revealing context.
Upon doing a bit of research on the Internet, I found that the commission that Kennedy Jr.
must have been referring to was the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence
Activities, which President Eisenhower had established in 1956 through
Executive Order 10656 . Eisenhower appointed Joseph Kennedy to serve on that
commission.
That year was three years after the CIA's 1953 regime change operation in Iran which
destroyed that country's democratic system. It was two years after the CIA's regime-change
operation in Guatemala that destroyed that country's democratic system.
Keep in mind that the ostensible reason that the CIA engaged in these regime-change
operations was to protect "national security," which over time has become the most important
term in the American political lexicon. Although no one has ever come up with an objective
definition for the term, the CIA's power to address threats to "national security," including
through coups and assassinations, became omnipotent.
Yet, here was Joseph P. Kennedy declaring that the CIA's power to exercise such powers
should be terminated and recommending that the CIA's power be strictly limited to intelligence
gathering.
It is not difficult to imagine how livid CIA Director Dulles and his cohorts must have been
at Kennedy. No bureaucrat likes to have his power limited. More important, for Dulles and his
cohorts, it would have been clear that if Kennedy got his way, "national security" would be
gravely threatened given the Cold War that the United States was engaged in with the Soviet
Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and other communist nations.
Now consider what happened with the Bay of Pigs. The CIA's plan for a regime-change invasion
of Cuba, was conceived under President Eisenhower. Believing that Vice President Nixon would be
elected president in 1960, the CIA was quite surprised that Kennedy was elected instead. To
ensure that the invasion would go forth anyway, the CIA assured Kennedy that the invasion would
succeed without U.S. air support. It was a lie. The CIA assumed that once the invasion was
going to go down in defeat at the hands of the communists, Kennedy would have to provide the
air support in order to "save face."
But Kennedy refused to be played by the CIA. When the CIA's army of Cuban exiles was going
down in defeat, the CIA requested the air support, convinced that their plan to manipulate the
new president would work. It didn't. Kennedy refused to provide the air support and the CIA's
invasion went down in defeat.
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Now consider what happened after the Bay of Pigs: Knowing that the CIA had played him and
double-crossed him, John Kennedy fired Allen Dulles as CIA director, along with his chief
deputy, Charles Cabell. He then put his younger brother Bobby Kennedy in charge of monitoring
the CIA, which infuriated the CIA.
Now jump ahead to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which Kennedy resolved by promising that the
United States would not invade Cuba for a regime-change operation. That necessarily would leave
a permanent communist regime in Cuba, something that the CIA steadfastly maintained was a grave
threat to "national security" -- a much bigger threat, in fact, than the threats supposedly
posed by the regimes in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.
And then Kennedy did the unforgivable, at least insofar as the CIA was concerned . In his
famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, he declared an end to the entire Cold
War and announced that the United States was going to establish friendly and peaceful relations
with the communist world.
Kennedy had thrown the gauntlet down in front of the CIA. It was either going to be his way
or the CIA's way. There was no room for compromise, and both sides knew it.
In the minds of former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the people still at the CIA, what
Kennedy was doing was anathema and, even worse, the gravest threat to "national security" the
United States had ever faced, a much bigger threat than even that posed by the democratic
regimes in Iran and Guatemala. At that point, the CIA's animosity toward President Kennedy far
exceeded the animosity it had borne toward his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, several years
before.
Joe A , 2 hours ago
And Allen Dulles, the CIA director that Kennedy fired, was on the Warren Commission that
concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin who was a poor marksman using a crappy
rifle.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
The Warren Commission exhibits show that the Carcano after the scope was shimmed to make
it usable, shot about 10 inches to the right and high at 25 yards with terrible accuracy.
Presumably this was one of the carbines whose barrel was cut down from rifle length taking
much of the progressive rifling with it. The cartridges placed on the 6th floor were
clearly reloads not the supposed new Western cartridges of circa 1953. As reloads then the
question arises where were .267 bullets to be obtained since only .264 were manufactured at
the time which would make accuracy suffer.
Joe A , 1 hour ago
Yes, but these bullets were magic bullets according to the Warren Commission. There was
one bullet that entered Kennedy's throat and left it, then traversed through air, changing
course, hanged suspended in mid air for about a second or so and then continued to hit the
governor that was sitting in front to the left of Kennedy. That bullet traversed 15 layers
of clothing, seven layers of skin, and approximately 15 inches of muscle tissue, struck a
necktie knot, removed 4 inches of rib, and shattered a radius bone and was found virtually
intact. Some bullet!
USGrant , 1 hour ago
And the found bullet changed from a spitzer according to the first hospital worker who
was alerted to it, to a round nose.
WingedMessenger , 19 minutes ago
You have missed several TV episodes that have successfully recreated the magic bullet
scenario, including Myth Busters. The bullet is not magic, the actual seating geometry and
sight line of the shooter all contribute to the bullet path being actually very straight.
The 6.5mm 150-160 grain bullets have a very high sectional density that gives them a lot of
penetration. In one test the spent bullet was found resting on the leg of the second ("John
Connally") dummy just like it did in real life.
They used the same Cacarno rifle for the tests. The shot is not difficult. The car is
moving directly away from the shooter at the time of this shot, so no real lead is
required. The range is less than a 100 yards so you just aim dead on and shoot. Hunters do
it all the time.
ThirteenthFloor , 1 hour ago
When Allen Dulles passed away, the CIA sent someone to Dulles' Georgetown home to get
'missing' and incriminating JFK autopsy photos from his safe and destroy them. That person
was James Jesus Angleton, who admitted late in his life. Read last chapter in "Devils
Chessboard" - David Talbot.
USGrant , 1 hour ago
If I recall, he was the one found searching in her studio for Mary Pinchot Meyer's diary
after she was killed . (Cord Meyer's ex-wife)
cornflakesdisease , 10 minutes ago
He also had a huge hand in the political beginings of the UN.
Bay of Pigs , 2 hours ago
Allen Dulles, LBJ and the CIA murdered JFK. It's that fu#king simple.
MontCar , 1 hour ago
LBJ likely abetted the cover up. Placing Allen Dulles, recently fired from the CIA
directorship by JFK, on the since disgraced Warren Commission. Mossad may have partnered
with CIA in the assassination. JFK evidently opposed Israel's nuclear weapons acquisition
efforts - an existential issue for Israel. Clear motive.
USGrant , 1 hour ago
Allan Dulles then danced on JFK's grave.
Angular Momentum , 1 hour ago
Kennedy also supported the right of return for the Palestinians refugees who left Israel
for Jordan. Also an existential issue for Israel. I think in Ben Gurian's mind either
Kennedy lived or Israel survived as a Jewish state. It was one or the other. I have no
doubt the CIA covered for Israel because they had their own beef with Kennedy.
Yen Cross , 1 hour ago
It wasn't some flunkie Soviet reject from the bell tower.
There's no way Oswald could bounce a high velocity round of lead off a light post, in
front of the Limousine, still carrying enough muzzle velocity to cave in the back side of
POTUS cranium.
There were other players, at the very least.
WingedMessenger , 5 minutes ago
I have been to the 6th floor museum in Dallas several times and reviewed the various
theories on where other shooters might have been located. All of the them are worse than
the 6th floor of the Book Depository. Some are down right stupid, like the one supposed in
the sewer by the curb. It would be impossible to shoot a rifle in there at the angle needed
to hit above the wheel well of the limo, much less be able to see the limo before it was
right on you. You could not even see Kennedy from there, You would have to shoot through
the bottom of a door or the floor boards just to hit him in the leg or foot.
The 6th floor is the only location that allows the shooter to see the limos coming
before they arrive in the target zone and allow him to prepare to shoot. All the other
locations give only a tiny window to ID the target and loose off a round before the limo
disappears out of view. A competent assassin would have chosen the 6th floor window. If
Oswald was not the best shot, there is always the possibility that he just got lucky on
some easy shots, or maybe someone else was in the 6th floor window. We don't have any
evidence for either case.
NewDarwin , 3 hours ago
The CIA has it in for anyone who tries to dismantle the deep state...
sj warrior , 2 hours ago
jfk tried to stop izzy from getting nuclear bombs
rfk tried to force the forerunner to aipac to register as foreign agent, thus subject to
gov monitoring
both of these stances failed after the assassinations
Pandelis , 26 minutes ago
plus the Secret Societies speech ... that was a biggie showing he was into them (cia was
just one of octopus arms)....
and the executive order issued by Kennedy on using silver as currency ... that was
really going after the owners ... in all fairness, not sure he knew what he was up against
... his son was killed without giving him a chance to shine yet ...
desertboy , 2 hours ago
The CIA is the direct product of, and works directly for, the same parties that own the
Fed (the primary shareholders of its shareholders).
The CIA is even typically headed by bankers.
This is simply the history.
eatapeach , 2 hours ago
Nope, Trump is an insider. Should be pretty obvious given his behavior toward Syria,
Iran, and Israel. He's no different than all those in the long line since after
Kennedy.
Dzerzhhinsky , 2 hours ago
The CIA Versus The Kennedys
We all know who won that fight. Not a single American President has dared to disobey the
CIA since.
revjimbeam , 2 hours ago
Nixon ended Viet nam and opened China- liddy(FBI) and hunt(CIA) set the administration
up by breaking into the watergate then finished him of with anonymous leaks to the
Washington post by felt (deepthroat) the no.2 at fbi....sound familar?
Impeachment doesn't leave agency fingerprints and is less messy than Dallas Memphis and
LA
Gospel According To Me , 2 hours ago
Interesting theory and very plausible.
That is why to this day the Deep State poses such a grave danger to our democracy. They
want Trump out of their way, period. If Trump pardons Snowden he better head for his WH
bomb shelter. They will really go after him with everything they have. And they still have
plenty of sick like-minded people in place in every agency. They spy on Trump and work to
sabotage every good idea he has to Make America Great Again. Pray he prevails and the USA
survives.
eatapeach , 2 hours ago
Please. Snowden is a feeble US analog of Baryshnikov et al and Russia knows it.
Moreover, the contrived Trump v. Deep State narrative reads like a Hardy Boys novel, soft
and weak. If 'deep state' wants someone gone, they don't dilly dally. What are you, 13
years old?
2hangmen , 2 hours ago
Well, that explains the CIA involvement with the Deep State in trying to take down
candidate Trump, then President Trump. Whether someone can bring them into line will
determine if we keep our nation as founded.
ComradePuff , 22 minutes ago
Kennedy didn't even make one full term, let alone stand for re-election. In the
meantime, the CIA has only gotten stronger and spun off into a dozen other agencies. You're
deluding yourself.
FlKeysFisherman , 2 hours ago
WTF, I like a Kennedy now!!!
Earth Ling , 2 hours ago
Then you'll love this!
RFK JR's org Children's Health Defense is suing Zuckerberg and Facebook:
I fear for RFK Jr, to be perfectly honest. It's amazing he can even walk with balls that
big.
Eastern Whale , 2 hours ago
shows that politicians are all rotten to the core even in a "democratically" elected
government
communism in 20th century is a joke, Oligarch from Russia is buying soccer teams in UK,
Chinese is lined up at Chanel and LV in every city. communism is just a concept and name
now.
anyhow, all politicians should be at the bottom of the ocean
presterjohn1198 , 2 hours ago
The cia has always been the shadow government of the USSA. Those clever Ivy League boys
think that they always knew better about screwing up world affairs than our elected
government. Pretty much the same kind of club as the legacy media, whom the cia frequently
collaborates with.
Fools!
Arising , 1 hour ago
... the CIA's 1953 regime change operation in Iran which destroyed that country's
democratic system.
There's one for all the Republican fan boys that hate Iran because their leaders tell
them to.
buckboy , 1 hour ago
Pres. Trump are well aware of these facts. Main reason why he has his own private
security. Amazing he is getting this far. This man knows how to win than anyone else.
He made Brennan, Clapper, Comey Clintons like real clowns instead.
Call it conspiracy, the terrorism, blm antifa racism and non sense chaos are supported
by the cia. CIA is the main and most dangerous enemy of the world. To control is the main
objective.
Like the JFK family and now Trump, if you are against them, they'll discredit you
through the history.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
Listen to Douglas Horne's interview of Dino Brugioni and how the Zupruder film was
doctored to make it seem that the head shot came from the back. No surprise with the head
movement-it came from the front.
USGrant , 2 hours ago
Those frames were cut out which not only exaggerated the head movement but it made it
impossible for 3 shots to come from the crappy Carcano in the shortened time as gauged from
the film. So there is only one frame of the head shot but Dino remembered several as he was
the one charged with making the briefing board on Saturday night prior to the film being
altered on Sunday at the Kodak Hawkeye Works.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
Richard
Dolan has a nice set of interviews with Phillip Lavelle (a walking JFK encyclopedia) on
the topic at his youtube channel. ...
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
And Tracey too, being that smart and good looking is almost unfair
fucking truth , 1 hour ago
And yet trump promised and reneged on releasing all the Kennedy docs, it's a big swamp
and i think Trump's in it, ribbit.
Wild Bill Steamcock , 1 hour ago
It's like trying to drain an ocean. Eventually you fall in
mcmich , 1 hour ago
The people in power now is the people behind JFK's murder..
Soloamber , 38 minutes ago
So does everyone else . Jackie Kennedy knew too . She said they finally got him . Johnson told his mistress the same day .
DEDA CVETKO , 1 hour ago
The only worthwhile human beings in the entire Kennedy clan were JFK and Jr.
(notwithstanding Jackie, whom I count as Onassis). The rest - particularly Bobby Kennedy -
were scum of the earth and sycophants of the Matrix, the lowliest kind of elitist
wire-carrying police informants and apron-wearers. To this day I don't understand how
anyone in the right mind could venerate Bobby Kennedy. The man was three tiers below even
his fuhrer-sucking daddy.
Would United States have been better off had Kennedy survived? Probably, but not by much
and only in the short term. We might have avoided Vietnam (highly questionable - JFK had
already sent our troops there and the whole thing was already on the verge of dangerous
escalation). But as soon as his second term ended, the Deep State would have installed a
more desirable and obedient puppet (most likely Nixon, possibly LBJ) in the White House and
we would have continued where LBJ left off in January 1969.
Bezos announced the purchase in an Instagram post on Thursday, saying the name will serve
"as a regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action." The e-commerce kingpin
said that the National Hockey League (NHL) venue will "be the first
net-zero-carbon-certified arena in the world," will generate no waste, and will use
reclaimed rainwater in its ice system.
"... Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on ..."
"... most of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said ..."
"... The Center for Cyber Intelligence also did not monitor who used its network, so the task force could not determine the size of the breach. However, it determined that the employee who accessed the intelligence stole about 2.2 billion pages -- or 34 terabytes -- of information, the Post reported. ..."
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared onBusiness Insider .
The Central Intelligence Agency's elite hacking team "prioritized building cyber weapons at
the expense of securing their own systems," according to an internal agency report prepared for
then-CIA director Mike Pompeo and his deputy, Gina Haspel, who is now the agency's
director.
In March 2017, US officials discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group
WikiLeaks published troves of documents detailing the CIA's electronic surveillance and
cyberwarfare capabilities. WikiLeaks dubbed the series of documents "Vault 7," and officials
say it was the biggest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the agency's
history.
The internal report was introduced in criminal proceedings against former CIA employee
Joshua Schulte, who was charged with swiping the hacking tools and handing them over to
WikiLeaks.
The government brought in witnesses who prosecutors said showed, through forensic analysis,
that Schulte's work computer accessed an old file that matched some of the documents WikiLeaks
posted.
Schulte's lawyers, meanwhile, pointed to the internal report as proof that the CIA's
internal network was so insecure that any employee or contractor could have accessed the
information Schulte is accused of stealing.
A New York jury failed
to reach a verdict in the case in March after the jurors told Judge Paul Crotty that they
were "extremely deadlocked" on many of the most serious charges, though he was convicted on two
counts of contempt of court and making false statements to the FBI.
Crotty subsequently declared a mistrial, and prosecutors said they intended to try Schulte
again later this year.
The report was compiled in October 2017 by the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force, and it found that
security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the
CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," according to the Post.
The outlet reported that the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if
WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the
information first.
"Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might
still be unaware of the loss," the internal report said.
It also faulted the CIA for moving "too slowly" to implement safety measures "that we knew
were necessary given successive breaches to other U.S. Government agencies." Moreover, most
of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems
administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls,
and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said .
The Center for Cyber Intelligence also did not monitor who used its network, so the task
force could not determine the size of the breach. However, it determined that the employee who
accessed the intelligence stole about 2.2 billion pages -- or 34 terabytes -- of information,
the Post reported.
"... In December 1917, Europe was immersed in the First World War -- one of the most vicious, insane wars the world had ever witnessed. After learning about the high casualty toll and the horrific nature of trench warfare, which included the use of poison gas, Britain's prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided in a private conversation to C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: ..."
"... "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course, they don't know, and can't know ." ..."
"... Sadly, we seem to have not learned from history that, once the state is asked by the citizenry to respond to a danger, it will do so with a drastic course of action -- with rights-restricting rules that will never be removed once imposed. This is exactly how societies become despotisms. ..."
"... What happened to the action plan when it was applied to the on-its-heels real-life scenario? Unsurprisingly, it was fully implemented and made fully operational. So, thanks to Event 201's meticulous pandemic planning and WHO's replication of it, the power of the police state is rising to unprecedented levels. Our global overlords and their CDC and WHO and MSM lackeys have succeeded in generating fear in the planet's populace. This pandemic panic has, in turn, caused people to voluntarily, though unwittingly, surrender their hard-won freedoms. These freedoms are articulated in the constitutions of countries around the world, including the US Constitution, with its Bill of Rights -- notably the First Amendment. These documents are now nothing more than meaningless pieces of paper. They may as well be blank. ..."
In December 1917, Europe was immersed in the First World War -- one of the most vicious,
insane wars the world had ever witnessed. After learning about the high casualty toll and the
horrific nature of trench warfare, which included the use of poison gas, Britain's prime
minister, David Lloyd George, confided in a private conversation to C. P. Scott, editor of the
Manchester Guardian:
"If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course,
they don't know, and can't
know ."
Just over a century later, here we are, yet again, immersed in a global war. However, this
war, which is ostensibly sold to all of us as a battle to "stop the spread of the coronavirus,"
is in reality a war devised by "the powers-that-shouldn't-be" to remove the last remnants of
humanity's inherent freedoms and liberties.
And, just like all of the previous criminal wars throughout human history -- the First World
War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and every other subsequent conflict
-- if people around the world knew the truth about this war, it would come to a screeching halt
overnight.
Through all of my years of research in matters relating to war, I have come to understand
one very important thing: When human societies lose their freedom, it's usually not because the
monarch, the state, or some dictator has overtly taken it away. Rather, it is lost because too
many people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection from some perceived
(real or imagined) menace.
That menace is typically manufactured by the state and is designed to stir up such a torrent
of fear in the mind of citi zens that they pressure their politicians to implement measures
against the fabricated threat.
Unfortunately, it rarely occurs to the public to ask:
Are we simply reacting to an orchestrated threat?
Will the protective measures we're demanding of our leaders actually work?
Or will "the cure" being offered to us be worse than "the disease"?
Sadly, we seem to have not learned from history that, once the state is asked by the
citizenry to respond to a danger, it will do so with a drastic course of action -- with
rights-restricting rules that will never be removed once imposed. This is exactly how
societies become despotisms.
To be sure, there is a seasonal influenza, a coronavirus, currently sweeping around the
world, just as the flu does every year, like clockwork. And, yes, this particular coronavirus
seems to pose a serious health hazard to the elderly and to anyone with underlying medical
issues. However, one crucial question has being avoided by officials and the public alike: Is
this outbreak of an infectious disease called COVID-19 serious enough to warrant the draconian
countermeasures that all governments -- with the exception of Sweden -- have initiated?
Those counteractions have done a number on communities everywhere:
collapsing local economies and, in a ripple effect, the world economy
sending millions upon millions of people to the unemployment line
imprisoning millions of honest, hard-working citizens in their homes
bankrupting countless mid-size and small businesses (and destroying the dreams and
livelihoods of their owners)
bringing out of the woodwork rules-obsessed busybodies who take delight in snitching on
neighbours and strangers alike for not "social distancing"
unearthing every petty tyrant whose main mission in life is to ensure that every
mask-less person is arrested and carted off to jail
policing quarantined areas with drones
tracking and surveilling all human beings who are ambulatory and have cell phones (if
ants carried mobile phones into and out of their mounds, they'd doubtless be subject to
triangulation tracking)
increasing stress and the incidence of flaring tempers among the homebound, which has
resulted in a sharp escalation of domestic violence
saddling future generations with massive debt that can lead debtors into deep depression,
permanent homelessness, possible suicide
Medical professionals are observing the entire state of affairs with increasing alarm. They
are questioning the official coronavirus infection rates and noting the detrimental effects of
the lockdown. Examples abound.
Take Dr. Erickson , co-owner of Accelerated Urgent Care in Kern County, California, who,
with his partner, Dr. Massihi, has gone on record saying that, in contrast to the high numbers
of people contracting this coronavirus, there has been only "a small amount of death . . .
similar to what we have seen every year with the seasonal
flu ."
Stanford University epidemiologist and professor of medicine John Ioannidis has made the
same observation. In an April 17
interview , Dr. Ioannidis he claimed that "COVID-19 has an infection fatality rate that is
in the same ballpark as seasonal influenza." Moreover, he said, the devastation and deaths
caused by the imposed lockdown on the entire world economy "can be far worse than anything the
coronavirus can
do ." Based on a study he conducted, Dr. Ioannides said that "the data collected so far on
how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly
unreliable ."
Indeed, we have seen ample evidence of this "utterly unreliable" data -- less
euphemistically known as manipulated data -- coming out of Italy. Professor Walter
Ricciardi, scientific advisor to Italy's minister of health, referred to a report produced by
the Italian COVID-19 Surveillance Group and observed that "
only 12 per cent of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus,
while 88 per cent of patients who have died have at least one pre-morbidity -- many had two or
three." The report cited by Prof. Ricciardi pointed out that half of the patients who died had
three or more other underlying diseases at the time of
death .
In the United States, meanwhile, the death toll figures attributed to the virus are no more
accurate. Doctors are being told to write on death certificates that the cause of death is "
presumed " to be COVID-19 or that COVID-19 "contributed" to the death , when, in fact,
there is absolutely no proof that COVID-19 caused the death, nor did any lab test indicate a
COVID-19 positive.
The United Nations' Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), which has been entrusted
to be an impartial global health guardian, has proven itself no better than national
governments at truthfully disseminating critical information. WHO's questionable statistics on
COVID-19 only serve to cement its reputation as an organization that, since 2009, has been
plagued by corruption, conflict-of-interest scandals linked to Big Pharma, and a lack of
transparency. Few citizens are familiar with the WHO's transgressions, and even fewer
understand how it is financed.
So let me briefly explain the latter. The WHO's principal advisory group for vaccines and
immunization is called the Scientific Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE). This team of so-called
"experts" is dominated by individuals who receive significant funding from either the major
vaccine makers, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, or from Wellcome Trust. In his
informative article, "Can We Trust the WHO?" author F. William Engdahl
writes that, in the latest posting by WHO:
". . . of the 15 scientific members of SAGE, no fewer than 8 had declared interest, by
law, of potential conflicts. In almost every case the significant financial funder of these 8
SAGE members included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Merck & Co. (MSD), Gavi,
the Vaccine Alliance (a Gates-funded vaccine group), BMGF Global Health Scientific Advisory
Committee, Pfizer, Novovax, GSK, Novartis, Gilead, and other leading pharma
vaccine players ."
Moreover, unlike in its early years, when the WHO was primarily funded by UN member
governments, today it receives funding from a "public-private partnership," which vaccine
companies dominate. The WHO's financial audit for 2017 indicates that by "far the largest
private or non-governmental
funders of WHO are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation together with the Gates-funded
GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the Gates-initiated Global Fund to fight AIDS." That year, the Gates
Foundation alone donated a staggering $324,654,317 to the WHO, second only to the US
government, which contributed
$401 million . According to statistics posted in 2018, "the second-largest funder after the
US government is still the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provides 9.8 per cent of
the
WHO's funds ."
In light of these relationships, it is not surprising that WHO data on COVID-19 has been
found to contain repeated errors -- false positives -- and inconsistencies, all of which it
refuses to correct. As a result, Oxford University and various countries have ceased using WHO
data on coronavirus infection rates.
Because of the inaccurate and incomplete data that WHO has been collecting from around the
world, we will never know exactly how many people have died from the virus.
Of course, in order to successfully prosecute their war on our civil liberties, these global
overlords must maintain a monopoly on the information that shapes their official narrative.
If they were to release videos of empty hospitals or reveal the very low mortality rates
actually associated with the virus, they would not be able to foster the element of fear
required to keep the public credulously accepting their every pronouncement and obeying their
every edict. It is this single factor of fear, fomented by false information emanating from
"trusted sources," which is the vital element our health-state/police-state nannies rely upon
as they deliberately, calculatingly fan the flames of the collective hysteria that has engulfed
the world.
Why do I say "deliberately, calculatingly"? Because, by now, most readers have undoubtedly
seen the smoking gun proof that the COVID-19 pandemic is in fact a plan demic. That
smoking gun took the form of a simulation exercise called Event 201.
More aptly termed a drill, Event 201 was held in mid-October of last year, just weeks before
the reports of the first recorded case of a contagious novel coronavirus disease starting
seeping out of Wuhan, China. Sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the John
Hopkins Center for Health, and the World Economic Forum, this tabletop exercise simulated "a
series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life
dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible,
pandemic ." That its sponsors have the gall to insist there is no connection between their
exercise (I mean "drill") and the near-simultaneous unrolling of the actual "live" event
(dubbed COVID-19) speaks to their hubris -- and their hypocrisy.
At best, maybe 10 percent of the entire simulation was devoted to actually helping
people infected with the coronavirus. The remainder of the exercise was concerned with how
officials would disseminate information and maintain all-important control of the official
narrative -- including the statistical narrative. Predictably, the participants discussed
strategies for how to silence the misinformation and disinformation that would surely spread in
the wake of this "hypothetical" pandemic. In other words, they were super-intent on shutting
down any and all information, whether leaked or hacked or accidentally discovered, that was not
sanctioned by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), by WHO officials, and by MSM corporate
stenographers.
Key talking points included an elaborate plan of action for governments that would enable
them to work in cooperation with social media giants like Facebook and Google and Twitter.
Specifically, governments were told how they could troll social media sites and request that
any voices countering the official narrative be removed; how they could silence independent
journalists, while elevating their own so-called "authoritative voices"; and how they could
join forces with Big Pharma companies like Johnson & Johnson to develop a vaccine to ward
off the coronavirus .
What happened to the action plan when it was applied to the on-its-heels real-life
scenario? Unsurprisingly, it was fully implemented and made fully operational. So, thanks to
Event 201's meticulous pandemic planning and WHO's replication of it, the power of the police
state is rising to unprecedented levels. Our global overlords and their CDC and WHO and MSM
lackeys have succeeded in generating fear in the planet's populace. This pandemic panic has, in
turn, caused people to voluntarily, though unwittingly, surrender their hard-won freedoms.
These freedoms are articulated in the constitutions of countries around the world, including
the US Constitution, with its Bill of Rights -- notably the First Amendment. These documents
are now nothing more than meaningless pieces of paper. They may as well be blank.
A few for instances: Facebook is removing all voices that counter the official COVID-19
narrative from its platform. Google is monitoring (read: snooping) to check up on whether
people are "social distancing." The Clinton Global Initiative is promoting another Orwellian
concept called "
contact tracing " (read: total government surveillance grid), which involves monitoring,
tracing, and, if need be, quarantining the entire US population. The plan is being sold to the
American population as a critical component of a universal healthcare system, when, in reality,
if implemented, it will be nothing more than a marketing ploy to disguise the arrival of George
Orwell's 1984 .
Throughout the US, companies like
VSBLTY and public-private partnerships are spreading a ubiquitous surveillance network of
CCTV cameras with the ability to measure heartbeat and social distancing without any legal
or legislative restraint -- a true police state dystopia.
Power-grabbing governments the world over have locked down their societies and are dreaming
up legislation to stop the spread of "dangerous misinformation" about the pandemic. British MP
Damian Collins, for one, is calling for just such measures to silence free speech in the UK. In
Canada, Privy Council President Dominic LeBlanc has admitted that the Canadian government is
"considering introducing legislation to make it an offence to knowingly spread misinformation
that could harm
people ."
Not to be outdone, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced the creation of "a
new United Nations Communication Response initiative to flood the Internet with facts and
science while countering the growing scourge of
misinformation ." In addition, the Secretary- General, like Canada's Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and various other leaders, is advising us precisely where to place our trust: in
vaccines.
Vaccines are not the answer. If the mandatory vaccination agenda is ever implemented
by these globalist kingpins, the coup against our fundamental rights and freedoms will be
complete. Our governments -- or, more likely, a one world government! -- will force-vaccinate
us with our own unique digital ID and chip that, once in place, will further heighten their
surveillance of and tighten their control over all human beings. At that point, the police
state will be complete and will be here to stay.
Contrary to what Trudeau believes, the way that governments have implemented oppressive
edicts to combat the hyped virus is not the "new-normal." Their actions are hardly
normal, whether old or new.
Precisely the opposite is true: This is the forever abnormal.
Abnormal because, whether the virus was developed in a bioweapons lab or if it is the annual
seasonal influenza, it is a manufactured crisis designed to infuse us with fear, induce us to
willingly surrender our freedoms, and steer us away from seeing the ever-scarier, underlying
agenda of a technocratic takeover by the New (or Flu!) World Order. (Think AI, 5G, Internet of
Things, digital body chips,
Data Fusion Centers , the NSA's
Project Prism , ad infinitum ).
This collective insanity will come to an end only if we all leave behind the MSM nest of
lies and seek out sources -- independent online and in-print investigative journalists like
James Corbett, F. William Engdahl, Derrick Broze, Ryan Cristián, Patrick Wood, Jon
Rappoport, and countless others -- who have been probing for (and finding and relaying) the
truth about world events for anywhere from a decade to several dozen years. We must cease
buying into propaganda and accept only provable facts from dependable sites -- the ones that
are called "fake news" by the real fakers and fearmongers.
To men like David Lloyd George and his ilk, we reply: Yes, we will learn the truth, and with
this knowledge we will stop the war on our liberty and our lives!
*
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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served
as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air
Force he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and
Djibouti.
The degree to which government "by and for the people" cannot create consensus is the measure
of its failure to represent the people. The government is not trusted because it is
undemocratic. Rule By Secrecy is the rule.
Where did the Patriot Act come from? This abridgment of liberty appeared seemingly out of
nowhere in October 2001. No representative of the people actually read it and yet it was
voted into law. ( Hint: Joe Biden is principally responsible for the Patriot Act )
The surveillance state is well established in our midst and in our minds and the need to
promote the general welfare by defending against pandemics will entail more surveillance and
more constraints on personal liberty. The degree to which the government must rely on secrecy
and denial of the Bill of Rights to remain in power is the degree to which it will earn the
fear & loathing of the people and simple mistrust will become violence. When Elon Musk,
one of our favorite oligarchs, attacks government for its handling of the pandemic,
government should worry.
Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the
progressive agenda.
George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are
living it right now.
Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member
of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its "resistance" is undermining
an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the
proper president would be elected -- the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology.
Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy-
or girlfriend, or co-workers.
But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the
strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford's accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh.
In Orwell's world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry,
rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven
guilty. Instead, regimented ideology -- the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of
one's life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality -- warps everything from the use of
language to private life.
Oceania's Rules
Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long
sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his
nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when
Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the
so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the
Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election
year.
Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions
and writings -- and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp
mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was
impeccable, his family admirable.
Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the
questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater
interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by "I am Spartacus"
Democratic senators.
So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And
so we got a bombshell.
Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh
of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly
two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until
a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the
full text of the redacted complaint , and she has said she does not know whether the very
accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations
by formally submitting them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford
subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?
The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination --
but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in
extremis , Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the
same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation.
Think something McCarthesque, like "I have here in my hand the name . . ."
Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm
election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on
record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh
would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican
chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the
confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if
they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)
Feinstein's anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford's
identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white
men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.
The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford's
allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government
norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at
the mercy of the state. He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and
then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor
and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.
Newspeak and Doublethink
Statue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh
today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.
Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser
faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though
he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour
over his testimony to prepare her accusation.
Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the
alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the
alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory
mattered no longer at all.
Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years
ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as
recorded in the therapist's notes.
But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In
truth, all four people -- now including a female -- named in her accusations as either
assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of
wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at
times used as proof by Ford's lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.
An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any
of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that
17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no
idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge
were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage "one beer."
Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of
alcoholic beverages they consumed -- but not so much about either after 36 years.
Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn't matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged
suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36
years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of
felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago.
That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise
of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a
deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.
Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. "All women must be believed" is the testament,
and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, there are
ideological exceptions -- such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden.
The slogan of Ford's psychodrama is "All women must be believed, but some women are more
believable than others." That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and
gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.
Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984 , the accuser,
a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under
which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special
considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras
and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.
In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a
victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving
her charges.
Doublespeak abounds. "Victim" solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was
Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed
into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond
from charging that she was groped and "assaulted" to the claim that she was "raped."
In our 1984, the phrase "must be believed" is doublespeak for "must never face
cross-examination."
Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence , not her position, gender,
or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when,
as Neal Kinnock's doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners -- any
more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant
named "T-Bone," or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet
or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for
unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does
not translate into confirmation of truth.
Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought
"medical treatment" for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean
that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor's or emergency room's help to address
either her physical or mental injuries -- records might therefore be a powerful refutation of
Kavanaugh's denials.
But "medical treatment" now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought
counseling for some sort of "relationship" or "companion" therapy, or what might legitimately
be termed "marriage counseling." And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about
her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then
name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford's current
version.
Memory Holes
Then we come to Orwell's idea of "memory holes," or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient
facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential
social-media revelations vanished, as if she'd never held her minor-league but confident
pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions . And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased
as well.
Similarly, one moment the New York Times -- just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting
that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime
-- reported that Kavanaugh's alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford's allegation.
Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times , Judge told the Judiciary Committee
that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the
committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode . Forty minutes later, the
Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.
The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford's high school from the early 1980s
vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the
all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, "passing out" at
parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the
"frat boy" and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh -- and certainly not the environment in which the
noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down
drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a
circumspect 15-year-old, she had only "one beer."
A former teenage friend of Ford's sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly
confirming that Ford's ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault
narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details
(schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of
the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her
earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she
had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an
accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her
charges.
When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another
sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she
followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate : None of those whom she named as witnesses could
either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative
after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during
the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only
difference from Ford's narrative is that Ramirez's accusation was deemed not credible enough to
be reported even by the New York Times , which recently retracted false stories about witness
Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had
charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.
As in 1984 , "truths" in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the
larger "Truth" of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in
a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and
should be exempt from all counter-examinations.
Little "truths" -- such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence,
insistence on cross-examination, and due process -- are counterrevolutionary constructs and the
refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii
senator Mazie Hirono:
Guess who's perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It's the men in this country. And
I just want to say to the men in this country, "Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing,
for a change."
The View 's Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: "These white men, old by the
way, are not protecting women," Behar exclaimed. "They're protecting a man who is probably
guilty." We thank Behar for the concession "probably."
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty
of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no
longer in America . We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell
warned us about long ago.
All Comments 30
NiggaPleeze , 10 seconds ago
National Review? Really? Does it get more evil than them?
Debt Slave , 16 seconds ago
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now
guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17.
Well half the country are idiots but the important thing to remember in our democracy is
that the idiots have the right to vote. And here we are today.
No wonder the founders believed that democracy was a stupid idea. But we know better than
they did, right?
Jkweb007 , 37 seconds ago
It is hard for me to believe 50% when in America you are presumed innocent till proven
guilty. Is this the spanish inquizition or salem witch trials. If he floats he was innocent.
I am shocked that people in congress would make statements, she must be believed, I believe
he is guilty. These are people who represent and stand for the constitution that many died in
the defense of life liberty and the persuit of happiness. It may be time for that mlilitia
that our founding fathers endorsed. If Kavanaugh is rebuked for these accusation our freedom,
free speech may be next.
One more confirmation that the so called "social justice warriors" -like last night's
goons' who shamefully interrupted Senator Cruz's night out with his wife at a private
restaurant- are Orwell's projected fascists!
opport.knocks , 20 minutes ago
Bush 2 was in the big chair when he and his cabinet started the USA down the full
Orwellian path (Patriot Act, post 911). Kavanaugh and his wife were both members of that
government team.
If there is any reason to dismiss him, that would be it, not this post-pubescent sex
crap.
If I was a cynical person, I would say this whole exercise is to deflect attention away
from that part of his "swampy" past.
Aubiekong , 23 minutes ago
We lost the republic when we allowed the liberals to staff the ministry of
education...
CheapBastard , 15 minutes ago
My neighbor is a high school teacher. I asked her if she was giving students time off to
protest this and she looked at me and said, "Just the opposite. I have given them a 10 page
seminar paper to write on the meaning of Due Process."
So there IS hope.
my new username , 23 minutes ago
This is criminal contempt for the due lawful process of the Congress.
These are unlawful attempts and conspiracies to subvert justice.
So we need to start arresting, trying, convicting and punishing the criminals.
BlackChicken , 23 minutes ago
Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of
the progressive agenda.
This needs to end, not later, NOW.
Be careful what you wish for leftists, I'll dedicate my remaining years to torture you
with it.
Jus7tme , 22 minutes ago
>>the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
I think Orwell was in 1949 was warning about a fascist totalitarian hell, not a socialist
one, but nice try rewriting history.
Duc888 , 29 minutes ago
WTF ever happened to "innocent until PROVEN guilty"?
CheapBastard , 19 minutes ago
Schumer said before the confirmation hearings even began he would not let Kavanaugh become
SC justice no matter what.
Dems are so tolerant, open minded and respectful of due process, aren't they.
"... Nothing speaks more loudly of the dumbed down, idiotic, Fakebook groupthink of the age than the current rush to buy toilet roll as a response to the Coronavirus crisis. ..."
No need to worry about the corona virus - it'll all be okay as long as you buy enough toilet
roll...
Nothing speaks more loudly of the dumbed down, idiotic, Fakebook groupthink of the age
than the current rush to buy toilet roll as a response to the Coronavirus crisis.
You've seen it on the tele and (un)social media – supermarket shelves denuded of bog
roll and fat birds beating seven shades of sh*t out of each other over the last bag of ass
wipe.
I mean, what the hell!? Is this how stupid and pathetic we've become? Someone sees a post
on Fakebook that says its a good idea to respond to a potentially fatal virus by buying lots
of bog roll and within 5 minutes there's a massive rush on the stuff – after all, you
gotta buy it, right, COS IT SAYS SO ON FAKEBOOK...
Interviewed there in the 90s. Hiring manager picked me up at the hotel, took me out to
dinner and told me, flat out, that he was NSA. I doubt it has changed much.
(I said, to myself, "f*ck this", flagged the waiter and ordered the most expensive cab on
the menu, then another)
Uncovering The CIA's Audacious Operation That Gave Them Access To State Secrets
(interview) WaPo. "So we end up with ostensibly private company that is secretly owned by
two intelligence services." That company is probably just an outlier , even
though this operation is presented as incredibly successful.
I've helpfully underlined the irony. I should add Surveillance Valley to my reading
list, I suppose
Maybe, the Dulles Brothers had a deeper understanding of the logic of the US-Empire then
Kinzer with their conviction that they could not allow third-world-countries to be
independent.
thanks b...no shortage of hypocrisy in all this...
regarding @ 4 mike r which @8 ian2 linked properly to, i enjoyed the last paragraph which
i think sums it up well.. here it is..
"I continue to believe that the United States cannot effectively restrict the spread of a
technology under Chinese leadership without offering a superior product of its own. The fact
that the United States has attempted to suppress Huawei's market leadership in the absence of
any American competitor in this field is one of the oddest occurrences in the history of US
foreign policy. If the US were to announce something like a Manhattan Project for 5G
broadband and solicit the cooperation of its European and Asian allies, it probably would get
an enthusiastic response. As matters stand, America's efforts to stop Huawei have become an
embarrassment."
The reason European customers trust Huawei is because Huawei uses open-source software or at
least makes their code available for inspection by customers.
Closed-source software cannot provide secrecy or security. This was vividly demonstrated
last month when
NSA revealed a critical vulnerability in Windows 10 that rendered any cryptographic
security worthless.
Rashid's simulated attack exploits CVE-2020-0601, the critical vulnerability that
Microsoft patched on Tuesday after receiving a private tipoff from the NSA. As Ars
reported, the flaw can completely break certificate validation for websites, software
updates, VPNs, and other security-critical computer uses. It affects Windows 10 systems,
including server versions Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. Other versions of
Windows are unaffected.
The flaw involves the way the new versions of Windows check the validity of certificates
that use elliptic-curve cryptography. While the vulnerable Windows versions check three ECC
parameters, they fail to verify a fourth, crucial one, which is known as a base point
generator and is often represented in algorithms as 'G.' This failure is a result of
Microsoft's implementation of ECC rather than any flaw or weakness in the ECC algorithms
themselves.
The attacker examines the specific ECC algorithm used to generate the root-certificate
public key and proceeds to craft a private key that copies all of the certificate
parameters for that algorithm except for the point generator. Because vulnerable Windows
versions fail to check that parameter, they accept the private key as valid. With that, the
attacker has spoofed a Windows-trusted root certificate that can be used to mint any
individual certificate used for authentication of websites, software, and other sensitive
properties.
I do not believe this vulnerability was a bug. It is more likely a backdoor intentionally
left in the code for NSA to utilize. Whatever the case, NSA must have known about it for
years. Why did they reveal it now? Most likely someone else had discovered the back door and
may have been about to publish it.
(I
commented on these same issues on Sputnik a few weeks ago.)
The other possible US objection is that Huawei will only let their customers spy, not third
countries.
Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Feb 11 2020 21:57 utc | 24
It reminds me a joke about Emperor Napoleon arriving in a town. The population, the
notables and the mayor are greeting him, and the Emperor says "No gun salute, hm?". Mayor
replies "Sire, we have twenty reasons. Fist, we have canons", "Enough", replied Napoleon.
Isn't the "other possible US objection" exactly "Enough"? Of course, USA is not a mere
"third country", USA is the rule maker of rule based international order.
History Politics I hang around some pretty
intelligent people who have smart friends commenting on their facebook pages. The first part of
this post is from a comment on Claude Scales's Facebook page by William R. Everdell. I think it
fits with the NYT article Claude referenced. The second part of this is a shorten version of
the NYT Opinion
article "Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE," Matthew Connelly, Professor of
History, Columbia.
George Orwell in "'1984', Winston Smith was dropping documents into the 'memory hole' by his
desk at the Ministry of Truth – Minitrue
'Who controls the past controls the
future: who controls the present controls the past.'
Manipulation of the language is one of the most powerful Propaganda tool. See the original Orwell essay at George Orwell Politics
and the English Language. among other things he stated "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
Notable quotes:
"... we were set a writing task as a follow-up, reporting on the same story using the same facts, from completely opposing points of view, using euphemism and mind-numbing cliches. Teach children to do this themselves and they can see how language can be skewed and facts distorted and misrepresented without technically lying. ..."
"... It might be taught in Media Studies, I suppose - but gosh, don't the right really hate that particular subject! Critical thinking is anathema to them. ..."
I remember at school we read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language in an English class and then we were set
a writing task as a follow-up, reporting on the same story using the same facts, from completely opposing points of view, using
euphemism and mind-numbing cliches. Teach children to do this themselves and they can see how language can be skewed and facts
distorted and misrepresented without technically lying.
How many children in schools are taught such critical thinking these days, I wonder? It might be taught in Media Studies,
I suppose - but gosh, don't the right really hate that particular subject! Critical thinking is anathema to them.
Gossufer2.0 and CrowdStrike are the weakest links in this sordid story. CrowdStrike was nothing but FBI/CIA contractor.
So the hypothesis that CrowdStrike employees implanted malware to implicate Russians and created fake Gussifer 2.0 personality
is pretty logical.
Notable quotes:
"... Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of then CIA Director John Brennan ..."
"... In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust. ..."
"... We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the Vault 7 documents : ..."
"... Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович" is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.) ..."
"... Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA. ..."
"... The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich. Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign, would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia. ..."
"... The only source for the claim that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. ..."
"... Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch, but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June. That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction. ..."
"... The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU. ..."
"... LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA, not the GRU." ..."
"... ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments? ..."
"... With the Russians not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet), would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump. ..."
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report insists that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks were created by Russia's military intelligence organization,
the GRU, as part of a Russian plot to meddle in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election. But this is a lie. Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks
were created by Brennan's CIA and this action by the CIA should be a target of U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation. Let me
explain why.
Let us start with the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment aka ICA. Only three agencies of the 17 in the U.S. intelligence
community contributed to and coordinated on the ICA--the FBI, the CIA and NSA. In the preamble to the ICA, you can read the following
explanation about methodology:
When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as "we assess" or "we judge," they are conveying an analytic assessment or
judgment
To be clear, the phrase,"We assess", is intel community jargon for "opinion". If there was actual evidence or source material
for a judgment the writer of the assessment would state, "According to a reliable source" or "knowledgeable source" or "documentary
evidence."
Pay close attention to what the analysts writing the ICA stated about the GRU and Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks:
We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data
obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.
Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims
about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer
2.0 interacted with journalists.
Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting
in June.
We assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks.
Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did
not contain any evident forgeries.
Not one piece of corroborating intelligence. It is all based on opinion and strong belief. There was no human source report or
electronic intercept pointing to a relationship between the GRU and the two alleged creations of the GRU--Guccifer 2.0 persona and
DCLeaks.com. Now consider the spin that Robert Mueller put on this opinion in his report on possible collusion between the Trump
campaign and the Russians. Mueller bluffs the unsuspecting reader into believing that it is a proven fact that Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks
were Russian assets. But he is relying on a mere opinion from a handpicked group of intel analysts working under the direction of
then CIA Director John Brennan.
Here's Mueller's take (I apologize for the lengthy quote but it is important that you read how the Mueller team presents this):
DCLeaks
"The GRU began planning the releases at least as early as April 19, 2016, when Unit 26165 registered the domain dcleaks.com
through a service that anonymized the registrant.137 Unit 26165 paid for the registration using a pool of bitcoin that it had
mined.138 The dcleaks.com landing page pointed to different tranches of stolen documents, arranged by victim or subject matter.
Other dcleaks.com pages contained indexes of the stolen emails that were being released (bearing the sender, recipient, and date
of the email). To control access and the timing of releases, pages were sometimes password-protected for a period of time and
later made unrestricted to the public.
Starting in June 2016, the GRU posted stolen documents onto the website dcleaks.com, including documents stolen from a number
of individuals associated with the Clinton Campaign. These documents appeared to have originated from personal email accounts
(in particular, Google and Microsoft accounts), rather than the DNC and DCCC computer networks. DCLeaks victims included an advisor
to the Clinton Campaign, a former DNC employee and Clinton Campaign employee, and four other campaign volunteers.139 The GRU released
through dcleaks.com thousands of documents, including personal identifying and financial information, internal correspondence
related to the"Clinton Campaign and prior political jobs, and fundraising files and information.140
GRU officers operated a Facebook page under the DCLeaks moniker, which they primarily used to promote releases of materials.141
The Facebook page was administered through a small number of preexisting GRU-controlled Facebook accounts.142
GRU officers also used the DCLeaks Facebook account, the Twitter account @dcleaks__, and the email account [email protected]
to communicate privately with reporters and other U.S. persons. GRU officers using the DCLeaks persona gave certain reporters
early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not
yet become public. For example, on July 14, 2016, GRU officers operating under the DCLeaks persona sent a link and password for
a non-public DCLeaks webpage to a U.S. reporter via the Facebook account.143 Similarly, on September 14, 2016, GRU officers sent
reporters Twitter direct messages from @dcleaks_, with a password to another non-public part of the dcleaks.com website.144
The dcleaks.com website remained operational and public until March 2017."
Guccifer 2.0
On June 14, 2016, the DNC and its cyber-response team announced the breach of the DNC network and suspected theft of DNC documents.
In the statements, the cyber-response team alleged that Russian state-sponsored actors (which they referred to as "Fancy Bear")
were responsible for the breach.145 Apparently in response to that announcement, on June 15, 2016, GRU officers using the persona
Guccifer 2.0 created a WordPress blog. In the hours leading up to the launch of that WordPress blog, GRU officers logged into
a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455 and searched for a number of specific words and phrases in English, including
"some hundred sheets," "illuminati," and "worldwide known." Approximately two hours after the last of those searches, Guccifer
2.0 published its first post, attributing the DNC server hack to a lone Romanian hacker and using several of the unique English
words and phrases that the GRU officers had searched for that day.146
That same day, June 15, 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 WordPress blog to begin releasing to the public documents
stolen from the DNC and DCCC computer networks.
The Guccifer 2.0 persona ultimately released thousands of documents stolen from the DNC and DCCC in a series of blog posts
between June 15, 2016 and October 18, 2016.147 Released documents included opposition research performed by the DNC (including
a memorandum analyzing potential criticisms of candidate Trump), internal policy documents (such as recommendations on how to
address politically sensitive issues), analyses of specific congressional races, and fundraising documents. Releases were organized
around thematic issues, such as specific states (e.g., Florida and Pennsylvania) that were perceived as competitive in the 2016
U.S. presidential election.
Beginning in late June 2016, the GRU also used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release documents directly to reporters and other
interested individuals. Specifically, on June 27, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to the news outlet The Smoking Gun offering
to provide "exclusive access to some leaked emails linked [to] Hillary Clinton's staff."148 The GRU later sent the reporter a
password and link to a locked portion of the dcleaks.com website that contained an archive of emails stolen by Unit 26165 from
a Clinton Campaign volunteer in March 2016.149 "That the Guccifer 2.0 persona provided reporters access to a restricted portion
of the DCLeaks website tends to indicate that both personas were operated by the same or a closely-related group of people.150
The GRU continued its release efforts through Guccifer 2.0 into August 2016. For example, on August 15, 2016, the Guccifer
2.0 persona sent a candidate for the U.S. Congress documents related to the candidate's opponent.151 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer
2.0 persona transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of Florida-related data stolen from the DCCC to a U.S. blogger covering Florida
politics.152 On August 22, 2016, the Guccifer 2.0 persona sent a U.S. reporter documents stolen from the DCCC pertaining to the
Black Lives Matter movement.153"
Wow. Sounds pretty convincing. The documents referencing communications by DCLeaks or Guccifer 2.0 with Wikileaks are real. What
is not true is that these entities were GRU assets.
In October 2015 John Brennan reorganized the CIA . As part of that reorganization he created a new directorate--DIRECTORATE
OF DIGITAL INNOVATION. Its mission was to "manipulate digital footprints." In other words, this was the Directorate that did the
work of creating Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. One of their specialties, creating Digital Dust.
We also know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the CIA was using software specifically designed to mask CIA activity and make it
appear like it was done by a foreign entity. Wikipedia describes the
Vault 7 documents :
Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, that detail activities and capabilities of the
United States' Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016,
include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,[1] web browsers (including
Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),[2][3][4] and the operating systems of most smartphones (including
Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux[5][6
One of the tools in Vault 7 carries the innocuous name, MARBLE.
Hackernews explains the purpose and function
of MARBLE:
Dubbed "Marble," the part 3 of CIA files contains 676 source code files of a secret anti-forensic Marble Framework, which is basically
an obfuscator or a packer used to hide the true source of CIA malware.
The CIA's Marble Framework tool includes a variety of different algorithm with foreign language text intentionally inserted into
the malware source code to fool security analysts and falsely attribute attacks to the wrong nation.
Marble is used to hamper[ing] forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks
to the CIA," says the whistleblowing site.
"...for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English, but Chinese, but then
showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion," WikiLeaks
explains.
So guess what
gullible techies "discovered" in mid-June 2016? The meta data in the Guccifer 2.0 communications had "Russian fingerprints."
We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 -- the nom
de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove
it -- left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.
Exhibit A in the case is this document created and later edited in the ubiquitous Microsoft Word format. Metadata left inside
the file shows it was last edited by someone using the computer name "Феликс Эдмундович." That means the computer was configured
to use the Russian language and that it was connected to a Russian-language keyboard. More intriguing still, "Феликс Эдмундович"
is the colloquial name that translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the 20th Century Russian statesman who is best known for founding the
Soviet secret police. (The metadata also shows that the purported DNC strategy memo was originally created by someone named Warren
Flood, which happens to be the name of a LinkedIn user claiming to provide strategy and data analytics services to Democratic candidates.)
Just use your common sense. If the Russians were really trying to carry out a covert cyberattack, do you really think they
are so sloppy and incompetent to insert the name of the creator of the Soviet secret police in the metadata? No. The Russians are
not clowns. This was a clumsy attempt to frame the Russians.
Why would the CIA do this? The CIA knew that Podesta's emails had been hacked and were circulating on the internet. But they
had no evidence about the identity of the culprit. If they had such evidence, they would have cited it in the 2017 ICA.
The U.S. intelligence community became aware around May 26, 2016 that someone with access to the DNC network was offering
those emails to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Julian Assange and people who spoke to him indicate that the person was Seth Rich.
Whether or not it was Seth, the Trump Task Force at CIA was aware that the emails, which would be embarrassing to the Clinton campaign,
would be released at some time in the future. Hence the motive to create Guccifer 2.0 and pin the blame on Russia.
It is essential to recall the timeline of the alleged Russian intrusion into the DNC network. The only source for the claim
that Russia hacked the DNC is a private cyber security firm, CrowdStrike. Here is the timeline for the DNC "hack."
Here are the facts on the public record. They are at odds with the claims of the Intelligence Community:
It was
29 April 2016 , when the DNC claims it became aware its servers had been penetrated. No claim yet about who was responsible.
And no claim that there had been a prior warning by the FBI of a penetration of the DNC by Russian military intelligence.
According to CrowdStrike founder , Dimitri Alperovitch, his company first supposedly detected the Russians mucking around
inside the DNC server on 6 May 2016. A CrowdStrike intelligence analyst reportedly told Alperovitch that:
Falcon had identified not one but two Russian intruders: Cozy Bear, a group CrowdStrike's experts believed was affiliated
with the FSB, Russia's answer to the CIA; and Fancy Bear, which they had linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence.
The Wikileaks data shows that the last message copied from the DNC network is dated Wed, 25 May 2016 08:48:35.
10 June 2016 --CrowdStrike waited until 10 June 2016 to take concrete steps to clean up the DNC network. Alperovitch told
Esquire's Vicky Ward that: 'Ultimately, the teams decided it was necessary to replace the software on every computer at the DNC.
Until the network was clean, secrecy was vital. On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave
their laptops in the office."
On June 14, 2016 , Ellen Nakamura, a Washington Post reporter who had been briefed by computer security company hired by the
DNC -- Crowdstrike--, wrote:
Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the
entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security
experts who responded to the breach.
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC's system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said
DNC officials and the security experts.
The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political
action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.
15 June, 2016 , an internet "personality" self-described as Guccifer 2.0 surfaces and claims to be responsible for the hacks
but denies being Russian. The people/entity behind Guccifer 2.0:
Used a Russian VPN service provider to conceal their identity.
Created an email account with AOL.fr (a service that exposes the sender's IP address) and contacted the press (exposing his
VPN IP address in the process).
Contacted various media outlets through this set up and claimed credit for hacking the DNC, sharing copies of files purportedly
from the hack (one of which had Russian error messages embedded in them) with reporters from Gawker, The Smoking Gun and other
outlets.
Carried out searches for terms that were mostly in English, several of which would appear in Guccifer 2.0's first blog post.
They chose to do this via a server based in Moscow. (this is from the indictment,
"On or about June 15, 2016, the Conspirators logged into a Moscow-based server used and managed by Unit 74455")
Created a blog and made an initial blog post claiming to have hacked the DNC, providing links to various documents as proof.
Carelessly dropped a "Russian Smiley" into his first blog post.
Managed to add the name "Феликс Эдмундович" (which translates to Felix Dzerzhinsky, also known as "Iron Felix") to the metadata
of several documents. (Several sources went beyond what the evidence shows and made claims about Guccifer 2.0 using a Russian
keyboard, however, these claims are just assumptions made in response to the presence of cyrillic characters.)
The only thing that the Guccifer 2.0 character did not do to declare its Russian heritage was to take out full page ads in the
New York Times and Washington Post. But the "forensic" fingerprints that Guccifer 2.0 was leaving behind is not the only inexplicable
event.
Time for the common sense standard again. Crowdstrike detected the Russians on the 6th of May, according to CEO Dimitri Alperovitch,
but took no steps to shutdown the network, eliminate the malware and clean the computers until 34 days later, i.e., the 10th of June.
That is 34 days of inexcusable inaction.
It is only AFTER Julian Assange announces on 12 June 2016 that WikiLeaks has emails relating to Hillary Clinton that DCLeaks or
Guccifer 2.0 try to contact Assange.
The actions attributed to DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 should be priority investigative targets for U.S. Attorney John Durham's
team of investigators. This potential use of a known CIA tool, developed under Brennan with the sole purpose to obfuscate the source
of intrusions, pointing to another nation, as a false flag operation, is one of the actions and issues that U.S. Attorney John Durham
should be looking into as a potential act of "Seditious conspiracy. It needs to be done. To quote the CIA, I strongly assess that
the only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential election was the CIA,
not the GRU.
LJ bottom line: "The only intelligence agency that evidence indicates was meddling via cyber attacks in the 2016 Presidential
election was the CIA, not the GRU."
Larry, thanks -- vital clarifications and reminders. In your earlier presentation of this material did you not also distinguish
between the way actually interagency assessments are titled, and ICA which seemed to have been framed to allow journalists or
the unwary to link the ICA with more rigorous standards used by more authentic assessments?
Thank you Larry. You have discovered one more vital key to the conspiracy. We now need the evidence of Julian Assange. He is kept
incommunicado and He is being tortured by the British in jail and will be murdered by the American judicial system if he lasts
long enough to be extradited.
You can be sure he will be "Epsteined" before he appears in open court because he knows the source of what Wikileaks published.
Once he is gone, mother Clinton is in the clear.
I can understand the GRU or SVR hacking the DNC and other e-mail servers because as intelligence services that is their job, but
can anyone think of any examples of Russia (or the Soviet Union) using such information to take overt action?
With the Russians
not having the advantages that the NSA does (back doors in all US-designed network hardware/software and taps all over the internet),
would Russia reveal anything unless it involved an immediate major national security threat. I doubt that would cover Trump.
"... All that changed with the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state and with the adoption of a pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy. When that happened, the U.S. government assumed the duty to fix the wrongs of the world. ..."
"... That's when U.S. officials began thinking in terms of empire and using empire-speak. Foreign regimes became "allies," "partners," and "friends." Others became "opponents," "rivals," or "enemies." Events thousands of miles away became threats to "national security." ..."
"... The results of U.S. imperialism and interventionism have always been perverse, not only for foreigners but also for Americans. That's how Americans have ended up with out-of-control federal spending and debt that have left much of the middle class high and dry, unable to support themselves in their senior years, unable to save a nest egg for financial emergencies, and living paycheck to paycheck. Empire and interventionism do not come cheap. ..."
"... There is but one solution to all this chaos and mayhem -- the dismantling, not the reform, of the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, the vast empire of foreign and domestic military bases, and the NSA, along with an immediate end to all foreign interventionism. A free, peaceful, prosperous, and harmonious society necessarily entails the restoration of a limited-government republic and a non-interventionist foreign policy to our land. ..."
The chaos arising from U.S. interventionism in Syria provides an excellent opportunity to explore the interventionist mind.
Consider the terminology being employed by interventionists: President Trump's actions in Syria have left a "power vacuum," one
that Russia and Iran are now filling. The United States will no longer have "influence" in the region. "Allies" will no longer be
able to trust the U.S. to come to their assistance. Trump's actions have threatened "national security." It is now possible that
ISIS will reformulate and threaten to take over lands and even regimes in the Middle East.
This verbiage is classic empire-speak. It is the language of the interventionist and the imperialist.
Amidst all the interventionist chaos in the Middle East, it is important to keep in mind one critically important fact: None of
it will mean a violent takeover of the U.S. government or an invasion and conquest of the United States. The federal government will
go on. American life will go on. There will be no army of Muslims, terrorists, Syrians, ISISians, Russians, Chinese, drug dealers,
or illegal immigrants coming to get us and take over the reins of the IRS.
Why is that an important point? Because it shows that no matter what happens in Syria or the rest of the Middle East, life will
continue here in the United States. Even if Russia gets to continue controlling Syria, that's not going to result in a conquest of
the United States. The same holds true if ISIS, say, takes over Iraq. Or if Turkey ends up killing lots of Kurds. Or if Syria ends
up protecting the Kurds. Or if Iran continues to be controlled by a theocratic state. Or if the Russians retake control over Ukraine.
It was no different than when North Vietnam ended up winning the Vietnamese civil war. The dominoes did not fall onto the United
States and make America Red. It also makes no difference if Egypt continues to be controlled by a brutal military dictatorship. Or
that Cuba, North Korea, and China are controlled by communist regimes. Or that Russia is controlled by an authoritarian regime. Or
that Myanmar (Burma) is controlled by a totalitarian military regime. America and the federal government will continue standing.
America was founded as a limited government republic, one that did not send its military forces around the world to slay monsters.
That's not to say that bad things didn't happen around the world. Bad things have always happened around the world. Dictatorships.
Famines. Wars. Civil wars. Revolutions. Empires. Torture. Extra-judicial executions. Tyranny. Oppression. The policy of the United
States was that it would not go abroad to fix or clear up those types of things.
All that changed with the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state and with the adoption of a pro-empire,
pro-intervention foreign policy. When that happened, the U.S. government assumed the duty to fix the wrongs of the world.
That's when U.S. officials began thinking in terms of empire and using empire-speak. Foreign regimes became "allies," "partners,"
and "friends." Others became "opponents," "rivals," or "enemies." Events thousands of miles away became threats to "national security."
That's when U.S. forces began invading and occupying other countries, waging wars of aggression against them, intervening in foreign
wars, revolutions, and civil wars, initiating coups, destroying democratic regimes, establishing an empire of domestic and foreign
military bases, and bombing, shooting, killing, assassinating, spying on, maiming, torturing, kidnapping, injuring, and destroying
people in countries all over the world.
The results of U.S. imperialism and interventionism have always been perverse, not only for foreigners but also for Americans.
That's how Americans have ended up with out-of-control federal spending and debt that have left much of the middle class high and
dry, unable to support themselves in their senior years, unable to save a nest egg for financial emergencies, and living paycheck
to paycheck. Empire and interventionism do not come cheap.
The shift toward empire and interventionism has brought about the destruction of American liberty and privacy here at home. That's
what the assassinations, secret surveillance, torture, and indefinite detentions of American citizens are all about -- to supposedly
protect us from the dangers produced by U.S. imperialism and interventionism abroad. One might call it waging perpetual war for freedom
and peace, both here and abroad.
There is but one solution to all this chaos and mayhem -- the dismantling, not the reform, of the Pentagon, the military-industrial
complex, the vast empire of foreign and domestic military bases, and the NSA, along with an immediate end to all foreign interventionism.
A free, peaceful, prosperous, and harmonious society necessarily entails the restoration of a limited-government republic and a non-interventionist
foreign policy to our land.
"... It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing to pay attention to the action on the field. ..."
"... The stupendous failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its gross falsifications. ..."
"... Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore. The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running, and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan. ..."
Here's one big reason that America is driving itself batshit crazy : the explosion of computerized records, emails, inter-office
memos, Twitter trails, Facebook memorabilia, iPhone videos, YouTubes, recorded conversations, and the vast alternative universe of
storage capacity for all this stuff makes it seem possible to constantly go back and reconstruct reality. All it has really done
is amplified the potential for political mischief to suicide level.
It's a major unanticipated consequence of the digital "revolution." It has gotten us stuck looking backward at events, obsessively
replaying them, while working overtime to spin them favorably for one team or the other, at the expense of actually living in real
time and dealing with reality as it unspools with us. If life were a ballgame, we'd only be watching jumbotron replays while failing
to pay attention to the action on the field.
Before all this, history was left largely to historians, who curated it from a range of views for carefully considered introduction
to the stream of human culture, and managed this process at a pace that allowed a polity to get on with its business at hand in the
here-and-now -- instead of incessantly and recursively reviewing events that have already happened 24/7. The more electronic media
has evolved, the more it lends itself to manipulation, propaganda, and falsification of whatever happened five minutes, or five hours,
or five weeks ago.
This is exactly why and how the losing team in the 2016 election has worked so hard to change that bit of history. The stupendous
failure of the Mueller Investigation only revealed what can happen when extraordinary bad faith, dishonesty, and incompetence are
brought to this project of reinventing "truth" -- of who did what and why -- while it provoked a counter-industry of detecting its
gross falsifications.
This dynamic has long been systematically studied and applied by institutions like the so-called "intelligence community," and
has gotten so out-of-hand that its main mission these days appears to be the maximum gaslighting of the nation -- for the purpose
of its own desperate self-defense. The "Whistleblower" episode is the latest turn in dishonestly manipulated records, but the most
interesting feature of it is that the release of the actual transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call did not affect the "narrative"
precooked between the CIA and Adam Schiff's House Intel Committee. They just blundered on with the story and when major parts of
the replay didn't add up, they retreated to secret sessions in the basement of the US capitol.
Perhaps you can see why unleashing the CIA, NSA, and the FBI on political enemies by Mr. Obama and his cohorts has become
such a disaster. When that scheme blew up, the intel community went to the mattresses, as the saying goes in Mafia legend and lore.
The "company" found itself at existential risk. Of course, the CIA has long been accused of following an agenda of its own simply
because it had the means to do it. It had the manpower, the money, and the equipment to run whatever operations it felt like running,
and a history of going its own way out of sheer institutional arrogance, of knowing better than the crackers and clowns elected by
the hoi-polloi. The secrecy inherent in its charter was a green light for limitless mischief and some of the agency's directors showed
open contempt for the occupants of the White House. Think: Allen Dulles and William Casey. And lately, Mr. Brennan.
The recently-spawned NSA has mainly added the capacity to turn everything that happens into replay material, since it is suspected
of recording every phone call, every email, every financial transaction, every closed-circuit screen capture, and anything else its
computers can snare for storage in its Utah Data Storage Center. Now you know why the actions of Edward Snowden were so significant.
He did what he did because he was moral enough to know the face of malevolence when he saw it. That he survives in exile is a miracle.
As for the FBI, only an exceptional species of ineptitude explains the trouble they got themselves into with the RussiaGate fiasco.
The unbelievable election loss of Mrs. Clinton screwed the pooch for them, and the desperate acts that followed only made things
worse. The incompetence and mendacity on display was only matched by Mr. Mueller and his lawyers, who were supposed to be the FBI's
cleanup crew and only left a bigger mess -- all of it cataloged in digital records.
Now, persons throughout all these agencies are waiting for the hammer to fall. If they are prosecuted, the process will entail
yet another monumental excursion into the replaying of those digital records. It could go on for years. So, the final act in the
collapse of the USA will be the government choking itself to death on replayed narratives from its own server farms.
In the meantime, events are actually tending in a direction that will eventually deprive the nation of the means to continue most
of its accustomed activities including credible elections, food distribution, a reliable electric grid, and perhaps even self-defense.
This article raises serious questions about
Snowden's authenticity. Although the level of damage he has done make suggestion that he is apart of CIA operation
against NSA much less plausible. He did some damage by publicizing operations like Prism. No question about it.
And it is diffuclt to treat Snowden like another variation of Lee Harvey Oswald defection
to the USSR.
But it is true that several steps that he took after supposed exfiltration of the documents were highly suspicious: As author pointed out WaPo
and Guardian are essentially intelligence agencies controlled outlets, so there is no chance that publication can't be completely blocked.
Another good point is that in any large corporation there is system of logs and they suppoedly are analysed, althout the level
of qualification in doing so varies greatly.
And if reports are created automatically that not not mean that they are ver read. Another valid point is that even if you are system administrator, you have
great powers over all your users. But at the same time your power is compartmentalized: you have access only to few selected computer that constitute the set of servers you manage.
And you usually access then via special jumpserver, which logs everything you do. In no way you have access to any server and any
database in the organization; you
might not even know that some servers exist. Actually access to critical databases is very tightly controlled.
The author also pointed to an interesting question about difficulties of exfiltration of data on encrypted Windows computers. I
think that copy to the UCB drive from encrypted drive to SD or USB drive might still be permitted for sysadmins, as it might be required for some operations.
But SD accepted might be special, issued by NSA, not retai and they should be accounted for. Still the point that Yvonne Lorenzo raised is very interesting: how you bypass existing protections on you computer to copy information
of SD card ?
On another issue, why did Snowden provide his files to known house organs of Intelligence Agencies, specifically the Washington
Post and The Guardian, and not give them to Wikileaks?
Notable quotes:
"... How many reading my words work at a large entity, not necessarily government, let us say a Fortune 1000 or higher? Do you have the ability to copy data unimpeded onto any external device? Can you surf the Internet at will? Or is everything you do on the computer network under constant, real-time scrutiny? ..."
"... Edward Snowden would have us believe that the Eye of Sauron didn't notice he was looking at gigabytes of data unrelated to his job function and using his computer to copy the data to external devices over a lengthy period of time. Are his supporters alleging he is so clever he could disappear from the "Eye of Sauron's" view and be unnoticed? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Crimea. ZeroHedge reported " IRS Agent Charged In Leak Of Michael Cohen Transactions To Michael Avenatti ." ..."
"... However, don't believe it takes nine months to identify such an unauthorized intrusion. Don't think every keystroke isn't monitored in real-time. So my question is: would the NSA, which has much more sensitive data (especially compromising information on the governing class) than tax returns and financial transactions have inferior capabilities than the IRS as to maintaining data security? Are we to believe the NSA lacks a "digital trail" when it comes to classified documents? ..."
"... On another issue, why did Snowden provide his files to known house organs of Intelligence Agencies, specifically the Washington Post and The Guardian, and not give them to Wikileaks to allow a publicly available searchable database? ..."
"... While other outlets -- such as the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post and the New York Times -- also possess much (though not all) of the archive, the Intercept was the only outlet with the (full) archive that had continued to publish documents, albeit at a remarkably slow pace, in recent years. In total, fewer than 10 percent of the Snowden documents have been published since 2013. Thus, the closing of the publication's Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Greenwald's promise of finding "the right partner that has the funds to robustly publish" is fulfilled ..."
"... Do you believe Putin's intelligence agencies don't communicate to him how Washington "organized crime" really operates, as Whitney Webb has disclosed, now on the pages of Unz.com ? What difference does any compromised President make to the policies and goals of the occupational government of the United States (obvious to any reader of this and similar websites)? ..."
"... Why is an alleged humanitarian such a Russophobe? ..."
"... Has Snowden ever challenged the September 11 narrative, ludicrous as it is, and him being an "engineer?" ..."
"... STO equals Special Technical Operations It's highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these. ..."
"... ECI = Exceptionally Controlled Information. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these ECI controlled networks). VRK = Very Restricted Knowledge. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these VRK controlled networks. ..."
"... So what they did, is they took a few documents and they downgraded [he classification level of the documents] – just a few – and gave them to them to placate this basic whitewash investigation. ..."
"... Journalist Margie Burns asked some good questions back in June that have not yet been answered. She wondered about the 29-year old Snowden who had been a U.S. Army Special Forces recruit, a covert CIA operative, and an NSA employee in various capacities, all in just a few, short years. Burns asked "How, exactly, did Snowden get his series of NSA jobs? Did he apply through regular channels? Was it through someone he knew? Who recommended him? Who were his references for a string of six-figure, high-level security jobs? Are there any safeguards in place so that red flags go up when a subcontractor jumps from job to job, especially in high-level clearance positions?" ..."
"... In December, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds broke the news that Omidyar's Paypal Corporation was implicated in the as-yet-unreleased NSA documents from Snowden. Moreover, Edmonds had allegedly been contacted by an NSA official who alleged that "a deal was made in early June, 2013 between the journalists involved in this recent NSA scandal and U.S. government officials, which was then sealed by secrecy and nondisclosure agreements by all parties involved." ..."
"... No, no one is accusing Wikileaks of conspiring with Russia, just Robert Mueller. I really appreciate Snowden calling Julian Assange a liar, for he has consistently denied there was a "state actor." ..."
"... "Terrorism is a real problem" Snowden said. Is it credible that Snowden, who presented himself as donating funds to Ron Paul, has never read any alternative news sites? Is it credible that Snowden believes that terrorists and this would include the good "moderate terrorists" in Syria are armed and act on their own initiative, and is ignorant of the role of the governments of America, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in using them to achieve their ends as proxy armies? ..."
"... Does Snowden then think this report, " America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group" is false? Does that mindset make Snowden a champion for liberty or a tool for more control of the American population? For example, is it credible that this alleged genius supports the narrative of the September 11 attacks World Trade Center attacks? ..."
"... Tor lists on its own website sponsors that include Google, the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ONR via Naval Research Laboratory (past sponsor) and DARPA. ..."
"... Perhaps Snowden is only a Soros and Hillary Clinton supporting liberal -- but then why would he have done what he did? His character is of any government employee of the "surface state" who swallows false narratives whole. ..."
"... The logging of user and information accessed is sure added to the file. But real time supervision? No. A eye of sauron? Please. The system isnt there to prevent crime, its to track down the criminal and deeds later. And yes everything takes a very long time on the public side. ..."
"... 'Edward Snowden' who first 'leaked' to the CIA's Washington Post, in fact to Bush VP Dick Cheney's biographer Bart Gellman then the Deep State realised that was too stupid, so they switched to Rothschild employee & ex-gay-pornography-seller Glenn Greenwald, former proprietor of 'hairystuds', at the Guardian, an intel-agency rag which lies about nearly everything ..."
"... NeonRevolt once floated the theory that Snowden was an FBI or CIA plant who whistleblew solely because he had the mission to undermine NSA operations by exposing their equipment/techniques and turning public opinion against them. ..."
"... inter-service rivalry and sabotage between spy agencies is absolutely a thing, and reviewing the inconsistencies of Snowden's stunt, its aftermath, and his personal views with that potential background in mind suddenly makes things make much more sense, in my mind at least. ..."
"... If we accept the later, that he's a plant, then it raises a further question: was the short term loss, associated with his revelations, ie highlighting the utterly disturbing degree of Gov surveillance over US citizens (etc) worth the long term profit of having an established, authoritive psy-op's agent able to influence/distort etc any debate or narrative concerning the US State /elites. On this side the author notes Snowmen's views on Tor, 9/11, Russia etc which clearly advantage the US State's own views on these subjects. ..."
"... Consider that nothing Snowden revealed was news. It was all old hat for anyone who'd been paying attention, and for up to ten years. Sure Snowden made it mainstream for what good it did but nothing he said was a secret anymore. In fact, I thought even at the time his actions were nothing less than a 'threat and warning' from the intel services that they had this much on everyone. Just imagine all those national leaders, politicians from all states being pout on notice. All your secrets are ours! What a powerful global message to deliver and in such a loud and clear fashion. ..."
"... The lack of deviation from official bullshit on 9/11 is on its own however reason enough to toss this guy out. ..."
"... To my mind "9/11, attitude to", is a sort of touch-stone for telling genuine dissidents from fake and both Snowden and Assange fail on that test ..."
"... Snowden is not a classic defector so it makes sense for him to keep his distance from Russian society so as not to be inadvertently compromised or used by their intelligence services. He's obviously under surveillance there, I know we all are but he's much more aware of it, so that doesn't make it easy for him but he's definitely safer there than he'd be in France or Germany. I just don't think he planned well ahead when he became a whistle-blower or was clear about what he was trying to achieve. He's not the top level type of spy we're accustomed to reading about who betray their country for money or to serve another they believe in more than their own. If he has been on active duty as a CIA asset all along I can't see that he has achieved much of use to them other than in some inter-agency rivalry game. But it's natural for Russians to be suspicious of him – they're suspicious by nature – and rightly so, but it doesn't make his life easy there. ..."
"... 9/11 is the "litmus test" and it appears that both Assange and Snowden have failed it. ..."
"... Snowden keeping "distance" to Russia, and not openly defending them seems reasonable to me. You can imagine the smear campaign back home if he would side with Russia against the U.S. on almost anything. "The Russians got to him" or "He was always their man". ..."
"... He is trying to keep his neutrality and credibility and his target audience isn't the average Unz reader, but rather some mainstream educated middle/upper class blokes. Easily scared away from his views if they become too controversial and too far from the established narrative. ..."
"... If I had been in the position like 'Snowden', after first having been granted asylum, my priority would have been to study the language. I would gtuess that he can order food or drink, do basic greetings, and not much else. ..."
"... I agree. Shilling for the Israelis regarding 911 is a deal breaker for me. They had me going about these 2 guys for a while, but when I heard that they had ridiculed 911 truthers I smelled a rat. And after this article I agree they are shills for the status quo. Reasonable people can not doubt that 911 was a false flag operation. There's just too much bullshit there. ..."
"... I think the idea Snowden is a "plant" is a bit far out there. If he is; the real purpose of the exercise is what exactly? ..."
"... I also don't get why some commenters think Julian Assange isn't who he claims to be. His Wikileaks has published great volume of highly embarrassing material for the U.S. The embassy cables come to mind – bringing to light evidence contrary to Washington narrative on many events. ..."
"... There is another thing; Just after he established Wikileaks he came to Iceland and met with journalists and few politicians. The result from that visit was he met one Kristinn Hrafnsson, long time journalist in Iceland with excellent track record and credibility. Since Assange got in trouble, accused of sexual harassment from Swedish woman and finally escaped into the Ecuador embassy in London, Hrafnsson has been spokesman for Wikileaks. ..."
"... "It all comes down to 9/11.Everything that has happened has happened based on a lie . Everyone in Government ; everyone in the media , in entertainment , in organized religion , in the public ,in the public eye who accepts and promotes the official story is either a traitor or a tool . Everyone who does not stand forth and speak truth to power is a coward , a liar and complicit in mass-murder . Everyone everywhere can be measured by this Litmus Test ." ..."
Have you ever had the pleasure of dealing with an agent of the Federal government? For example, have you been audited by the IRS?
Did you notice what the "Agent" does to gain access to his (or her) computer -- by inserting a "Smart ID" into a slot? Did you ask
how your personal information is protected from disclosure or theft? What is to prevent the Agent from copying files to a thumb drive
and taking them home?
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), issued by President George W. Bush on August 27, 2004, mandated the
establishment of a standard for identification of Federal government employees and contractors. HSPD-12 requires the use of
a common identification credential for both logical and physical access to federally controlled facilities and information systems.
The Department of Commerce and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) were tasked with producing a standard for
secure and reliable forms of identification. In response, NIST published Federal Information Processing Standard Publication
201 (FIPS 201), Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and Contractors, issued on February 25, 2005, and a
number of special publications that provide more detail on the implementation of the standard.
Both Federal agencies and enterprises have implemented FIPS 201-compliant ID programs and have issued PIV cards. The FIPS
201 PIV card is a smart card with both contact and contactless interfaces that is now being issued to all Federal employees and
contractors
Additional information about FIPS 201 can be found on the Government Identity/Credentialing Resources page, from NIST, and
from the Secure Technology Alliance Access Control Council.
If you engage the IRS employee in conversation, remembering the adage you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, you'll
learn the computer cannot be compromised -- all data on the device are encrypted; the only access to it is via the Smart ID. Data
can be copied to an external "thumb drive" but everything copied will be encrypted; any file on that thumb drive is only readable
by that specific device. Wouldn't this be true of NSA devices as well? Why does Snowden never discuss dealing with such encryption:
how would it be possible?
In the Oliver Stone movie Snowden , as well as in any of Snowden's descriptions of how he accessed the NSA computers, did
you note either the depiction or reference to this universal Smart ID? How could Snowden be exempt from its requirement? Why wasn't
its use, which is public knowledge, shown or discussed? Per the above, the Smart ID is deployed in all government agencies: there
are no exceptions. And while the financial portion (think of all those Goldman Sachs alumni at the U.S. Department of the Treasury)
is likely the most powerful part of the financial-military-industrial-media-congressional complex that is the central power of the
federal government, do you think that IRS systems are different and superior in security to what was employed by a contractor working
for Booze-Allen Hamilton at the NSA?
How many reading my words work at a large entity, not necessarily government, let us say a Fortune 1000 or higher? Do you
have the ability to copy data unimpeded onto any external device? Can you surf the Internet at will? Or is everything you do on the
computer network under constant, real-time scrutiny?
Did Edward Snowden, who has publicly criticized Google, mention Google is deployed as a search engine throughout the federal "intranet"?
And can he catch a link to the Washington Post on the NSA homepage too? Or would he testify and can it be verified that NSA does
not use Google (for example to obtain the PowerPoint he revealed) for searching for internal documents and procedures? Can anyone
reading my words answer the questions I've posed so far and answer accurately and honestly with confirmatory evidence?
Edward Snowden would have us believe that the Eye of Sauron didn't notice he was looking at gigabytes of data unrelated to
his job function and using his computer to copy the data to external devices over a lengthy period of time. Are his supporters alleging
he is so clever he could disappear from the "Eye of Sauron's" view and be unnoticed? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell
you in Crimea. ZeroHedge reported "
IRS Agent Charged In Leak Of Michael Cohen Transactions To Michael Avenatti ." From the article:
John C. Fry, an analyst in the San Francisco IRS office who had worked for the agency since 2008, was charged with disclosing
Cohen's Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) – nine months after we reported that it wouldn't be difficult to track down the leaker
due to a digital trail left behind from accessing the system.
However, don't believe it takes nine months to identify such an unauthorized intrusion. Don't think every keystroke isn't
monitored in real-time. So my question is: would the NSA, which has much more sensitive data (especially compromising information
on the governing class) than tax returns and financial transactions have inferior capabilities than the IRS as to maintaining data
security? Are we to believe the NSA lacks a "digital trail" when it comes to classified documents?
On another issue, why did Snowden provide his files to known house organs of Intelligence Agencies, specifically the Washington
Post and The Guardian, and not give them to Wikileaks to allow a publicly available searchable database? As Roger Stone has
noted, the odious Nixon was taken down principally by the CIA media front The Washington Post because he sought detente with Russia
and another presidential assassination would have been too obvious. Notice the situation regarding the Snowden treasure trove as
investigative journalist Whitney Webb writes about it here: "
Silencing the Whistle: The Intercept Shutters
Snowden Archive, Citing Cost ."
According to a timeline of events written by Poitras that was shared and published by journalist and former Intercept columnist
Barrett Brown, both Scahill and Greenwald were intimately involved in the decision to close the Snowden archive.
While other outlets -- such as the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post and the New York Times -- also possess much (though
not all) of the archive, the Intercept was the only outlet with the (full) archive that had continued to publish documents, albeit
at a remarkably slow pace, in recent years. In total, fewer than 10 percent of the Snowden documents have been published since
2013. Thus, the closing of the publication's Snowden archive will likely mean the end of any future publications, unless Greenwald's
promise of finding "the right partner that has the funds to robustly publish" is fulfilled
Yet, as Poitras pointed out, the research department accounted for a minuscule 1.5 percent of First Look Media's budget. Greenwald's
claim that the archive was shuttered owing to its high cost to the company is also greatly undermined by the fact that he, along
with several other Intercept employees -- Reed and Scahill among them -- receive massive salaries that dwarf those of journalists
working for similar nonprofit publications.
Greenwald, for instance, received $1.6 million from First Look Media, of which Omidyar is the sole shareholder, from 2014 to
2017. His yearly salary peaked in 2015, when he made over $518,000. Reed and Scahill both earn well over $300,000 annually from
First Look. According to journalist Mark Ames, Scahill made over $43,000 per article at the Intercept in 2014. Other writers at
the site, by comparison, have a base salary of $50,000, which itself is higher than the national average for journalists.
And what about Snowden himself, the pontificator, the man who can speak on television or to the media with evidence of training?
Practice yourself -- see how well you can answer questions and speak publicly to a TV camera. How did he get his training? Who trained
him? Why? How is it that the legacy media, which
applauds
the slow, painful execution of Julian Assange , be in rapture over Snowden's new book tour and provide ample coverage? Is Assange
being murdered in part to prevent his providing exculpatory evidence that Russia never hacked the DNC and it was a leak?
I have provided two videos below for the reader to consider and compare.
Look at how Bill Binney, a true techno-nerd speaks and compare the difference between him with the polished interviews given by
Snowden who borders on pomposity. Also, to his favor Binney is doing his best to debunk the Russia hacking narrative of the DNC;
Snowden makes his thoughts about Russia and Russians clear
in his latest interview with Der Spiegel promoting his new book about himself:
DER SPIEGEL: Do you have Russian friends?
Snowden: I try to keep a distance between myself and Russian society, and this is completely intentional. I live my life
with basically the English-speaking community. I'm the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. And, you know, I'm
an indoor cat. It doesn't matter where I am -- Moscow, Berlin, New York -- as long as I have a screen to look into.
DER SPIEGEL: Western authorities accuse the Russian government on a regular basis of being one of the biggest disrupters
in the digital world. Are they right?
Snowden: Russia is responsible for a lot of negative activity in the world, you can say that right and fairly. Did Russia
interfere with elections? Almost certainly. But do the United States interfere in elections? Of course. They've been doing
it for the last 50 years. Any country bigger than Iceland is going to interfere in every crucial election, and they're going to
deny it every time, because this is what intelligence services do. This is explicitly why covert operations and influence divisions
are created, and their purpose as an instrument of national power is to ask: How can we influence the world in a direction that
improves our standing relative to all the other countries?
I am pleased to have played a small role in getting Stephen F. Cohen's work published on Unz.com. He and others have effectively
debunked Russian involvement in the manipulation of America elections and the conclusions of the Mueller report. To paraphrase a
point Professor Cohen made in his most recent article posted here, which is simply common sense: We are to believe Trump is Putin's
puppet yet Putin simultaneously encouraged the preparation of a dossier to destroy him. Does that make sense to any one with half
a brain? Do you believe Putin's intelligence agencies don't communicate to him how Washington "organized crime" really operates,
as Whitney Webb has disclosed, now on the pages of Unz.com
? What difference does any compromised President make to the policies and goals of the occupational government of the United States
(obvious to any reader of this and similar websites)?
Do you notice how Snowden never challenges any government narrative, whether it's on Russia as a villain, and not as a victim
of war initiated by Washington? Why is an alleged humanitarian such a Russophobe? Is this how he repays the nation that
granted him asylum? Has he only compassion in the abstract, and is a genius but too stupid to consider the consequences of America
going to war with Russia and in fact exacerbating the tension by his false and inflammatory statements about Russian conduct in the
2016 elections, for which there are no facts and evidence?
And then there's the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings. Of course Snowden at NSA had no access to information on
how and why it was done, but as Dmitri Orlov has written:
I suppose I am a "conspiracy theorist" too. Whenever I write something that questions the veracity of some official narrative,
someone (probably a troll) pops up and asks me what I think of 9/11. Here is what I typically reply:
I totally believe that it was possible to knock down three steel-framed buildings using two flying aluminum cans loaded
with kerosene, luggage and meat. I have proven that this is possible by throwing two beer cans at three chain-link fences.
All three fences were instantly swallowed up by holes in the ground that mysteriously opened up right under them and in which
they were instantaneously incinerated into fine oxide powder that coated the entire neighborhood. Anybody who does not believe
my experimental results is obviously a tin-foil-hat crackpot conspiracy theorist.
Lots of people read this and ran away bleating; a few people bust a gut laughing because this is (trust me on this!) actually
quite funny. Some people took offense at someone ridiculing an event in which thousands of people died. (To protect their tender
sensibilities they should consider emigrating to a country that isn't run by a bunch of war criminals.)
But if you do see the humor in this, then you may be up to the challenge, which is to pull out a useful signal (a typical
experimentalist's task) out of a mess of unreliable and contradictory data. Only then would you be in a position to persuasively
argue -- not prove, mind you! -- that the official story is complete and utter bullshit.
Note that everything beyond that point, such as arguing what "the real story" is, is strictly off-limits. If you move beyond
that point you open yourself up to well-organized, well-funded debunking. But if all you produce is a very large and imposing
question mark, then the only way to attack it is by producing certainty -- a very tall order! In conspiracy theory, as in
guerrilla warfare, you don't have to win. You just have to not lose long enough for the enemy to give up.
Has Snowden ever challenged the September 11 narrative, ludicrous as it is, and him being an "engineer?" And this last
point is the reason I'm writing these words: I don't have to come up with the "real story" on who Edward Snowden is and what his
true motives are. I am asking questions that point out the discrepancies in Snowden's statements and conduct and his alleged sanctity.
In this article, "
EXCLUSIVE REPORT: NSA Whistleblower: Snowden Never Had Access to the JUICIEST Documents Far More Damning "
WASHINGTON'S BLOG: Glenn Greenwald – supposedly, in the next couple of days or weeks – is going to disclose, based on NSA documents
leaked by Snowden, that the NSA is spying on all sorts of normal Americans and that the spying is really to crush dissent. [Background
here, here and here.]
Does Snowden even have documents which contain the information which you've seen?
RUSSELL TICE: The answer is no.
WASHINGTON'S BLOG: So you saw handwritten notes. And what Snowden was seeing were electronic files ?
RUSSELL TICE: Think of it this way. Remember I told you about the NSA doing everything they could to make sure that the
information from 40 years ago – from spying on Frank Church and Lord knows how many other Congressman that they were spying on
– was hidden?
Now do you think they're going to put that information into PowerPoint slides that are easy to explain to everybody what
they're doing?
They would not even put their own NSA designators on the reports [so that no one would know that] it came from the NSA.
They made the reports look like they were Humint (human intelligence) reports. They did it to hide the fact that they were NSA
and they were doing the collection. That's 40 years ago. [The NSA and other agencies are still doing "parallel construction",
"laundering" information to hide the fact that the information is actually from mass NSA surveillance.]
Now, what NSA is doing right now is that they're taking the information and they're putting it in a much higher security level.
It's called "ECI" – Exceptionally Controlled Information – and it's called the black program which I was a specialist in, by the
way.
I specialized in black world – DOD and IC (Intelligence Community) – programs, operations and missions in "VRKs", "ECIs", and
"SAPs", "STOs". SAP equals Special Access Program. It's highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these. STO equals Special
Technical Operations It's highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these.
Now in that world – the ECI/VRK world – everything in that system is classified at a higher level and it has its own computer
systems that house it. It's totally separate than the system which Mr. Snowden was privy to, which was called the "JWICS": Joint
Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. The JWICS system is what everybody at NSA has access to. Mr Snowden had Sys Admin
[systems administrator] authority for the JWICS.
And you still have to have TS/SCI clearance [i.e. Top Secret/ Sensitive Compartmented Information – also known as "code word"
– clearance] to get on the JWICS. But the ECI/VRK systems are much higher [levels of special compartmentalized clearance] than
the JWICS. And you have to be in the black world to get that [clearance].
ECI = Exceptionally Controlled Information. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these ECI controlled networks).
VRK = Very Restricted Knowledge. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these VRK controlled networks.
These programs typically have, at the least, a requirement of 100 year or until death, 'till the person first being "read in"
[i.e. sworn to secrecy as part of access to the higher classification program] can talk about them. [As an interesting sidenote,
the Washington Times reported in 2006 that – when Tice offered to testify to Congress about this illegal spying – he was informed
by the NSA that the Senate and House intelligence committees were not cleared to hear such information.]
It's very compartmentalized and – even with stuff that they had – you might have something at NSA, that there's literally 40
people at NSA that know that it's going on in the entire agency.
When the stuff came out in the New York Times [the first big spying story, which broke in 2005] – and I was a source of information
for the New York Times – that's when President Bush made up that nonsense about the "terrorist surveillance program." By the way,
that never existed. That was made up.
There was no such thing beforehand. It was made up to try to placate the American people.
The NSA IG (Inspector General) – who was not cleared for this – all of a sudden is told he has to do an investigation on this;
something he has no information or knowledge of.
So what they did, is they took a few documents and they downgraded [he classification level of the documents] – just a
few – and gave them to them to placate this basic whitewash investigation.
Snowden's Failure To Understand the Most Important Documents
RUSSELL TICE: Now, if Mr. Snowden were to find the crossover, it would be those documents that were downgraded to the NSA's
IG.
The stuff that I saw looked like a bunch of alphanumeric gobbledygook. Unless you have an analyst to know what to look for
– and believe me, I think that what Snowden's done is great – he's not an intelligence analyst. So he would see something like
that, and he wouldn't know what he's looking at.
But that would be "the jewels". And the key is, you wouldn't know it's the jewels unless you were a diamond miner and you knew
what to look for. Because otherwise, there's a big lump of rock and you don't know there's a diamond in there.
I worked special programs. And the way I found out is that I was working on a special operation, and I needed information from
NSA from another unit. And when I went to that unit and I said "I need this information", and I dealt with [satellite spy operations],
and I did that in the black world. I was a special operations officer. I would literally go do special missions that were in the
black world where I would travel overseas and do spooky stuff.
Did we really need Snowden to have told us that the Internet, federally controlled, does not allow anyone a modicum of privacy
and the government after implementing the Patriot Act considers ordinary Americans the enemy?
Journalist Margie Burns asked some good questions back in June that have not yet been answered. She wondered about the
29-year old Snowden who had been a U.S. Army Special Forces recruit, a covert CIA operative, and an NSA employee in various capacities,
all in just a few, short years. Burns asked "How, exactly, did Snowden get his series of NSA jobs? Did he apply through regular
channels? Was it through someone he knew? Who recommended him? Who were his references for a string of six-figure, high-level
security jobs? Are there any safeguards in place so that red flags go up when a subcontractor jumps from job to job, especially
in high-level clearance positions?"
Five months later, journalists Mark Ames and Yasha Levine investigated some of the businesses in which Greenwald's benefactor
Omidyar had invested. They found that the actual practices of those businesses were considerably less humanitarian than the outward
appearance of Omidyar's ventures often portray. The result was that Omidyar took down references to at least one of those businesses
from his website.
In December, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds broke the news that Omidyar's Paypal Corporation was implicated in the as-yet-unreleased
NSA documents from Snowden. Moreover, Edmonds had allegedly been contacted by an NSA official who alleged that "a deal was made
in early June, 2013 between the journalists involved in this recent NSA scandal and U.S. government officials, which was then
sealed by secrecy and nondisclosure agreements by all parties involved."
It would appear that Snowden's whistleblowing has been co-opted by private corporate interests. Are those involved with privatization
of the stolen documents also colluding with government agencies to frame and direct national discussions on domestic spying and
other serious matters?
The possibilities are endless, it seems. Presenting documents at a measured rate could be a way to acclimate citizens to
painful realities without stirring the public into a panic or a unified response that might actually threaten the status quo.
And considering that the number of documents has somehow grown from only thousands to nearly two million, it seems possible
that those in control could release practically anything, thereby controlling national dialogue on many topics.
Please read the final paragraph above twice and think about the points raised about acclimating citizens and controlling national
dialog. Is Snowden as much of a "Pied Piper" as QAnon? How did Snowden describe the nature of the CIA and NSA
in this earlier interview with Der Spiegel ?
DER SPIEGEL: But those people see you as their biggest enemy today.
Snowden: My personal battle was not to burn down the NSA or the CIA. I even think they actually do have a useful role in
society when they limit themselves to the truly important threats that we face and when they use their least intrusive means.
**
Snowden: It wasn't that difficult. Everybody is currently pointing at the Russians.
DER SPIEGEL: Rightfully?
Snowden: I don't know. They probably did hack the systems of Hillary Clinton's Democratic Party, but we should have proof
of that. In the case of the hacking attack on Sony, the FBI presented evidence that North Korea was behind it. In this case
they didn't, although I am convinced that they do have evidence. The question is why?
DER SPIEGEL: Mike Pompeo, the new head of the CIA, has accused WikiLeaks, whose lawyers helped you, of being a mouthpiece for
the Russians. Is that not harmful to your image as well?
Snowden: First, we should be fair about what the accusations are. I don't believe the U.S. government or anybody in the
intelligence community is directly accusing Julian Assange or WikiLeaks of working directly for the Russian government. The
allegations I understand are that they were used as a tool basically to wash documents that had been stolen by the Russian government.
And, of course, that's a concern. I don't see that as directly affecting me because I'm not WikiLeaks and there is no question
about the provenance of the documents that I dealt with.
DER SPIEGEL: Currently, there's another American guy out there who is accused of being too close to Putin.
Snowden: Oh (laughs).
DER SPIEGEL: Your president. Is he your president?
Snowden: The idea that half of American voters thought that Donald Trump was the best among us, is something that I struggle
with. And I think we will all be struggling with it for decades to come.
DER SPIEGEL: But isn't there reason to fear terrorism?
Snowden: Sure there is. Terrorism is a real problem. But when we look at how many lives it has claimed in basically
any country that is outside of war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, it is so much less than, say, car accidents or heart attacks.
Even if Sept. 11 were to happen every single year in the U.S., terrorism would be a much lower threat than so many other things.
No, no one is accusing Wikileaks of conspiring with Russia, just Robert Mueller. I really appreciate Snowden calling Julian Assange
a liar, for he has consistently denied there was a "state actor."
"Terrorism is a real problem" Snowden said. Is it credible that Snowden, who presented himself as donating funds to Ron Paul,
has never read any alternative news sites? Is it credible that Snowden believes that terrorists and this would include the good "moderate
terrorists" in Syria are armed and act on their own initiative, and is ignorant of the role of the governments of America, Israel,
and Saudi Arabia in using them to achieve their ends as proxy armies?
Does Snowden then think this report, "
America Created
Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group" is false? Does that mindset make Snowden a champion for liberty or a tool for more control
of the American population? For example, is it credible that this alleged genius supports the narrative of the September 11 attacks
World Trade Center attacks? Whom do you trust, the contributors to these very pages or Edward Snowden?
The Tor Project – a private nonprofit known as the "NSA-proof" gateway to the "dark web," turns out to be almost "100% funded
by the US government" according to documents obtained by investigative journalist and author Yasha Levine.
In a recent blog post, Levine details how he was able to obtain roughly 2,500 pages of correspondence via FOIA requests while
performing research for a book. The documents include strategy, contract, budgets and status updates between the Tor project and
its primary source of funding; a CIA spinoff known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which "oversees America's foreign
broadcasting operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe."
By following the money, I discovered that Tor was not a grassroots. I was able to show that despite its indie radical
cred and claims to help its users protect themselves from government surveillance online, Tor was almost 100% funded by three
U.S. National Security agencies: the Navy, the State Department and the BBG. Following the money revealed that Tor was not
a grassroots outfit, but a military contractor with its own government contractor number. In other words: it was a privatized
extension of the very same government that it claimed to be fighting.
The documents conclusively showed that Tor is not independent at all. The organization did not have free reign to do
whatever it wanted, but was kept on a very short leash and bound by contracts with strict contractual obligations. It was also
required to file detailed monthly status reports that gave the U.S. government a clear picture of what Tor employees were developing,
where they went and who they saw. -Yasha Levine
The FOIA documents also suggest that Tor's ability to shield users from government spying may be nothing more than hot air.
While no evidence of a "backdoor" exists, the documents obtained by Levine reveal that Tor has "no qualms with privately tipping
off the federal government to security vulnerabilities before alerting the public, a move that would give the feds an opportunity
to exploit the security weakness long before informing Tor users."
Interestingly, Edward Snowden is a big fan of Tor – even throwing a "cryptoparty" while he was still an NSA contractor where
he set up a Tor exit node to show off how cool they are.
In a 2015 interview with The Intercept's (Wikileaks hating) Micah Lee, Snowden said:
LEE: What do you think about Tor? Do you think that everyone should be familiar with it, or do you think that it's only a use-it-if-you-need-it
thing?
SNOWDEN: I think Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project being used today.
"Tor Browser is a great way to selectively use Tor to look something up and not leave a trace that you did it. It can also
help bypass censorship when you're on a network where certain sites are blocked. If you want to get more involved, you can volunteer
to run your own Tor node, as I do, and support the diversity of the Tor network."
Tor lists on its own website sponsors that include Google,
the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ONR via Naval Research Laboratory (past sponsor) and DARPA.
When Julian Assange was taken from the Ecuadoran embassy, he was carrying a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National Security
State & Vidal on America. As an older article on Vidal in The Guardian noted, "
Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit
in 9/11 ."
Isn't it odd by doing what he did with Vidal's book Assange makes the point the legitimacy of Washington must be challenged, but
Snowden never does, other than offering suggestions for tinkering at the margins, perhaps advising we use DuckDuckGo instead of Google
to give us the illusion of privacy? Did Snowden, for someone who is in front of a computer screen for most of the day, make public
the facts obtained by Whitney Webb in her piece "
How the CIA, Mossad and 'the Epstein Network' Are Exploiting Mass Shootings to Create an Orwellian Nightmare " posted on Unz.com
which goes in depth into the Orwellian hell we are facing, for as Webb concludes:
With companies like Carbyne -- with its ties to both the Trump administration and to Israeli intelligence -- and the Mossad-linked
Gabriel also marketing themselves as "technological" solutions to mass shootings while also doubling as covert tools for mass
data collection and extraction, the end result is a massive surveillance system so complete and so dystopian that even George
Orwell himself could not have predicted it.
Following another catastrophic mass shooting or crisis event, aggressive efforts will likely follow to foist these "solutions"
on a frightened American public by the very network connected, not only to Jeffrey Epstein, but to a litany of crimes and a
frightening history of plans to crush internal dissent and would-be dissenters in the United States.
There is the concept of willful blindness that I think applies to much of what Snowden has done, if not something altogether more
nefarious -- distorations, misrepresenations, and outright lies, in addition to hubris. What is the point I'm making? Perhaps Snowden
is only a Soros and Hillary Clinton supporting liberal -- but then why would he have done what he did? His character is of any government
employee of the "surface state" who swallows false narratives whole.
I only wish the reader fairly and intelligently consider the questions I have raised. For I am encouraging you to think very carefully
before you trust the statements, purpose, motives, and truthfulness of the secular saint, Edward Snowden.
Yvonne Lorenzo makes her home in New England in a house full to bursting with books, including works on classical Greece.
Her interests include gardening, mythology, ancient history, The Electric Universe, and classical music, especially the compositions
of Handel, Mozart, Bach, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and the Bel Canto repertoire. She is the author of the novels the
Son of Thunder and
The Cloak of Freya and has contributed to LewRockwell.com and TheSaker.IS.
Edward Snowden is a typical American fachidiot who, despite their protestations is a striver and bootlick for the Empire.
I genuinely believe that he is puzzled as to why it has turned against him. He deserves his destiny of forever languishing in
political purgatory.
Several years later, practically nobody remembers him here in the US, and possible elsewhere (save for when it is convenient
for the media). Julian Assange was a far more daring, more insightful figure.
(As an aside, I am curious about the author's liking of bel canto . Lot of birdbrain music to my ears; I prefer Wagner,
Strauss, Schreker, and Berg. Also, the older I get, the more I realize that Schoenberg was by far the greater genius than Mahler.)
The logging of user and information accessed is sure added to the file. But real time supervision? No. A eye of sauron? Please.
The system isnt there to prevent crime, its to track down the criminal and deeds later. And yes everything takes a very long time
on the public side.
You know, 16:00 hours the mouse just drops dead from the hand. Public servants don't give a damn if a job is made fast or efficient,
only that procedure if followed and that it is eventually done. Unless priorities are reassigned, stuff left halfway undone in
disarray is no problem when reassigned.
Just as keeping secret private archives of more or less job related data is all standard procedure. That is keep a load of
data in your personal folders and move those into whatever form desired. Security is not very tight. Only in the sense that eventually
every person with hours and access point etc data can be recovered if so ordered to.
So stealing data out of that system shouldn't be terribly hard. Just email it to a private email. Or store on something else
and transport out. For one Hillary was doing the same thing for ages. In that case though "what difference does it make"
There was an interview with Edward in the German magazine Der Spiegel this month, Nr. 18. In it, we get the tale, he copied material
on SD cards, and smugeled them in his mouth, or inside a "magic cube" out of the base on Hawaii, passing "guards". A cube, the
occult symbol, how blatant, just mocking the profane.
On the technical side, I got a story from a German BMW factory. A bunch
of guys on nightshift plugged a USB Harddisk into a PC to watch a movie. Minutes later they received a call from the IT, it had
been recognized remotely. What a charade. It has the taste of Jewish tales, smuggling stuff, tricking guards of an evil system.
Nice to have a piece helping point to the truth, that Glenn Greenwald & Edward Snowden are CIA frauds, as every major government
knows
'Edward Snowden' who first 'leaked' to the CIA's Washington Post, in fact to Bush VP Dick Cheney's biographer Bart Gellman
then the Deep State realised that was too stupid, so they switched to Rothschild employee & ex-gay-pornography-seller Glenn Greenwald,
former proprietor of 'hairystuds', at the Guardian, an intel-agency rag which lies about nearly everything
Despite the Snowden-Assange mutual sniping in their media-star rivalry, Julian Assange is also a CIA-Mossad asset, as Bibi
Netanyahu himself has boasted to Israeli media, regarding aggressively pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian Julian, equally anti-9-11-truth
along with Eddie Snowden
As loyal CIA assets, neither Assange and Snowden dare to mention USA Virginia fed judge bribery files that have blocked other
extraditions, tho these files would make their own extraditions impossible, if these CIA fakers really cared about their own 'defence'
Zbigniew Brzezinski on 29 Nov 2010, on the US public television PBS News Hour, also admitted Assange was intel, his Wikileaks
'selected'
People trusting Assange are dead, Peter W Smith, Seth Rich; others jailed
You will notice that Assange & Snowden both got famous via CIA – MI6 media, NY Times, UK Guardian, who are never interested
in real dissidents
Assange shared lawyer with Rothschilds, Rothschild sister-in-law posted Assange bail, Assange has ties to George Soros too
Early on, Assange helped Rothschilds destroy rival bank Julius Baer that is 'progressive Wiki-leaking' for you
Assange had a weird childhood with Aussie mind-control cult 'the Family'
Things like 'Assange living at Ecuador Embassy' – 'now in Belmarsh prison' – easily faked, Assange moved in & out for photos
by MI5 MI6, police under national security orders 'Snowden' is not necessarily in Russia either
Assange & Snowden de-legitimise real dissidents, because people say, 'Wikileaks – NY Times – UK Guardian would cover it if
it was true'
NeonRevolt once floated the theory that Snowden was an FBI or CIA plant who whistleblew solely because he had the mission to undermine
NSA operations by exposing their equipment/techniques and turning public opinion against them.
I completely understand if people are leery of the theorycrafting of a Q tracker, but I do believe that this suggestion is plausible.
Setting aside attempts at placing it in context of a Deep State war, inter-service rivalry and sabotage between spy agencies is
absolutely a thing, and reviewing the inconsistencies of Snowden's stunt, its aftermath, and his personal views with that potential
background in mind suddenly makes things make much more sense, in my mind at least.
Interesting, thought-provoking article.
It asks us to balance up competing interests & advantages.
On the one hand we can assume Snowden is "real" or not. That is, he's a genuine whistle blower, or he's a government psy-op's
plant.
If we accept the later, that he's a plant, then it raises a further question: was the short term loss, associated with his revelations,
ie highlighting the utterly disturbing degree of Gov surveillance over US citizens (etc) worth the long term profit of having
an established, authoritive psy-op's agent able to influence/distort etc any debate or narrative concerning the US State /elites.
On this side the author notes Snowmen's views on Tor, 9/11, Russia etc which clearly advantage the US State's own views on these
subjects.
I don't know the answer -- except that this article raises serious questions, suspicions , about
Snowden's authenticity.
Never for a moment considered Snowden any sort of secular saint.
Snowden for the most part only confirmed the downward trajectory of the formerly at least interesting filmmaker, Oliver Stone.
If JFK was worth a laugh (and evidently did get a few people thinking about the phoniness of Dallas '63 for the first time),
Snowden was total chloroform on screen. Sad to see Ollie hit such lows.
This bit is interesting:
When Julian Assange was taken from the Ecuadoran embassy, he was carrying a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National
Security State & Vidal on America. As an older article on Vidal in The Guardian noted, "Gore Vidal claims 'Bush junta' complicit
in 9/11."
As batty as Vidal may have been, it is a fact he was the first American with any sort of national recognition to speak out
against the National Security State, starting in the Eisenhower years. His fury was partly stoked by their meddling in Central
America, but he stayed at it. Even gave it a mention in a movie he had a gag role in, Bob Roberts , 1992.
His favorite line (variously rendered) was "Harry Truman signed the United States of America into oblivion in February, 1949"
which was when the NSA papers were drawn up, giving us the security state, the CIA and the whole shebang. Anytime before, any
US citizen could demand accounting of any government project, no matter what. Afterward, the rule by secrecy applied.
Vidal had been a WWII veteran and deplored all that came about after. Credit is due for that.
Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded. The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows
it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested
without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone calls, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get
your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards. – Edward Snowden
Snowden, exiled and isolated in Russia, is some sort of USG crypto-agent or something?
I suppose that if you're going to look for outside-the-box commentary and analysis, you're going to get some of this sort of
nonsense. I guess you can't expect to hit a home run every time.
"Edward Snowden is a typical American fachidiot who, despite their protestations is a striver and bootlick for the Empire.
I genuinely believe that he is puzzled as to why it has turned against him. He deserves his destiny of forever languishing
in political purgatory."
And yet this "striver and bootlick for the Empire" is exiled in Russia. So some guy sacrifices an enjoyable and secure life
to go live in Russia and all you can say is that "he deserves his destiny?"
"Several years later, practically nobody remembers him here in the US"
And this is a reflection on him or on the rest of us?
Comfortable living in Moscow, vs. Belmarsh, makes all the difference in the world.
You might be right about Snowden, you might not be, but were Assange living in a Russian city, far out of reach of NeoconiaDC,
Bill Blaney would show him greater respect believe me.
@Horst G Boy howdy, a Rubik's
Cube is now magical, profane, occult, and eerily symbolic, because it's cubical! And geometry class is a satanic false
flag op of oppressive propaganda taught by crypto-Jews! Who else could be interested in IRRATIONAL numbers like π? PYTHAGORAS
WAS A MOSSAD AGENT!
And yet this "striver and bootlick for the Empire" is exiled in Russia. So some guy sacrifices an enjoyable and secure life
to go live in Russia and all you can say is that "he deserves his destiny?"
His "sacrifice" was inadvertent and involuntary. The fact that he seems not to appreciate the sanctuary offered to him by Russia
-- has he not repeatedly expressed the desire to go elsewhere? -- says a lot. From everything I have read about him, it would
appear that he regards his exile not as something to be borne with dignity, but as something to pout over as does a child who
unexpectedly did not get his way.
Julian Assange, on the other hand, sacrificed much more and did so willingly and courageously. He had no illusions about the
consequences that he would face for his beliefs and actions.
And this is a reflection on him or on the rest of us?
Both. Nobody remembers anything here in the US anyway, least of all people and events which do not flatter the national mythos.
In the case of this would-be patriot -- the scion of a family that grew fat at the government teat, and who himself has made a
tidy profit from his exile -- his unofficial damnatio memoriæ is deserved.
Maybe you ought to give Snowden some credit for his military service too. Fair is fair.
Snowden enlisted in the United States Army Reserve on May 7, 2004, and became a Special Forces candidate through its 18X
enlistment option.[39] He did not complete the training.[12] After breaking both legs in a training accident,[40] he was discharged
on September 28, 2004.[41]
@Brabantian Is Seth Rich dead
? OpDeepState.com : "The 'murder' of Seth Rich – Everything we thought we knew is wrong !" by Lisa Phillips . "The MOSSAD infiltrated
Clinton's campaign with a Sayanim contractor – Seth Rich – this OP took Hillary right out of the race ."
Tor is a great tool, if you know how to use it correctly. The US gov't know people don't know how to use it correctly, and sets
up exit nodes to spy on idiots, like this:
In 2007 Egerstad set up just five Tor exit nodes and used them to intercept thousands of private emails, instant messages
and email account credentials.
Amongst his unwitting victims were the Australia, Japanese, Iranian, India and Russia embassies, .
Dan Egerstad proved then that exit nodes were a fine place to spy on people and his research convinced him in 2007, long
before Snowden, that governments were funding expensive, high bandwidth exit nodes for exactly that purpose.
Tor is a fine security project and an excellent component in a strategy of defence in depth but it isn't (sadly) a cloak
of invisibility.
Exit nodes, just like fake Wi-Fi hotspots, are an easy and tempting way for attackers to silently insert themselves into
a network.
By running an exit node they can sit there as an invisible man-in-the-middle on a system that people choose when
they want extra privacy and security.
Well, this is refreshing. I agree wholeheartedly about Snowden and have the same reservations. My feelings about Assange, however,
aren't much different. Julian has not challenged the 9/11 narrative either to be fair. I am inclined to see them both as limited
hangouts. Snowden's 'revelations' were all old news to anyone who'd been paying attention for 10 years before his appearance.
Even other whistleblowers, none of whom got any media coverage, had spoken of much of it previously. I see them both as pied pipers
and nothing more. I think Russian intelligence services are perfectly well aware of what Snowden is and have kept him at arms
length themselves. Not much they could do but play along but nothing suggests they ever saw him as any sort of 'coup'
Anyone who still plays along with the 9/11 bullshit narrative isn't worth a damn anyway.
@animalogicConsider that nothing
Snowden revealed was news. It was all old hat for anyone who'd been paying attention, and for up to ten years. Sure Snowden made
it mainstream for what good it did but nothing he said was a secret anymore. In fact, I thought even at the time his actions were
nothing less than a 'threat and warning' from the intel services that they had this much on everyone. Just imagine all those national
leaders, politicians from all states being pout on notice. All your secrets are ours! What a powerful global message to deliver
and in such a loud and clear fashion.
The lack of deviation from official bullshit on 9/11 is on its own however reason enough to toss this guy out. Snowden NEVER
impressed me for a moment and honestly, nor has Assange. I believe they're both working for the other side still. By the way,
Julian Assange has actually denigrated 9/11 truthers a number of times.
@anon It's in the magazine, page
82, quote "Zauberwürfel". Presented by me, for you to get the picture. Maybe you haven't seen enough cubes around, to get that
humor. In real life, copying material on devices will be followed by arrest, no interview, no journey to some exile. This whole
tale is not funny, it's evil on many levels. Your sarcasm is disturbing.
Several years later, practically nobody remembers him here in the US, and possible elsewhere (save for when it is convenient
for the media). Julian Assange was a far more daring, more insightful figure.
I disagree, there are plenty of people who remember him. The problem is they don't care, most Americans would rather watch
America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than do something about our corrupt political system.
2013 Edward Snowden 'leaked stolen documents' (1) 'Leaked' to Dick Cheney friend at CIA WashPost, Rothschild employee Greenwald
(2) Anti-9-11-truth (3) Nothing really new beyond more than 5+ previous NSA whistleblowers (4) Has CIA lawyers, worked with Brzezinski
son, promoted by Brzezinski daughter, fake CV history (5) Known as fake to all major gov intel agencies
@Johnny Walker ReadThis is
absolutely dynamite material, it blows to smithereens any notion that Edward Snowden is anything other than a fraud, a CIA disinfo
op.
So now we can place him alongside Julian Assange and Wikileaks in the rogue's gallery of professional liars. This report
also exposes several other media outlets as being under CIA control, something we have known for some time
I don't know the answer -- except that this article raises serious questions, suspicions , about
Snowden's authenticity.
To my mind "9/11, attitude to", is a sort of touch-stone for telling genuine dissidents from fake and both Snowden and Assange
fail on that test. I don't have a reference for it, but I saw it in correspondence on this site. There was a video of a lecture
given by Assange, where someone asked him about 9/11. He looked extremely embarrassed and then replied that he thought that it
was "not very important" (Sic!) and changed the subject.
I am less sure of this but I think I saw something similar in an interview with Snowden. Perhaps someone else can remind me
of exact references?
This is the same government whose leaders secure their laptops with the secret code "pas$word" and require the producers of computers
to give them full access via day one exploits along with tailor fitted programs that are easier to hack.
That Snowden got away with what he did is not that shocking.
These days Snowden has become a generic term for whistleblowing on the Deep State tech spying, like xerox for copying. I suppose someone here wants to remind us that this was _really_ the first copier, patented in 1879:
The truth or falsity of the original "myth" becames moot at some point.
The Deep State is spying. They do have hardware and software and monkey in the middle hacks. They do trade intelligence with
other spy agencies, domestic and foreign. They lie about it through the Mockingbird media.
_That_ is what is important.
Snowden's bona fides are "inside baseball", and minor league baseball at that.
.gov IT security is a joke–millions of pages of regulations, proclamations, millions of hours of management meetings, goals,
powerpoint slides–ultimately easily outmatched by any determined hackers (whether in mom's basement or an intelligence agency's
basement).
If he was a sys admin, that probably meant he had the rights to install, remove, enable, and disable the various safety guards
and security checks discussed in this article.
@Jonathan Revusky Yvonne Lorenzo
paper suggest suspect issues exist to support Snowden's story but finds Assange's saga to be
based in epic, consistent, continued resistance to the organized forces at work in governments and high profile international
corporations and agencies to keep secret things which expose officials as criminals.
<=the difference is consistency, scope and finger points. Assange has been consistent.. always seeking to make available as
much as he could, always with as much clarity as possible; making the point where he could, that much of what he exposed seems
to be in the domain of organized crime. Assange often exposes high profile persons and tags them with evidence to connect them
to prior and current organized crime or obviously corrupt activities. Assange shows these persons or governments or agencies are
involved in secret diplomatic activities, the secrecy of which seem always to be protected by judicial and legal processes
The Assange story paints a picture that suggest globally organized crime has come into possession and now manages and controls
many well armed domestic governments and that selected agencies of government have been enabling selected private enterprises.
Assange exposes intelligence services of many different nations to be a bank, corporation, and agency inter connects that coordinate
infrastructure destruction, invasion, regime change, and war, and that these events are often followed by opportunistic privatization.
Snowden merely says a few things are wrong and should be corrected. in time the government will fix its own mistakes. I do
not know if Snowden is a Trojan, but nothing Assange has done suggest he is and governments have treated Assange as anything but
one of them. My opinion.
@Nicolás Palacios Navarro I agree
that Assange has suffered much more than Snowden, but why hold that against the latter?
Snowden took a risk to publicize what he thought was important information indicating a dangerous trend in US policy. He wasn't
willing to offer himself up as a lamb to the slaughter, so it's true that his sacrifice is not perhaps the ultimate one. He seems
to have thought he could remain in Hong Kong but didn't realize that China was never going to compromise relations with the US
to protect him. Putin wouldn't have either except that the US was so imperious in demanding his return that Putin really couldn't
save face and give him up, and no doubt he was rankled by US hypocrisy, knowing that had Snowden been a Russian, the US would
never have considered sending him back.
But Snowden DID take action which is more than most of us do. I find your complete lack of empathy kind of weird, to be honest.
Even if Assange is the more virtuous or if one disagrees with Snowden's actions, he has paid a price for principle.
What does his family background have to do with anything?
I'm not inclined to sneer at him, and I don't see how you get to "he deserves what he gets."
So Pamela Anderson lied about visiting Assange in the embassy? If they're faking it, wherever he is he isn't in the public
eye walking down the street or sitting in a Starbucks, so he's leading a prison life anyway behind closed doors somewhere. I suppose
a dedicated agent would do something like that for Queen and country or whatever, but I doubt he's the type. I gather veterans
today are trying to cast Assange as a Mossad agent but then they're the Journal of the Clandestine Community, whatever that is.
Snowden is not a classic defector so it makes sense for him to keep his distance from Russian society so as not to be inadvertently
compromised or used by their intelligence services. He's obviously under surveillance there, I know we all are but he's much more
aware of it, so that doesn't make it easy for him but he's definitely safer there than he'd be in France or Germany. I just don't
think he planned well ahead when he became a whistle-blower or was clear about what he was trying to achieve. He's not the top
level type of spy we're accustomed to reading about who betray their country for money or to serve another they believe in more
than their own. If he has been on active duty as a CIA asset all along I can't see that he has achieved much of use to them other
than in some inter-agency rivalry game. But it's natural for Russians to be suspicious of him – they're suspicious by nature –
and rightly so, but it doesn't make his life easy there.
Good stuff. Snowden was outed by Gordon Duff years ago. Although I'll have to come back to finish this article, it generally appears
to agree with Duff's analysis that none of it adds up. If I may paraphrase Edward Bernays, To read the Washington Post and Guardian or watch TV news is to see America and Western Civilization through the eyes of its
enemy.
The owners of the media own the public forum in America and through it the formation of men's attitudes and the outcome of
elections. The left vs right, CNN vs Fox News, MAGA vs socialism and other contrived theater serves the interests of the media
owners and no other.
Assange tried to destroy the "system", which would have furthered the conditions for completing the ongoing, global
Cultural Marxist Revolution Mao Zedong on steroids.
Snowden, on the other hand, wanted something much less extreme. He wanted to fix and save the "system" by exposing
its excesses in order to bring it back within a quasi-legal, democratic framework.
In response, the "system" was satisfied to teach Snowden a lesson. They were willing to slap Snowden's hand by exiling him
to Western Russia, which is better than rotting in a Siberian labor camp or "max" prison in the United States.
Assange, on the other hand, is a reincarnated, digital version of Che Guevara. They want his scalp, recognizing that Assange
(like Che Guevara) will brook no compromise in his revolutionary agitation.
Good article. Snowden and Assange are agents of disinformation
"I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence
of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud."
@9/11 Inside job Well, the
Real Litmus Test ™ is eternal security vs. conditional salvation. Don't fail, or everything else you've ever said must be
summarily dismissed. Answer well, friendo .
Splitting (also called black-and-white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking) is the failure in a person's thinking to bring
together the dichotomy of both positive and negative qualities of the self and others into a cohesive, realistic whole. It
is a common defense mechanism.
The problem is they don't care, most Americans would rather watch America's Got Talent or Dancing With The Stars than do
something about our corrupt political system.
It appears the author of this piece has not read Snowden's book, Permanent Record . If she had, she would not have asked
questions which are answered, in detail, in Snowden's book. Here are some of the most obvious points.
1. "Why does Snowden never discuss dealing with such encryption: how would it be possible?"
Answer: In his book, Snowden describes the layers of encryption that he used when copying the files from NSA. He also describes
the extraordinary level of access he had as a systems engineer. Further, he mentions his surprise at finding that the NSA did
not practice widespread encryption, in contrast to his experience at CIA, where the hard drives were not only encrypted, but removed
from the computers and placed in a safe each night.
2. "In the Oliver Stone movie Snowden, as well as in any of Snowden's descriptions of how he accessed the NSA computers, did
you note either the depiction or reference to this universal Smart ID? How could Snowden be exempt from its requirement?"
Answer: Movies omit details. In his book, Snowden describes working in the one-person Information Sharing department. As part
of that work, he brought an older, "obsolete" system to his office under the cover story of "compatibility testing" and used this
older system to copy the data.
3. "Did Edward Snowden, who has publicly criticized Google, mention Google is deployed as a search engine throughout the federal
"intranet"?"
Answer: Yes, as a matter of fact, in his book, Snowden does mention that Google provides a custom internal version of their
search engine to the intelligence community.
4. "Edward Snowden would have us believe that the Eye of Sauron didn't notice he was looking at gigabytes of data unrelated
to his job function and using his computer to copy the data to external devices over a lengthy period of time."
Answer: In his book, Snowden describes how he created a "readboard" that collected the documents as part of his work in the
Information Sharing department. He also describes how another systems administrator did notice, and how he addressed this attention
by providing access to his "readboard" to the other administrator, and explained its purpose and value to users. In other words,
the "gigabytes of data" he was looking at were directly related to his job function.
5. "On another issue, why did Snowden provide his files to known house organs of Intelligence Agencies, specifically the Washington
Post and The Guardian, and not give them to Wikileaks to allow a publicly available searchable database?"
Answer: Snowden also discusses this topic in his book. According to Snowden, he did not want to simply release the information,
he wanted the media to remove anything that might cause harm.
6. "And what about Snowden himself, the pontificator, the man who can speak on television or to the media with evidence of
training? Practice yourself -- see how well you can answer questions and speak publicly to a TV camera. How did he get his training?
Who trained him? Why?"
Answer: After 6 years of media attention, it seems reasonable he would gain some expertise in dealing with the media.
My purpose in providing the answers above is not to defend or attack Snowden. Rather, these examples just show that the author
of this piece is a sloppy amateur who did not do her homework. I suspect the author is also woefully ignorant of computer technology.
Anyone curious about these topics should read Permanent Record and decide for themselves.
Your opinion stands. Snowden has de facto been compromised. Being in Russia, and not in control of his environment. Whether
he was from the start, could be. The Tor browser bull- *** t speaks against him all the way. His conventional career start, and
youth also. He is more Macron then a Galloway.
Assange was in for the long term, had thorough knowledge of affairs digital, his youth, his physical courage(there must be
a point where selling out was a possibility) were exemplary all along the (long) and still ongoing slug.
Even his ego, fronting Wikileaks seems to be proportionate as compared to the conventional Jerks &, as Pompeo, Hillary, Trump,
Obama. If one sees how many personnel is dedicated to steer elections and governance public opinion, he certainly looks like a
lonely giant on the civil disobedience, organizational, knowledgeable, energy spent and resilience side. A true example of what
White, and Western European descend stands for. Enlightenment, in system, style, and function. Relevancy, long term goals, dare,
does not come better then that.
@Oscar Peterson I don't have "Agree/Disagree/Etc"
privileges so I say here that I agree with you.
Some of the pompous ingrates trashing Snowden for the flimsiest of reasons still seem to have a high opinion of Thomas Drake,
William Binney, or Kirk Wiebe. They might read this:
Three NSA Veterans Speak Out on Whistleblower
The author, interestingly enough, isn't I.T. professional, but, has very definite opinions about IT security. Dumb.
Just email it to a private email.
Well, firewall logs could reveal your connection to some email server outside ..
Or store on something else and transport out.
Yep. Hehe the girl doesn't actually get how that "encryption" thing works. OSI layers etc.
And, what people really don't get: all security is as good as an average person using it.
As hehe you pointed out:
Hillary was doing the same thing for ages.
Insider doesn't need to tackle technology. All he/she needs is to tackle is a dumb employee.
Anyway .
I could make my home systems quite secure, even against Five Eyes. That would create another set of even worse problems, but
let's leave it out for now.
The problem is my wife and her browsing/computer use habits. Hehe makes sense?
Snowden keeping "distance" to Russia, and not openly defending them seems reasonable to me. You can imagine the smear campaign
back home if he would side with Russia against the U.S. on almost anything. "The Russians got to him" or "He was always their
man".
He is trying to keep his neutrality and credibility and his target audience isn't the average Unz reader, but rather some mainstream
educated middle/upper class blokes. Easily scared away from his views if they become too controversial and too far from the established
narrative.
Last but not least, he is playing very dangerous game, probably without much security from his host country. This probably
limits what he can do, TPTB could probably get to him if they wanted it badly enough.
@PetrOldSack > The Tor browser
bull- *** t speaks against him all the way
No, your stupid bull- *** t lack of understanding about Tor speaks against you all the way. It's not encryption, like you probably
think it is. It's simply a way to use another IP address without having to drive to the nearest Starbucks to use their wifi. You
treat Tor just like any "free" wifi, assuming that your data is being sniffed and collected. If you're going to message, use Signal
(or Telegram.) Always force HTTPS. Use encryption. All Tor does is obfuscate your IP location, which is exactly what Snowden states,
"All Tor does is obfuscate your IP location .
"[Tor] allows you to disassociate your physical location ."
And now Brave Browser has it built in! So easy. Try it. Just don't do anything on Tor that you wouldn't do with a Starbuck's
free wifi in Foggy Bottom.
@Republic How he got taken down
is here
, and it started with the name-fag using his Real Name while e-begging for help to run illegal websites, and ended up with a half-dozen
FBI agents tailing him at his arrest. Even then, Tor made it harder for the FBI to track him, just not impossible.
Tor only does one thing, obfuscate your physical location. That's it. It's not magic. It's a virtual way to sit at the Starbucks
cafe and use their free wifi. Just assume the exit node is owned by the Feds, looking for criminal morons who don't understand
it and think it's "secure" or "encrypted." It's not. Use encryption too.
Stuff like this just confirms Qanon. He said years ago Snowden was a CIA plant in the NSA to reveal this information about their
mass surveillance on purpose. Why ? Maybe it relates to what Michael Hoffman describes as revelation of the method – a process
of revealing the crimes being committed against us by "they" so it breeds apathy and despair in the population when nothing comes
from
The revelation of the crimes
An allegedly very high iq high school from a family with drop out Snowden's tried to join special forces and failed jump school,
he failed a polygraph, got accepted to the CIA though not as a field agent despite his lack of a degree, and was bounced from
the CIA and then got a job with Dell as an outside contractor on the basis of his still intact security clearance, the contractors
were not compartmentalised in the way government employees were.
Then he went to work for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton,
at an NSA facility in Hawaii. In subsequent interview with journalists, Snowden lied about his doing undercover work for the CIA,
salary and seniority at Booz Allen, being able to spy on the the emails and phone calls of President Obama. Oh, and suffering broken
bones in special forces jump school, he just had shin splints It is very clear how he got access, and why most of the people who
gave him it did not own up.
https://nypost.com/2013/11/08/snowden-duped-coworkers-to-get-passwords/
Snowden duped co-workers to get passwords A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified,
questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage
caused by the leaks.
Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii
to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator,
a second source said.
Are we to believe the NSA lacks a "digital trail" when it comes to classified documents?
It's only difficult to believe if you think NASA (like the CIA and FBI once were) are only guarded in relation to external
rather than internal security breaches
[A] frightening history of plans to crush internal dissent and would-be dissenters in the United States.
Why would they bother? Those dissenters cannot change anything, while they are whiling away their free time on the internet.
Such activity cannot change anything at all, and so it is to be encouraged from the point of view of any establishment as open
dissent on the net wards off the allegation of totalitarian state. Talk is cheap.
I'm not going to comment on the person or their agenda, rather the process-broadly.
Can you copy encrypted files without knowledge and smuggle them out?
Short answer:
Yes, with a second device and some standard hardware stuff.
They can see the second device if it is plugged in, but they have to look for it.
There is no need to try and copy from the source, copy the output to a second machine that can interpret.
ought to give Snowden some credit for his military service too.
Hell, I'd give the guy credit for his quick sprinting at the NSA. But we haven't established if he was a wiz kid or a plant.
Vidal went into the US Army after Pearl Harbor, at age 17. Even though he'd been his high school representative for the America
First Committee, trying to keep the US out of the war. Due to hypothermia working on army transport ships in the Aleutians, he
was initially misdiagnosed as arthritic and, not being caught in time, ended up first with a titanium leg replacement years later,
then in a wheelchair.
I remain sort of impressed when a young man opposes a fight, then for patriotic reasons, serves anyway (and pays a steep price).
I'm sure we'll get the full story on Snowden sooner or later.
@Saggy A stupid girl who is completely
unfamiliar with the Snowden history. For example, she asks this, "why did Snowden provide his files to The Guardian?"
Because he needed immediate press coverage. He didn't have weeks or even days, he had at most a few hours. His story
had to be in the press the next morning. Both Greenwald and the Guardian reporter were with him at the hotel, worried that
Snowden might even be assassinated if caught by US forces, and worked to get immediate press coverage of his plight to save his
life. Plus, he was in constant contact with Wikileaks'Julian Assange, which she conveniently ignores to promote her lie-based
conspiritard theory.
Without his story getting into the press within a few hours, and without Wikileaks' Julian Assange helping Snowden, he'd be
in prison now, at best, possibly dead.
I say, give the guy a fair trial. He has asked for a fair trial. But the US Gov't has refused to allow his motive to
be considered in the trial. Amazing, isn't it? Since when is motive to not be considered in a criminal trial?
For Snowden, a fair trial means allowing the jury to consider his motivations rather than simply deciding the case
on whether a law was broken.
"They want the jury strictly to consider whether these actions were lawful or unlawful, not whether they were right or wrong,"
Snowden said. "And I'm sorry, but that defeats the purpose of a jury trial."
Tor may still be a good tool, it certainly was, I had great fun using it to troll and set off edit wars on English Wikipedia for
a year or two mid-last decade. One of those edit wars lasted for about three days. I just watched after starting it (but I meant
what I said in the comment that set it off, but not always in the trolling(^-^)v).
In any case, the English-language WP has been madly tracking Tor exit nodes and banning them since about early '07.
Fun while it lasted.
As for the wrong way to use it, that basically means making a connection to any other site, without Tor, while using Tor. I
slipped up on that once or twice when slightly drunk.
I don't even know if using Tor is even legal in Japan now. I do love, however, how Wikipedia is aggressively supressing it.
Some politicians in ruling party were moving to make it illegal a couple of years ago, our polity is so nonsensical that I
have to checck Japanese wiki to see the result.
Any fule knows that Tor original is a U.S.N. programme,
Rappaport started my thinking and I bookmarked his pages long ago and to my horror found the site was taken down. I wonder
why? Glad for this archive. Thank you.
It appears the author of this piece has not read Snowden's book, Permanent Record. If she had, she would not have asked
questions which are answered, in detail, in Snowden's book. Here are some of the most obvious points.
1. "Why does Snowden never discuss dealing with such encryption: how would it be possible?"
Answer: In his book, Snowden describes the layers of encryption that he used when copying the files from NSA. He also describes
the extraordinary level of access he had as a systems engineer. Further, he mentions his surprise at finding that the NSA did
not practice widespread encryption, in contrast to his experience at CIA, where the hard drives were not only encrypted, but
removed from the computers and placed in a safe each night.
2. "In the Oliver Stone movie Snowden, as well as in any of Snowden's descriptions of how he accessed the NSA computers,
did you note either the depiction or reference to this universal Smart ID? How could Snowden be exempt from its requirement?"
Answer: Movies omit details. In his book, Snowden describes working in the one-person Information Sharing department. As
part of that work, he brought an older, "obsolete" system to his office under the cover story of "compatibility testing" and
used this older system to copy the data.
No, I haven't read the book–yet.
As part of a forensic analysis, which none of you were observant enough to understand, the subject is interviewed without knowledge
of the questions in advance. His answers would be evaluated based on facts, for which a forensic IT team with no connections to
government contractors would be part of and gain access to NSA systems. Thus, testimony is considered but it must be verified.
Rand Paul might be one to open an investigation into the inadequacy of NSA security but government investigating itself is suspect.
No such investigation will ever take place.
Note there has been no calls, that I am aware of, for any GAO study of NSA vulnerabilities.
Second, the critics miss the point: providing files to CIA-Five Eye fronts like Guardian and CIA Washington Post is suspect.
As per what I wrote, no one now has access to this data.
I suspect Snowden leaked legitimate information to con the Russians to be on their soil and conduct malfeasance. Prior to Putin
providing S-300s to Syria, Israel had better relations with Russia. I suspect Q is also coordinated by Intel agency friendly to
Likud. Note his mention of John Perry Barlow before his death. He warned of Snowden being sent deliberately to Russia and hence
my concern for CIA doing something stupid.
As to his comments on not supporting Russia, no support is necessary. If he were a decent human being he could simply have
stated, "Election interference notwithstanding the U.S. should pursue non-aggressive posture against Russia. There was no 'Second
Pearl Harbor.' The risk of nuclear war is great and I agree with President Trump to reduce tensions, although I disagree with
his politics."
Instead, see his Tweets supporting the Pussy Hats and "We came, we saw, he died" Hillary Clinton.
In the event, Snowden is irrelevant. The end of Empire is imminent.
Read Martyanov's post on the recent threats America made to Russia here.
I have compassion for Snowden. His end will likely be as Skripals was: disappearance by Western IC which he supports and blame
placed on Russia.
We are free to disagree with one another. I trust nothing a supporter of Empire says.
As to September 11 I wasn't aware of Assange's remarks. This is the touchstone as others have said. Snowden enlisted because
of September 11 false flag. Yeah, right, he is an idiot savant.
Even Ed Asner who no longer wins Emmy awards and is blackballed had the courage to do this video. Trust Snowden? I think not.
Y. Lorenzo (this site will not allow me to post under my name)
p.s. Ron uses Gmail. The nearest military base is a long, long way from my location. A helicopter outfitted with surveillance
bubbles overflew after I submitted this piece.. Coincidence, right?
I will fight for the truth. I receive no compensation for my work and expect none. I support the cause of peace and not Empire.
Thanks for the intelligent supportive comments. Ad hominem attacks mean nothing. Thanks to Ron for posting though he disagrees.
...re. 'Smowden"when he was constantly whining about Russia, getting hhs pole-dancing gf to join him there must have
been a major effort, but he has no gratitude for it.
Really strange. At the time, I thought that Putin's comment 'he is a strange young man' had to do only with questions of loyalty and betrayal,
of course, it was lilekely deeper and more suspicious than that. If I had been in the position like 'Snowden', after first having been granted asylum, my priority would have been to study
the language. I would gtuess that he can order food or drink, do basic greetings, and not much else.
@Republic Snowden's wife is a
former pole dancer, those are for good for something, but its not marrying. Everything about him suggests immaturity, from his
toying with the idea of being a model to his trying to go from frail civilian with a youth spent 24/7 gaming to passing jumps
school. He stole vastly more than he could ever have read, much of it having no bearing on privacy so he has no idea what he might
have compromised. Quoth he:
There is a secrecy agreement, but there is also an oath of service. An oath of service is to support and defend, not an
agency, not even the president, it is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies
– direct quote – foreign and domestic. And this begs the question, what happens when our obligations come into conflict.
If you have meaningful values (ie those that do not charge to suit your personal aggrandisement) you resign, I but instead
of doing that he deliberately got another job contracting with the NSA all the better to steal data.
.In the event, Snowden is irrelevant. The end of Empire is imminent. Read Martyanov's post on the recent threats America made to Russia here .
That was fast, even for this pub.
Ad hominem attacks mean nothing.
You mean being positive about you UNABLE to visualize a byte from a "keypress" moving all the way to the LAN cable with each
timer "click"? You know, buffers, busses, microcode/firmware, interrupts, stack/heap, closed source, encryption/decryption layer
of the OSI stack etc. That's for technology.
As for people, unaware of an average idiot user in any environment using IT, Governments in particular, and the role and power
of sysadmins in such environments?
But confident to write articles what can and can not be done re IT security?
Yeah .
@anon Not sure about Pythagoras,
but there are (very unfortunately) people who might have
fun from combining "Rubik's Cube and highly classified information".
And not necessarily in reality.
You mean being positive about you UNABLE to visualize a byte from a "keypress" moving all the way to the LAN cable with
each timer "click"? You know, buffers, busses, microcode/firmware, interrupts, stack/heap, closed source, encryption/decryption
layer of the OSI stack etc. That's for technology.
Rand Paul might be one to open an investigation into the inadequacy of NSA security but government investigating itself
is suspect. No such investigation will ever take place.
Yes, Rand Paul who while cutting his lawn provoked his own retired doctor neighbor in a gated community into a maddened vicious
rib dislocating attack that cost Paul part of his lung What a brilliant choice to annoy the government.
His end will likely be as Skripals was: disappearance by Western IC which he supports and blame placed on Russia
Skirpal is in America. The British got Skirpal out of Russia, but Russia could have killed him any time because he was homesick
and meeting people from the Russian Embassy. In my opinion the Russians were trying to kill Skirpal's daughter along with him.
They knew she was coming and timed the nerve agent attack so as to 'accidentally' kill her along with the traitor. The knowledge
that you will go after their families is the ultimate deterrent. Unless you are a narcissistic dick like Snowden, who hardly mentions
anything his family did for him except getting a second phone line so he could play some stupid internet game. Snowden actually
says in his book that the internet raised him. It did not get him a job in the CIA despite him having no degree, that was his
mom's NSA and her father's Pentagon connections. Aldrich Ames's father worked for the CIA .
Edward Snowden is a great man – a great American. (Will a Dem president pardon him?) I recently viewed a video on how a poor immigrant family hid Snowden before he secured a flight out of Hong Kong. (He is working
to get them out of Hong Kong, to Canada.) I am curious as to how he got the flight out to Russia?????
This will be my final comment.
My issue is one regarding Snowden's character and integrity, especially as the collapsing Empire under FUBAR Trump is waging
war on the world. Come on, none of the CIA trolls here have read The Saker with Orlov on the fate of the mass murdering Empire?
At this point it is important to explain what exactly a "final collapse" looks like. Some people are under the very mistaken
assumption that a collapsed society or country looks like a Mad Max world. This is not so. The Ukraine has been a failed state
for several years already, but it still exists on the map. People live there, work, most people still have electricity (albeit
not 24/7), a government exists, and, at least officially, law and order is maintained. This kind of collapsed society can go
on for years, maybe decades, but it is in a state of collapse nonetheless, as it has reached all the 5 Stages of Collapse as
defined by Dmitry Orlov in his seminal book "The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors' Toolkit" where he mentions the following
5 stages of collapse:
Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in "business as usual" is lost.
Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that "the market shall provide" is lost.
Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that "the government will take care of you" is lost.
Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that "your people will take care of you" is lost.
Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in "the goodness of humanity" is lost.
Sound familiar? Read it and weep. Your pensions are toast.
Or read Chris Hedges America The Farewell Tour.
Snowden's character is proven by his interview with Brian Roberts.
Now, although only 14% of U.S. TLAMs got past Syrian air defenses, hear him was rhapsodic on the "beautiful missiles."
And Snowden is happy to talk to this creep? And asks Rothschild-Kravis puppet Macron to ex-filtrate him to France?
It was in this milieu that he met Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis, in their residence on Park Avenue in New York [1]. The Kravis
couple, unfailing supporters of the US Republican Party, are among the great world fortunes who play politics out of sight
of the Press. Their company, KKR, like Blackstone and the Carlyle Group, is one of the world's major investment funds.
" Emmanuel's curiosity for the 'can-do attitude' was fascinating – the capacity to tell yourself that you can do anything
you set your mind to. He had a thirst for knowledge and a desire to understand how things work, but without imitating or copying
anyone. In this, he remained entirely French ", declares Marie-Josée Drouin (Mrs. Kravis) today [2].
Snowden's revelations about his aspirations for asylum outside of Russia come just days ahead of the upcoming release of
his new memoir which is expected to hit the shelves on US Constitution Day.
Famous American whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the man responsible for exposing a number of global
surveillance programs run by the US agency, has recently revealed that he would like to obtain asylum in France.
Call it female intuition, Snowden creeps me out.
Those who want to bow before his altar, be my guest. You have free will.
Just realized, isn't this creature the only female author here?
A female creature is writing, as an author, on alt-whatever site, about things she has never been professionally involved in.
With certain hahaha style.
Hahaha ..oh my.
So, what have we got:
1. Unz finally collapsed under "diversity" pressure?
2. There is, sort of a hidden, message here.
@Sean True true .mea culpa. Female
stuff, that is, in general.
Style, though, is unique for the creature here.
Butthurt
whoo-hoo..
Go wave your flag
.CIA trolls here
Read it and weep. Your pensions are toast .
.creep .creeps me out
I mean hahaha .when reading those things it's, almost, as written by a certain type of commentators here. Almost as one of
them, actually. Same "footprint". Especially the first two.
I mean, having that from an author here is, really, a new low for sure.
This is the first time I've seen something like that, and my attitude was mild in this thread compared to some in other threads.
I mean, I was quite hard on some authors here, and never, so far that. "Butthurt" ."whoo-hoo"
I've quite offended a couple of authors here and they never replied with any rude word. And ..my God "whoo-hoo". Haha crazy.
New "quality" seeping here, apparently. Hehe getting with times, I guess. And program.
Understandable.
I've been on this site for quite some time. Read, on average, 20 % of articles and similar number of comments in those articles.
I can't, really, recollect ONE case when an AUTHOR, here, in a comments exchange with a commentator, used the words
"butthurt" and "whoo-hoo". Not once from the, say, authors from the West. Born and raised there, that is. Cultural
thing, I guess.
@foolisholdmanI agree. Shilling
for the Israelis regarding 911 is a deal breaker for me. They had me going about these 2 guys for a while, but when I heard that
they had ridiculed 911 truthers I smelled a rat. And after this article I agree they are shills for the status quo. Reasonable
people can not doubt that 911 was a false flag operation. There's just too much bullshit there.
I think the idea Snowden is a "plant" is a bit far out there. If he is; the real purpose of the exercise is what exactly?
I also don't get why some commenters think Julian Assange isn't who he claims to be. His Wikileaks has published great volume
of highly embarrassing material for the U.S. The embassy cables come to mind – bringing to light evidence contrary to Washington
narrative on many events.
There is another thing; Just after he established Wikileaks he came to Iceland and met with journalists and few politicians.
The result from that visit was he met one Kristinn Hrafnsson, long time journalist in Iceland with excellent track record and
credibility. Since Assange got in trouble, accused of sexual harassment from Swedish woman and finally escaped into the Ecuador
embassy in London, Hrafnsson has been spokesman for Wikileaks.
Since I am familiar with Hrafnsson work for decades, I would be very surprised if he worked with Assagne all this time, and
even took over his job, so to speak, as head of Wikileaks if Assagne wasn't genuine. Hrafnsson has struck me as smart guy and
honest and it's extremely unlikely he would continue if something didn't smell right at Wikileaks. I also want to point out Wikileaks
has been working with, what I consider the few remaining NEWS outlets in Europe. (Including The Guardian before it was bought
few years ago and became worthless).
To Assagne credit he booted Icelandic polititian, one Birgitta Jónsdóttir; who tried to visit him in U.K. prison – and wanted
nothing to do with her. She has been trying to make international name for herself as fighter for human rights and peacemaker
and against corruption and so forth. Unfortunately she is a bag full of hot air and thinks SHE is the center of the universe.
It's all about her and therefore she is of no use for any cause. Julian was right to send her packing.
I can't imagine what the CIA or NSA or other tentacles of the Empire would gain by running Wikileaks. It makes absolutely no
sense to me.
@2stateshmustate "9/11 is the
Litmus Test " By Smoking – Mirrors.Com :
"It all comes down to 9/11.Everything that has happened has happened based on a lie . Everyone in Government ; everyone in
the media , in entertainment , in organized religion , in the public ,in the public eye who accepts and promotes the official
story is either a traitor or a tool . Everyone who does not stand forth and speak truth to power is a coward , a liar and complicit
in mass-murder . Everyone
everywhere can be measured by this Litmus Test ."
David Warner Mathisen definitely know what he is talking about due to his long military career... Freefall speed
is documented and is an embarrassment to the official story, because freefall is impossible for a naturally
collapsing building.
Now we need to dig into the role of Larry Silverstein in the
Building 7 collapse.
Notable quotes:
"... Below is a video showing several film sequences taken from different locations and documenting multiple angles of World Trade Center Building 7 collapsing at freefall speed eighteen years ago on September 11, 2001. ..."
"... The four words "Building Seven Freefall Speed" provide all the evidence needed to conclude that the so-called "official narrative" promoted by the mainstream media for the past eighteen years is a lie, as is the fraudulent 9/11 Commission Report of 2004. ..."
"... Earlier this month, a team of engineers at the University of Alaska published their draft findings from a five-year investigation into the collapse of Building 7 ..."
"... This damning report by a team of university engineers has received no attention from the mainstream media outlets which continue to promote the bankrupt "official" narrative of the events of September 11, 2001. ..."
"... its rate of collapse can be measured and found to be indistinguishable from freefall speed, as physics teacher David Chandler explains in an interview here (and as he eventually forced NIST to admit), beginning at around 0:43:00 in the interview. ..."
"... the collapse of the 47-story steel-beam building World Trade Center 7 into its own footprint at freefall speed is all the evidence needed to reveal extensive and deliberate premeditated criminal activity by powerful forces that had the ability to prepare pre-positioned demolition charges in that building ..."
"... Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming, to the point that no one can any longer be excused for accepting the official story. Certainly during the first few days and weeks after the attacks, or even during the first few years, men and women could be excused for accepting the official story (particularly given the level to which the mainstream media controls opinion in the united states). ..."
"... Additionally, I would also recommend the interviews which are archived at the website of Visibility 9-11 , which includes valuable interviews with Kevin Ryan but also numerous important interviews with former military officers who explain that the failure of the military to scramble fighters to intercept the hijacked airplanes, and the failure of air defense weapons to stop a jet from hitting the Pentagon (if indeed a jet did hit the Pentagon), are also completely inexplicable to anyone who knows anything at all about military operations, unless the official story is completely false and something else was going on that day. ..."
"... In addition to these interviews and the Dig Within blog of Kevin Ryan, I would also strongly recommend everybody read the article by Dr. Gary G. Kohls entitled " Why Do Good People Become Silent About the Documented Facts that Disprove the Official 9/11 Narrative? " which was published on Global Research a few days ago, on September 6, 2019. ..."
"... on some level, we already know we have been bamboozled, even if our conscious mind refuses to accept what we already know. ..."
"... Previous posts have compared this tendency of the egoic mind to the blissfully ignorant character of Michael Scott in the television series The Office (US version): see here for example, and also here . ..."
"... The imposition of a vast surveillance mechanism upon the people of this country (and of other countries) based on the fraudulent pretext of "preventing terrorism" (and the lying narrative that has been perpetuated with the full complicity of the mainstream media for the past eighteen years) is in complete violation of the human rights which are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and which declare: ..."
"... David Warner Mathisen graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point and became an Infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 4th Infantry Division. He is a graduate of the US Army's Ranger School and the 82nd Airborne Division's Jumpmaster Course, among many other awards and decorations. He was later selected to become an instructor in the Department of English Literature and Philosophy at West Point and has a Masters degree from Texas A&M University. ..."
Below is a video showing several film sequences
taken from different locations and documenting multiple angles of World Trade Center Building 7 collapsing at freefall speed eighteen
years ago on September 11, 2001.
The four words "Building Seven Freefall Speed" provide all the evidence needed to conclude that the so-called "official narrative"
promoted by the mainstream media for the past eighteen years is a lie, as is the fraudulent 9/11 Commission Report of 2004.
Earlier this month, a team of engineers at the University of Alaska
published their draft findings from a five-year investigation into the collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by any airplane
on September 11, 2001, and concluded that fires could not possibly have caused the collapse of that 47-story steel-frame building
-- rather, the collapse seen could have only been caused by the near-simultaneous failure of every support column (43 in number).
This damning report by a team of university engineers has received no attention from the mainstream media outlets which continue
to promote the bankrupt "official" narrative of the events of September 11, 2001.
Various individuals at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) tried to argue that the collapse of Building
7 was slower than freefall speed, but its rate of collapse can be measured and found to be indistinguishable from freefall speed,
as physics teacher David Chandler explains in an
interview
here (and as he eventually forced NIST to admit), beginning at around 0:43:00 in the interview.
Although the collapse of the 47-story steel-beam building World Trade Center 7 into its own footprint at freefall speed is all
the evidence needed to reveal extensive and deliberate premeditated criminal activity by powerful forces that had the ability to
prepare pre-positioned demolition charges in that building prior to the flight of the aircraft into the Twin Towers of the World
Trade Center (Buildings One and Two), as well as the power to cover up the evidence of this criminal activity and to deflect questioning
by government agencies and suppress the story in the mainstream news, the collapse of Building 7 is by no means the only evidence
which points to the same conclusion.
Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming, to the point that no one can any longer be excused for accepting the official story. Certainly
during the first few days and weeks after the attacks, or even during the first few years, men and women could be excused for accepting
the official story (particularly given the level to which the mainstream media controls opinion in the united states).
However, eighteen years later there is simply no excuse anymore -- except for the fact that the ramifications of the admission
that the official story is a flagrant fraud and a lie are so distressing that many people cannot actually bring themselves to consciously
admit what they in fact already know subconsciously.
For additional evidence, I strongly recommend the work of the indefatigable Kevin Robert Ryan , whose blog at Dig Within should be required reading for every man and woman in the united
states -- as well as those in the rest of the world, since the ramifications of the murders of innocent men, women and children on
September 11, 2001 have led to the murders of literally millions of other innocent men, women and children around the world since
that day, and the consequences of the failure to absorb the truth of what actually took place, and the consequences of the
failure to address the lies that are built upon the fraudulent explanation of what took place on September 11, continue to
negatively impact men and women everywhere on our planet.
Additionally, I would also recommend the interviews which are archived at the website of Visibility 9-11 , which includes valuable interviews with Kevin Ryan
but also numerous important interviews with former military officers who explain that the failure of the military to scramble fighters
to intercept the hijacked airplanes, and the failure of air defense weapons to stop a jet from hitting the Pentagon (if indeed a
jet did hit the Pentagon), are also completely inexplicable to anyone who knows anything at all about military operations, unless
the official story is completely false and something else was going on that day.
I would also strongly recommend listening very carefully to the series of five interviews with Kevin Ryan on Guns and Butter with Bonnie Faulkner, which can be found in the
Guns and Butterpodcast archive here . These interviews,
from 2013, are numbered 287, 288, 289, 290, and 291 in the archive.
I would in fact recommend listening to nearly every interview in that archive of Bonnie Faulkner's show, even though I do not
of course agree with every single guest nor with every single view expressed in every single interview. Indeed, if you carefully
read Kevin Ryan's blog which was linked above, you will find a
blog post by Kevin Ryan dated June 24, 2018 in which he
explicitly names James Fetzer along with Judy Woods as likely disinformation agents working to discredit and divert the efforts of
9/11 researchers. James Fetzer appears on Guns and Butter several times in the archived interview page linked above.
That article contains a number of stunning quotations about the ongoing failure to address the now-obvious lies we are being told
about the attacks of September 11. One of these quotations, by astronomer Carl Sagan (1934 – 1996), is particularly noteworthy --
even though I certainly do not agree with everything Carl Sagan ever said or wrote. Regarding our propensity to refuse to acknowledge
what we already know deep down to be true, Carl Sagan said:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even
to ourselves, that we've been taken.
This quotation is from Sagan's 1995 text, The Demon-Haunted World (with which I have points of disagreement, but which
is extremely valuable for that quotation alone, and which I might suggest turning around on some of the points that Sagan was arguing
as well, as a cautionary warning to those who have accepted too wholeheartedly some of Sagan's teachings and opinions).
This quotation shows that on some level, we already know we have been bamboozled, even if our conscious mind refuses to accept
what we already know. This internal division is actually addressed in the world's ancient myths, which consistently illustrate that
our egoic mind often refuses to acknowledge the higher wisdom we have available to us through the reality of our authentic self,
sometimes called our Higher Self. Previous posts have compared this tendency of the egoic mind to the blissfully ignorant character
of Michael Scott in the television series The Office (US version): see
here for example,
and also here .
The important author Peter Kingsley has noted that in ancient myth, the role of the prophet was to bring awareness and acknowledgement
of that which the egoic mind refuses to see -- which is consistent with the observation that it is through our authentic self (which
already knows) that we have access to the realm of the gods. In the Iliad, for example, Dr. Kingsley notes that Apollo sends disaster
upon the Achaean forces until the prophet Calchas reveals the source of the god's anger: Agamemnon's refusal to free the young woman
Chryseis, whom Agamemnon has seized in the course of the fighting during the Trojan War, and who is the daughter of a priest of Apollo.
Until Agamemnon atones for this insult to the god, Apollo will continue to visit destruction upon those following Agamemnon.
Until we acknowledge and correct what our Higher Self already knows to be the problem, we ourselves will be out of step with the
divine realm.
If we look the other way at the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children on September 11, 2001, and deliberately
refuse to see the truth that we already know deep down in our subconscious, then we will face the displeasure of the Invisible Realm.
Just as we are shown in the ancient myths, the truth must be acknowledged and admitted, and then the wrong that has been done must
be corrected.
In the case of the mass murder perpetrated on September 11, eighteen years ago, that admission requires us to face the fact that
the "terrorists" who were blamed for that attack were not the actual terrorists that we need to be focusing on.
Please note that I am very careful not to say that "the government" is the source of the problem: I would argue that the government
is the lawful expression of the will of the people and that the government, rightly understood, is exactly what these criminal perpetrators
actually fear the most, if the people ever become aware of what is going on. The government, which is established by the Constitution,
forbids the perpetration of murder upon innocent men, women and children in order to initiate wars of aggression against countries
that never invaded or attacked us (under the false pretense that they did so). Those who do so are actually opposed to our government
under the Constitution and can be dealt with within the framework of the law as established by the Constitution, which establishes
a very clear penalty for treason.
When the people acknowledge and admit the complete bankruptcy of the lie we have been told about the attacks of September 11,
the correction of that lie will involve demanding the immediate repeal and dismantling of the so-called "USA PATRIOT Act" which was
enacted in the weeks immediately following September 11, 2001 and which clearly violates the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Additionally, the correction of that lie will involve demanding the immediate cessation of the military operations which were
initiated based upon the fraudulent narrative of the attacks of that day, and which have led to invasion and overthrow of the nations
that were falsely blamed as being the perpetrators of those attacks and the seizure of their natural resources.
The imposition of a vast surveillance mechanism upon the people of this country (and of other countries) based on the fraudulent
pretext of "preventing terrorism" (and the lying narrative that has been perpetuated with the full complicity of the mainstream media
for the past eighteen years) is in complete violation of the human rights which are enumerated in the Bill of Rights and which declare:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing
the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
That human right has been grievously trampled upon under the false description of what actually took place during the September
11 attacks. Numerous technology companies have been allowed and even encouraged (and paid, with public moneys) to create technologies
which flagrantly and shamelessly violate "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" and
which track their every move and even enable secret eavesdropping upon their conversation and the secret capture of video within
their homes and private settings, without any probable cause whatsoever.
When we admit and acknowledge that we have been lied to about the events of September 11, which has been falsely used as a supposed
justification for the violation of these human rights (with complete disregard for the supreme law of the land as established in
the Constitution), then we will also demand the immediate cessation of any such intrusion upon the right of the people to "be secure
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" -- including the cessation of any business models which involve spying on men and
women.
Companies which cannot find a business model that does not violate the Bill of Rights should lose their corporate charter and
the privilege of limited liability, which are extended to them by the people (through the government of the people, by the people
and for the people) only upon the condition that their behavior as corporations do not violate the inherent rights of men and women
as acknowledged in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
It is well beyond the time when we must acknowledge and admit that we have been lied to about the events of September 11, 2001
-- and that we continue to be lied to about the events of that awful day. September 11, 2001 is in fact only one such event in a
long history which stretches back prior to 2001, to other events which should have awakened the people to the presence of a very
powerful and very dangerous criminal cabal acting in direct contravention to the Constitution long before we ever got to 2001 --
but the events of September 11 are so blatant, so violent, and so full of evidence which contradicts the fraudulent narrative that
they actually cannot be believed by anyone who spends even the slightest amount of time looking at that evidence.
Indeed, we already know deep down that we have been bamboozled by the lie of the so-called "official narrative" of September 11.
But until we admit to ourselves and acknowledge to others that we've ignored the truth that we already know, then the bamboozle
still has us .
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog
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David Warner Mathisen graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point and became an Infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne
Division and the 4th Infantry Division. He is a graduate of the US Army's Ranger School and the 82nd Airborne Division's Jumpmaster
Course, among many other awards and decorations. He was later selected to become an instructor in the Department of English Literature
and Philosophy at West Point and has a Masters degree from Texas A&M University.
David Warner Mathisen graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point and became an Infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne
Division and the 4th Infantry Division. He is a graduate of the US Army's Ranger School and the 82nd Airborne Division's Jumpmaster
Course, among many other awards and decorations. He was later selected to become an instructor in the Department of English Literature
and Philosophy at West Point and has a Masters degree from Texas A&M University.
If you want a vision of the future, don't imagine "a boot stamping on a human face -- for
ever," as Orwell suggested in 1984 . Instead, imagine that human face staring mesmerized
into the screen of some kind of nifty futuristic device on which every word, sound, and image
has been algorithmically approved for consumption by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ("DARPA") and its
"innovation ecosystem" of "academic, corporate, and governmental partners."
The screen of this futuristic device will offer a virtually unlimited range of
"non-divisive" and "hate-free" content, none of which will falsify or distort the "truth," or
in any way deviate from "reality." Western consumers will finally be free to enjoy an
assortment of news, opinion, entertainment, and educational content (like this Guardian
podcast about a man who
gave birth , or MSNBC's latest bombshell about
Donald Trump's secret Russian oligarch backers ) without having their enjoyment totally
ruined by discord-sowing alternative journalists like Aaron Maté or satirists like
myself.
"Fake news" will not appear on this screen. All the news will be "authentic." DARPA and its
partners will see to that. You won't have to worry about being "influenced" by Russians, Nazis,
conspiracy theorists, socialists, populists, extremists, or whomever. Such Persons of Malicious
Intent will still be able to post their content (because of "freedom of speech" and all that
stuff), but they will do so down in the sewers of the Internet where normal consumers won't
have to see it. Anyone who ventures down there looking for it (i.e., such "divisive" and
"polarizing" content) will be immediately placed on an official DARPA watchlist for "potential
extremists," or "potential white supremacists," or "potential Russians."
Once that happens, their lives will be over (i.e., the lives of the potentially extremist
fools who have logged onto whatever dark web platform will still be posting essays like this,
not the lives of the Persons of Malicious Intent, who never had any lives to begin with, and
who by that time will probably be operating out of some heavily armed, off-the-grid compound in
Idaho). Their schools, employers, and landlords will be notified. Their photos and addresses
will be published online. Anyone who ever said two words to them (or, God help them, appears in
a photograph with them) will have 24 hours to publicly denounce them, or be placed on
DARPA’s watchlist themselves.
"... Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name. ..."
"... In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets, also funded by the FO. ..."
"... "The Guardian is struggling for money" Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets. ..."
OffGuardian already covered the Global Media Freedom Conference, our article
Hypocrisy Taints UK's
Media Freedom Conference , was meant to be all there was to say. A quick note on the obvious hypocrisy of this event. But, in
the writing, I started to see more than that. This event is actually creepy. Let's just look back at one of the four "main themes"
of this conference:
Building trust in media and countering disinformation
"Countering disinformation"? Well, that's just another word for censorship. This is proven by their refusal to allow Sputnik or RT
accreditation. They claim RT "spreads disinformation" and they "countered" that by barring them from attending. "Building trust"?
In the post-Blair world of PR newspeak, "building trust" is just another way of saying "making people believe us" (the word usage
is actually interesting, building trust not earning trust). The whole conference is shot through with this language
that just feels off. Here is CNN's
Christiane Amanpour :
Our job is to be truthful, not neutral we need to take a stand for the truth, and never to create a false moral or factual equivalence."
Being "truthful not neutral" is one of Amanpour's
personal sayings
, she obviously thinks it's clever. Of course, what it is is NewSpeak for "bias". Refusing to cover evidence of The White
Helmets staging rescues, Israel arming ISIS or other inconvenient facts will be defended using this phrase – they will literally
claim to only publish "the truth", to get around impartiality and then set about making up whatever "truth" is convenient. Oh, and
if you don't know what "creating a false moral quivalence is", here I'll demonstrate: MSM: Putin is bad for shutting down critical
media. OffG: But you're supporting RT being banned and Wikileaks being shut down. BBC: No. That's not the same. OffG: It seems the
same. BBC: It's not. You're creating a false moral equivalence . Understand now? You "create a false moral equivalence" by
pointing out mainstream media's double standards. Other ways you could mistakenly create a "false moral equivalence": Bringing up
Gaza when the media talk about racism. Mentioning Saudi Arabia when the media preach about gay rights. Referencing the US coup in
Venezuela when the media work themselves into a froth over Russia's "interference in our democracy" Talking about the invasion of
Iraq. Ever. OR Pointing out that the BBC is state funded, just like RT. These are all no-longer flagrant examples of the media's
double standards, and if you say they are , you're "creating a false moral equivalence" and the media won't have to allow
you (or anyone who agrees with you) air time or column inches to disagree. Because they don't have a duty to be neutral or show both
sides, they only have a duty to tell "the truth" as soon as the government has told them what that is. Prepare to see both those
phrases – or variations there of – littering editorials in the Guardian and the Huffington Post in the coming months. Along
with people bemoaning how "fake news outlets abuse the notion of impartiality" by "being even handed between liars the truth tellers".
(I've been doing this site so long now, I have a Guardian-English dictionary in my head).
Equally dodgy-sounding buzz-phrases litter topics on the agenda. "Eastern Europe and Central Asia: building an integrated support
system for journalists facing hostile environments" , this means pumping money into NGOs to fund media that will criticize our
"enemies" in areas of strategic importance. It means flooding money into the anti-government press in Hungary, or Iran or (of course),
Russia. That is ALL it means. I said in my earlier article I don't know what "media sustainability" even means, but I feel I can
take a guess. It means "save the government mouthpieces". The Guardian is struggling for money, all print media are, TV news
is getting lower viewing figures all the time. "Building media sustainability" is code for "pumping public money into traditional
media that props up the government" or maybe "getting people to like our propaganda". But the worst offender on the list is, without
a doubt "Navigating Disinformation"
"Navigating Disinformation" was a 1 hour panel from the second day of the conference. You can watch it embedded above if you really
feel the need. I already did, so you don't have to. The panel was chaired by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Foreign Minister. The
members included the Latvian Foreign Minister, a representative of the US NGO Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Ukrainian
Deputy Minister of Information
Have you guessed what "disinformation" they're going to be talking about? I'll give you a clue: It begins with R. Freeland, chairing
the panel, kicks it off by claiming that "disinformation isn't for any particular aim" . This is a very common thing for establishment
voices to repeat these days, which makes it all the more galling she seems to be pretending its is her original thought. The reason
they have to claim that "disinformation" doesn't have a "specific aim" is very simple: They don't know what they're going to call
"disinformation" yet. They can't afford to take a firm position, they need to keep their options open. They need to give themselves
the ability to describe any single piece of information or political opinion as "disinformation." Left or right. Foreign or domestic.
"Disinformation" is a weaponised term that is only as potent as it is vague. So, we're one minute in, and all "navigating disinformation"
has done is hand the State an excuse to ignore, or even criminalise, practically anything it wants to. Good start. Interestingly,
no one has actually said the word "Russia" at this point. They have talked about "malign actors" and "threats to democracy", but
not specifically Russia. It is SO ingrained in these people that "propaganda"= " Russian propaganda" that they don't need
to say it.
The idea that NATO as an entity, or the individual members thereof, could also use "disinformation" has not just been dismissed
it was literally never even contemplated. Next Freeland turns to Edgars Rinkēvičs, her Latvian colleague, and jokes about always
meeting at NATO functions. The Latvians know "more than most" about disinformation, she says. Rinkēvičs says disinformation is nothing
new, but that the methods of spreading it are changing then immediately calls for regulation of social media. Nobody disagrees. Then
he talks about the "illegal annexation of Crimea", and claims the West should outlaw "paid propaganda" like RT and Sputnik. Nobody
disagrees. Then he says that Latvia "protected" their elections from "interference" by "close cooperation between government agencies
and social media companies". Everyone nods along. If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention. They don't say
it, they probably don't even realise they mean it, but when they talk about "close cooperation with social media networks", they
mean government censorship of social media. When they say "protecting" their elections they're talking about rigging them. It only
gets worse. The next step in the Latvian master plan is to bolster "traditional media".
The problems with traditional media, he says, are that journalists aren't paid enough, and don't keep up to date with all the
"new tricks". His solution is to "promote financing" for traditional media, and to open more schools like the "Baltic Centre of Media
Excellence", which is apparently a totally real thing .
It's a training centre which teaches young journalists about "media literacy" and "critical thinking". You can read their depressingly
predictable list of "donors" here . I truly wish I was joking. Next
up is Courtney Radsch from CPJ – a US-backed NGO, who notionally "protect journalists", but more accurately spread pro-US propaganda.
(Their token effort to "defend"
RT and Sputnik when they were barred from the conference was contemptible).
She talks for a long time without saying much at all. Her revolutionary idea is that disinformation could be countered if everyone
told the truth. Inspiring. Beata Balogova, Journalist and Editor from Slovakia, gets the ship back on course – immediately suggesting
politicians should not endorse "propaganda" platforms. She shares an anecdote about "a prominent Slovakian politician" who gave exclusive
interviews to a site that is "dubiously financed, we assume from Russia". They assume from Russia. Everyone nods.
It's like they don't even hear themselves.
Then she moves on to Hungary. Apparently, Orban has "created a propaganda machine" and produced "antisemitic George Soros posters".
No evidence is produced to back-up either of these claims. She thinks advertisers should be pressured into not giving money to "fake
news sites". She calls for "international pressure", but never explains exactly what that means. The stand-out maniac on this panel
is Emine Dzhaparova, the Ukrainian First Deputy Minister of Information Policy. (She works for the Ministry of Information – nicknamed
the Ministry of Truth, which was formed in 2014 to "counter lies about Ukraine". Even
The Guardian thought that sounded dodgy.)
She talks very fast and, without any sense of irony, spills out a story that shoots straight through "disinformation" and becomes
"incoherent rambling". She claims that Russian citizens are so brainwashed you'll never be able to talk to them, and that Russian
"cognitive influence" is "toxic like radiation." Is this paranoid, quasi-xenophobic nonsense countered? No. Her fellow panelists
nod and chuckle. On top of that, she just lies. She lies over and over and over again. She claims Russia is locking up Crimean Tartars
"just for being muslims", nobody questions her. She says the war in Ukraine has killed 13,000 people, but doesn't mention that her
side is responsible for over 80% of civilian deaths.
She says only 30% of Crimeans voted in the referendum, and that they were "forced". A fact not supported by
any polls done by either side in the last
four years, and any referenda held
on the peninsula any time in the last last 30 year. It's simply a lie. Nobody asks her about the journalists
killed in Ukraine since their
glorious Maidan Revolution . Nobody questions the fact that she works for something called the "Ministry of Information". Nobody
does anything but nod and smile as the "countering disinformation" panel becomes just a platform for spreading total lies.
When everyone on the panel has had their ten minutes on the soapbox, Freeland asks for recommendations for countering this "threat"
– here's the list:
Work to distinguish "free speech" from "propaganda", when you find propaganda there must be a "strong reaction".
Pressure advertisers to abandon platforms who spread misinformation.
Regulate social media.
Educate journalists at special schools.
Start up a "Ministry of Information" and have state run media that isn't controlled, like in Ukraine.
This is the Global Conference on Media Freedom and all these six people want to talk about is how to control what can be said,
and who can say it. They single only four countries out for criticism: Hungary, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia .and Russia takes
up easily 90% of that. They mention only two media outlets by name: RT and Sputnik. This wasn't a panel on disinformation, it was
a public attack forum – a month's worth of 2 minutes of hate. These aren't just shills on this stage, they are solid gold idiots,
brainwashed to the point of total delusion.
They are the dangerous glassy eyes of a Deep State that never questions itself, never examines itself, and will do anything it
wants, to anyone it wants whilst happily patting itself on the back for its superior morality. They don't know, they don't care.
They're true believers. Terrifyingly dead inside. Talking about state censorship and re-education camps under a big sign that says
"Freedom". And that's just one talk. Just one panel in a 2 day itinerary filled to the brim with similarly soul-dead servants of
authority. Truly, perfectly Orwellian.
Read and be appalled at what America is up to .keep for further reference. We are in danger.
Tim Jenkins
It would serve Ms. Amanpour well, to relax, rewind & review her own interview with Sergei Lavrov:-
Then she might see why Larry King could stomach the appalling corporate dictatorship, even to the core of False & Fake recording
of 'our' "History of the National Security State" , No More
Amanpour was forced to laugh uncontrollably, when confronted with Lavrov's humorous interpretations of various legal aspects
of decency & his Judgement of others' politicians and 'Pussy Riots' >>> if you haven't seen it, it is to be recommended, the whole
interview, if nothing else but to study the body language and micro-facial expressions, coz' a belly up laugh is not something
anybody can easily control or even feign that first spark of cognition in her mind, as she digests Lavrov's response :- hilarious
Einstein
A GE won't solve matters since we have a Government of Occupation behind a parliament of puppets.
Latest is the secretive Andy Pryce squandering millions of public money on the "Open Information Partnership" (OIP) which
is the latest name-change for the Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, just like al-Qaeda kept changing its name.
In true Orwellian style, they splashed out on a conference for "defence of media freedom", when they are in the business
of propaganda and closing alternative 'narratives' down. And the 'media' they would defend are, in fact, spies sent to foreign
countries to foment trouble to further what they bizarrely perceive as 'British interests'. Just like the disgraceful White Helmets,
also funded by the FO.
Pryce's ventriloquist's dummy in parliament, the pompous Alan Duncan, announced another £10 million of public money for this
odious brainwashing programme.
Tim Jenkins
That panel should be nailed & plastered over, permanently:-
and as wall paper, 'Abstracts of New Law' should be pasted onto a collage of historic extracts from the Guardian, in
offices that issue journalistic licenses, comprised of 'Untouchables' :-
A professional habitat, to damp any further 'Freeland' amplification & resonance,
of negative energy from professional incompetence.
Francis Lee
Apropos of the redoubtable Ms Freeland, Canada's Foreign Secretary.
The records now being opened by the Polish government in Warsaw reveal that Freeland's maternal grandfather Michael (Mikhailo)
Chomiak was a Nazi collaborator from the beginning to the end of the war. He was given a powerful post, money, home and car by
the German Army in Cracow, then the capital of the German administration of the Galician region. His principal job was editor
in chief and publisher of a newspaper the Nazis created. His printing plant and other assets had been stolen from a Jewish newspaper
publisher, who was then sent to die in the Belzec concentration camp. During the German Army's winning phase of the war, Chomiak
celebrated in print the Wehrmacht's "success" at killing thousands of US Army troops. As the German Army was forced into retreat
by the Soviet counter-offensive, Chomiak was taken by the Germans to Vienna, where he continued to publish his Nazi propaganda,
at the same time informing for the Germans on other Ukrainians. They included fellow Galician Stepan Bandera, whose racism against
Russians Freeland has celebrated in print, and whom the current regime in Kiev has turned into a national hero.
Those Ukrainian 'Refugees' admitted to Canada in 1945 were almost certainly members of the 14th Waffen SS Division Galizia 1.
These Ukie collaboraters – not to be confused with the other Ukie Nazi outfit – Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army -were
held responsible for the massacre of many Poles in the Lviv area the most infamous being carried out in the Polish village of
Huta Pienacka. In the massacre, the village was destroyed and between 500] and 1,000 of the inhabitants were killed. According
to Polish accounts, civilians were locked in barns that were set on fire while those attempting to flee were killed. That's about
par for the course.
Canada's response was as follows:
The Canadian Deschênes Commission was set up to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the collaborators
Memorial to SS-Galizien division in Chervone, Lviv Oblast, western Ukraine
The Canadian "Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes" of October 1986, by the Honourable Justice Jules Deschênesconcluded that in
relation to membership in the Galicia Division:
''The Galicia Division (14. Waffen grenadier division der SS [gal.1]) should not be indicted as a group. The members of Galicia
Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes of Galicia Division
have never been substantiated, either in 1950 when they were first preferred, or in 1984 when they were renewed, or before this
Commission. Further, in the absence of evidence of participation or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia
Division is insufficient to justify prosecution.''
However, the Commission's conclusion failed to acknowledge or heed the International Military Tribunal's verdict at the Nuremberg
Trials, in which the entire Waffen-SSorganisation was declared a "criminal organization" guilty of war crimes. Also, the Deschênes
Commission in its conclusion only referenced the division as 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr.1), thus in legal
terms, only acknowledging the formation's activity after its name change in August 1944, while the massacre of Poles in Huta Pieniacka,
Pidkamin and Palikrowy occurred when the division was called SS Freiwilligen Division "Galizien". Nevertheless, a subsequent review
by Canada's Minister of Justice again confirmed that members of the Division were not implicated in war crimes.
Yes, the west looks after its Nazis and even makes them and their descendants political figureheads.
mark
Most of these people are so smugly and complacently convinced of their own moral superiority that they just can't see the hypocrisy
and doublethink involved in the event.
Meanwhile Owen Jones has taken to Twitter to rubbish allegations that a reign of terror exists at Guardian Towers – the socialist
firebrand is quoted as saying 'journalists are free to say whatever they like, so long as it doesn't stray too far from Guardian-groupthink'.
Good analysis Kit, of the cognitive dissonant ping pong being played out by Nazi sympathisers such as Hunt and Freeland.
The echo chamber of deceit is amplified again by the selective use of information and the ignoring of relevant facts, such
as the miss reporting yesterday by Reuters of the Italian Neo-Nazi haul of weapons by the police, having not Russian but Ukrainian
links.
Not a word in the WMSM about this devious miss-reporting as the creation of fake news in action. But what would you expect?
Living as I do in Russia I can assure anyone reading this that the media freedom here is on a par with the West and somewhat
better as there is no paranoia about a fictitious enemy – Russians understand that the West is going through an existential crisis
(Brexit in the UK, Trump and the Clinton war of sameness in the US and Macron and Merkel in the EU). A crisis of Liberalism as
the failed life-support of capitalism. But hey, why worry about the politics when there is bigger fish to fry. Such as who will
pay me to dance?
The answer is clear from what Kit has writ. The government will pay the piper. How sweet.
I'd like to thank Kit for sitting through such a turgid masquerade and as I'm rather long in the tooth I do remember the old
BBC schools of journalism in Yelsin's Russia. What I remember is that old devious Auntie Beeb was busy training would be hopefuls
in the art of discretion regarding how the news is formed, or formulated.
In other words your audience. And it ain't the public
The British government's "Online Harms" White Paper has a whole section devoted to "disinformation" (ie, any facts, opinions,
analyses, evaluations, critiques that are critical of the elite's actual disinformation). If these proposals become law, the government
will have effective control over the Internet and we will be allowed access to their disinformation, shop and watch cute cat videos.
Question This
The liberal news media & hypocrisy, who would have ever thought you'd see those words in the same sentence.
But what do you expect from professional liars, politicians & 'their' free press?
Can this shit show get any worse? Yes, The other day I wrote to my MP regards the SNP legislating against the truth, effectively
making it compulsory to lie! Mr Blackford as much as called me a transphobic & seemed to go to great length publishing his neo-liberal
ideological views in some scottish rag, on how right is wrong & fact is turned into fiction & asked only those that agreed with
him contact him.
Tim Jenkins
"The science or logical consistency of true premise, cannot take place or bear fruit, when all communication and information is
'marketised and weaponised' to a mindset of possession and control."
B.Steere
Mikalina
I saw, somewhere (but can't find it now) a law or a prospective law which goes under the guise of harassment of MPs to include
action against constituents who 'pester' them.
I only emailed him once! That's hardly harassment. Anyway I sent it with proton-mail via vpn & used a false postcode using only
my first name so unlikely my civil & sincere correspondence will see me locked up for insisting my inalienable rights of freedom
of speech & beliefs are protected. But there again the state we live in, i may well be incarcerated for life, for such an outrageous
expectation.
Where to?
"The Guardian is struggling for money"
Surely, they would be enjoying some of the seemingly unlimited US defense and some of the mind control programmes budgets.
Harry Stotle
Its the brazen nature of the conference that is especially galling, but what do you expect when crooks and liars no longer feel
they even have to pretend?
Nothing will change so long as politicians (or their shady backers) are never held to account for public assets diverted toward
a rapacious off-shore economic system, or the fact millions of lives have been shattered by the 'war on terror' and its evil twin,
'humanatarian regime change' (while disingenuous Labour MPs wail about the 'horrors' of antisemitism rather than the fact their
former leader is a key architect of the killings).
Kit remains a go-to voice when deconstructing claims made by political figures who clearly regard the MSM as a propaganda vehicle
for promoting western imperialism – the self-satisfied smugness of cunts like Jeremy Cunt stand in stark contrast to a real journalist
being tortured by the British authorities just a few short miles away.
It's a sligtly depressing thought but somebody has the unenviable task of monitoring just how far our politicians have drifted
from the everyday concerns of the 'just about managing' and as I say Mr Knightly does a fine job in informing readers what the
real of agenda of these media love-ins are actually about – it goes without saying a very lengthy barge pole is required when
the Saudis are invited but not Russia.
Where to?
This Media Freedom Conference is surely a creepy theatre of the absurd.
It is a test of what they can get away with.
Mikalina
Yep. Any soviet TV watcher would recognise this immediately. Message? THIS is the reality – and you are powerless.
mark
When are they going to give us the Ministry of Truth we so desperately need?
"... We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.' ..."
"... Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of the public. ..."
"... All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria, blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included bankers, financiers, industrialists, and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the ill-fated beer-hall putsch. (See here , and here .) ..."
"... The purpose of this propaganda barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering business interests.' ..."
Here was, of course, another surreal spectacle, this time courtesy of one of the Deep State's most dangerous, reviled, and divisive
figures, a notable protagonist in the Russia-Gate conspiracy, and America's most senior diplomat no less.
Not only is it difficult to accept that the former CIA Director actually believes what he is saying, well might we ask, "Who can
believe Mike Pompeo?"
And here's also someone whose manifest cynicism, hypocrisy, and chutzpah would embarrass the much-derided
scribes and Pharisees of Biblical days.
We have Pompeo on record recently in a rare moment of
honesty admitting – whilst laughing his ample ass off, as if recalling some "Boy's Own Adventure" from his misspent youth with a
bunch of his mates down at the local pub – that under his watch as CIA Director:
We lied, cheated, we stole we had entire training courses.'
It may have been one of the few times in his wretched existence that Pompeo didn't speak with a forked tongue.
At all events, his candour aside, we can assume safely that this reactionary, monomaniacal, Christian Zionist 'end-timer' passed
all the Company's "training courses" with flying colours.
According to Matthew Rosenberg
of the New York Times, all this did not stop Pompeo however from name-checking Wikileaks when it served his own interests. Back
in 2016 at the height of the election campaign, he had ' no compunction about pointing people toward emails stolen* by Russian hackers
from the Democratic National Committee and then posted by WikiLeaks."
[NOTE: Rosenberg's omission of the word "allegedly" -- as in "emails allegedly stolen" -- is a dead giveaway of bias on his part
(a journalistic Freudian slip perhaps?), with his employer
being one of those MSM marques leading the charge with the "Russian Collusion" 'story'. For a more insightful view of the source
of these emails and the skullduggery and thuggery that attended Russia-Gate, readers are encouraged to
check this out.]
And this is of course The Company we're talking about, whose past and present relationship with the media might be summed up in
two words:
Operation Mockingbird (OpMock). Anyone vaguely familiar with the well-documented Grand Deception that was OpMock, arguably the
CIA's most enduring, insidious, and successful
psy-ops gambit, will know what
we're talking about. (See
here ,
here ,
here , and
here .) At its most basic, this operation was all about propaganda and censorship, usually operating in tandem to ensure all
the bases are covered.
After opining that the MSM is 'totally infiltrated' by the CIA and various other agencies, for his part former NSA whistleblower
William Binney recently added , ' When it
comes to national security, the media only talk about what the administration wants you to hear, and basically suppress any other
statements about what's going on that the administration does not want get public. The media is basically the lapdogs for the government.'
We know our disinformation program is complete when almost everything the American public believes is false.'
In order to provide a broader and deeper perspective, we should now consider the views of a few others on the subjects at hand,
along with some history. In a 2013 piece musing on the modern significance of the practice, my compatriot John Pilger
ecalled a time when he met
Leni Riefenstahl
back in 70s and asked her about her films that 'glorified the Nazis'.
Using groundbreaking camera and lighting techniques, Riefenstahl produced a documentary that mesmerized Germans; as Pilger
noted, her Triumph of the Will 'cast Adolf Hitler's
spell'. She told the veteran Aussie journalist the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the
"submissive void" of the public.
All in all, Riefenstahl produced arguably for the rest of the world the most compelling historical footage of mass hysteria,
blind obedience, nationalistic fervour, and existential menace, all key ingredients in anyone's totalitarian nightmare. That it also
impressed a lot of very powerful, high profile people in the West on both sides of the pond is also axiomatic: These included
bankers, financiers, industrialists,
and sundry business elites without whose support Hitler might've at best ended up a footnote in the historical record after the
ill-fated
beer-hall
putsch. (See
here , and here .)
" Triumph " apparently still resonates today. To the surprise of few one imagines, such was the impact of the film -- as casually
revealed in the excellent 2018 Alexis Bloom documentary Divide and
Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes -- it elicited no small amount of admiration from arguably the single most influential propagandist
of recent times.
[Readers might wish to check out Russell Crowe's recent portrayal of Ailes in Stan's mini-series
The Loudest Voice , in my view one the best performances of the man's career.]
In a recent piece unambiguously titled "Propaganda Is The Root Of All Our Problems", my other compatriot Caitlin Johnstone also
had a few things to
say about the subject, echoing Orwell when she observed it was all about "controlling the narrative".
Though I'd suggest the greater "root" problem is our easy propensity to ignore this reality, pretend it doesn't or won't affect
us, or reject it as conspiratorial nonsense, in this, of course, she's correct. As she cogently observes,
I write about this stuff for a living, and even I don't have the time or energy to write about every single narrative control
tool that the US-centralised empire has been implementing into its arsenal. There are too damn many of them emerging too damn
fast, because they're just that damn crucial for maintaining existing power structures.'
Fittingly, in a discussion encompassing amongst other things history, language, power, and dissent, he opined, ' Determining how
individuals communicate is' an objective which represents for the power elites 'the best chance' [they] have to control what people
think. This translates as: The more control 'we' have over what the proles think, the more 'we' can reduce the inherent risk for
elites in democracy.
' Clumsy men', Saul went on to say, 'try to do this through power and fear. Heavy-handed men running heavy-handed systems attempt
the same thing through police-enforced censorship. The more sophisticated the elites, the more they concentrate on creating intellectual
systems which control expression through the communications structures. These systems require only the discreet use of censorship
and uniformed men.'
In other words, along with assuming it is their right to take it in the first place, ' those who take power will always try to
change the established language ', presumably to better facilitate their hold on it and/or legitimise their claim to it.
For Oliver Boyd-Barrett, democratic theory presupposes a public communications infrastructure that facilitates the free and open
exchange of ideas.' Yet for the author of the recently published
RussiaGate and Propaganda: Disinformation in the Age of Social Media , 'No such infrastructure exists.'
The mainstream media he says, is 'owned and controlled by a small number of large, multi-media and multi-industrial conglomerates'
that lie at the very heart of US oligopoly capitalism and much of whose advertising revenue and content is furnished from other conglomerates:
The inability of mainstream media to sustain an information environment that can encompass histories, perspectives and vocabularies
that are free of the shackles of US plutocratic self-regard is also well documented.'
Of course the word "inability" suggests the MSM view themselves as having some responsibility for maintaining such an egalitarian
news and information environment. They don't of course, and in truth, probably never really have! A better word would be "unwilling",
or even "refusal". The corporate media all but epitomise the " plutocratic self-regard" that is characteristic of "oligopoly capitalism".
Indeed, the MSM collectively functions as advertising, public relations/lobbying entities for Big Corp, in addition to acting
as its Praetorian bodyguard , protecting their secrets,
crimes, and lies from exposure. Like all other companies they are beholden to their shareholders (profits before truth and people),
most of whom it can safely be assumed are no strangers to "self-regard", and could care less about " histories, perspectives and
vocabularies" that run counter to their own interests.
It was Aussie social scientist Alex Carey who
pioneered the study of nationalism ,
corporatism , and moreso for our purposes herein, the
management (read: manipulation) of public opinion, though all three have important links (a story for another time). For Carey, the
following conclusion was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that
we are free from propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' This former farmer
from Western Australia became one of the world's acknowledged experts on propaganda and the manipulation of the truth.
Prior to embarking on his academic career, Carey was a successful sheep
grazier . By all accounts, he was a first-class judge of the
animal from which he made his early living, leaving one to ponder if this expertise gave him a unique insight into his main area
of research!
In any event, Carey in time sold the farm and travelled to the U.K. to study psychology, apparently a long-time ambition. From
the late fifties until his death in 1988, he was a senior lecturer in psychology and industrial relations at the Sydney-based University
of New South Wales, with his research being lauded by such luminaries as Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, both of whom have had a thing
or three to say over the years about The Big Shill. In fact such was his admiration, Pilger
described him as "a second Orwell", which in anyone's lingo
is a big call.
In fact, for anyone with an interest in how public opinion is moulded and our perceptions are managed and manipulated, in whose
interests they are done so and to what end, it is as essential reading as any of the work of other more famous names. This tome came
complete with a foreword by Chomsky, so enamoured was the latter of Carey's work.
For Carey, the three "most significant developments" in the political economy of the twentieth century were:
the growth of democracy the growth of corporate power; and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against
democracy.
For Carey, it is an axiom of conventional wisdom that the use of propaganda as a means of social and ideological control is 'distinctive'
of totalitarian regimes. Yet as he stresses: the most minimal exercise of common sense would suggest a different view: that propaganda
is likely to play at least as important a part in democratic societies (where the existing distribution of power and privilege is
vulnerable to quite limited changes in popular opinion) as in authoritarian societies (where it is not).' In this context, 'conventional
wisdom" becomes conventional ignorance; as for "common sense", maybe not so much.
The purpose of this propaganda
barrage, as Sharon Bader has noted, has been to convince as many people as
possible that it is in their interests to relinquish their own power as workers, consumers, and citizens, and 'forego their democratic
right to restrain and regulate business activity. As a result the political agenda is now confined to policies aimed at furthering
business interests.'
An extreme example of this view playing itself right under our noses and over decades was the cruel fiction of the "
trickle down effect " (TDE) -- aka the 'rising tide that would lift all yachts' -- of
Reaganomics . One of several mantras that defined Reagan's
overarching political shtick, the TDE was by any measure, decidedly more a torrent than a trickle, and said "torrent" was going up
not down. This reality as we now know was not in Reagan's glossy economic brochure to be sure, and it may have been because the Gipper
confused his prepositions and verbs.
Yet as the GFC of 2008 amply demonstrated, it culminated in a free-for all, dog eat dog, anything goes, everyman for himself form
of cannibal (or anarcho) capitalism -- an updated, much
improved version of the no-holds-barred mercenary mercantilism much reminiscent of the
Gilded Age and the
Robber Barons who 'infested' it, only one
that doesn't just eat its young, it eats itself!
Making the World Safe for Plutocracy
In the increasingly dysfunctional, one-sided political economy we inhabit then, whether it's widgets or wars or anything in between,
few people realise the degree to which our opinions, perceptions, emotions, and views are shaped and manipulated by propaganda (and
its similarly 'evil twin' censorship ,) its most adept practitioners, and those elite, institutional, political, and corporate entities
that seek out their expertise.
It is now just over a hundred years since the practice of propaganda took a giant leap forward, then in the service of persuading
palpably reluctant Americans that the war raging in Europe at the time was their war as well.
This was at a time when Americans had just voted their then-president
Woodrow Wilson back into office for a second term, a victory
largely achieved on the back of the promise he'd
"keep us out of the War." Americans were
very much in what was one of their most
isolationist
phases , and so Wilson's promise resonated with them.
But over time they were convinced of the need to become involved by a distinctly different appeal to their political sensibilities.
This "appeal" also dampened the isolationist mood, one which it has to be said was not embraced by most of the political, banking,
and business elites of the time, most of whom stood to lose big-time if the Germans won, and/or who were already profiting or benefitting
from the business of war.
For a president who "kept us out of the war", this wasn't going to be an easy 'pitch'. In order to sell the war the president
established the Committee on Public Information
(aka the Creel Committee) for the purposes of publicising the rationale for the war and from there, garnering support for it
from the general public.
Either way, Bernays 'combined their perspectives and synthesised them into an applied science', which he then 'branded' "public
relations".
For its part the Creel committee struggled with its brief from the off; but Bernays worked with them to persuade Americans their
involvement in the war was justified -- indeed necessary -- and to that end he devised the brilliantly inane slogan,
"making the world safe for democracy"
.
Thus was born arguably the first
great propaganda catch-phrases of the modern era, and certainly one of the most portentous. The following sums up Bernays's unabashed
mindset:
The conscious, intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power
of our country.'
The rest is history (sort of), with Americans becoming more willing to not just support the war effort but encouraged to view
the Germans and their allies as evil brutes threatening democracy and freedom and the 'American way of life', however that might've
been viewed then. From a geopolitical and historical perspective, it was an asinine premise of course, but nonetheless an extraordinary
example of how a few well chosen words tapped into the collective psyche of a country that was decidedly opposed to any U.S involvement
in the war and turned that mindset completely on its head.
' [S]aving the world for democracy' (or some 'cover version' thereof) has since become America's positioning statement, 'patriotic'
rallying cry, and the "Get-out-of-Jail Free" card for its war and its white collar criminal clique.
At all events it was by any measure, a stroke of genius on Bernays's part; by appealing to people's basic fears and desires, he
could engineer consent on a mass scale. It goes without saying it changed the course of history in more ways than one. That the U.S.
is to this day still using a not dissimilar meme to justify its
"foreign entanglements" is testament to both its utility and durability.
The reality as we now know was markedly different of course. They have almost always been about power, empire, control, hegemony,
resources, wealth, opportunity, profit, dispossession, keeping existing capitalist structures intact and well-defended, and crushing
dissent and opposition.
The Bewildered Herd
It is instructive to note that the template for 'manufacturing consent' for war had already been forged by the British. And the
Europeans did not 'sleepwalk'
like some " bewildered herd ' into this conflagration.
For twenty years prior to the outbreak of the war in 1914, the then stewards of the British Empire had been diligently preparing
the ground for what they viewed as a preordained clash with their rivals for empire the Germans.
To begin with, contrary to the opinion of the general populace over one hundred years later, it was not the much touted German
aggression and militarism, nor their undoubted imperial ambitions, which precipitated its outbreak. The stewards of the British Empire
were not about to let the Teutonic upstarts chow down on their imperial lunch as it were, and set about unilaterally and preemptively
crushing Germany and with it any ambitions it had for creating its own imperial domain in competition with the Empire upon which
Ol' Sol never set.
The "Great War" is worth noting here for other reasons. As documented so by Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty in their two books
covering the period from 1890-1920, we learn much about propaganda, which attest to its extraordinary power, in particular its
power to distort
reality en masse in enduring and subversive ways.
In reality, the only thing "great" about World War One was the degree to which the masses fighting for Britain were conned via
propaganda and censorship into believing this war was necessary, and the way the official narrative of the war was sustained for
posterity via the very same means. "Great" maybe, but not in a good way!
The horrendous carnage and destruction that resulted from it was of course unprecedented, the global effects of which linger on
now well over one hundred years later.
Such was the
enduring power
of the propaganda that today most folks would have great difficulty in accepting the following; this is a short summary of historical
realities revealed by Macgregor and Docherty that are at complete odds with the official narrative, the political discourse, and
the school textbooks:
It was Great Britain (supported by France and Russia) and not Germany who was the principal aggressor in the events and actions that
let to the outbreak of war; The British had for twenty years prior to 1914 viewed Germany as its most dangerous economic and imperial
rival, and fully anticipated that a war was inevitable; In the U.K. and the U.S., various factions worked feverishly to ensure the
war went on for as long as possible, and scuttled peacemaking efforts from the off; key truths about this most consequential of geopolitical
conflicts have been concealed for well over one hundred years, with no sign the official record will change; very powerful forces
(incl. a future US president) amongst U.S. political, media, and economic elites conspired to eventually convince an otherwise unwilling
populace in America that U.S. entry onto the war was necessary; those same forces and many similar groups in the U.K. and Europe
engaged in everything from war profiteering, destruction/forging of war records, false-flag ops, treason, conspiracy to wage aggressive
war, and direct efforts to prolong the war by any means necessary, many of which will rock folks to their very core.
But peace was not on the agenda. When, by 1916, the military failures were so embarrassing and costly, some key players in the
British government were willing to talk about peace. This could not be tolerated. The potential peacemakers had to be thrown under
the bus. The unelected European leaders had one common bond: They would fight Germany until she was crushed.
Prolonging the Agony details how this secret cabal organised to this end the change of government without a single vote being
cast. David Lloyd George was promoted to prime minister
in Britain and Georges Clemenceau made prime minister
in France. A new government, an inner-elite war cabinet thrust the Secret Elite leader, Lord
Alfred Milner into power at the very inner-core of the
decision-makers in British politics.
Democracy? They had no truck with democracy. The voting public had no say. The men entrusted with the task would keep going till
the end and their place-men were backed by the media and the money-power, in Britain, France and America.
Propaganda Always Wins
But just as the pioneering adherents of propaganda back in the day might never have dreamt how sophisticated and all-encompassing
the practice would become, nor would the citizenry at large have anticipated the extent to which the industry has facilitated an
entrenched, rapacious plutocracy at the expense of our economic opportunity, our financial and material security, our physical, social
and cultural environment, our values and attitudes, and increasingly, our basic democratic rights and freedoms.
We now live in the Age of the Big Shill -- cocooned in a submissive void no less -- an era where nothing can be taken on face
value yet where time and attention constraints (to name just a few) force us to do so; [where] few people in public life can be taken
at their word; where unchallenged perceptions become accepted reality; where 'open-book' history is now incontrovertible not-negotiable,
upon pain of imprisonment fact; where education is about uniformity, function, form and conformity, all in the service of imposed
neo-liberal ideologies embracing then prioritising individual -- albeit dubious -- freedoms.
More broadly, it's the "Roger Ailes" of this world -- acting on behalf of the power elites who after all are their paymasters
-- who create the intellectual systems which control expression through the communications structures, whilst ensuring these systems
require only 'the discreet use of censorship and uniformed men.'
They are the shapers and moulders of the discourse that passes for the accepted lingua franca of the increasingly globalised,
interconnected, corporatised political economy of the planet. Throughout this process they 'will always try to change the established
language.'
And we can no longer rely on our elected representatives to honestly represent us and our interests. Whether this decision making
is taking place inside or outside the legislative process, these processes are well and truly in the grip of the banks and financial
institutions and transnational organisations. In whose interests are they going to be more concerned with?
We saw this all just after the
Global Financial Crisis
(GFC) when the very people who brought the system to the brink, made billions off the dodge for their banks and millions for
themselves, bankrupted hundreds of thousands of American families, were called upon by the U.S. government to fix up the mess, and
to all intents given a blank cheque to so do.
That the U.S. is at even greater risk now of economic
implosion is something few serious pundits would dispute, and a testament to the effectiveness of the snow-job perpetrated upon Americans
regarding the causes, the impact, and the implications of the 2008 meltdown going forward.
In most cases, one accepts almost by definition such disconnects (read: hidden agendas) are the rule rather than the exception,
hence the multi-billion foundation -- and global reach and impact -- of the propaganda business. This in itself is a key indicator
as to why organisations place so much importance on this aspect of managing their affairs.
At the very least, once corporations saw how the psychology of persuasion could be leveraged to manipulate consumers and politicians
saw the same with the citizenry and even its own workers, the growth of the industry was assured.
As Riefenstahl noted during her chinwag with Pilger after he asked if those embracing the "submissive void" included the liberal,
educated bourgeoisie? " Everyone ," she said.
By way of underscoring her point, she added enigmatically: 'Propaganda always wins if you allow it'.
Greg Maybury is a freelance writer based in Perth, Australia. His main areas of interest are American history and politics
in general, with a special focus on economic, national security, military, and geopolitical affairs. For 5 years he has regularly
contributed to a diverse range of news and opinion sites, including OpEd News, The Greanville Post, Consortium News, Dandelion Salad,
Global Research, Dissident Voice, OffGuardian, Contra Corner, International Policy Digest, the Hampton Institute, and others.
nottheonly1
This brilliant essay is proof of the reflective nature of the Universe. The worse the propaganda and oppression becomes, the greater
the likelihood such an essay will be written.
Such is the sophistication and ubiquity of the narrative control techniques used today -- afforded increasingly by 'computational
propaganda' via automated scripts, hacking, botnets, troll farms, and algorithms and the like, along with the barely veiled
censorship and information gatekeeping practised by Google and Facebook and other tech behemoths -- it's become one of the
most troubling aspects of the technological/social media revolution.
Very rarely can one experience such a degree of vindication. My moniker 'nottheonly1' has received more meaning with this precise
depiction of the long history of the manipulation of the masses. Recent events have destroyed but all of my confidence that there
might be a peaceful way out of this massive dilemma. Due to this sophistication in controlling the narrative, it has now become
apparent that we have arrived at a moment in time where total lawlessness reigns. 'Lawlessness' in this case means the loss of
common law and the use of code law to create ever new restrictions for free speech and liberty at large.
Over the last weeks, comments written on other discussion boards have unleashed a degree of character defamation and ridicule
for the most obvious crimes perpetrated on the masses through propaganda. In this unholy union of constant propaganda via main
stream 'media' with the character defamation by so called 'trolls' – which are actually virtual assassins of those who write the
truth – the ability of the population, or parts thereof to connect with, or search for like minded people is utterly destroyed.
This assault on the online community has devastating consequences. Those who have come into the cross hairs of the unintelligence
agencies will but turn away from the internet. Leaving behind an ocean of online propaganda and fake information. Few are now
the web sites on which it is possible to voice one's personal take on the status quo.
There is one word that describes these kind of activities precisely: traitor. Those who engage in the character defamation
of commenters, or authors per se, are traitors to humanity. They betray the collective consciousness with their poisonous attacks
of those who work for a sea change of the status quo. The owner class has all game pieces positioned. The fact that Julian Assange
is not only a free man, but still without a Nobel price for peace, while war criminals are recipients, shows just how much the
march into absolute totalitarianism has progressed. Bernays hated the masses and offered his 'services' to manipulate them often
for free.
Even though there are more solutions than problems, the time has come where meaningful participation in the search for such
solution has been made unbearable. It is therefore that a certain fatalism has developed – from resignation to the acceptance
of the status quo as being inevitable. Ancient wisdom has created a proverb that states 'This too, will pass'. While that is a
given, there are still enough Human Beings around that are determined to make a difference. To this group I count the author of
this marvelous, albeit depressing essay. Thank you more that words can express. And thank you, OffGuardian for being one of the
last remaining places where discourse is possible.
Really great post! Thanks. I'm part of the way through reading Alex Carey's book: "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate
Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty," referenced in this article. I've learned more about the obviously verifiable history of
U.S. corporate propaganda in the first four chapters than I learned gaining a "minor" in history in 1974 (not surprisingly I can
now clearly see). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in just how pervasive, entrenched and long-standing are the
propaganda systems shaping public perception, thought and behavior in America and the West.
Norcal
Wow Greg Maybury great essay, congratulations. This quote is brilliant, I've never see it before, "For Carey, the following conclusion
was inescapable: 'It is arguable that the success of business propaganda in persuading us, for so long, that we are free from
propaganda is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.' "
Too, Rodger Ailes was the man credited with educating Nixon up as how to "use" the TV media, and Ailes never looked back as
he manipulated media at will. Thank you!
nondimenticare
That is also one of the basic theses of Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize speech.
vexarb
I read in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' about Homo Sapiens and his domesticated animals. Apparently we got on best in places where we
could find animals that are very like us: sheep, cattle, horses and other herd animals which instinctively follow their Leader.
I think our cousins the chimpanzee are much the same; both species must have inherited this common trait from some pre-chimpanzee
ancestor who had found great survival value in passing on the sheeple trait to their progeny. As have the sheep themselves.
By the way, has anybody observed sheeple behaviour in ants and bees? For instance, quietly following a Leader ant to their
doom, or noisily ganging up to mob a worker bee that the Queen does not like?
I'd say the elites are both for and against. Competing factions.
It's clear that many are interested in overturning democracy, whilst others want to exploit it.
The average grunt on the street is in the fire, regardless of the pan chosen by the elites.
An interesting method of monitoring access to the particular WEB site or page by intercepting pages at the router and
inserting reference to the "snooping" site for example one pixel image) which collects IPs of devices which accessed particular
page. Does not require breaking into the particular Web site 00 just the control of provider router is is enough. That
makes it more understandable the attack on Huawei.
Notable quotes:
"... Said Mr. Snowden was at risk for extra ordinary rendition.. qualified him for application under refuge law. Said to claim refugee status Art. 33 of the refugee humanitarian grounds application is Intl Refuge Law, that those in control of governments are working to eliminate this long standing intl understanding. ..."
"... said we are experiencing the greatest and fastest and most pervasive redistribution of power since the Industrial revolution.Highly concerned that very few are going to benefit. ..."
"... Talked about Conspiracy , a group called 5 eyes (USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, and UK) and prism.. explained how it worked. basically a collaboration between big corporations and government ..."
"... Explained how these corporations and government (mostly government) could intercept web page request between user at home or in office and the target server, and replace generate a blank page that has surveillance hidden in the page, then blend hidden with the legitimate page delivered by the innocent server to the unknowing user. said it goes beyond collaboration and moves to proactive surveillance. ..."
"... Said law is needed to criminalize companies and governments that make useful network devices that people buy, into evil spyware. mentioned the NSO group can remember why?. .. classified "trade in hidden exploits". as evil relayed story about how such devices were used in Mexico to defeat political opposition ..."
Describes the incredible pressure governments are applying on anyone who steps forward to
help a whistle blower.
Said Mr. Snowden was at risk for extra ordinary rendition.. qualified him for application
under refuge law. Said to claim refugee status Art. 33 of the refugee humanitarian grounds
application is Intl Refuge Law, that those in control of governments are working to eliminate
this long standing intl understanding.
Explained the constitution of Equador was the most complex constitution on planet its due
process rights solid due process safeguard, has a very high threshold but. Morales decision
was arbitrary to strip Mr. Assange of his asylum. Said HK angry at Germany over two whistle
blowers
Snowden then speaks .. excellent talk..
1st point.. progress in science has been unprecedented, especially nuclear science, but
the nation states are using that new
knowledge to make nuclear weapons.. called the progress an "Atomic Moment" in Science
evolution. .
said we are experiencing the greatest and fastest and most pervasive redistribution of
power since the Industrial revolution.Highly concerned that very few are going to benefit.
2nd point Platforms and Algorithms are being used by those in power to "shift our
behaviors" accomplished covertly by user
contracts people are required to sign when joining something on line (<=he said no one
reads these things, but they are dangerous
Talked about Conspiracy , a group called 5 eyes (USA, Canada, Australia, NZ, and UK) and
prism.. explained how it worked.
basically a collaboration between big corporations and government
Explained how these corporations and government (mostly government) could intercept web
page request between
user at home or in office and the target server, and replace generate a blank page that has
surveillance hidden in the page, then
blend hidden with the legitimate page delivered by the innocent server to the unknowing user.
said it goes beyond collaboration
and moves to proactive surveillance.
said the legal means to spy on the populations existed long before 9/11, but it could not
find daylight to be adopted until 9/11.
Basically the government and massive in size corporations have all of the data on every
single person on the earth because they gather it everywhere all of the time. discussed
warrant_less wire tap, explained why whistle blower fair trial in he USA not likely,
Said everything single call or electronic communication made by citizens is captured
suggested monitoring calls was a felony many corporations committed before the FISA Act was
enacted to protect the listener.
Mentioned Signal by Open Whisper <= for encryption??
Said law is needed to criminalize companies and governments that make useful network devices
that people buy, into evil spyware. mentioned the NSO group can remember why?. .. classified
"trade in hidden exploits". as evil relayed story about how such devices were used in Mexico
to defeat political opposition.
But the big thing I got out of it, was how website contract agreements are not innocent.
Such agreements prey on human desire to [interact, connect, share and cooperate] these
desires have been modelled into a platform that allows government or private commercial
enterprises to manipulate, exploit and prey-on any human "interacting with a such
websites.
GCHQ has dismissed fresh allegations that it spied on Donald Trump's presidential campaign -
describing the claims as "utterly ridiculous".
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, has accused the British intelligence agency of helping
Barack Obama by spying on the billionaire businessman during the 2016 race.
The US president tweeted about the rumours on Wednesday after they were highlighted in a
report on the right-wing One America News Network.
Mr Trump wrote: "'Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of
helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign.' @OANN WOW!
"It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be
a beauty!"
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks
to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment
and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source
and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.
You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from
a document dump that is almost
entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact
Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the
period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.
These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important
for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source.
This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the
meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.
What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive
contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?
The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA)
and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps
who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").
We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking
of the DNC in 2015).
This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests,
https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but
then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public
is skeptical of their claims'.
The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their
hand on the scale.
Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are
trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the
mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't
support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.
I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in
the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.
What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the
Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance
with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them
to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie
that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.
From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole
thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews
by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national
security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got
their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.
Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered
to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.
Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was
not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?
The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law
enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as
'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.
It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of
agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.
Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'
It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely,
both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately
involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information
to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.
An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back
channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.
A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the
supposed termination.
When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue
to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:
"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be
forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."
At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me
a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would
it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance
of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?
Another crucial paragraph:
'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in
London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence
probes in American history.'
The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.
As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he
created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments
of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.
I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large
measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures
close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication
which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.
The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky
Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.
(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at
http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who
sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)
The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent
'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'
Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No
mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian
Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.
The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf
of elements in the CIA.
Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether
the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson
were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important
issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.
Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including
McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense.
So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.
Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem
to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with
the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted
his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation
culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian
Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was
potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get
'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously
I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt
on Trump...how is this not the same...?
Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential
candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact
the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him?
Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this
have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence
source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation
that may have already begun?
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete),
his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated
desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting
others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has
not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too
big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing
agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant
thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)?
'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's
"raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they
would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,
" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching
him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "
That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance
authorization?.
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the
NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws
they have that prohibits spying on their people.
Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about
a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered
as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years
ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In
my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them
are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these
people think they are.
It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.
"... DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed 2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016, report by the Office of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review. ..."
"... The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016. ..."
"... After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing numerous "about query" violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and reported his findings to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are not "to" or "from" the target. ..."
"... On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally informed the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings of his audit. ..."
"... Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant. ..."
"... The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page. ..."
"... While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director. ..."
Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for
uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page
unsealed FISA
court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.
"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.
"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."
The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar
disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."
The FISA Court
disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to
the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.
In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of
improper
contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he
directed the NSA's Office
of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors
working for the FBI.
DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was
part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the Office
of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose
Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.
The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin
announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.
After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing
numerous "about query"
violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and
reported his findings
to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are
not "to" or "from" the target.
On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance
on Carter Page from the FISA Court.
At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally
informed
the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings
of his audit.
The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions
at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a
recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.
The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing
to present his findings to the FISA Court.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
"... The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives, the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting." This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program. ..."
"... One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely. ..."
"... I am confident that a survey of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially, his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone unless their name is in an intelligence report. ..."
"... Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from a registered FBI informant. ..."
"... That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, ..."
"... Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI for launching the investigation into George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported. ..."
"... Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive: ..."
"... I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government? ..."
"... Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution. ..."
"... Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before the country move forward on any front. ..."
"... So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal. ..."
Do not focus on July 2016 as the so-called start of the counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump. That is a lie. We
know, thanks to the work of Judicial Watch, that the FBI had signed up Christopher Steele as a Confidential Human Source (aka CHS)
by February of 2016. It is incumbent on Attorney General Barr to examine the contact reports filed by Steele's FBI handler (those
reports are known as FD-1023s). He also, as I have noted in a previous post, needs to look at the FD-1023s for Felix Sater and Henry
Greenberg. But these will only tell a small part of the story. There is a massive intelligence side to this story.
The CIA, with the knowledge of the Director of National Intelligence, worked with British counterparts starting in the summer
of 2015 to collect intelligence on Republican and at least one Democrat candidate. John Brennan was probably hoping that his proactive
steps to help the Hillary Clinton campaign would ensure him taking over as DNI in the new Clinton Administration. Regardless of motives,
the CIA enlisted the British intelligence community to start gathering intelligence on most major Republican candidates and on Bernie
Sanders. This initial phase of intelligence gathering goes beyond opposition research. The information being gathered identified
the key personnel in each campaign and identified the people outside the United States receiving their calls, texts and emails. This
information was turned into intelligence reports that then were passed back to the United States intel community as "liaison reporting."
This was not put into normal classified channels. This intelligence was put into a SAP, i.e. a Special Access Program.
One person who needs to be called on the carpet and asked some hard questions is current CIA Director Gina Haspel. She was
CIA Chief of Station in London at the time and was a regular attendee at the meeting of the Brit's Joint Intelligence Committee aka
the JIC. I suppose it is possible she was cut out of the process, but I believe that is unlikely.
This initial phase of intelligence collection produced a great volume of intelligence that allowed analysts to identify key personnel
and the people they were communicating with overseas. You don't have to have access to intelligence information to understand this.
For example, you simply have to ask the question, "how did George Papadopoulos get on the radar." I am confident that a survey
of NSA and CIA liaison reporting will show that George Papadopoulos was identified as a possible target by the fall of 2015. Initially,
his name was "masked." But we now know that many people on the Trump campaign had their names "unmasked." You cannot unmask someone
unless their name is in an intelligence report. We also know that Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Donald Trump
and an FBI informant since December 1998 (he was signed up by Andrew Weismann), initiated the proposal to do a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Don't take my word for it, that's what Robert Mueller reported:
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately
September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen (i.e., Michael Cohen) on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert),
a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov. Sater had known Rozov since approximately
2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City. Sater later
contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and
brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee
of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
Sater's communication with Rozov were intercepted by western intelligence agencies -- GCHQ and NSA. I do not know which agency
put it into an intel report, but it was put into the system. The Sater FD-1023 will tell us whether or not Sater did this at the
direction of the FBI or acted on his own initiative. The key point is that the "bait" to do something with the Russians came from
a registered FBI informant.
By December of 2015, the Hillary Campaign decided to use the Russian angle on Donald Trump. Thanks to Wikileaks we have Campaign
Manager John Podesta's email exchange in December 2015 with Democratic operative Brent Budowsky:
" That's good, sooner it's clarified the better, and the stronger the better, " Budowski replies, later adding: "
Best approach is to slaughter Donald for his bromance with Putin , but not go too far betting on Putin re Syria ."
The program to slaughter Donald Trump using Russia as the hatchet was already underway. This was more the opposition research.
This was the weaponization of law enforcement and intelligence assets to attack political opponents. Hillary had covered the opposition
research angle in London by hiring a firm comprised of former MI6 assets--
Hakluyt: there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about
with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against
Donald Trump.
Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , founded by three former British intelligence
operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations
pay huge sums. . . .
Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's
Henry
Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6
[British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "
I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was the one credited by the FBI
for launching the investigation into
George Papadopolous : It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that
led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's
associates conspired," The Times reported.
Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially,
he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network
reported in a January 2016 exclusive:
But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client
cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.
His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation
of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.
Much remains to be uncovered in this plot. But this much is certain--there is an extensive documentary record, including TOP SECRET
intelligence reports (SIGINT and HUMINT) and emails and phone calls that will show there was a concerted covert action operation
mounted against Donald Trump and his campaign. Those documents will tell the story. This cannot be allowed to happen again.
Having watched interviews of Papadopoulos on TeeVee I would say that this creature would be easy to manipulate. His ego is so
enormous that a minimal effort would be required.
I'm curious why they went after minor characters in the Trump campaign and not Jared or one of Trump's sons? From what
I've read of Hoover, it seems he was constantly building "dossiers" of the powerful and those he considered "subversives" so that
he would remain preeminent. Then there was the Church Committee investigation. Is this qualitatively different? Can we ever expect
that law enforcement & intelligence with so much secretive power are not the 4th branch of government?
The guts of the matter was well expressed by Judge T.S. Ellis when he made the distinction between different results which
can be expected from exerting pressures on witnesses: they may 'sing' - which is, commonly, in the interests of justice - but,
there again, they may 'compose', which is not.
Also involved - and I think Judge Ellis was very well aware of this - is a fundamental distinction relating to what law
enforcement authorities are trying to achieve. If Mueller was honestly - even of perhaps misguidedly - trying to get witnesses
to 'sing', that is hardly a mortal sin. If he was trying to get them to 'compose', then the question becomes whether he should
be under indictment for subversion of the Constitution.
Yes, indeed, many a composition have been elicited by prosecutors in criminal cases. The issue is there is no penalty for prosecutorial
misconduct while the advancement points ratchet up with each conviction. The incentives are aligned perfectly for the "institution"
to run rough shod on ordinary Americans. Only those wealthy enough to fight the unlimited funds of the government have a chance.
But of course in matters relating to national security there is the added twist of state secrets that protects government malfeasance.
I don't know how the national security state we continue to build ever gets rolled back. A small victory would be for Trump
to declassify all documents and communications relating to the multifaceted spying on his campaign and as Larry so eloquently
writes to frame him as a Manchurian Candidate. At least the public will learn about what their grandchildren are paying for. But
it seems that Trump prefers tweeting to taking any kind of action. Not that it would matter much as half the country will still
believe that Trump deserves it until the tables are turned on their team. While most Americans will say to use Ben Hunt's phrasing
Yay! Constitution. Yay! Liberty. they sure don't care as the state oligarchy tighten their chokehold.
Yes, he seems young and ambitious enough to be easy (and willing) prey. Having been involved in some local political campaigns
though, I've observed that more and more than before, young people like him are hyper-concerned with networking. Papadopoulos'
ego aside, of course he and many people who sign on hope to make self-serving connections. Not only that, it's also been my observation
that casual sexual hook-ups go with the territory, and not only among young, single guys like him. I have to say I've been shocked
a few times by how risky and cavalier some liaisons have been that've come to my attention, considering "public figures" are involved.
No doubt that's why a "honeypot" was dispatched to try to help entrap Papadopoulos.
Why aren't the MSM having a hissy fit about the real, documented election interference by the British Commonwealth/5 Eyes
spooks in the 2016 campaign (and before)? The hoax of projecting onto Putin what they themselves have done must be exposed before
the country move forward on any front.
So, was Skripal one of Steele's so-called Kremlin insiders? I see Pablo Miller is connected to both Porton Down and Steele
via the ironically titled II's media pods. And Miller is certainly connected to Skripal.
Papadopolos was very young hence the nativity getting sucked in. The ego helped for sure. Probably exciting to be part of something
important probably for the first time since he started working for Trump campaign
One thing that's always concerned me about Larry's informative and insightful essays on these matters is how can we be assured
that the IC documentation mentioned has been filled out honestly and accurately -- or that the forms even still exist and haven't
been conveniently "lost" or surreptitiously destroyed?
"Here is what we now know, per intelligence gleaned form federal law enforcement sources with insider knowledge of what amounts
to a plot by U.S. intelligence agencies to secure back door and illegal wiretaps of President Trump's associates:
Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA’s Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and
possibly Trump himself. To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of
Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ. The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial
of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. GCHQ did not work from London or the
UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping
surveillance on Trump associates. The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former
British spy Christopher Steele. The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and
Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump’s associates appear compromised. Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ
began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency
could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting
Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into
the United States or the UK, federal sources said. By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole
to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the
United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil
at Fort Meade. The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged
Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered “poisoned fruit.”
-----------.
Someone left this link in a comment to LJ, but as ringmaster of this circus, I choose to publish this as the best summary of all
the threads of the supposed conspiracy that I have seen thus far. pl
Wikipedia page on Paul Manafort says that the FBI began a criminal investigation into him in 2014, associated with his previous
dealings in Ukraine. He could have been a target of surveillance and wiretapping since then.
I therefore think Manafort was the key the intelligence agencies used to get to into Trump's organisation. It may have been
initially incidental to their ongoing, and much earlier surveillance of Manafort.
Robert Poling said...
Thank-you for this summary. If confirmed, Brennan (and others in the group he formed to spy on Trump and Trump's campaign)
should go to jail. Congress specifically forbid American spy agencies spying on American citizens in the U.S. Since that Congressional
action, the CIA and NSA have gotten around it by having foreign partners among the 'five eyes' do the collecting and then passing
the information back to us.
The spying on Trump was done at the behest of Obama and his minions. I'm reminded of an American president who was hounded
from office by the mainstream press for sending minions to spy and collect dirt at the opposition's political headquarters. He
had to resign and leave office. Several involved in the burglary went to jail and lost their livelihoods. Why is this situation
today any different and why is there a delay in prosecuting them? It's because the major media is bought out and controlled by
Trump's political opponents and not demanding justice, indeed is providing cover and excuses for them
"... It is literally the supreme act of projection for Max Boot to accuse anyone of lacking courage, as this particular think tank warmonger is the living, breathing personification of the unique strain of American neocon cowardice . Unlike Snowden -- who sacrificed his liberty and unraveled his life in pursuit of his beliefs -- the 45-year-old Boot has spent most of his adult life advocating for one war after the next, but always wanting to send his fellow citizens of his generation to die in them, while he hides in the comfort of Washington think tanks, never fighting them himself. ..."
"... All of that is just garden-variety neocon cowardice, and it's of course grotesque to watch someone like this call someone else a coward. ..."
"... It's not surprising that someone whose entire adult life is shaped by extreme cowardice would want to accuse others of lacking courage, as it distracts attention away from oneself and provides the comfort of company. Nor is it surprising that government-loyal journalists spew outright falsehoods to smear whistleblowers. But even neocon rags like Commentary shouldn't be able to get away with this level of blatant lying. ..."
"... Being a neocon coward means never having to admit error. ..."
In the neocon journal
Commentary , Max Boot today complains that the New York Times published
an op-ed by Edward Snowden . Boot's objection rests on his accusation that the NSA whistleblower is actually a "traitor." In
objecting, Boot made these claims:
Oddly enough nowhere in his article -- which is datelined Moscow -- does he mention the surveillance apparatus of his host,
Vladimir Putin , which far exceeds in scope anything created by any Western country. . . .That would be the same FSB that has
taken Snowden into its bosom as it has previously done (in its earlier incarnation as the KGB) with previous turncoats such as
Kim Philby. . . .
But of course Ed Snowden is not courageous enough, or stupid enough, to criticize the dictatorship that he has defected to.
It's much easier and safer to criticize the country he betrayed from behind the protection provided by the FSB's thugs. The only
mystery is why the Times is giving this traitor a platform.
It is literally the supreme act of projection for Max Boot to accuse anyone of lacking courage, as this particular think tank
warmonger is
the living, breathing personification of the unique strain of American neocon cowardice . Unlike Snowden -- who sacrificed his
liberty and unraveled his life in pursuit of his beliefs -- the 45-year-old Boot has spent most of his adult life advocating for
one war after the next, but always wanting to send his fellow citizens of his generation to die in them, while he hides in the comfort
of Washington think tanks, never fighting them himself.
All of that is just garden-variety neocon cowardice, and it's of course grotesque to watch someone like this call someone
else a coward. But it's so much worse if he lies when doing so. Did he do so here? You decide. From Snowden's NYT op-ed today:
Basic technical safeguards such as encryption -- once considered esoteric and unnecessary -- are now enabled by default in
the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private.
Such structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the
arbitrary passage of anti privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.
The meaning of that passage -- criticisms of Russia's attack on privacy -- is so clear and glaring that it caused even
Time magazine to publish this today :
The first sentence of Time 's article: "Former CIA officer and NSA contractor Ed Snowden has taken a surprising swing at his new
home, accusing Russia of 'arbitrarily passing' new anti-privacy laws ." In other words, in the very op-ed to which Boot objects,
Snowden did exactly that which Boot accused him of lacking the courage to do: "criticize" the country that has given him asylum.
This is far from the first time Snowden has done exactly that which the Tough and Swaggering Think Tank Warrior proclaimed Snowden
would never do. In April, 2014, Snowden wrote
an
op-ed in The Guardian under this headline:
With Max Boot's above-printed accusations in mind, just re-read that. Did Boot lie? To pose the question is to answer it. Here's
part of what Snowden wrote in that op-ed:
On Thursday, I questioned Russia's involvement in mass surveillance on live television. . . . I went on to challenge whether,
even if such a mass surveillance program were effective and technically legal, it could ever be morally justified. . . . In his
response, Putin denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter. There are serious inconsistencies in his denial.
In countless speeches, Snowden has said much the same thing: that Russian spying is a serious problem that needs investigation
and reform, and that Putin's denials are not credible. Boot simply lied about Snowden.
It's not surprising that someone whose entire adult life is shaped by extreme cowardice would want to accuse others of lacking
courage, as it distracts attention away from oneself and provides the comfort of company. Nor is it surprising that government-loyal
journalists spew outright falsehoods to smear
whistleblowers. But even neocon rags like Commentary shouldn't be able to get away with this level of blatant lying.
UPDATE : In typical neocon fashion, Boot first
replies by minimizing his own error to a mere innocent oversight, and implying that only hysteria could cause anyone to find
what he did to be problematic. Even then, the facts negate his self-justification. But
then he says he was actually right all along
and his "point stands":
Being a neocon coward means never having to admit error.
This is probably the most comprehensive outline of the color revolution against Trump. Bravo, simply bravo !!!
Reads like Agatha Christi Murder on the Orient
Express ;-) Rosenstein role is completely revised from a popular narrative. Brennan role clarifies and detailed. Obama
personal role hinted. Victoria Nuland role and the role of the State Department in Russiagate is documented for the first
time, I think.
Notable quotes:
"... The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation, led by McCabe, could continue unhindered. ..."
"... Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known since at least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr, an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working for Fusion GPS sometime in late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier. ..."
"... The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is provided by Section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's data-sharing order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission. ..."
"... Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken. ..."
"... The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and charged with one count of lying to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time. ..."
"... The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey. ..."
"... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
"... Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents? ..."
Spygate: The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] How America's most powerful agencies were weaponized against President
Donald Trump
Although the details remain complex, the structure underlying Spygate -- the creation of the false narrative that candidate Donald
Trump colluded with Russia, and the spying on his presidential campaign -- remains surprisingly simple:
CIA Director John Brennan, with some assistance from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, gathered foreign intelligence
and fed it throughout our domestic Intelligence Community.
The FBI became the handler of Brennan's intelligence and engaged in the more practical elements of surveillance.
The Department of Justice facilitated investigations by the FBI and legal maneuverings, while providing a crucial shield of
nondisclosure.
The Department of State became a mechanism of information dissemination and leaks.
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided funding, support, and media collusion.
Obama administration officials were complicit, and engaged in unmasking and intelligence gathering and dissemination.
The media was the most corrosive element in many respects. None of these events could have transpired without their willing
participation. Stories were pushed, facts were ignored, and narratives were promoted.
Let's start with a simple premise: The candidacy of Trump presented both an opportunity and a threat.
Initially not viewed with any real seriousness, Trump's campaign was seen as an opportunistic wedge in the election process. At
the same time, and particularly as the viability of his candidacy increased, Trump was seen as an existential threat to the established
political system.
The sudden legitimacy of Trump's candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment. Here was a true political outsider
who held no traditional allegiances. He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn't be bought, and he didn't
care what others thought of him -- he trusted himself.
Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried. Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy,
regulations, and the power of special interests. He challenged Congress. He challenged the United Nations and the European Union.
He questioned everything.
Brennan played a crucial role in the creation of the Russia-collusion narrative and the spying on the Trump campaign. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty
Images)
Brennan became the point man in the operation to stop a potential Trump presidency. It remains unclear whether his role was self-appointed
or came from above. To embark on such a mission without direct presidential authority seems both a stretch of the imagination and
particularly foolhardy.
Brennan took unofficial foreign intelligence compiled by contacts, colleagues, and associates --
primarily from the UK , but also from other Five Eyes members, such as Australia.
Individuals in official positions in UK intelligence, such as Robert Hannigan -- head of the UK Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ, Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency) -- partnered with former UK foreign intelligence members. Former MI6
head Sir Richard Dearlove
, former Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood, and private UK intelligence firm
Hakluyt all played a role.
In the summer of 2016, Hannigan traveled to Washington to
meet with Brennan
regarding alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. On Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration
-- Hannigan abruptly announced
his retirement. The Guardian openly
speculated that Hannigan's
resignation was directly related to the sharing of UK intelligence.
One method used to help establish evidence of collusion was the employment of "spy traps." Prominent among these were ones set
for Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The intent was to provide or establish connections between the Trump
campaign and Russia. The content and context mattered little as long as a connection could be established that could then be publicized.
The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting was another such attempt.
Western intelligence assets were used to initiate and establish these connections, particularly in the cases of Papadopoulos and
Page.
Ultimately, Brennan formed an inter-agency task
force comprising an estimated six agencies and/or government departments. The FBI, Treasury, and DOJ handled the domestic inquiry
into Trump and possible Russia connections. The CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency
(NSA) handled foreign and intelligence aspects.
Brennan's inter-agency task force is not to be confused with the July 2016 FBI counterintelligence investigation, which was formed
later at Brennan's urging.
During this time, Brennan also employed the use of
reverse targeting , which relates to the targeting of a foreign individual with the intent of capturing data on a U.S. citizen.
This effort was uncovered and
made public by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) in a March 2017
press conference :
"I have seen intelligence reports that clearly show the president-elect and his team were monitored and disseminated out in
intelligence-reporting channels. Details about persons associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent
foreign-intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.
"From what I know right now, it looks like incidental collection. We don't know exactly how that was picked up but we're trying
to get to the bottom of it."
As this foreign intelligence -- unofficial in nature and outside of any traditional channels -- was gathered, Brennan began a
process of feeding his gathered intelligence to the FBI. Repeated transfers of foreign intelligence from the CIA director pushed
the FBI toward the establishment of a formal counterintelligence investigation. Brennan repeatedly noted this during
a May 23, 2017, congressional testimony :
"I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump
campaign, was shared with the [FBI]."
Brennan also admitted that his intelligence helped establish
the FBI investigation:
"I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in
my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and
it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred."
Once the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, Brennan shifted his focus. Through a series of meetings
in August and September 2016, Brennan informed the congressional Gang of Eight regarding intelligence and information he had gathered.
Notably, each Gang of Eight member was briefed separately, calling into question whether each of the members received the same information.
Efforts to
block the release of the transcripts from each meeting remain ongoing.
This final report was used to continue pushing the Russia-collusion narrative following the election of President Donald Trump.
Notably, Admiral Mike Rogers of the NSA publicly dissented from the findings of the ICA, assigning only a moderate confidence level.
Although the FBI is technically part of the DOJ, it is best for the purposes of this article that the FBI and DOJ be viewed as
separate entities, each with its own related ties.
The FBI itself was comprised of various factions, with a particularly active element that has come to be known as the "insurance
policy group." It appears that this faction was led by FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and comprised other notable names such as
FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and FBI general counsel James Baker.
The FBI established the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russia collusion with the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.
Comey initially refused to say whether the FBI was investigating possible connections between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
He would continue to refuse to provide answers until March 20, 2017, when he disclosed the existence of the FBI investigation
during congressional testimony.
Comey also testified that he did not provide notification to the Gang of Eight until early March 2017 -- less than one month earlier.
This admission was in stark contrast to actions taken by Brennan, who had notified members of the Gang of Eight individually during
August and September 2016. It's likely that Brennan never informed Comey that he had briefed the Gang of Eight in 2016. Comey did
note that the DOJ "had been aware" of the investigation all along.
Comey opened the counterintelligence investigation into Trump on the urging of CIA Director John Brennan.
Following Comey's firing on May 9, 2017, the FBI's investigation was transferred to special counsel Robert Mueller. The
Mueller investigation remains ongoing.
The FBI's formal involvement with the
Steele dossier began on July 5, 2016,
when Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the US Embassy in Rome, was dispatched to visit former MI6 spy Christopher
Steele in London. Gaeta would return from this meeting with a copy of Steele's first memo. This memo was given to Victoria Nuland
at the State Department, who passed it along to the FBI.
Gaeta, who also headed the FBI's Eurasian Organized Crime unit, had known Steele since at least 2010, when Steele had provided
assistance to the FBI's investigation into the
FIFA corruption
scandal .
Prior to the London meeting, Gaeta may also have met on a less formal basis with Steele
several weeks earlier.
"In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had cooperated over FIFA," The Guardian reported. "His information
started to reach the bureau in Washington."
It's worth noting that there was no "dossier" until it was fully compiled in December 2016. There was only a sequence of documents
from Steele -- documents that were passed on individually -- as they were created. Therefore, from the FBI's legal perspective, they
didn't use the dossier. They used individual documents.
For the next month and a half, there appeared to be little contact between Steele and the FBI. However, the FBI's interest in
the dossier suddenly accelerated in late August 2016, when the bureau
asked Steele "for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify
his sources."
In September 2016, Steele traveled back to Rome to meet with the FBI's Eurasian squad once again. It's likely that the meeting
included several other FBI officials as well. According to a
House Intelligence Committee
minority memo , Steele's reporting reached the FBI counterintelligence team in mid-September 2016 -- the same time as Steele's
September trip to Rome.
The reason for the FBI's renewed interest had to do with an adviser to the Trump campaign -- Carter Page -- who had been in
contact with Stefan Halper, a CIA
and FBI source, since July 2016. Halper
arranged to meet with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page took a trip
to Moscow. Speakers at the symposium included Madeleine Albright, Vin Webber, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6.
Page was now the FBI's chosen target for a FISA warrant that would be obtained on Oct. 21, 2016. The Steele dossier would be the
primary evidence used in obtaining the FISA warrant, which would be renewed three separate times, including after Trump took office,
finally expiring in September 2017.
Former volunteer Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Nov. 2, 2017. The FBI obtained a retroactive FISA spy warrant
on Page.
After being in contact with Page for 14 months, Halper stopped contact exactly as the final FISA warrant on Page expired. Page,
who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, was never charged with any crime by the FBI. Efforts for the declassification of the
Page FISA application are currently ongoing through the DOJ's Office of the Inspector General.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were two prominent members of the FBI's "insurance policy" group. Strzok, a senior FBI agent, was the
deputy assistant director of FBI's Counterintelligence Division. Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, served as special counsel to FBI Deputy
Director Andrew McCabe.
Strzok was in charge of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for government business. He helped
FBI Director James Comey draft the statement exonerating Clinton and was personally responsible for changing specific wording within
that statement that reduced Clinton's legal liability. Specifically, Strzok changed the words "grossly negligent," which could be
a criminal offense, to "extremely careless."
Strzok also personally led the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into the alleged Trump–Russia collusion and signed the
documents that opened the investigation on July 31, 2016. He was one of the FBI agents who interviewed Trump's national security
adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn. Strzok met multiple times with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and received information from Steele at those
meetings.
Following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Strzok would join the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. Two months later,
he was removed from that team after the DOJ inspector general discovered a lengthy series of texts between Strzok and Page that contained
politically charged messages. Strzok would be fired from the FBI in August 2018.
Both Strzok and Page engaged in strategic
leaking to the press. Page did so at the direction of McCabe, who directly
authorized Page to share information with Wall Street
Journal reporter Devlin Barrett. That information was used in an Oct. 30, 2016, article headlined
"FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe ." Page leaked to Barrett thinking she had been granted legal and official authorization
to do so.
McCabe would later initially deny providing such
authorization to the Office of Inspector General. Page, when confronted with McCabe's denials, produced texts refuting his statement.
It was these texts that led to the inspector general uncovering the texts between Strzok and Page.
The two exchanged thousands of texts, some of them indicating surveillance activities, over a two-year period. Texts sent between
Aug. 21, 2015, and June 25, 2017, have been made
public . The series comes
to an end with a final text by Page telling Strzok, "Don't ever text me again."
On Aug. 8, 2016, Stzrok wrote that they would prevent candidate Trump from becoming president:
Page: "[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!"
Strzok: "No. No he won't. We'll stop it."
On Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok sent a text referring to an "insurance policy":
"I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way [Trump] gets elected --
but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
The "insurance policy" appears to have been the effort to legitimize the Trump–Russia collusion narrative so that an FBI investigation,
led by McCabe, could continue unhindered.
Department of Justice
The Department of Justice, which comprises 60 agencies , was transformed
during the Obama years. The department is forbidden by federal law from hiring employees based on political affiliation.
However, a
series
of investigative articles by PJ Media published during Eric Holder's tenure as attorney general revealed an unsettling pattern
of ideological conformity among new hires at the DOJ: Only lawyers from the progressive left were hired. Not one single moderate
or conservative lawyer made the cut. This is significant as the DOJ enjoys significant latitude in determining who will be subject
to prosecution.
The DOJ's job in Spygate was to facilitate the legal side of surveillance while providing a protective layer of cover for all
those involved. The department became a repository of information and provided a protective wall between the investigative efforts
of the FBI and the legislative branch. Importantly, it also served as the firewall within the executive branch, serving as the insulating
barrier between the FBI and Obama officials. The department had become legendary for its stonewalling tactics with Congress.
DOJ Official Bruce Ohr on Aug. 28, 2018. Ohr passed on information from Christopher Steele to the FBI.
The DOJ, which was fully aware of the actions being taken by James Comey and the FBI, also became an active element acting against
members of the Trump campaign. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, along with Mary McCord, the head of the DOJ's National Security
Division, was actively
involved in efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn from his position as national security adviser to President Trump.
To this day, it remains unknown which individual was responsible for making public Flynn's call with the Russian ambassador. Flynn
ultimately pleaded guilty to a process crime: lying to the FBI. There have been
questions raised in Congress regarding the possible alteration of FD-302s, the written notes of Flynn's FBI interviews. Special
counsel Robert Mueller has repeatedly deferred Flynn's sentencing hearing.
David Laufman, deputy assistant attorney general in charge of counterintelligence at the DOJ's National Security Division, played
a key role in both the Clinton email server and Russia hacking investigations. Laufman is currently the attorney for Monica McLean,
the long-time friend of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while in high
school. McLean was also
employed
by the FBI for 24 years.
Bruce Ohr was a significant DOJ official who played a
key role in Spygate. Ohr held
two important positions at the DOJ: associate deputy attorney general, and director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task
Force. As associate deputy attorney general, Ohr was just four offices away from then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and he
reported directly to her. As director of the task force, he was in charge of a program described as "the centerpiece of the attorney
general's drug strategy."
Ohr, one of the highest-ranking officials in the DOJ, was communicating on an ongoing basis with Steele, whom he had known
since at
least 2006 , well into mid-2017. He is also married to Nellie Ohr,
an expert on Russia and Eurasia who began working
for Fusion GPS sometime in
late 2015 . Nellie Ohr likely played a significant role in the construction of the dossier.
According to testimony from FBI agent Peter Strzok, he and Ohr met at least five times during 2016 and 2017. Strzok was working
directly with then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
Additionally, Ohr met with the FBI at least
12 times between late November 2016 and May 2017 for a series of interviews. These meetings could have been used to
transmit information from Steele to the FBI. This came after the FBI had formally severed contact with Steele in late October
or early November 2016.
John Carlin is another notable figure with the DOJ. Carlin was an assistant attorney general and the head of the DOJ's National
Security Division until October 2016. His role will be discussed below in the section on FISA abuse.
The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe
Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe held a pivotal role in what has become known as "Spygate." He directed the activities of Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page and was involved in all aspects of the Russia investigation. He was also mentioned in the infamous "insurance
policy" text message.
McCabe was a major component of the insurance policy.
On April 26, 2017, Rosenstein found himself appointed as the new deputy attorney general. He was placed into a somewhat chaotic
situation, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the ongoing Russia investigation a little less than two months
earlier, on March 2, 2017. This effectively meant that no one in the Trump administration had any oversight of the ongoing investigation
being conducted by the FBI and the DOJ.
Additionally, the leadership of then-FBI Director James Comey was coming under increased scrutiny as the result of actions taken
leading up to and following the election, particularly Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation.
On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memorandum recommending that Comey be fired. The subject of the memo was "Restoring Public
Confidence in the FBI." Comey was fired that day. McCabe was now the acting director of the FBI and was immediately under consideration
for the permanent position.
On the same day Comey was fired, McCabe would lie during an interview with agents from the FBI's Inspection Division (INSD) regarding
apparent leaks that were used in an Oct. 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal article, "FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe"
by Devlin Barrett. This would later be disclosed in the inspector general report, "A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations
Relating to Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe."
At the time, nobody, including the INSD agents, knew that McCabe had lied, nor were the darker aspects of McCabe's role in Spygate
fully known.
In late April or early May 2016, McCabe opened a federal criminal investigation on Sessions, regarding potential lack of candor
before Congress in relation to Sessions's contacts with Russians. Sessions was unaware of the investigation.
Sessions would later be cleared of any wrongdoing by special counsel Robert Mueller.
On the morning of May 16, 2017, Rosenstein reportedly suggested to McCabe that he secretly record President Trump. This remark
was reported in a New York Times article that was sourced from memos from the now-fired McCabe, along with testimony taken from former
FBI general counsel James Baker, who relayed a conversation he had with McCabe about the occurrence. Rosenstein issued a statement
denying the accusations.
The alleged comments by Rosenstein occurred at a meeting where McCabe was "pushing for the Justice Department to open an investigation
into the president." An unnamed participant at the meeting, in comments to The Washington Post, framed the conversation somewhat
differently, noting Rosenstein responded sarcastically to McCabe, saying, "What do you want to do, Andy, wire the president?"
Later, on the same day that Rosenstein had his meetings with McCabe, President Trump met with Mueller, reportedly as an interview
for the FBI director job. On May 17, 2017, the day after President Trump's meeting with Mueller -- and the day after Rosenstein's
encounters with McCabe -- Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel.
The May 17 appointment of Mueller in effect shifted control of the Russia investigation from the FBI and McCabe to Mueller. Rosenstein
would retain ultimate authority for the probe and any expansion of Mueller's investigation required authorization from Rosenstein.
Interestingly, without Comey's memo leaks, a special counsel might not have been appointed -- the FBI, and possibly McCabe, would
have remained in charge of the Russia investigation. McCabe was probably not going to become the permanent FBI director, but he was
reportedly under consideration. Regardless, without Comey's leak, McCabe would have retained direct involvement and the FBI would
have retained control.
On July 28, 2017, McCabe lied to Inspector General Michael Horowitz while under oath regarding authorization of the leaking to
The Wall Street Journal. At this point, Horowitz knew McCabe was lying, but did not yet know of the May 9 INSD interview with McCabe.
On Aug. 2, 2017, Rosenstein secretly issued Mueller a revised memo on "the scope of investigation and definition of authority"
that remains heavily redacted. The full purpose of this memo remains unknown. On this same day, Christopher Wray was named as the
new FBI director.
Two days later, on Aug. 4, 2017, Sessions announced that the FBI had created a new leaks investigation unit. Rosenstein and Wray
were tasked with overseeing all leak investigations.
That Aug. 2 memo from Rosenstein to Mueller may have been specifically designed to remove any residual FBI influence -- specifically
that of McCabe -- from the Russia investigation. The appointment of Wray as FBI director helped cement this. McCabe was finally completely
neutralized.
On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired for lying under oath at least three different times and is currently the subject of a grand
jury investigation.
State Department
The State Department, with its many contacts within foreign governments, became a conduit for the flow of information. The transfer
of Christopher Steele's first dossier memo was personally
facilitated by Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. Nuland gave approval for
FBI agent Michael Gaeta to travel to London to obtain the memo from Steele. The memo may have passed directly from her to FBI leadership.
Secretary of State John Kerry was also given a copy.
Steele was already well-known within the State Department. Following Steele's involvement in the FIFA scandal investigation, he
began to provide reports
informally to the State Department. The reports were written for a "private client" but were "shared widely within the U.S. State
Department, and sent up to Secretary of State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of
the U.S.
response to Putin's annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine," the Guardian reported.
Nuland passed on parts of the Steele dossier to the FBI. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
In July 2016, when the FBI wanted to send Gaeta to visit Steele in London, the bureau
sought permission from the office of Nuland, who provided this version of events during a Feb. 4, 2018,
appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation":
"In the middle of July, when [Steele] was doing this other work and became concerned, he passed two to four pages of short
points of what he was finding and our immediate reaction to that was, this is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI
if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian Federation. That's
something for the FBI to investigate."
Steele also
met with Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy
for Libya. Steele and Winer had known each other since at least 2010. In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Winer wrote the
following:
"In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the 'dossier.' Steele's sources
suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign
but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign."
In a strange turn of events, Winer also received a
separate dossier , very similar to Steele's, from long-time Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal. This "second dossier" had been
compiled by another longtime Clinton operative, former journalist Cody Shearer, and echoed claims made in the Steele dossier. Winer
then met with Steele in late September 2016 and gave Steele a copy of the "second dossier." Steele went on to
share this second dossier with the FBI, which may have used it to corroborate his dossier.
Winer passed on memos from Christopher Steele to Victoria Nuland. (State Department)
Other foreign officials also used conduits into the State Department. Alexander Downer, Australia's high commissioner to the UK,
reportedly funneled his conversation
with Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos -- later used as a reason to open the FBI's counterintelligence investigation --
directly to the U.S. Embassy in London.
"The Downer details landed with the embassy's then-chargé d'affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy
assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton's State Department," The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel wrote in a May 31, 2018,
article .
If true, this would mean that neither Australian intelligence nor the Australian government alerted the FBI to the Papadopoulos
information. What happened with the Downer details, and to whom they were ultimately relayed, remains unknown.
Curiously, details surprisingly similar to the Papadopoulos–Downer conversation show up in the
first memo written
by Steele on June 20, 2016:
"A dossier of compromising information on Hillary Clinton has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many
years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls. It has not yet
been distributed abroad, including to Trump."
Clinton Campaign and the DNC
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee both occupied a unique position. They had the most to gain but they
also had the most to lose. And they stood willing and ready to do whatever was necessary to win. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager,
Robby Mook, is credited with being the first to raise the specter of candidate Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia.
The entire Clinton campaign willfully promoted the narrative of Russia–Trump collusion despite the uncomfortable fact that they
were the ones who had engaged the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele through their law firm Perkins Coie. Information
flowed from the campaign -- sometimes through Perkins Coie, other times through affiliates -- ultimately making its way into the
media and sometimes to the FBI. Information from the Clinton campaign may also have ended up in the Steele dossier.
Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Clinton campaign, in tandem with Jake Sullivan, the senior policy adviser
to the campaign,
took the lead in briefing the press on the Trump–Russia collusion story.
Another example of this behavior can be seen from an instance when Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann
leaked information from Steele and Fusion GPS to Franklin Foer of Slate magazine. This event is described in the House Intelligence
Committee's final report on
Russian active measures
, in footnote 43 on page 57. Foer then published the article
"Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia? " on Oct. 31, 2016. The article concerns allegations regarding a server in the
Trump Tower.
The Slate article managed to attract the immediate attention of Clinton, who posted a
tweet on the same day the article was
published:
"Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank."
Attached to her tweet was a
statement from Sullivan:
"This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow. Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert
server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.
"This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization
felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists."
These statements, which were later proven to be incorrect, are all the more disturbing with the hindsight knowledge that it was
a senior Clinton/DNC lawyer who helped plant the story. And given the prepared statement by Sullivan, the Clinton campaign knew this.
This type of behavior would be engaged in repeatedly -- damning leaks leading to media stories, followed by ready attacks from
the Clinton campaign.
Alexandra Chalupa is a Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee. Chalupa
met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, Paul Manafort, and Russia.
Chalupa began investigating
Manafort in 2014. In late 2015, Chalupa expanded her opposition research on Manafort to include Trump's ties to Russia. In January
2016, Chalupa shared her information with a senior DNC official.
Chalupa's meetings with DNC and Ukrainian officials would continue. On April 26, 2016, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff
published a story
on Yahoo News about Manafort's business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It was later learned from a DNC email leaked
by Wikileaks that Chalupa had been working with Isikoff
-- the same journalist Christopher Steele
leaked to
in September 2016. Manafort would later be indicted for Foreign Agents Registration Act violations that occurred during the Obama
administration.
Perkins Coie
International law firm Perkins Coie served as the legal arm for both the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Ties to Perkins Coie extended
beyond the DNC into the Obama White House.
Bob Bauer, a partner at the law firm and founder of its political law practice, served as
White House counsel to President Barack Obama throughout 2010 and 2011. Bauer was also
general counsel to Obama's campaign organization, Obama for America, in 2008 and 2012.
Perkins Coie partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann each played critical roles and were the ones who hired Fusion GPS and Steele.
Sussmann
personally handled the alleged hack of the DNC server. He also transmitted information, likely from Steele and Fusion GPS, to
James Baker, then-chief counsel at the FBI, and to several members of the press.
Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann. Sussmann transmitted information to FBI chief counsel James Baker and several
journalists. (Courtesy Perkins Coie)
According to a
letter
dated Oct. 24, 2017, written by Matthew Gehringer, general counsel at Perkins Coie, the firm was approached by Fusion GPS founder
Glenn Simpson in early March 2016 regarding the possibility of hiring Fusion GPS to continue opposition research into the Trump campaign.
Simpson's overtures were successful, and in April 2016, Perkins Coie
hired
Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC.
Sometime in April or May 2016, Fusion GPS
hired Christopher Steele. During
this same period, Fusion also reportedly
hired Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr. Steele would complete his first memo on June 20, 2016,
and send it to Fusion via enciphered mail.
Perkins Coie appears to have also been acting as a conduit between the DNC and the FBI.
Documents suggest that Sussmann was feeding information to FBI general counsel James Baker and at least one journalist ahead
of the FBI's application for a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.
The information provided by Sussmann may have been used by the FBI as "corroborating information."
Obama Administration
The Obama administration provided a simultaneous layer of protection and facilitation for the entire effort. One example is
provided by
Section
2.3 of Executive Order 12333 , also known as Obama's
data-sharing
order . With the passage of the order, agencies and individuals were able to ask the NSA for access to specific surveillance
simply by claiming the intercepts contained relevant information that was useful to a particular mission.
Section 2.3 had been expected to be finalized by early to mid-2016. Instead, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn't
sign off on Section 2.3 until Dec. 15, 2016. The order was finalized when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed it on Jan. 3, 2017.
The reason for the delay could relate to the fact that while the executive order made it easier to share intelligence between
agencies, it also limited certain types of information from going to the White House.
An example of this was provided by Evelyn Farkas during a March 2, 2017,
MSNBC interview , where she detailed how the Obama administration
gathered and disseminated intelligence on the Trump team:
"I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill 'Get as much information as you can. Get as
much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.'
"The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff's dealing with Russians, [they] would try
to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. That's why you have the
leaking."
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia Evelyn Farkas on May 6, 2014. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Many of the Obama administration's efforts appear to have been structural in nature, such as establishing new procedures or creating
impediments to oversight that enabled much of the surveillance abuse to occur.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz was appointed by Obama in 2011. From the very start, he found his duties throttled by the
attorney general's office. According to congressional
testimony by Horowitz:
"We got access to information up to 2010 in all of these categories. No law changed in 2010. No policy changed. It was simply
a decision by the General Counsel's Office in 2010 that they viewed, now, the law differently. And as a result, they weren't going
to give us that information."
These new restrictions were
put in place by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
On Aug. 5, 2014, Horowitz and other inspectors general sent a
letter to Congress asking for unimpeded access to all records. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates responded on July 20, 2015,
with a 58-page
memorandum . The memo specifically denied the inspector general access to any information collected under Title III -- including
intercepted communications and national security letters.
The New York Times recently
disclosed that national security letters were used in the surveillance of the Trump campaign.
At other times, the Obama administration's efforts were more direct. The
Intelligence Community assessment was released
internally on Jan. 5, 2017. On this same day, Obama held an undisclosed White House meeting to discuss the dossier with national
security adviser Susan Rice, FBI Director James Comey, and Yates. Rice would later send herself an email
documenting
the meeting.
The following day, Brennan, Clapper, and Comey attached a written summary of the Steele dossier to the classified briefing they
gave Obama. Comey then met with President-elect Trump to inform him of the dossier. This meeting took place just hours after Comey,
Brennan, and Clapper formally briefed Obama on both the Intelligence Community assessment and the Steele dossier.
Comey would only inform Trump of the "salacious" details contained within the dossier. He later
explained on CNN in an April 2018 interview
why:
"Because that was the part that the leaders of the Intelligence Community agreed he needed to be told about."
Shortly after Comey's meeting with Trump, both the Trump–Comey meeting and the existence of the dossier were leaked to CNN. The
significance of the meeting was material, as Comey
noted in
a Jan. 7 memo he wrote:
"Media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write
that the FBI has the material."
Clapper leaked information to CNN, after which he publicly condemned the leaks. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The media had widely dismissed the dossier as unsubstantiated and, therefore, unreportable. It was only after learning that Comey
briefed Trump that
CNN reported
on the dossier. It was later
revealed that DNI James Clapper personally leaked Comey's meeting with Trump to CNN.
The Obama administration also directly participated in a series of
intelligence unmaskings
, the process whereby a U.S. citizen's identity is revealed from collected surveillance. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha
Power reportedly engaged in hundreds of unmasking requests. Rice has admitted to doing the same.
The Obama administration engaged in the ultimately successful effort to oust Trump's newly appointed national security adviser,
Gen. Michael Flynn. Yates, along with Mary McCord, head of the DOJ's National Security Division,
led that effort
.
Executive Order 13762
President Barack Obama issued a last-minute executive order on Jan. 13, 2017, that altered the line of succession within the DOJ.
The action was not done in consultation with the incoming Trump administration.
Acting Attorney General Sally Yates was fired on Jan. 30, 2017, by a newly inaugurated President Trump for refusing to uphold
the president's executive order limiting travel from certain terror-prone countries. Yates was initially supposed to serve in her
position until Jeff Sessions was confirmed as attorney general.
Obama's executive order placed the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia next in line behind the department's senior leadership.
The attorney at the time was Channing Phillips.
Phillips was first hired by former Attorney General Eric Holder in 1994 for a position in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office. Phillips,
after serving as a senior adviser to Holder, stayed on after he was replaced by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
It appears the Obama administration was hoping the Russia investigation would default to Channing in the event Sessions was forced
to recuse himself from the investigation. Sessions, whose confirmation hearings began three days before the order, was already coming
under intense scrutiny.
The implementation of the order may also tie into Yates's efforts to remove Gen. Michael Flynn over his call with the Russian
ambassador.
Trump ignored the succession order, as he is legally allowed to do, and instead appointed Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general on Jan. 30, 2017, the same day Yates was fired.
Trump issued a new executive order on Feb. 9, 2017, the same day Sessions was sworn in, reversing Obama's prior order.
On March 10, 2017, Trump fired 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys, including Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. These firings
appear to have been unexpected.
Media
In some respects, the media has played the most disingenuous of roles. Areas of investigation that historically would have proven
irresistible to reporters of the past have been steadfastly ignored. False narratives have been all-too-willingly promoted and facts
ignored. Fusion GPS personally made a
series of payments to several as-of-yet-
unnamed reporters .
The majority of the mainstream media has represented positions of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
Steele met with members of certain media with relative frequency. In
September 2016 ,
he met with a number of U.S. journalists for "The New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN," according
to The Guardian. It was during this period that Steele met with Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News.
In mid-October
2016, Steele returned to New York and met with reporters again. Toward the end of October, Steele spoke via Skype with Mother
Jones reporter David Corn.
Leaking, including felony leaking of classified information, has been widespread. The Carter Page FISA warrant -- likely the
unredacted version -- has been in the possession of The Washington Post and The New York Times since March 2017. Traditionally, the
intelligence community leaked to The Washington Post while the DOJ leaked to sources within The New York Times. This was a historical
pattern that stood until this election. The leaking became so widespread, even this tradition was broken.
On April 3, 2017, BuzzFeed reporter Ali Watkins wrote the article "
A Former Trump Adviser Met With a Russian Spy ." In the article, she identified "Male-1," referred to in
court documents
relating to the case of Russian spy Evgeny Buryakov, as Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had provided the FBI with assistance
in the case. Just over a week later, on April 11, 2017, a Washington Post article, "
FBI Obtained FISA Warrant to Monitor Former Trump Adviser Carter Page ," confirmed the existence of the October 2016 Page FISA
warrant.
The information contained within both articles likely came via felony leaks from James Wolfe, former director of security
for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who was arrested on June 7, 2018, and
charged with one count of lying
to the FBI. Wolfe's indictment
alleges that he was leaking classified information to multiple reporters over an extended period of time.
Reporter Ali Watkins likely received the undredacted FISA application on Carter Page from James Wolfe.
It appears probable that Wolfe leaked unredacted copies of the Page FISA application. According to the
indictment , Wolfe
exchanged 82 text messages with
Watkins on March 17, 2017. That same evening they engaged in a 28-minute phone call. The original Page FISA application is 83 pages
long, including one final signatory page.
In the public version of the application, there are 37 fully redacted pages. In addition to that, several other pages have redactions
for all but the header. There are only two pages in the entire document that contain no redactions.
Why would Wolfe bother to send 37 pages of complete redactions? It seems more than plausible that Wolfe took pictures of the original
unredacted FISA application and sent them by text to Watkins.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has repeatedly
stated that evidence within the FISA application
shows the counterintelligence agencies were abused by the Obama administration. Most of the mainstream media has known this.
Despite this, most major news organizations for over two years have promoted the Russia-collusion narrative. Despite ample evidence
having come out to the contrary, they have not admitted they were wrong, likely because doing so would mean they would have to admit
their complicity.
Foreign Intelligence
UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.
Britain's GCHQ was involved in
collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert
Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to
meet personally
with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.
Former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan in this file photo. Hannigan transmitted information regarding Donald Trump to John
Brennan in the summer of 2016. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)
Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers.
In the following year, Hannigan
abruptly announced
his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.
As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted
after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant
Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly
so.
Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele
retains close ties with Dearlove.
Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to
work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at
the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter
Page to attend.
Dearlove knows Halper through their
mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is
an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence
and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and
retains close ties to UK intelligence services.
Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has
co-authored two books.
Downer, who
met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting
established through a chain
of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt
from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still
maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish
the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.
The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the
former
British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later
relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute,
to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017,
statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.
Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations
-- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can
we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.
In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that
the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.
Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified
documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest
idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?
Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release
appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.
Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele
Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion
was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against
Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.
The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.
Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he
and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele
maintains contact with British intelligence,
Sir Richard Dearlove
, and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.
Steele appears to have been
represented
by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from
texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:
"Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important
concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort.
I will be with him next tuesday for a week."
Steele also appears to have
lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in
emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently
disclosed by the Washington Examiner:
"Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool'
of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."
Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation
pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler,
who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower
meeting, at which she discussed the
Magnitsky Act .
Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson
met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government
agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside
contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.
Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.
Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.
Bruce and Nellie Ohr have
known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a
DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography
lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr
before and after the 2016 election.
Bruce Ohr had been in
contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later
actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions
between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s
-- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.
Spy Traps
In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps
were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has
ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.
Papadopoulos and Mifsud
both worked
at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around
November
2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly
joined
LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some
reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November
or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths
until March 14, 2016, in Italy.
Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and
Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and
Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days
in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.
Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but
was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.
Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed
as a
chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.
Papadopoulos was introduced
to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened
to
be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit
remains unknown.
The Papadopoulos–Downer
meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly
reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.
Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence
agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point
mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
"During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the
lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told
The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging
to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."
Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was
responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.
Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017,
BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted
to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended
target of these failed FISAs.
Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael
Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.
Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.
After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter
Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized
with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct.
21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.
Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a
Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016
Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known
each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.
Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with
Page. Current information suggests there was only
one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named
in the Buryakov case.
Page, who
cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted
by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov
pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was
sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was
deported to Russia.
FBI informant Stefan Halper approached Trump campaign advisers George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes
said in August that exculpatory evidence
on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence
likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.
If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application
to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.
Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.
FISA Abuse
Admiral Mike Rogers, while director of the NSA, was personally responsible for
uncovering an unprecedented level of FISA abuse that would later be documented in a 99-page
unsealed FISA
court ruling . As the FISA court noted in the April 26, 2017, ruling, the abuses had been occurring since at least November 2015:
"The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information, to private contractors.
"Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems.
"Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI's requests."
The FISA Court report is particularly focused on the FBI:
"The Court is concerned about the FBI's apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar
disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported."
The FISA Court
disclosed that illegal NSA database searches were endemic. Private contractors, employed by the FBI, were given full access to
the NSA database. Once in the contractors' possession, the data couldn't be traced.
In April 2016, after Rogers became aware of
improper
contractor access to raw FISA data on March 9, 2016, he
directed the NSA's Office
of Compliance to conduct a "fundamental baseline review of compliance associated with 702."
On April 18, 2016, Rogers shut down all outside contractor access to raw FISA information -- specifically outside contractors
working for the FBI.
Then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on May 23, 2017. Rogers uncovered widespread abuse of FISA data by the FBI. (Saul
Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
DOJ National Security Division (NSD) head John Carlin filed the government's proposed
2016 Section 702 certifications on Sept. 26, 2016. Carlin knew the general status of compliance review by Rogers. The NSD was
part of the review. Carlin failed to disclose a critical Jan. 7, 2016,
report by the Office
of the Inspector General and associated FISA abuse to the FISA Court in his 2016 certification. Carlin also failed to disclose
Rogers's ongoing Section 702 compliance review.
The following day, on Sept. 27, 2016, Carlin
announced his resignation, effective Oct. 15, 2016.
After receiving a briefing by the NSA compliance officer on Oct. 20, 2016, detailing
numerous "about query"
violations from the 702 NSA compliance audit, Rogers shut down all "about query" activity the next day and
reported his findings
to the DOJ. "About queries" are searches based on communications containing a reference "about" a surveillance target but that are
not "to" or "from" the target.
On Oct. 21, 2016, the DOJ and the FBI sought and received a Title I FISA probable-cause order authorizing electronic surveillance
on Carter Page from the FISA Court.
At this point, the FISA Court was still unaware of the Section 702 violations.
On Oct. 24, 2016, Rogers verbally
informed
the FISA Court of his findings. On Oct. 26, 2016, Rogers appeared formally before the FISA Court and presented the written findings
of his audit.
The FISA Court had been unaware of the query violations until they were presented to the court by Rogers.
Carlin didn't disclose his knowledge of FISA abuse in the annual Section 702 certifications in order to avoid raising suspicions
at the FISA Court ahead of receiving the Page FISA warrant.
The FBI and the NSD were literally racing against Rogers's investigation in order to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.
While all this was transpiring, DNI James Clapper and Defense Secretary Ash Carter submitted a
recommendation that Rogers be removed from his post as NSA director.
The move to fire Rogers, which ultimately failed, originated sometime in mid-October 2016 -- exactly when Rogers was preparing
to present his findings to the FISA Court.
The Insurance Policy
Ever since the release of FBI text messages revealing the existence of an "insurance policy," the term has been the subject of
wide speculation.
Some observers have suggested that the insurance policy was the FISA spy warrant used to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter
Page and, by extension, other members of the Trump campaign. This interpretation is too narrow and fails to capture the underlying
meaning of the text.
The insurance policy was the actual process of establishing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.
It encompassed actions undertaken in late 2016 and early 2017, including the leaking of the Steele dossier and James Clapper's
leaks of James Comey's briefing to President Trump. The intent behind these actions was simple. The legitimization of the investigation
into the Trump campaign.
The strategy involved the recusal of Trump officials with the intent that Andrew McCabe would end up running the investigation.
The Steele dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, served as the
foundation for the Russia narrative.
The intelligence community, led by CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper, used the dossier as a launching pad for creating
their Intelligence Community assessment.
This report, which was presented to Obama in December 2016, despite NSA Director Mike Rogers having only moderate confidence in
its assessment, became one of the core pieces of the narrative that Russia interfered with the 2016 elections.
Through intelligence community leaks, and in collusion with willing media outlets, the narrative that Russia helped Trump win
the elections was aggressively pushed throughout 2017.
Spygate
Spygate represents the biggest political scandal in our nation's history. A sitting administration actively colluded with a political
campaign to affect the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Government agencies were weaponized and a complicit media spread
intelligence community leaks as facts.
But a larger question remains: How long has the United States been subject to interference from the intelligence community and
our political agencies? Was the 2016 presidential election a one-time aberration, or is this episode symptomatic of a larger pattern
extending back decades?
The intensity, scale, and coordination suggest something greater than overzealous actions taken during a single election. They
represent a unified reaction of the establishment to a threat posed by a true outsider -- a reaction that has come to be known as
Spygate.
Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed
on Twitter @themarketswork.
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services?
Notable quotes:
"... Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? ..."
"... "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." ..."
"... Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. ..."
"... The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. ..."
"... As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career". ..."
"... Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance. ..."
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? The following extracts are from
an article at the excellent Medialens
And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference...
I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services: While it might be difficult to identify precisely
the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources)
on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.
As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented:
"Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5."
Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished
journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll.
And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct
Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.
In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret
state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed
forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants.
As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of
the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood
at the end of their career".
Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent
is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.
A brief history
Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer - probably as a
cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest
Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them.
Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf
of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance.
The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the
Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body - which even Orwell aided
by sending them a list of "crypto-communists". Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it "ran" dozens of Fleet Street journalists
and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.
According to John Pilger in the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism
served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour
of the British intelligence agencies was hidden.
And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret
service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today.
In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representatives'
Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists.
And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll.
David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media
and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: "We have somebody
in every office in Fleet Street"
Leaker King
And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing
companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming "embarrassing publications".
Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, "was a longstanding agent of ours" who "made it clear
he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction".
Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet
Street journalists. Wright comments: "No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot". King was also closely
involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten.
Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according
to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper.
David Walker, the Mirror's foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security
scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament.
Maxwell and Mossad
According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners' strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the
1970s MI5's F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success.
In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6
were equally as strong.
Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that
he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks
were fascinating.
For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: "Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse
during the Cold War."
The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster
Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked
to lunch by the head of MI6. "It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted
to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms
of first-hand knowledge."
And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph
and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to
handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain.
Lawson strongly denied the allegations.
Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan
McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from "dodgy security
services". She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland
Human Rights Commission: "We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not
being used." (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)
Growing power of secret state
Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US.
But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official
Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into
the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.
Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats.
According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by
the Rockingham cell within the MoD.
A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant
attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.
Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists.
Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: "Saddam Hussein
has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of
the United Nations inspectors." The source of these "revelations" was said to be "intelligence picked up from within Iraq". Early
in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies
about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group,
the Iraqi National Congress.
Sexed up – and missed out
During the controversy that erupted following the end of the "war" and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the
ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government
(in collusion with the intelligence services) had "sexed up" a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq.
The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that
drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition?
But those facts will be forever secret.
Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists' links with the intelligence services was
ignored by the inquiry.
Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of
WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US
President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times' dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress
and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.
Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up" devised to foster the
propaganda case for war. "In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published
stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam's regime." And he concluded: "The information fog is thicker
than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures,
especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor."
Let's not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence
services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.
~
Richard Keeble's publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John
Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International
Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.
"... General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children. ..."
"... Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War". ..."
"... The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war. ..."
"... the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces. ..."
"... The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening ..."
"... In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing. ..."
"... The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. ..."
"... Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet. ..."
"... But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day. ..."
The American Public has gotten exactly what it deserved. They have been dumbed-down in our poor-by-intention school systems. The
moronic nonsense that passes for news in this country gets more sensational with each passing day. Over on Fox, they are making
the claim that ISIS fighters are bringing Ebola over the Mexican Border, which prompted a reply by the Mexican Embassy that won't
be reported on Fox.
We continue to hear and it was even reported in this very fine article by Ms. Benjamin that the American
People now support this new war. Really? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen that support anywhere but on the news and I just don't
believe it any more.
There is also the little problem of infiltration into key media slots by paid CIA Assets (Scarborough and brainless Mika are
two of these double dippers). Others are intermarried. Right-wing Neocon War Criminal Dan Senor is married to "respected" newsperson
Campbell Brown who is now involved in privatizing our school system. Victoria Nuland, the slimey State Department Official who
was overheard appointing the members of the future Ukrainian Government prior to the Maidan Coup is married to another Neo-Con--Larry
Kagan. Even sweet little Andrea Mitchell is actually Mrs. Alan Greenspan.
General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC.
MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market.
Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being
CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli
Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women
and Children.
Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is
connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option
discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to
a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior
put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War".
Yesterday there was a coordinated action by all of the networks, which was clearly designed to support the idea that the generals
want Obama to act and he just won't. The not-so-subtle message was that the generals were right and that the President's "inaction"
was somehow out of line-since, after all, the generals have recommended more war. It was as if these people don't remember that
the President, sleazy War Criminal that he is, is still the Commander in Chief.
The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our
various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that
they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war.
Finally, this Sunday every NFL Game will begin with some Patriotic "Honor America" Display, which will include a missing man
flyover, flags and fireworks, plenty of uniforms, wounded Vets and soon-to-be-wounded Vets. A giant American Flag will, once again,
cover the fields and hundreds of stupid young kids will rush down to their "Military Career Center" right after the game. These
are the ones that I pity most.
Let's be frank: powerful interests want war and subsequent puppet regimes in the half dozen nations that the neo-cons have been
eyeing (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). These interests surely include industries like banking, arms and oil-all of
whom make a killing on any war, and would stand to do well with friendly governments who could finance more arms purchases and
will never nationalize the oil.
So, the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come
back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact
that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark
forces.
IanB52, 10 October 2014 6:57pm
The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening. When I'm down at the gym they always have CNN on (I can
only imagine what FOX is like) which is a pretty much dyed in the wool yellow jingoist station at this point. With all the segments
they dedicate to ISIS, a new war, the "imminent" terrorist threat, they seem to favor talking heads who support a full ground
war and I have never, not once, heard anyone even speak about the mere possibility of peace. Not ever.
In media universe there
is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing.
I'd imagine that these media companies have a lot stock in and a cozy relationship with the defense contractors.
Damiano Iocovozzi, 10 October 2014 7:04pm
The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. The media doesn't report on anything but
relies on repeating manufactured crises, creating manufactured consent & discussing manufactured solutions. Follow the oil, the
pipelines & the money. Both R's & D's are left & right cheeks of the same buttock. Thanks to Citizens United & even Hobby Lobby,
a compliant Supreme Court, also owned by United States of Corporations, it's a done deal.
Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer
have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department
to your favorite media outlet.
Let me give you one clear example. A year ago Barack Obama came very close to bombing Syria to
kingdom come, the justification used was "Assad gassed his own people", referring to a sarin gas attack near Damascus. Well, it
turns out that Assad did not initiate that attack, discovered by research from many sources including the prestigious MIT, it
was a false flag attack planned by Turkey and carried out by some of Obama's own "moderate rebels".
But all that research from
MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written
still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and
distorts and misrepresents the news every day.
"... It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians and Democrats posing as Russians. ..."
"... Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand down and close the murder case without further investigation. ..."
"... What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump impeached & removed from the Whitehouse? ..."
"... Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another reason to stop the investigation. ..."
"... Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue. ..."
"... We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C. park for transport to Wikileaks. ..."
"... This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press" failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call the tune. ..."
"... Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump. So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020. ..."
"... Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ & FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c ..."
"... Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless, short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. ..."
"... Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is that stupid. ..."
"... Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm ..."
"... It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray! ..."
"... Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war continues. Mission Accomplished. ..."
I could not suffer through reading the whole article. This is mainly because I have
watched the news daily about Mueller's Investigation and I sincerely believe that Mueller is
Champion of the Democrats who are trying to depose President Donald Trump at any cost.
For what Mueller found any decent lawyer with a Degree and a few years of experience could
have found what Mueller found for far far less money. Mueller only found common crimes AND NO
COLLUSION BETWEEN PRESIDENT TRUMP AND PUTIN!
The Mueller Investigation should be given to an honest broker to review, and Mueller
should be paid only what it would cost to produce the commonplace crimes Mueller, The
Democrats, and CNN has tried to convince the people that indeed Trump COLLUDED with RUSSIA.
Mueller is, a BIG NOTHING BURGER and THE DEMOCRATS AND CNN ARE MUELLER'S SINGING CANARYS!
Mueller should be jailed.
Bogdan Miller , March 15, 2019 at 11:04 am
This article explains why the Mueller Report is already highly suspect. For another thing,
we know that since before 2016, Democrats have been studying Russian Internet and hacking
tactics, and posing as Russian Bots/Trolls on Facebook and other media outlets, all in an
effort to harm President Trump.
It appears the FBI, CIA, and NSA have great difficulty in differentiating between Russians
and Democrats posing as Russians.
B.J.M. Former Intelligence Analyst and Humint Collector
vinnieoh , March 15, 2019 at 8:17 am
Moving on: the US House yesterday voted UNANIMOUSLY (remember that word, so foreign these
days to US governance?) to "urge" the new AG to release the complete Mueller report.
A
non-binding resolution, but you would think that the Democrats can't see the diesel
locomotive bearing down on their clown car, about to smash it to pieces. The new AG in turn
says he will summarize the report and that is what we will see, not the entire report. And
taxation without representation takes a new twist.
... ... ...
Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:38 pm
What else would you expect from two Political Parties who are really branches of the ONE
Party which Represents DEEP STATE".
DWS , March 15, 2019 at 5:58 am
Maybe the VIPS should look into the murder of Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who had the
security clearance required to access the DNC servers, and who was murdered in the same week
as the emails were taken. In particular, they should ask why the police were told to stand
down and close the murder case without further investigation.
Raymond Comeau , March 15, 2019 at 12:47 pm
EXACTLY! But, Deep State will not allow that. And, it would ruin the USA' plan to continue
to invade more sovereign countries and steal their resources such as oil and Minerals. The
people of the USA must be Ostriches or are so terrified that they accept anything their
Criminal Governments tell them.
Eventually, the chickens will come home to roost and perhaps the USA voters will ROAST
when the crimes of the USA sink the whole country. It is time for a few Brave Men and Women
to find their backbones and throw out the warmongers and their leading Oligarchs!
KiwiAntz , March 14, 2019 at 6:44 pm
What a brilliant article, so logical, methodical & a forensic, scientific breakdown of
the phony Russiagate project? And there's no doubt, this was a co-ordinated, determined
Intelligence project to reverse the results of the 2016 Election by initiating a soft coup or
Regime change op on a elected Leader, a very American Coup, something the American
Intelligence Agencies specialise in, everywhere else, on a Global scale, too get Trump
impeached & removed from the Whitehouse?
If you can't get him out via a Election, try
& try again, like Maduro in Venezuela, to forcibly remove the targeted person by setting
him up with fake, false accusations & fabricated evidence? How very predictable & how
very American of Mueller & the Democratic Party. Absolute American Corruption, corrupts
absolutely?
Brian Murphy , March 15, 2019 at 10:33 am
Right. Since its purpose is to destroy Trump politically, the investigation should go on
as long as Trump is in office. Alternatively, if at this point Trump has completely sold out, that would be another
reason to stop the investigation.
If the investigation wraps up and finds nothing, that means Trump has already completely
sold out. If the investigation continues, it means someone important still thinks Trump retains some
vestige of his balls.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:19 pm
By last June or July the Mueller investigation has resulted in roughly 150 indictments
for perjury/financial crimes, and there was a handful of convictions to date. The report did
not support the Clinton wing's anti-Russian allegations about the 2016 election, and was
largely brushed aside by media. Mueller was then reportedly sent back in to "find something."
presumably to support the anti-Russian claims.
mike k , March 14, 2019 at 12:57 pm
From the beginning of the Russia did it story, right after Trump's electoral victory, it
was apparent that this was a fraud. The democratic party however has locked onto this
preposterous story, and they will go to their graves denying this was a scam to deny their
presidential defeat, and somehow reverse the result of Trump's election. My sincere hope is
that this blatant lie will be an albatross around the party's neck, that will carry them down
into oblivion. They have betrayed those of us who supported them for so many years. They are
in many ways now worse than the republican scum they seek to replace.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:26 pm
Trump is almost certain to be re-elected in 2020, and we'll go through this all over
again.
The very fact that the FBI never had access to the servers and took the word of a private
company that had a history of being anti-Russian is enough to throw the entire ruse out.
LJ , March 14, 2019 at 2:39 pm
Agreed!!!! and don't forget the FBI/Comey gave Hillary and her Campaign a head's up before
they moved to seize the evidence. . So too, Comey said he stopped the Investigation , thereby
rendering judgement of innocence, even though by his own words 'gross negligence' had a
occurred (which is normally considered grounds for prosecution). In doing so he exceeded the
FBI's investigative mandate. He rationalized that decision was appropriate because of the
appearance of impropriety that resulted from Attorney General Lynch having a private meeting
on a plane on a runway with Bill and Hillary . Where was the logic in that. Who called the
meeting? All were Lawyers who had served as President, Senator, Attorney General and knew
that the meeting was absolutely inappropriate. . Comey should be prosecuted if they want to
prosecute anyone else because of this CRAP. PS Trump is an idiot. Uhinfortunately he is just
a symptom of the disease at this point. Look at the cover of Rolling Stone magazine , carry a
barf bag.
Jane Christ , March 14, 2019 at 6:51 pm
Exactly. This throws doubt on the ability of the FBI to work independently. They are
working for those who want to cover -up the Hillary mess . She evidently has sufficient funds
to pay them off. I am disgusted with the level of corruption.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 10:50 am
Nancy Pelosi's announcement two days ago that the Democrats will not seek impeachment for
Trump suggests the emptiness of the Mueller investigation on the specific "collusion" issue.
If there were something hot and lingering and about to emerge, this decision is highly
unlikely, especially with the reasoning she gave at "so as not to divide the American
people." Dividing the people hasn't been of much concern throughout this bogus witch hunt on
Trump, which has added to his incompetence in leavening a growing hysteria and confusion in
this country. If there is something, anything at all, in the Mueller report to support the
collusion theory, Pelosi would I'm sure gleefully trot it out to get a lesser candidate like
Pence as opposition for 2020.
We know and Assange has confirmed Seth Rich, assassinated in D.C. for his deed, downloaded
the emails and most likely passed them on to former British ambassador Craig Murray in a D.C.
park for transport to Wikileaks.
We must also honor Shawn Lucas assassinated for serving DNC with a litigation notice
exposing the DNC conspiracy against Sanders.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:18 pm
Where has Assange confirmed this? Assange's long-standing position is NOT to reveal his
sources. I believe he has continued to honor this position.
Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:15 am
It has merely been insinuated by the offering of a reward for info on Seth's murder. In
one breath he says wikileaks will never divulge a source, and in the next he offers a $20k
reward saying that sources take tremendous risk. Doesn't take much of a logical leap to
connect A to B.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:30 pm
Are you aware that Democrats split apart their 0wn voting base in the 1990s, middle class
vs. poor? The Obama years merely confirmed that this split is permanent. This is particularly
relevant for Democrats, as their voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class,
for the common good. Ignoring this deep split hasn't made it go away.
hetro , March 14, 2019 at 3:24 pm
Even more important is how the Democrats have sold out to an Establishment view favoring
neocon theory, since at least Bill Clinton. Pelosi's recent behavior with Ilhan Omar confirms
this and the split you're talking about. My point is it is distinctly odd that Pelosi is
discouraging impeachment on "dividing the Party" (already divided, of course, as you say),
whereas the Russia-gate fantasy was so hot not that long ago. Again it points to a cynical
opportunism and manipulation of the electorate. Both parties are a sad excuse to represent
ordinary people's interests.
Skip Scott , March 15, 2019 at 7:21 am
She said "dividing the country", not the party. I think she may have concerns over Trump's
heavily armed base. That said, the statement may have been a ruse. There are plenty of
Republicans that would cross the line in favor of impeachment with the right "conclusions" by
Mueller. Pelosi may be setting up for a "bombshell" conclusion by Mueller. One must never
forget that we are watching theater, and that Trump was a "mistake" to be controlled or
eliminated.
Mueller should be ashamed that he has made President Trump his main concern!! If all this
investigation would stop he could save America millions!!! He needs to quit this witch-hunt
and worry about things that really need to be handled!!! If the democrats and Trump haters
would stop pushing senseless lies hopefully this would stop ? It's so disgusting that his
democrat friend was never really investigated ? stop the witch-hunt and move forward!!!!
torture this , March 14, 2019 at 7:29 am
According to this letter, mistakes might have been made on Rachel Maddow's show. I can't
wait to read how she responds. I'd watch her show, myself except that it has the same effect
on me as ipecac.
Zhu , March 14, 2019 at 3:37 am
People will cling to "Putin made Trump President!!!" much as many cling "Obama's a Kenyan
Muslim! Not a real American!!!". Both nut theories are emotionally satisfying, no matter what
the historical facts are. Many Americans just can't admit their mistakes and blaming a
scapegoat is a way out.
O Society , March 14, 2019 at 2:03 am
Thank you VIPS for organizing this legit dissent consisting of experts in the field of
intelligence and computer forensics.
This so-called "Russiagate" narrative is an illustration of our "freedom of the press"
failure in the US due to groupthink and self censorship. He who pays the piper is apt to call
the tune.
It is astounding how little skepticism and scientifically-informed reasoning goes on in
our media. These folks show themselves to be native advertising rather than authentic
journalists at every turn.
DH Fabian , March 14, 2019 at 1:33 pm
But it has been Democrats and the media that market to middle class Dems, who persist in
trying to sell the Russian Tale. They excel at ignoring the evidence that utterly contradicts
their claims.
Oh, we're well beyond your "Blame the middle class Dems" stage.
The WINNING!!! team sports bullshit drowns the entire country now the latrine's sprung a
leak. People pretend to live in bubbles made of blue or red quite like the Three Little Pigs,
isn't it? Except instead of a house made of bricks saving the day for the littlepiggies, what
we've got here is a purple puddle of piss.
Everyone's more than glad to project all our problems on "THEM" though, aren't we?
Meanwhile, the White House smells like a urinal not washed since the 1950s and simpletons
still get their rocks off arguing about whether Mickey Mouse can beat up Ronald McDonald.
T'would be comic except what's so tragic is the desperate need Americans have to believe,
oh just believe! in something. Never mind the sound of the jackhammer on your skull dear,
there's an app for that or is it a pill?
I don't know, don't ask me, I'm busy watching TV. Have a cheeto.
Very good analysis clearly stated, especially adding the FAT timestamps to the
transmission speeds.
Minor corrections: "The emails were copied from the network" should be "from the much
faster local network" because this is to Contradict the notion that they were copied over the
internet network, which most readers will equate with "network." Also "reportedin" should be
"reported in."
Michael , March 13, 2019 at 6:25 pm
It is likely that New Knowledge was actually "the Russians", possibly working in concert
with Crowdstrike. Once an intelligence agency gets away with something like pretending to be
Russian hackers and bots, they tend to re-use their model; it is too tempting to discard an
effective model after a one-off accomplishment. New Knowledge was caught interfering/
determining the outcome in the Alabama Senate race on the side of Democrat Doug Jones, and
claimed they were merely trying to mimic Russian methods to see if they worked (they did; not
sure of their punishment?). Occam's razor would suggest that New Knowledge would be competent
to mimic/ pretend to be "Russians" after the fact of wikileaks' publication of emails. New
Knowledge has employees from the NSA and State department sympathetic to/ working with(?)
Hillary, and were the "outside" agency hired to evaluate and report on the "Russian" hacking
of the DNC emails/ servers.
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:48 pm
Mueller released report last summer, which resulted in (the last I checked) roughly 150
indictments, a handful of convictions to date, all for perjury/financial (not political)
crimes. This wasn't kept secret. It simply wasn't what Democrats wanted to hear, so although
it was mentioned in some lib media (which overwhelmingly supported neoliberal Hillary
Clinton), it was essentially swept under the carpet.
Billy , March 13, 2019 at 11:11 pm
Barr, Sessions, every congressmen all the corporate MSM war profiteer mouth pieces. They
all know that "Russia hacked the DNC" and "Russia meddled" is fabricated garbage. They don't
care, because their chosen war beast corporate candidate couldn't beat Donald goofball Trump.
So it has to be shown that the war beast only lost because of nefarious reasons. Because
they're gonna run another war beast cut from the same cloth as Hillary in 2020.
Realist , March 14, 2019 at 3:22 am
You betcha. Moreover, who but the Russians do these idiots have left to blame? Everybody
else is now off limits due to political correctness. Sigh Those Catholics, Jews, "ethnics"
and sundry "deviants" used to be such reliable scapegoats, to say nothing of the
"undeveloped" world. As Clapper "authoritatively" says, only this vile lineage still carries
the genes for the most extremes of human perfidy. Squirrels in your attic? It must be the
damned Russkies! The bastards impudently tried to copy our democracy, economic system and
free press and only besmirched those institutions, ruining all of Hillary's glorious plans
for a worldwide benevolent dictatorship. All this might be humorous if it weren't so
funny.
And those Chinese better not get to thinking they are somehow our equals just because all
their trillions invested in U.S. Treasury bonds have paid for all our wars of choice and MIC
boondoggles since before the turn of the century. Unless they start delivering Trump some
"free stuff" the big man is gonna cut off their water. No more affordable manufactured goods
for the American public! So there!
As to the article: impeccable research and analysis by the VIPS crew yet again. They've
proven to me that, to a near certainty, the Easter Bunny is not likely to exist. Mueller
won't read it. Clapper will still prance around a free man, as will Brennan. The Democrats
won't care, that is until November of 2020. And Hillary will continue to skate, unhindered in
larding up the Clinton Foundation to purposes one can only imagine.
Joe Tedesky , March 14, 2019 at 10:02 pm
Realist,
I have posted this article 'the Russia they Lost' before and from time to time but
once again it seems appropriate to add this link to expound upon for what you've been saying.
It's an article written by a Russian who in they're youth growing up in the USSR dreamed of
living the American lifestyle if Russia were to ever ditch communism. But . Starting with
Kosovo this Russian's youthful dream turned nightmarishly ugly and, as time went by with more
and yet even more USA aggression this Russian author loss his admiration and desire for all
things American to be proudly envied. This is a story where USA hard power destroyed any hope
of American soft power for world unity. But hey that unity business was never part of the
plan anyway.
right you are, joe. if america was smart rather than arrogant, it would have cooperated
with china and russia to see the belt and road initiative succeed by perhaps building a
bridge or tunnel from siberia to alaska, and by building its own fleet of icebreakers to open
up its part of the northwest passage. but no, it only wants to sabotage what others propose.
that's not being a leader, it's being a dick.
i'm gonna have to go on the disabled list here until the sudden neurological problem with
my right hand clears up–it's like paralysed. too difficult to do this one-handed using
hunt and peck. at least the problem was not in the old bean, according to the scans. carry
on, sir.
Brian James , March 13, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Mar 4, 2019 Tom Fitton: President Trump a 'Crime Victim' by Illegal Deep State DOJ &
FBI Abuses: https://youtu.be/ixWMorWAC7c
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 5:55 pm
Trump is a willing player in this game. The anti-Russian Crusade was, quite simply, a stunningly reckless,
short-sighted effort to overturn the 2016 election, removing Trump to install Hillary Clinton in office. Trump and the
Republicans continue to win by default, as Democrats only drive more voters away.
Thank you Ray McGovern and the Other 17 VIPS C0-Signers of your National Security Essay
for Truth. Along with Craig Murray and Seymour Hirsch, former Sam Adams Award winners for
"shining light into dark places", you are national resources for objectivity in critical
survival information matters for our country. It is more than a pity that our mainstream
media are so beholden to their corporate task masters that they cannot depart from the
company line for fear of losing their livelihoods, and in the process we risk losing life on
the planet because of unconstrained nuclear war on the part of the two main adversaries
facing off in an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Let me speak plainly. THEY SHOULD BE
TALKING TO YOU AND NOT THE VESTED INTERESTS' MOUTHPIECES. Thank you for your continued
leadership!
Roger Ailes founder of FOX news died, "falling down stairs" within a week of FOX news
exposing to the world that the assassinated Seth Rich downloaded the DNC emails.
DH Fabian , March 13, 2019 at 6:03 pm
Google the Mueller investigation report from last June or July. When it was released, the
public response was like a deflated balloon. It did not support the "Russian collusion"
allegations -- the only thing Democrats still had left to sell. The report resulted in
roughly 150 indictments for perjury/financial crimes (not political), and a handful of
convictions to date -- none of which had anything to do with the election results.
Hank , March 13, 2019 at 6:19 pm
Much ado about nothing. All the talk and chatter and media airplay about "Russian
meddling" in the 2016 election only tells me that these liars think the American public is
that stupid. They are probably right, but the REAL reason that Hillary lost is because there
ARE enough informed people now in this nation who are quite aware of the Clinton's sordid
history where scandals seem to follow every where they go, but indictments and/or
investigations don't. There IS an internet nowadays with lots of FACTUAL DOCUMENTED
information. That's a lot more than I can say about the mainstream corporate-controlled
media!
I know this won't ever happen, but an HONEST investigation into the Democratic Party and
their actions during the 2016 election would make ANY collusion with ANY nation look like a
mole hill next to a mountain! One of the problems with living in this nation is if you are
truly informed and make an effort 24/7 to be that way by doing your own research, you
more-than-likely can be considered an "island in a sea of ignorance".
We know that the FBI never had access to the servers and a private company was allowed to
handle the evidence. Wasnt it a crime scene? The evidence was tampered with And we will never
know what was on the servers.
Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:10 pm
As a complement to this excellent analysis, I would like to make 2 further points:
The Mueller indictment of Russian Intelligence for hacking the DNC and transferring their
booty to Wikileaks is absurd on its face for this reason: Assange announced on June 12th the
impending release of Hillary-related emails. Yet the indictment claims that Guccifer 2.0 did
not succeed in transferring the DNC emails to Wikileaks until the time period of July 14-18th
– after which they were released online on July 22nd. Are we to suppose that Assange, a
publisher of impeccable integrity, publicly announced the publication of emails he had not
yet seen, and which he was obtaining from a source of murky provenance? And are we further to
suppose that Wikileaks could have processed 20K emails and 20K attachments to insure their
genuineness in a period of only several days? As you will recall, Wikileaks subsequently took
a number of weeks to process the Podesta emails they released in October.
And another peculiarity merits attention. Assange did not state on June 12th that he was
releasing DNC emails – and yet Crowdstrike and the Guccifer 2.0 personna evidently knew
that this was in store. A likely resolution of this conundrum is that US intelligence had
been monitoring all communications to Wikileaks, and had informed the DNC that their hacked
emails had been offered to Wikileaks. A further reasonable prospect is that US intelligence
subsequently unmasked the leaker to the DNC; as Assange has strongly hinted, this likely was
Seth Rich. This could explain Rich's subsequent murder, as Rich would have been in a position
to unmask the Guccifer 2.0 hoax and the entire Russian hacking narrative.
Curious that Assange has Not explicitly stated that the leaker was Seth Rich, if it was,
as this would take pressure from himself and incriminate the DNC in the murder of Rich.
Perhaps he doesn't know, and has the honor not to take the opportunity, or perhaps he knows
that it was not Rich.
View the Dutch TV interview with Asssange and there is another interview available on
youtube in which Assange DOES subtly confirmed it was Seth Rich.
Assange posted a $10,000 reward for Seth Rich's murders capture.
Abby , March 13, 2019 at 10:11 pm
Another mistaken issue with the "Russia hacked the DNC computers on Trump's command" is
that he never asked Russia to do that. His words were, "Russia if you 'find' Hillary's
missing emails let us know." He said that after she advised congress that she wouldn't be
turning in all of the emails they asked for because she deleted 30,000 of them and said that
they were personal.
But if Mueller or the FBI wants to look at all of them they can find them at the NYC FBI
office because they are on Weiner's laptop. Why? Because Hillary's aid Huma Abedin, Weiner's
wife sent them to it. Just another security risk that Hillary had because of her private
email server. This is why Comey had to tell congress that more of them had been found 11 days
before the election. If Comey hadn't done that then the FBI would have.
But did Comey or McCabe look at her emails there to see if any of them were classified? No
they did not do that. And today we find out that Lisa Page told congress that it was Obama's
decision not to charge Hillary for being grossly negligent on using her private email server.
This has been known by congress for many months and now we know that the fix was always in
for her to get off.
robert e williamson jr , March 13, 2019 at 3:26 pm
I want to thank you folks at VIPS. Like I have been saying for years now the relationship
between CIA, NSA and DOJ is an incestuous one at best. A perverse corrupted bond to control
the masses. A large group of religious fanatics who want things "ONE WAY". They are the
facilitators for the rogue government known as the "DEEP STATE"!
Just ask billy barr.
More truth is a very good thing. I believe DOJ is supporting the intelligence community
because of blackmail. They can't come clean because they all risk doing lots of time if a new
judicial mechanism replaces them. We are in big trouble here.
Apparently the rule of law is not!
You folks that keep claiming we live in the post truth era! Get off me. Demand the truth
and nothing else. Best be getting ready for the fight of your lives. The truth is you have to
look yourself in the mirror every morning, deny that truth. The claim you are living in the
post truth era is an admission your life is a lie. Now grab a hold of yourself pick a
dogdamned side and stand for something,.
Thank You VIPS!
Joe Tedesky , March 13, 2019 at 2:58 pm
Hats off to the VIP's who have investigated this Russian hacking that wasn't a hacking for
without them what would we news junkies have otherwise to lift open the hood of Mueller's
never ending Russia-gate investigation. Although the one thing this Russia-gate nonsense has
accomplished is it has destroyed with our freedom of speech when it comes to how we citizens
gather our news. Much like everything else that has been done during these post 9/11 years of
continual wars our civil rights have been marginalized down to zero or, a bit above if that's
even still an argument to be made for the sake of numbers.
Watching the Manafort sentencing is quite interesting for the fact that Manafort didn't
conclude in as much as he played fast and loose with his income. In fact maybe Manafort's
case should have been prosecuted by the State Department or, how about the IRS? Also wouldn't
it be worth investigating other Geopolitical Rain Makers like Manafort for similar crimes of
financial wrongdoing? I mean is it possible Manafort is or was the only one of his type to do
such dishonest things? In any case Manafort wasn't charged with concluding with any Russians
in regard to the 2016 presidential election and, with that we all fall down.
I guess the best thing (not) that came out of this Russia-gate silliness is Rachel
Maddow's tv ratings zoomed upwards. But I hate to tell you that the only ones buying what Ms
Maddow is selling are the died in the wool Hillary supporters along with the chicken-hawks
who rally to the MIC lobby for more war. It's all a game and yet there are many of us who
just don't wish to play it but still we must because no one will listen to the sanity that
gets ignored keep up the good work VIP's some of us are listening.
Andrew Thomas , March 13, 2019 at 12:42 pm
The article did not mention something called to my attention for the first time by one of
the outstanding members of your commentariat just a couple of days ago- that Ambassador
Murray stayed publicly, over two years ago, that he had been given the thumb drive by a
go-between in D.C. and had somehow gotten it to Wikileaks. And, that he has NEVER BEEN
INTERVIEWED by Mueller &Company. I was blown away by this, and found the original
articles just by googling Murray. The excuse given is that Murray "lacks credibility ", or
some such, because of his prior relationship with Assange and/or Wikileaks. This is so
ludicrous I can't even get my head around it. And now, you have given me a new detail-the
meeting with Pompeo, and the complete lack of follow-up thereafter. Here all this time I
thought I was the most cynical SOB who existed, and now I feel as naive as when I was 13 and
believed what Dean Rusk was saying like it was holy writ. I am in your debt.
Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 2:33 pm
Andrew Thomas I'm afraid that huge amounts of our History post 1947 is organized and
propagandized disinformation. There is an incredible page that John Simpkin has organized
over the years that specifically addresses individuals, click on a name and read about
them. https://spartacus-educational.com/USAdisinformation.htm
Mark McCarty , March 13, 2019 at 4:18 pm
A small correction: the Daily Mail article regarding Murray claimed that Murray was given
a thumbdrive which he subsequently carried back to Wikileaks. On his blog, Murray
subsequently disputed this part of the story, indicating that, while he had met with a leaker
or confederate of a leaker in Washington DC, the Podesta emails were already in possession of
Wikileaks at the time. Murray refused to clarify the reason for his meeting with this source,
but he is adamant in maintaining that the DNC and Podesta emails were leaked, not hacked.
And it is indeed ludicrous that Mueller, given the mandate to investigate the alleged
Russian hacking of the DNC and Podesta, has never attempted to question either Assange or
Murray. That in itself is enough for us to conclude that the Mueller investigation is a
complete sham.
Ian Brown , March 13, 2019 at 4:43 pm
It's pretty astonishing that Mueller was more interested in Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi
as credible sources about Wikileaks and the DNC release than Craig Murray!
LJ , March 13, 2019 at 12:29 pm
A guy comes in with a pedigree like that, """ former FBI head """ to examine and validate
if possible an FBI sting manufactured off a phony FISA indictment based on the Steele Report,
It immediately reminded me of the 9-11 Commission with Thomas Kean, former Board member of
the National Endowment for Democracy, being appointed by GW Bush the Simple to head an
investigation that he had previously said he did not want to authorize( and of course bi
partisan yes man Lee Hamilton as #2, lest we forget) . Really this should be seen as another
low point in our Democracy. Uncle Sam is the Limbo Man, How low can you go?
After Bill and
Hillary and Monica and Paula Jones and Blue Dresses well, Golden Showers in a Moscow luxury
hotel, I guess that make it just salacious enough.
Mueller looks just like what he is. He
has that same phony self important air as Comey . In 2 years this will be forgotten.. I do
not think this hurts Trumps chances at re-election as much as the Democrats are hurting
themselves. This has already gone on way too long.
Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic
charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and
Russians.
Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass
media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by
Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump, which was
the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein, Brennan, Podesta and Mueller's crusade on behalf
of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. It will be fascinating to
witness how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent
edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?
So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to
their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was likely in bed with the Winter Hill Gang.
Jack , March 13, 2019 at 12:21 pm
You have failed. An investigation is just that, a finding of the facts. What would Mueller
have to extricate himself from? If nothing is found, he has still done his job. You are a
divisive idiot.
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:13 pm
Yes, he has done his job. And his job was to bring his royal Orangeness to heel, and to
make sure that detente and co-operation with Russia remained impossible. The forever war
continues. Mission Accomplished.
@Jack,
Keep running cover for an out of control prosecutor, who, if he had any integrity, would have
hit the bully pulpit mos ago declaring there's nothing of substance to one of the most
potentially dangerous accusations in world history: the Kremlin hacking the election. Last I
checked it puts two nuclear nation-states on the brink of potential war. And you call me
divisive? Mueller's now a willing accomplice to this entire McCarthyite smear and
disinformation campaign. It's all so pathetic that folks such as yourself try and mislead and
feed half-truths to the people.
Drew, you might enjoy this discussion Robert Scheer has with Stephen Cohen and Katrina
vanden Heuvel.
Realist , March 15, 2019 at 3:38 am
Moreover, as the Saker pointed out in his most recent column in the Unz Review, the entire
Deep State conspiracy, in an ad hoc alliance with the embarrassed and embarrassing Democrats,
have made an absolute sham of due process in their blatant witch hunt to bag the president.
This reached an apex when his personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen, was trotted out before congress to
violate Trump's confidentiality in every mortifying way he could even vaguely reconstruct.
The man was expected to say anything to mitigate the anticipated tortures to come in the
course of this modern day inquisition by our latter day Torquemada. To his credit though,
even with his ass in a sling, he could simply not confabulate the smoking gun evidence for
the alleged Russian collusion that this whole farce was built around.
Mueller stood with Bush as he lied the world into war based on lies and illegally spied on
America and tortured some folks.
George Collins , March 13, 2019 at 2:02 pm
QED: as to the nexus with the Winter Hill gang wasn't there litigation involving the
Boston FBI, condonation of murder by the FBI and damages awarded to or on behalf of convicted
parties that the FBI had reason to know were innocent? The malfeasance reportedly occurred
during Mueller time. Further on the sanctified diligence of Mr. Mueller can be gleaned from
the reports of Coleen Rowley, former FBI attorney stationed in Milwaukee??? when the DC FBI
office was ignoring warnings sent about 9/11. See also Sibel Edmonds who knew to much and was
court order muzzled about FBI mis/malfeasance in the aftermath of 9/11.
I'd say it's game, set, match VIPS and a pox on Clapper and the
complicit intelligence folk complicit in the nuclear loaded Russia-gate fibs.
Kiers , March 13, 2019 at 11:47 am
How can we expect the DNC to "hand it " to Trumpf, when, behind the scenes, THEY ARE ONE
PARTY. They are throwing faux-scary pillow bombs at each other because they are both
complicit in a long chain of corruptions. Business as usual for the "principled" two party
system! Democracy! Through the gauze of corporate media! You must be joking!
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 11:28 am
"We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to
prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly if they become
aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very
different conclusions."
I wish I shared this belief. However, as with Nancy Pelosi's recent statement regarding
pursuing impeachment, I smell a rat. I believe with the help of what the late Robert Parry
called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", Mueller is going to use coerced false testimony and fabricated
forensics to drop a bombshell the size of 911. I think Nancy's statement was just a feint
before throwing the knockout punch.
If reason ruled the day, we should have nothing to worry about. But considering all the
perfidy that the so-called "Intelligence" Agencies and their MSM lackeys get away with daily,
I think we are in for more theater; and I think VIPS will receive a cold shoulder outside of
venues like CN.
I pray to God I'm wrong.
Sam F , March 13, 2019 at 7:32 pm
My extensive experience with DOJ and the federal judiciary establishes that at least 98%
of them are dedicated career liars, engaged in organized crime to serve political gangs, and
make only a fanatical pretense of patriotism or legality. They are loyal to money alone,
deeply cynical and opposed to the US Constitution and laws, with no credibility at all beyond
any real evidence.
Eric32 , March 14, 2019 at 4:24 pm
As near I can see, Federal Govt. careers at the higher levels depend on having dirt on
other players, and helping, not hurting, the money/power schemes of the players above
you.
The Clintons (through their foundation) apparently have a lot of corruption dirt on CIA,
FBI etc. top players, some of whom somehow became multi-millionaires during their civil
service careers.
Trump, who was only running for President as a name brand marketing ploy with little
desire to actually win, apparently came into the Presidency with no dirt arsenal and little
idea of where to go from there.
Bob Van Noy , March 13, 2019 at 11:09 am
I remember reading with dismay how Russians were propagandized by the Soviet Press
Management only to find out later the depth of disbelief within the Russian population
itself. We now know what that feels like. The good part of this disastrous scenario for
America is that for careful readers, disinformation becomes revelatory. For instance, if one
reads an editorial that refers to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or continually refers to
Russian interference in the last Presidential election, then one can immediately dismiss the
article and question the motivation for the presentation. Of course the problem is how to
establish truth in reporting
Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 10:41 am
Thank you, VIPs. Hopefully, you don't expect this to make a difference. The US has moved
into a post truth, post reality existence best characterized by Karl Rove's declaration:
"we're an empire now, when we act, we create our own reality." What Mr. Rove in his arrogance
fails to appreciate is that it is his reality but not anyone else's. Thus Pompous can claim
that Guaido is the democratic leader in Venezuela even though he's never been elected .
Thank you. The next time one of my friends or family give me that glazed over stare and
utters anymore of the "but, RUSSIA" nonsense I will refer them directly to this article. Your
collective work and ethical stand on this matter is deeply appreciated by anyone who values
the truth.
Russiagate stands with past government propaganda operations that were simply made up out
of thin air: i.e. Kuwaiti incubator babies, WMD's, Gaddafi's viagra fueled rape camps, Assad
can't sleep at night unless he's gassing his own people, to the latest, "Maduro can't sleep
at night unless he's starving his own people."
The complete and utter amorality of the deep state remains on display for all to see with
"Russiagate," which is as fact-free a propaganda campaign as any of those just mentioned.
Marc , March 13, 2019 at 10:13 am
I am a computer naif, so I am prepared to accept the VIPS analysis about FAT and transfer
rates. However, the presentation here leaves me with several questions. First, do I
understand correctly that the FAT rounding to even numbers is introduced by the thumb drive?
And if so, does the FAT analysis show only that the DNC data passed through a thumb drive?
That is, does the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred to a
thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg, to
give a copy to Wikileaks? Second, although the transatlantic transfer rate is too slow to fit
some time stamps, is it possible that the data were hacked onto a local computer that was
under the control of some faraway agent?
Jeff Harrison , March 13, 2019 at 11:12 am
Not quite. FAT is the crappy storage system developed by Microsoft (and not used by UNIX).
The metadata associated with any file gets rewritten when it gets moved. If that movement is
to a storage device that uses FAT, the timestamp on the file will end in an even number. If
it were moved to a unix server (and most of the major servers run Unix) it would be in the
UFS (unix file system) and it would be the actual time from the system clock. Every storage
device has a utility that tells it where to write the data and what to write. Since it's
writing to a storage device using FAT, it'll round the numbers. To get to your real question,
yes, you could hack and then transfer the data to a thumb drive but if you did that the dates
wouldn't line up.
Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 8:05 am
Jeff-
Which dates wouldn't line up? Is there a history of metadata available, or just metadata
for the most recent move?
David G , March 13, 2019 at 12:22 pm
Marc asks: "[D]oes the analysis distinguish whether the DNC data were directly transferred
to a thumb drive, or whether the data were hacked and then transferred to a thumb drive, eg,
to give a copy to Wikileaks?"
I asked that question in comments under a previous CN piece; other people have asked that
question elsewhere.
To my knowledge, it hasn't been addressed directly by the VIPS, and I think they should do
so. (If they already have, someone please enlighten me.)
Skip Scott , March 13, 2019 at 1:07 pm
I am no computer wiz, but Binney has repeatedly made the point that the NSA scoops up
everything. If there had been a hack, they'd know it, and they wouldn't only have had
"moderate" confidence in the Jan. assessment. I believe that although farfetched, an argument
could be made that a Russian spy got into the DNC, loaded a thumb drive, and gave it to Craig
Murray.
David G , March 13, 2019 at 3:31 pm
Respectfully, that's a separate point, which may or may not raise issues of its own.
But I think the question Marc posed stands.
Skip Scott , March 14, 2019 at 7:59 am
Hi David-
I don't see how it's separate. If the NSA scoops up everything, they'd have solid evidence
of the hack, and wouldn't have only had "moderate" confidence, which Bill Binney says is
equivalent to them saying "we don't have squat". They wouldn't even have needed Mueller at
all, except to possibly build a "parallel case" due to classification issues. Also, the FBI
not demanding direct access to the DNC server tells you something is fishy. They could easily
have gotten a warrant to examine the server, but chose not to. They also purposely refuse to
get testimony from Craig Murray and Julian Assange, which rings alarm bells on its own.
As for the technical aspect of Marc's question, I agree that I'd like to see Bill Binney
directly answer it.
The final Mueller report should be graded "incomplete," says VIPS, whose forensic work proves the speciousness of the story that
DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Mueller's Forensics-Free Findings
Executive Summary
Media reports are predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to give you the findings of his probe into any
links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.
If Mueller gives you his "completed" report anytime soon, it should be graded "incomplete."
Major deficiencies include depending on a DNC-hired cybersecurity company for forensics and failure to consult with those who
have done original forensic work, including us and the independent forensic investigators with whom we have examined the data. We
stand ready to help.
We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing
story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story,
we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief
that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable
consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.
There is an overabundance of "assessments" but a lack of hard evidence to support that prevailing narrative. We believe that there
are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of "evidence," particularly
if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions.
We know only too well -- and did our best to expose -- how our former colleagues in the intelligence community manufactured fraudulent
"evidence" of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
We have scrutinized publicly available physical data -- the "trail" that every cyber operation leaves behind. And we have had
support from highly experienced independent forensic investigators who, like us, have no axes to grind. We can prove that the conventional-wisdom
story about Russian-hacking-DNC-emails-for-WikiLeaks is false. Drawing largely on the unique expertise of two VIPS scientists who
worked for a combined total of 70 years at the National Security Agency and became Technical Directors there, we have regularly published
our findings. But we have been deprived of a hearing in mainstream media -- an experience painfully reminiscent of what we had to
endure when we exposed the corruption of intelligence before the attack on Iraq 16 years ago.
This time, with the principles of physics and forensic science to rely on, we are able to adduce solid evidence exposing mistakes
and distortions in the dominant story. We offer you below -- as a kind of aide-memoire -- a discussion of some of the key
factors related to what has become known as "Russia-gate." And we include our most recent findings drawn from forensic work on data
associated with WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails.
We do not claim our conclusions are "irrefutable and undeniable," a la Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq war. Our judgments,
however, are based on the scientific method -- not "assessments." We decided to put this memorandum together in hopes of ensuring
that you hear that directly from us.
If the Mueller team remains reluctant to review our work -- or even to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, we fear that many of those yearning earnestly for the truth on Russia-gate
will come to the corrosive conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a sham.
In sum, we are concerned that, at this point, an incomplete Mueller report will fall far short of the commitment made by then
Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "to ensure a full and thorough investigation," when he appointed Mueller in May 2017. Again,
we are at your disposal.
Discussion
The centerpiece accusation of Kremlin "interference" in the 2016 presidential election was the charge that Russia hacked Democratic
National Committee emails and gave them to WikiLeaks to embarrass Secretary Hillary Clinton and help Mr. Trump win. The weeks following
the election witnessed multiple leak-based media allegations to that effect. These culminated on January 6, 2017 in an evidence-light,
rump report misleadingly labeled "Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)." Prepared by "handpicked analysts" from only three of
the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, and NSA), the assessment expressed "high confidence" in the Russia-hacking-to-WikiLeaks
story, but lacked so much as a hint that the authors had sought access to independent forensics to support their "assessment."
The media immediately awarded the ICA the status of Holy Writ, choosing to overlook an assortment of banal, full-disclosure-type
caveats included in the assessment itself -- such as:
" When Intelligence Community analysts use words such as 'we assess' or 'we judge,' they are conveying an analytic assessment
or judgment. Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on
collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment
is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong."
To their credit, however, the authors of the ICA did make a highly germane point in introductory remarks on "cyber incident attribution."
They noted: "The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber
operation -- malicious or not -- leaves a trail." [Emphasis added.]
Forensics
The imperative is to get on that "trail" -- and quickly, before red herrings can be swept across it. The best way to establish
attribution is to apply the methodology and processes of forensic science. Intrusions into computers leave behind discernible physical
data that can be examined scientifically by forensic experts. Risk to "sources and methods" is normally not a problem.
Direct access to the actual computers is the first requirement -- the more so when an intrusion is termed "an act of war" and
blamed on a nuclear-armed foreign government (the words used by the late Sen. John McCain and other senior officials). In testimony
to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017, former FBI Director James Comey admitted that he did not insist on physical access
to the DNC computers even though, as he conceded, "best practices" dictate direct access.
In June 2017, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr asked Comey whether he ever had "access to the actual hardware
that was hacked." Comey answered, "In the case of the DNC we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic
information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. " Sen. Burr followed up: "But no content? Isn't content
an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?" Comey: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks
is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016."
The "private party/high-class entity" to which Comey refers is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple
conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations. Comey indicated that the DNC hired
CrowdStrike in the spring of 2016.
Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – including a possible impeachment battle and greatly increased tension
between Russia and the U.S. -- it is difficult to understand why Comey did not move quickly to seize the computer hardware so the
FBI could perform an independent examination of what quickly became the major predicate for investigating election interference by
Russia. Fortunately, enough data remain on the forensic "trail" to arrive at evidence-anchored conclusions. The work we have done
shows the prevailing narrative to be false. We have been suggesting this for over two years. Recent forensic work significantly strengthens
that conclusion.
We Do Forensics
Recent forensic examination of the Wikileaks DNC files shows they were created on 23, 25 and 26 May 2016. (On June 12, Julian
Assange announced he had them; WikiLeaks published them on July 22.) We recently discovered that the files reveal a FAT (File Allocation
Table) system property. This shows that the data had been transferred to an external storage device, such as a thumb drive,
before WikiLeaks posted them.
FAT is a simple file system named for its method of organization, the File Allocation Table. It is used for storage only and is
not related to internet transfers like hacking. Were WikiLeaks to have received the DNC files via a hack, the last modified times
on the files would be a random mixture of odd-and even-ending numbers.
Why is that important? The evidence lies in the "last modified" time stamps on the Wikileaks files. When a file is stored under
the FAT file system the software rounds the time to the nearest even-numbered second. Every single one of the time stamps in the
DNC files on WikiLeaks' site ends in an even number.
We have examined 500 DNC email files stored on the Wikileaks site. All 500 files end in an even number -- 2, 4, 6, 8 or 0. If
those files had been hacked over the Internet, there would be an equal probability of the time stamp ending in an odd number. The
random probability that FAT was not used is 1 chance in 2 to the 500th power. Thus, these data show that the DNC emails posted by
WikiLeaks went through a storage device, like a thumb drive, and were physically moved before Wikileaks posted the emails on the
World Wide Web.
This finding alone is enough to raise reasonable doubts, for example, about Mueller's indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers
for hacking the DNC emails given to WikiLeaks. A defense attorney could easily use the forensics to argue that someone copied the
DNC files to a storage device like a USB thumb drive and got them physically to WikiLeaks -- not electronically via a hack.
Role of NSA
For more than two years, we strongly suspected that the DNC emails were copied/leaked in that way, not hacked. And we said so.
We remain intrigued by the apparent failure of NSA's dragnet, collect-it-all approach -- including "cast-iron" coverage of WikiLeaks
-- to provide forensic evidence (as opposed to "assessments") as to how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks and who sent them. Well before
the telling evidence drawn from the use of FAT, other technical evidence led us to conclude that the DNC emails were not hacked over
the network, but rather physically moved over, say, the Atlantic Ocean.
Is it possible that NSA has not yet been asked to produce the collected packets of DNC email data claimed to have been hacked
by Russia? Surely, this should be done before Mueller competes his investigation. NSA has taps on all the transoceanic cables leaving
the U.S. and would almost certainly have such packets if they exist. (The detailed slides released by Edward Snowden actually show
the routes that trace the packets.)
The forensics we examined shed no direct light on who may have been behind the leak. The only thing we know for sure is that the
person had to have direct access to the DNC computers or servers in order to copy the emails. The apparent lack of evidence from
the most likely source, NSA, regarding a hack may help explain the FBI's curious preference for forensic data from CrowdStrike. No
less puzzling is why Comey would choose to call CrowdStrike a "high-class entity."
Comey was one of the intelligence chiefs briefing President Obama on January 5, 2017 on the "Intelligence Community Assessment,"
which was then briefed to President-elect Trump and published the following day. That Obama found a key part of the ICA narrative
less than persuasive became clear at his last press conference (January 18), when he told the media, "The conclusions of the intelligence
community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to how 'the DNC emails that were leaked' got to WikiLeaks.
Is Guccifer 2.0 a Fraud?
There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet
as a result of a spearphishing attack. William Binney, one of VIPS' two former Technical Directors at NSA, along with other former
intelligence community experts, examined files posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those files could not have been downloaded
over the internet. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.
There was a flurry of activity after Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: "We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which
are pending publication." On June 14, DNC contractor CrowdStrike announced that malware was found on the DNC server and claimed there
was evidence it was injected by Russians. On June 15, the Guccifer 2.0 persona emerged on the public stage, affirmed the DNC statement,
claimed to be responsible for hacking the DNC, claimed to be a WikiLeaks source, and posted a document that forensics show
was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."
Our suspicions about the Guccifer 2.0 persona grew when G-2 claimed responsibility for a "hack" of the DNC on July 5, 2016, which
released DNC data that was rather bland compared to what WikiLeaks published 17 days later (showing how the DNC had tipped the primary
scales against Sen. Bernie Sanders). As VIPS
reported in a wrap-up
Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017 (titled "Intel Vets Challenge 'Russia Hack' Evidence)," forensic examination of the
July 5, 2016 cyber intrusion into the DNC showed it NOT to be a hack by the Russians or by anyone else, but rather a copy onto an
external storage device. It seemed a good guess that the July 5 intrusion was a contrivance to preemptively taint anything WikiLeaks
might later publish from the DNC, by "showing" it came from a "Russian hack." WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on July 22, three
days before the Democratic convention.
As we prepared our July 24 memo for the President, we chose to begin by taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value; i. e., that the documents
he posted on July 5, 2016 were obtained via a hack over the Internet. Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained
in the posted documents and compared that metadata with the known capacity of Internet connection speeds at the time in the U.S.
This analysis showed a transfer rate as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than was possible from a remote online
Internet connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincided, though, with the rate that copying onto a thumb drive could accommodate.
Binney, assisted by colleagues with relevant technical expertise, then extended the examination and ran various forensic tests
from the U.S. to the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest Internet rate obtained -- from a data center in New Jersey
to a data center in the UK -- was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the capacity typical of a copy onto a thumb
drive.
The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the WikiLeaks data does not indicate who copied the information
to an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). But our examination does disprove that G.2 hacked into the DNC on July 5,
2016. Forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data adds to other evidence that the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphishing
attack. The data breach was local. The emails were copied from the network.
Presidential Interest
After VIPS' July 24, 2017 Memorandum for the President, Binney, one of its principal authors, was invited to share his insights
with Mike Pompeo, CIA Director at the time. When Binney arrived in Pompeo's office at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017 for an
hour-long discussion, the director made no secret of the reason for the invitation: "You are here because the President told me that
if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk with you."
Binney warned Pompeo -- to stares of incredulity -- that his people should stop lying about the Russian hacking. Binney then started
to explain the VIPS findings that had caught President Trump's attention. Pompeo asked Binney if he would talk to the FBI and NSA.
Binney agreed, but has not been contacted by those agencies. With that, Pompeo had done what the President asked. There was no follow-up.
Confronting James Clapper on Forensics
We, the hoi polloi, do not often get a chance to talk to people like Pompeo -- and still less to the former intelligence
chiefs who are the leading purveyors of the prevailing Russia-gate narrative. An exception came on November 13, when former National
Intelligence Director James Clapper came to the Carnegie Endowment in Washington to hawk his memoir. Answering a question during
the Q&A about Russian "hacking" and NSA, Clapper said:
" Well, I have talked with NSA a lot And in my mind, I spent a lot of time in the SIGINT business, the forensic evidence
was overwhelming about what the Russians had done. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever." [Emphasis added]
Clapper added: " as a private citizen, understanding the magnitude of what the Russians did and the number of citizens in our
country they reached and the different mechanisms that, by which they reached them, to me it stretches credulity to think they didn't
have a profound impact on election on the outcome of the election."
(A transcript of the interesting Q&A can be found
here and a commentary
on Clapper's performance at Carnegie, as well as on his longstanding lack of credibility, is
here .)
Normally soft-spoken Ron Wyden, Democratic senator from Oregon, lost his patience with Clapper last week when he learned that
Clapper is still denying that he lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the extent of NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.
In an unusual outburst, Wyden said: "James Clapper needs to stop making excuses for lying to the American people about mass surveillance.
To be clear: I sent him the question in advance. I asked him to correct the record afterward. He chose to let the lie stand."
The materials brought out by Edward Snowden in June 2013 showed Clapper to have lied under oath to the committee on March 12,
2013; he was, nevertheless, allowed to stay on as Director of National Intelligence for three and half more years. Clapper fancies
himself an expert on Russia, telling Meet the Press on May 28, 2017 that Russia's history shows that Russians are "typically,
almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever."
Clapper ought to be asked about the "forensics" he said were "overwhelming about what the Russians had done." And that, too, before
Mueller completes his investigation.
For the steering group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
William Binney , former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals
Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
Richard H. Black , Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division,
Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)
Bogdan Dzakovic , former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Philip Girald i, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel , former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the
Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
James George Jatras , former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)
Larry C. Johnson , former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
John Kiriakou , former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Karen Kwiatkowski , former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture
of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
Edward Loomis , Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)
David MacMichael , Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern , former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray , former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA
political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce , MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Peter Van Buren , US Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Sarah G. Wilton , CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)
Kirk Wiebe , former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
Ann Wright , retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former U.S. diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq
War
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers
and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington's justifications for launching
a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived
threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of
VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.
The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
In neoliberal MSM there is positive feedback loop for "Trump is a Russian agent" stories. So the meme feeds on itself.
Notable quotes:
"... And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
"... the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience. ..."
"... Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors, and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's not that much different from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years ..."
"... Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water ..."
"... Now they're skipping the middle man and killing them directly by psychologically brutalizing them so aggressively that it ruins their health, all to ensure that Democrats support war and adore the U.S. intelligence community . ..."
"... The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting U.S. government institutions. ..."
"... The ability of those in power to manipulate the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an inverted totalitarianism which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered by the interests of the common man. ..."
The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just
published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the
interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia's natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning
Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.
<picture deleted>
And yet the trending, most high-profile stories about Trump today all involve painting him as a Putin puppet who is working
to destroy America by taking a weak stance against an alarming geopolitical threat. This has had the effect of manufacturing demand
for even more dangerous escalations against a nuclear superpower that just so happens to be a longtime target of U.S. intelligence
agencies.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, there would be a lot less "Putin's puppet" talk and a lot more "Hey,
maybe we should avoid senseless escalations which could end all life on earth" talk among news media consumers. But there isn't,
because the mass media is not in the business of reporting facts, it's in the business of selling narratives. Even if those narratives
are so shrill and stress-inducing that they imperil the health of their audience.
Like His Predecessors
Trump is clearly not a Russian asset, he's a facilitator of America's permanent unelected government just like his predecessors,
and indeed as far as actual policies and administration behavior goes he's
not that much different
from Barack Obama and George W Bush. Hell, for all his demagogic anti-immigrant speech Trump
hasn't even caught up to Obama's peak ICE deportation years.
If the mass media were in the business of reporting facts, people would be no more worried about this administration than they
were about the previous ones, because when it comes to his administration's actual behavior, he's just as reliable an upholder of
the establishment-friendly status quo as his predecessors.
Used to be that the U.S. mass media only killed people indirectly, by facilitating establishment war agendas in repeating
government agency propaganda as objective fact and promulgating narratives that manufacture support for a status quo which won't
even give Americans health insurance or safe drinking water.
They do this for a reason, of course. The Yellow Vests protests in France have continued unabated for their
ninth consecutive week , a decentralized populist uprising resulting from ordinary French citizens losing trust in their institutions
and the official narratives which uphold them.
The social engineers responsible for controlling the populace of the greatest military power on the planet are watching France
closely, and understand deeply what is at stake should they fail to control the narrative and herd ordinary Americans into supporting
U.S. government institutions. Right now they've got Republicans cheering on the White House and Democrats cheering on the U.S.
intelligence community, but that could all change should something happen which causes them to lose control over the thoughts that
Americans think about their rulers.
Propaganda is the single most-overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of human society. The ability of those in power to manipulate
the ways ordinary people think, act and vote has allowed for an
inverted totalitarianism
which turns the citizenry into their own prison wardens, allowing those with real power to continue doing as they please unhindered
by the interests of the common man.
The only thing that will lead to real change is the people losing trust in corrupt institutions and
rising like lions against them. That gets increasingly likely as those
institutions lose control of the narrative, and with trust in the mass media at an all-time low, populist uprisings restoring power
to the people in France, and media corporations
acting increasingly weird and insecure , that looks more and more likely by the day.
"... Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they're sucking the rest of us dry @rcbregman ..."
"... 'A big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body' ..."
"... This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have "made it". By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world. ..."
"... To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our "human capital" in economic terms) to create something new, whether that's a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth. ..."
"... But there is also a second way to make money. That's the rentier way : by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others' expense, using his power to claim economic benefit. ..."
"... For those who know their history, the term "rentier" conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century's large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty . These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier's right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley , from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere. ..."
"... It may take quite a mental leap to see our economy as a system that shows solidarity with the rich rather than the poor. So I'll start with the clearest illustration of modern freeloaders at the top: bankers. Studies conducted by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements – not exactly leftist thinktanks – have revealed that much of the financial sector has become downright parasitic. How instead of creating wealth, they gobble it up whole. ..."
"... In other words, a big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body. It's not creating anything new, merely sucking others dry. Bankers have found a hundred and one ways to accomplish this. The basic mechanism, however, is always the same: offer loans like it's going out of style, which in turn inflates the price of things like houses and shares, then earn a tidy percentage off those overblown prices (in the form of interest, commissions, brokerage fees, or what have you), and if the shit hits the fan, let Uncle Sam mop it up. ..."
"... Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields a similar revenue model. Take tax evasion . Untold hardworking, academically degreed professionals make a good living at the expense of the populations of other countries. Or take the tide of privatisations over the past three decades, which have been all but a carte blanche for rentiers. One of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim , earned his millions by obtaining a monopoly of the Mexican telecom market and then hiking prices sky high. The same goes for the Russian oligarchs who rose after the Berlin Wall fell , who bought up valuable state-owned assets for song to live off the rent. ..."
"... Even paragons of modern progress like Apple, Amazon, Google , Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are woven from the fabric of rentierism. Firstly, because they owe their existence to government discoveries and inventions (every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll). And second, because they tie themselves into knots to avoid paying taxes, retaining countless bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists for this very purpose. ..."
"... Even more important, many of these companies function as "natural monopolies", operating in a positive feedback loop of increasing growth and value as more and more people contribute free content to their platforms. Companies like this are incredibly difficult to compete with, because as they grow bigger, they only get stronger. ..."
"... Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative – after all, everybody is on Facebook these days. Zuckerberg has a website that advertisers are clamouring to get onto, and that doesn't come cheap. Don't be fooled by endearing pilots with free internet in Zambia. Stripped down to essentials, it's an ordinary ad agency. In fact, in 2015 Google and Facebook pocketed an astounding 64% of all online ad revenue in the US. ..."
"... Rentierism is, in essence, a question of power. That the Sun King Louis XIV was able to exploit millions was purely because he had the biggest army in Europe. It's no different for the modern rentier. He's got the law, politicians and journalists squarely in his court. That's why bankers get fined peanuts for preposterous fraud, while a mother on government assistance gets penalised within an inch of her life if she checks the wrong box. ..."
"... The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society's best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it's insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts. ..."
"... One thing is certain: countries where rentiers gain the upper hand gradually fall into decline. Just look at the Roman Empire. Or Venice in the 15th century. Look at the Dutch Republic in the 18th century. Like a parasite stunts a child's growth, so the rentier drains a country of its vitality. ..."
Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they're
sucking the rest of us dry @rcbregman
'A big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body'.
This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection
– cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job
creators, and by the people who have "made it". By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance
the whole world.
Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest
shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually
all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.
So entrenched is this assumption that it's even embedded in our language. When economists talk about "productivity", what they
really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like "
welfare
state ", "redistribution" and "solidarity", we're implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and
the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.
In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders
are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we
hail as "successful" and "innovative" are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts
are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about
it. Even for politicians on the left, it's a non-issue.
To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means
tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our "human capital" in economic terms) to create something new, whether that's a takeout
app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.
But there is also a second way to make money.
That's the rentier way : by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase
your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others' expense, using his
power to claim economic benefit.
'From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.'
For those who know their history, the term "rentier" conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century's large
class of useless rentiers, well-described by the
French economist
Thomas Piketty . These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend
the rentier's right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley , from big
pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.
There is no longer a sharp dividing line between working and rentiering. In fact, the modern-day rentier often works damn hard.
Countless people in the financial sector, for example, apply great ingenuity and effort to amass "rent" on their wealth. Even the
big innovations of our age – businesses like Facebook
and Uber – are interested mainly in expanding the rentier economy. The problem with most rich people therefore is not that they are
coach potatoes. Many a CEO toils 80 hours a week to multiply his allowance. It's hardly surprising, then, that they feel wholly entitled
to their wealth.
It may take quite a mental leap to see our economy as a system that shows solidarity with the rich rather than the poor. So I'll
start with the clearest illustration of modern freeloaders at the top: bankers. Studies conducted by the
International Monetary Fund and the
Bank for International Settlements – not exactly leftist
thinktanks – have revealed that much of the financial sector has become downright parasitic. How instead of creating wealth, they
gobble it up whole.
In other words, a big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body. It's not creating
anything new, merely sucking others dry. Bankers have found a hundred and one ways to accomplish this. The basic mechanism, however,
is always the same: offer loans like it's going out of style, which in turn inflates the price of things like houses and shares,
then earn a tidy percentage off those overblown prices (in the form of interest, commissions, brokerage fees, or what have you),
and if the shit hits the fan, let Uncle Sam mop it up.
The financial innovation concocted by all the math whizzes working in modern banking (instead of at universities or companies
that contribute to real prosperity) basically boils down to maximizing the total amount of debt. And debt, of course, is a means
of earning rent. So for those who believe that pay ought to be proportionate to the value of work, the conclusion we have to draw
is that many bankers should be earning a negative salary; a fine, if you will, for destroying more wealth than they create.
Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields
a similar revenue model.
Take
tax evasion . Untold hardworking, academically degreed professionals make a good living at the expense of the populations of
other countries. Or take the tide of privatisations over the past three decades, which have been all but a carte blanche for rentiers.
One of the richest people in the world,
Carlos Slim , earned his millions by obtaining a monopoly of the Mexican telecom market and then hiking prices sky high. The
same goes for the Russian oligarchs who rose after the
Berlin Wall fell , who bought up valuable state-owned assets for song to live off the rent.
But here comes the rub. Most rentiers are not as easily identified as the greedy banker or manager. Many are disguised. On the
face of it, they look like industrious folks, because for part of the time they really are doing something worthwhile. Precisely
that makes us overlook their massive rent-seeking.
Take the pharmaceutical industry. Companies like
GlaxoSmithKline and
Pfizer regularly
unveil new drugs, yet most real medical breakthroughs are made quietly at government-subsidised labs. Private companies mostly manufacture
medications that resemble what we've already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers,
and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years. In other words, the vast revenues of the pharmaceutical industry are the
result of a tiny pinch of innovation and fistfuls of rent.
Even paragons of modern progress like Apple, Amazon, Google
, Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are woven from the fabric of rentierism. Firstly, because they owe their existence to government discoveries
and inventions (every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice
recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll). And second, because they tie themselves into knots to avoid
paying taxes, retaining countless bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists for this very purpose.
Even more important, many of these companies function as "natural monopolies", operating in a positive feedback loop of increasing
growth and value as more and more people contribute free content to their platforms. Companies like this are incredibly difficult
to compete with, because as they grow bigger, they only get stronger.
Aptly characterising this "platform capitalism" in an article,
Tom Goodwin writes : "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner,
creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider,
owns no real estate."
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest 'Every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice
recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll.' Photograph: Regis Duvignau/Reuters
So what do these companies own? A platform. A platform that lots and lots of people want to use. Why? First and foremost, because
they're cool and they're fun – and in that respect, they do offer something of value. However, the main reason why we're all happy
to hand over free content to Facebook is because all of our friends are on Facebook too, because their friends are on Facebook because
their friends are on Facebook.
Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for
free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative – after all, everybody is on Facebook these days. Zuckerberg
has a website that advertisers are clamouring to get onto, and that doesn't come cheap. Don't be fooled by endearing pilots with
free internet in Zambia. Stripped down to essentials, it's an ordinary ad agency. In fact, in 2015 Google and Facebook pocketed an
astounding
64% of all online ad revenue in the US.
But don't Google and Facebook make anything useful at all? Sure they do. The irony, however, is that their best innovations only
make the rentier economy even bigger. They employ scores of programmers to create new algorithms so that we'll all click on more
and more ads.
Uber has
usurped the whole taxi sector just as
Airbnb has upended the hotel industry and Amazon has overrun the book trade. The bigger such platforms grow the more powerful
they become, enabling the lords of these digital feudalities to demand more and more rent.
Think back a minute to the definition of a rentier: someone who uses their control over something that already exists in order
to increase their own wealth. The feudal lord of medieval times did that by building a tollgate along a road and making everybody
who passed by pay. Today's tech giants are doing basically the same thing, but transposed to the digital highway. Using technology
funded by taxpayers, they build tollgates between you and other people's free content and all the while pay almost no tax on their
earnings.
This is the so-called innovation that has Silicon Valley gurus in raptures: ever bigger platforms that claim ever bigger handouts.
So why do we accept this? Why does most of the population work itself to the bone to support these rentiers?
I think there are two answers. Firstly, the modern rentier knows to keep a low profile. There was a time when everybody knew who
was freeloading. The king, the church, and the aristocrats controlled almost all the land and made peasants pay dearly to farm it.
But in the modern economy, making rentierism work is a great deal more complicated. How many people can explain a
credit default swap
, or a collateralised debt obligation ? Or the revenue
model behind those cute Google Doodles? And don't the folks on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley work themselves to the bone, too?
Well then, they must be doing something useful, right?
Maybe not. The typical workday of Goldman Sachs' CEO may be worlds away from that of King Louis XIV, but their revenue models
both essentially revolve around obtaining the biggest possible handouts. "The world's most powerful investment bank," wrote the journalist
Matt Taibbi about
Goldman Sachs , "is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything
that smells like money."
But far from squids and vampires, the average rich freeloader manages to masquerade quite successfully as a decent hard worker.
He goes to great lengths to present himself as a "job creator" and an "investor" who "earns" his income by virtue of his high "productivity".
Most economists, journalists, and politicians from left to right are quite happy to swallow this story. Time and again language is
twisted around to cloak funneling and exploitation as creation and generation.
However, it would be wrong to think that all this is part of some ingenious conspiracy. Many modern rentiers have convinced even
themselves that they are bona fide value creators. When current Goldman Sachs CEO
Lloyd Blankfein
was asked about the purpose of his job, his straight-faced answer was that he is "
doing God's
work ". The Sun King would have approved.
The second thing that keeps rentiers safe is even more insidious. We're all wannabe rentiers. They have made millions of people
complicit in their revenue model. Consider this: What are our financial sector's two biggest cash cows? Answer: the housing market
and pensions. Both are markets in which many of us are deeply invested.
Recent decades have seen more and more people contract debts to buy a home, and naturally it's in their interest if
house
prices continue to scale new heights (read: burst bubble upon bubble). The same goes for pensions. Over the past few decades
we've all scrimped and saved up a mountainous pension piggy bank. Now pension funds are under immense pressure to ally with the biggest
exploiters in order to ensure they pay out enough to please their investors.
The fact of the matter is that feudalism has been democratised. To a lesser or greater extent, we are all depending on handouts.
En masse, we have been made complicit in this exploitation by the rentier elite, resulting in a political covenant between the rich
rent-seekers and the homeowners and retirees.
Don't get me wrong, most homeowners and retirees are not benefiting from this situation. On the contrary, the banks are bleeding
them far beyond the extent to which they themselves profit from their houses and pensions. Still, it's hard to point fingers at a
kleptomaniac when you have sticky fingers too.
So why is this happening? The answer can be summed up in three little words: Because it can.
Rentierism is, in essence, a question of power. That the Sun King Louis XIV was able to exploit millions was purely because he
had the biggest army in Europe. It's no different for the modern rentier. He's got the law, politicians and journalists squarely
in his court. That's why bankers get fined peanuts for preposterous fraud, while a mother on government assistance gets penalised
within an inch of her life if she checks the wrong box.
The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society's best and brightest. Where once upon
a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks,
law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it's insane. We are forking over billions
in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts.
One thing is certain: countries where rentiers gain the upper hand gradually fall into decline. Just look at the Roman Empire.
Or Venice in the 15th century. Look at the Dutch Republic in the 18th century. Like a parasite stunts a child's growth, so the rentier
drains a country of its vitality.
What innovation remains in a rentier economy is mostly just concerned with further bolstering that very same economy. This may
explain why the big dreams of the 1970s, like flying cars, curing cancer, and colonising Mars, have yet to be realised, while bankers
and ad-makers have at their fingertips technologies a thousand times more powerful.
Yet it doesn't have to be this way. Tollgates can be torn down, financial products can be banned, tax havens dismantled, lobbies
tamed, and patents rejected. Higher taxes on the ultra-rich can make rentierism less attractive, precisely because society's biggest
freeloaders are at the very top of the pyramid. And we can more fairly distribute our earnings on land, oil, and innovation through
a system of, say, employee shares, or a
universal basic
income .
But such a revolution will require a wholly different narrative about the origins of our wealth. It will require ditching the
old-fashioned faith in "solidarity" with a miserable underclass that deserves to be borne aloft on the market-level salaried shoulders
of society's strongest. All we need to do is to give real hard-working people what they deserve.
And, yes, by that I mean the waste collectors, the nurses, the cleaners – theirs are the shoulders that carry us all.
CHICAGO -- Saying it was ultimately a small price to pay in exchange for the splendid spectacle that has followed, millions of
Americans admitted Thursday that they didn't really mind having their Facebook data stolen if it meant getting to watch that
little fucker squirm.
"... It's not what aboutism it's called having consistency and principles. It's like Jack the Ripper calling Ted Kennedy a murderer. It matters if both sides are doing deals with Russia and only one has proved collusion with Russia government officials ..."
"... Your new Mcarthyism isn't working but nice try since it's all you have to offer ..."
"... Whataboutism is a call out for hypocrisy. It wasn't invented by the Russians. It was in use by a carpenter over two-thousand years ago: "Why do you call out for a dust mote in my eye when there is a log in yours?" ..."
"... Nothing new under the sun. ..."
"... Kind of like What about Russian interference in our Elections? Whatabout that, as a clear and dangerous deflection from Hillary taking blame for her incompetent and corrupt 2016 campaigns? ..."
"What about Clinton?" is an example of Whataboutism, which is a classic Russian propaganda technique used to divert attention
away from the relevant subject, statement, argument, etc at hand with an accusation of hypocrisy.
It takes the form, "What about _______?"
Whataboutism is a type of psychological projection. It uses blame shifting to attribute wrong doing or some character defect
to someone else with a goal of sabotaging the conversation by steering the speaker to become defensive.
On the playground, the kids call it "I know you are, but what am I?"
I have no idea whether any of this Russiagate stuff is real. We have seen no evidence, so I remain skeptical until someone
shows actual evidence of Trump-Putin collusion.
However, I do know where Donald Trump got a bunch of his money, and where he and his followers got Whataboutism.
Shouldn't that be "A Guide to Ukrainian Propaganda"?
Gregory Herr , August 14, 2018 at 9:20 pm
It seems to me that jean agreed with your characterisation of Trump and in no way was trying to sabotage the conversation.
jean referenced some facts about characters relevant to the broader topic.
I would contend that every time I've heard the cry of "well, that's just whataboutism", the purpose of that claim has been
to avoid addressing the points made–thus sabotaging further engagement or conversation.
So now, after all this time, you still "have no idea" whether Russiagate nonsense is real–what a fine fence-straddler you are.
And then to suggest that "whataboutism" is made in Russia and slyly connect that to "Trump and his followers" -- well, you just
lost me brother.
It's not what aboutism it's called having consistency and principles. It's like Jack the Ripper calling Ted Kennedy a murderer.
It matters if both sides are doing deals with Russia and only one has proved collusion with Russia government officials
That would be Hillary
I understand why you would want to deflect from that but it won't change the facts
Your new Mcarthyism isn't working but nice try since it's all you have to offer
zendeviant , August 15, 2018 at 5:30 am
Whataboutism is a call out for hypocrisy. It wasn't invented by the Russians. It was in use by a carpenter over two-thousand
years ago: "Why do you call out for a dust mote in my eye when there is a log in yours?"
Nothing new under the sun.
michael , August 15, 2018 at 5:33 am
Kind of like What about Russian interference in our Elections? Whatabout that, as a clear and dangerous deflection from
Hillary taking blame for her incompetent and corrupt 2016 campaigns?
jeff montanye , August 17, 2018 at 6:38 am
and her incompetent and corrupt tenure as secretary of state which gave so many people a really good idea of what her presidency
would look like.
Nop , August 15, 2018 at 10:06 pm
The accusation "whataboutism" just a childish way of trying to deny the point of view of rival interests. Like plugging your
ears and chanting "la la la".
So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much
worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
"... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
"... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
"... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
"... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
"... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
"... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures
are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept
secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during
"routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and
the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to
whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might
have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch,
is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence
agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats
and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss
(R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type
of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive
Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community
Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The
fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers
raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly,"
wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with
"bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence
officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community
Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abuses
Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the
possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's
response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be
saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring
user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported
to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually
shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy
Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency
(NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance,"
said
Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S.
citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured
in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only
allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed
that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of
President Trump.
Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against
our Constitution would be in full swing!
When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter.
Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged
and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance
and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a
horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties
before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump
won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas
as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's
US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy"
closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And
the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified
material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing
incriminating evidence.
Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew
the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since
our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when
(((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive
order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an
increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the
master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would
they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
"... The anti-Russian mania in U.S. politics gives social media companies a welcome excuse to clamp down on promotional schemes for sites like Liberty Front Press by claiming that these are disinformation campaigns run by the U.S. enemy of the day . ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Well this surely shows that Facebook/Twitter is run through the help of US/Western intelligence ..."
"... Sorry, but, if you let any opinion on Facebook or Twitter sway your politics, you're an idiot. ..."
"... fireEye, google, yahoo, facebook and so many other tech companies are all in a few miles radius of one another in San Jose area of California ..."
"... In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted -- what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression. ..."
"... Blogs today represent yesterday's broadsheets, and by using social media, they can increase their exposure to a wider audience. Thus, social media represents a point-of-control for those trying to shape/frame discourse/content. They may be private companies, but they interact with public discourse and ought to be subjected to Free Speech controls like the USA's 1st Amendment. ..."
"... Very many hi-tech companies in the US are working with the CIA. Such as Oracle that has an office on the east coast of the US that keeps a very low profile inside the company. ..."
"... Robert Bridge provides us with a timely written article dealing with the issue at hand: "And if US intel is in bed with Hollywood you can be damn sure they're spending time in the MSM whorehouse as well." ..."
"... IMHO, it would be foolish to presume that the CIA would simply discontinue and to walk away from (as it claims!) a program like Operation Mockingbird. Government agencies have famously infiltrated the Quakers (ferchrissakes!). Facebook was funded and developed by a CIA front shop. Zuckerburg is a dopey kid and a frontispiece. ..."
"... The danger of course is when people start to conclude that any media site permitted by FB or SM is Sanctioned by the Propaganda department of the Ministry of Truth and ignored. ..."
"... Trump would be hailed a savior if he were to morph into President Taft and Bust the Trusts like BigLie Media, its allied telecoms and social media corps. ..."
"... As to a lack authenticity, what about the tweets from outside Egypt pushing and reporting on the "Arab Spring" protests there. We have other examples of "inauthentic" social messaging on other agendas pushed like Syria. What about "A Gay Girl in Damascus?" ..."
"... who still uses facebook? The only people i know who still are active users are senior citizens. ..."
The creation of digital content led to the re-establishment of claqueurs :
By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was
able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. These were usually under a chef de claque
(leader of applause), who judged where the efforts of the claqueurs were needed and to
initiate the demonstration of approval. This could take several forms. There would be
commissaires ("officers/commissioner") who learned the piece by heart and called the
attention of their neighbors to its good points between the acts. Rieurs (laughers) laughed
loudly at the jokes. Pleureurs (criers), generally women, feigned tears, by holding their
handkerchiefs to their eyes. Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the audience in a good humor,
while bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped and cried "Bis! Bis!" to request encores.
An alternative is to create artificial social media personas who then promote ones content.
That is what the Internet Research Agency , the Russian "troll factory" from St.
Petersburg, did. The fake personas it established on Facebook promoted IRA created
clickbait content like puppy picture pages that was then marketed
to sell advertisements .
The profit orientated social media giants do not like such third party promotions. They
prefer that people pay THEM to promote their content. Selling advertisements is Facebook's
business. Promotional accounts on its own platform are competition.
Yesterday Facebook announced that it deleted a
number of user accounts for "inauthentic behavior":
We've removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that
originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East,
Latin America, UK and US. FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, gave us a tip in July about "Liberty
Front Press," a network of Facebook Pages as well as accounts on other online services.
...
We are able to link this network to Iranian state media through publicly available website
registration information, as well as the use of related IP addresses and Facebook Pages
sharing the same admins. For example, one part of the network, "Quest 4 Truth," claims to be
an independent Iranian media organization, but is in fact linked to Press TV, an
English-language news network affiliated with Iranian state media.
FireEye has identified a suspected influence operation that appears to originate from Iran
aimed at audiences in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, and the Middle East. This operation is
leveraging a network of inauthentic news sites and clusters of associated accounts across
multiple social media platforms to promote political narratives in line with Iranian
interests. These narratives include anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as
well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear
deal (JCPOA) .
...
Based on an investigation by FireEye Intelligence's Information Operations analysis team, we
assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates from Iranian actors.
The evidence FireEye presents is quite thin. The purpose of its inquest and report is
obviously self-promotion.
Moon of Alabama is also promoting anti-Saudi , anti-Israeli
, and pro-Palestinian themes. It
supports the JCPOA deal. This is, according to FireEye, "in line with Iranian interests".
It may well be. But does that make Moon of Alabama a "suspected influence operation"?
Is it an "inauthentic news site"?
Is the @MoonofATwitter
account showing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" when it promotes the pieces presented on
this site? We, by the way, assess with high confidence that that this activity originates from
a German actor. Is that a reason to shut it down?
Here is another high confidence tip for FireEye. There is proof, and even an admission of
guilt, that a hostile government financed broadcasting organization is creating inauthentic
Facebook accounts to disseminate disinformation. These narratives include
anti-Russian, anti-Syrian, and pro-Saudi views, as well as support for specific U.S. policies
favorable to Israel, such as its financing of the
anti-Iranian headscarf campaign .
This year the U.S. government run Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will spend more than
$23 million for its Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). OCB administers Radio and Television
(TV) Martí programs directed at the Cuban public. In its 2019 budget
request to Congress (pdf) the BBG admits that it creates inauthentic Facebook
accounts to increase the distribution of its dreck:
In FY 2018, OCB is establishing on island digital teams to create non-branded local Facebook
accounts to disseminate information . Native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban
Facebook users newsfeeds. The same strategy will be replicated on other preferred social
media networks.
How is this different from what the PressTV may have done? When will Facebook shut those
inauthentic BBG accounts down?
At the Defense One Summit last November [2016], former GEC director Michael Lumpkin [GEC,
Pentagon propaganda department] described how the Center was using the data it received as
a Facebook advertiser to maximize the effectiveness of its own targeted appeals.
"Using Facebook ads, I can go within Facebook, I can go grab an audience, I can pick
Country X, I need age group 13 to 34, I need people who have liked -- whether it's Abu Bakr
Al Baghdadi or any other set -- I can shoot and hit them directly with messaging," Lumpkin
said. He emphasized that with the right data, effective message targeting could be done for
"pennies a click."
Ironically, when I created a FB page hangout for my foreign students to disseminate topical
educational materials that were freely available as PDF links, or free 'loss-leader' lessons
from for-profits, or Khan Academy free lesson links ... in other words, organizing a
docent-guided free education feed for terribly poor 3W students ...
FB informed me that this
was an 'illegal' business activity, lol. They shut it down with *zero* warning. One moment it
was a beautiful colorful uplifting education resource, the next it was burnt to ashes. 404.
ATM, on an Anony FB page I launched to reconnect with my students, after a couple
ill-advised comments to their thread posts, discussing what's *really* going on in the world,
FB has blocked any posts that I might want to make. They just never show up when I hit enter.
Like training a bad puppy, lol. All FB lets me do is 'like' or emoji or 'wave' to my
students, so it's a semaphore that I still exist, even in FB lockup.
But I think I'll stop. It's bread-crumbing them to FBs candy-cane house and the boiling
cauldron that awaits. Frog in a Pot!
"...we assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates from Iranian actors."
Jeez, can't they at least produce a "highly likely" for us? On the intelligence community's confidence scale, "moderate" has to be just above
"wishful" and "doubtful"
One of the tricks of corporate propaganda:
Often, when exposed to capitalist propaganda, a socialist gets the impression that he can
have the best of both worlds! - the perceived benefits of capitalism as he keeps his beloved
social benefits.
It isn't until some time after the bmobing has stopped, that he realizes that he has lost
ALL his former social benefits and what he has thereafter is hard capitalism and no
money.
Well this surely shows that Facebook/Twitter is run through the help of US/Western
intelligence.
Only way is to fight back or you will eventually have fines and end up in jail for
thoughtcrimes.
This site and us here commenting is of course already targeted by these scums, besides,
sites like this will certainly be shut down sooner or later.
Remember Facebook also attacked Venezuela recently, "Why Did Facebook Purge TeleSUR English?"
TeleSUR English is a rare voice of dissent to US foreign policy. Is that why Facebook
deleted its page?
b.. thanks... your first paragraph giving context to how the public was swayed going back
close to 200 years ago was very interesting..
The usa gov't has something to sell and something to buy.. fireEye, google, yahoo,
facebook and so many other tech companies are all in a few miles radius of one another in
San Jose area of California.. If Russia was to bomb somewhere in the usa - that would be one good
place to start!
They are all selling to the usa gov't at this point... the usa devotes so
much to propaganda and these corps all try to peddle the needed tools to keep the
fearmongering going, when they're not snooping of course! hey - they can do both - snoop and
sell!!
Long ago before the Hydrocarbon Epoch, the Broadsheet was your typical newscast assembled by
the local printer who was often reporter and editor, and even in small towns there was
competition, with readers of news gathering in coffee shops to discuss their contents. The
vociferousness of many publications was extreme, but as Jefferson observed in the 1790s,
easily disproved hyperbole was far more desirable than censorship -- people were deemed capable
of determining a publication's veracity for themselves and thus their success or failure
would be determined by the marketplace of ideas.
In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas
could be restricted -- what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version
of such repression. With the advent of the personal computer and internet, ease of publishing
exploded, which presented elites determined to control the overall discourse with a huge
problem they are still grappling with. One of the aims of the Independent Media Center on its
founding in 1999 was to turn every activist into a reporter and every computer into a
printing press with contents published collectively at regional Media Centers. Unfortunately,
after a promising first several years, the nascent movement failed and remains in dormancy,
being mostly replaced by personal blogs.
Blogs today represent yesterday's broadsheets, and by using social media, they can
increase their exposure to a wider audience. Thus, social media represents a point-of-control
for those trying to shape/frame discourse/content. They may be private companies, but they
interact with public discourse and ought to be subjected to Free Speech controls like the
USA's 1st Amendment.
Very many hi-tech companies in the US are working with the CIA. Such as Oracle that has an
office on the east coast of the US that keeps a very low profile inside the company. In fact
the first contract that launched the company was a contract with the CIA to implement the IBM
SQL standard. I shouldn't have to explain to anyone here why the CIA would use a relational
database (have to keep all those subversive secret ops in order). Similar connection to CIA
for Google, Facebook, Symantec, etc.
If you are using US software (very likely) then assume CIA and NSA back-doors. Some
solutions are to use Linux and VPNs, and Yandex for cloud storage. Get away from US
software.
Robert Bridge provides us with a timely written article dealing with the issue at hand:
"And if US intel is in bed with Hollywood you can be damn sure they're spending time in the
MSM whorehouse as well."
Sorry, should have included this in 17. As many know, Caitlin Johnstone, a Truth Seeker par
excellence, has also been censored, but prior to that
wrote this essay on the subject at hand, which is all about manufacturing consent as she
sees it:
"This is a setup. Hit the soft target so your oligarch-friendly censorship doesn't look
like what it is, then once you've manufactured consent, go on to shut down the rest of
dissenting media bit by bit."
This is a US government ordered setup supported by the evidence she presents in her intro,
but not by Trump!
IMHO, it would be foolish to presume that the CIA would simply discontinue and to walk away
from (as it claims!) a program like Operation Mockingbird.
Government agencies have famously infiltrated the Quakers (ferchrissakes!). Facebook was funded and developed by a CIA front shop. Zuckerburg is a dopey kid and a
frontispiece.
The danger of course is when people start to conclude that any media site permitted by FB or
SM is Sanctioned by the Propaganda department of the Ministry of Truth and ignored. Then
these few truthful media sites that are unbanned will need to beg these social media giants
to ban them so as to restablish credibility. FB and SM will then need to ban a few controlled
MSM sites so people will believe they are credible and read the propaganda
I guess we are not there yet, or are we? I do not use FB or other SM for news or anything else, although I do occasionally click on
links to them from a web page, but I guess a lot of people do. Maybe that will change.
The battle over Net Neutrality is related to this. Recently,
Verizon blackmailed a California fire department engaged in fighting the state's largest
ever wildfire by throttling its data feed thus threatening public safety for a Few Dollars
More.
Trump would be hailed a savior if he were to morph into President Taft and Bust the Trusts
like BigLie Media, its allied telecoms and social media corps.
Claqueurs. One of the earliest versions of the annoying "laugh track" used in television.
Like Ben 10, I learned something new today.
As to a lack authenticity, what about the tweets from outside Egypt pushing and reporting
on the "Arab Spring" protests there. We have other examples of "inauthentic" social messaging
on other agendas pushed like Syria. What about "A Gay Girl in Damascus?"
As usual, thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy of US govt/media.
Maybe it did expand my audience. I have no idea. About the only proven use I found was being
able to get on Tinder to get laid, as you cannot have a Tinder account without a Facebook
account. Thereafter I called it Fuckbook.
Manipulating democracy -- brainwashing the public for a large fee
Cambridge Analytica, the data harvesting firm that worked for the Trump campaign, is in the
midst of a scandal that should make everyone who cares about a clean political process demand
major investigations of anyone who has procured the services of the company, major prosecutions
of those who have violated laws across multiple nations and a wholesale revitalisation of
electoral laws to prevent politicians from ever again procuring the services of unethical
companies like Cambridge Analytica.
Days ago, whistleblower Christopher Wylie went public about his time
working for Cambridge Analytica and specifically about how the firm illegally obtained the
public and private data, including the private messages of 50 million Facebook users. He also
exposed how Cambridge Analytica used this data to run highly scientific social manipulation
campaigns in order to effectively brainwash the public in various countries to support a
certain political candidate or faction.
Cambridge Analytica's dubious methods were used to meddle in the US election after the Trump
campaign paid Cambridge Analytica substantial sums of money for their services. The firm also
meddled in the last two Kenyan Presidential elections, elections in Nigeria, elections in Czech
Republic, elections in Argentina, elections in India, the Brexit campaign, UK Premier Theresa
May's recently election and now stands accused of working with the disgraced former
Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif in an attempt to reverse his judicial ban on holding public
office, while helping his PML-N party win the forthcoming general election.
Beyond the scandalous use of personal data from Facebook users and the illegal access to
people's private messages, Cambridge Analytica has now been exposed as a company that, by the
hidden-camera admission of its CEO Alexander Nix, engages in nefarious, illegal and outrageous
activities across the globe.
The UK Broadcaster Channel 4 just released a video of Cambridge Analytica's CEO and Managing
DIrector Mark Turnbull in a conversation with an undercover reporter posing as a Sri Lankan
businessman interested in meddling in domestic elections. During the conversation Nix boasted
of Cambridge Analytica's history of using entrapment, bribery and intimidation against the
political opponents of its wealthy clients. Furthermore, Nix boasted about his firm's ability
to procure Ukrainian prostitutes as a means to entrap adversaries while also procuring the
services of "Israeli spies" as part of dirty smear operations.
The activities that Nix boasted of using in the past and then offered to a prospective
client are illegal in virtually every country in the world. But for Nix and his world of
ultra-rich clients, acting as though one is above the law is the rule rather than the
exception. Thus far, Cambridge Analaytica has been able to escape justice throughout the world
both for its election meddling, data harvesting, data theft and attempts to slander politicians
through calculated bribery and entrapment schemes.
One person who refused to be tempted by Cambridge Analytica was Julian Assange. Alexander
Nix personally wrote to Julian Assange asking for direct access to information possessed by
Wikileaks and Assange refused. This is a clear example of journalistic ethics and personal
integrity on the part of Assange. Justice must be done
Cambridge Analytica stands accused of doing everything and more that the Russian
state was accused of doing in respect of meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election. While
meetings and conversations that Trump campaign officials, including Steve Bannon had with
Cambridge Analyatica big wigs were not recorded, any information as to what was said during
these exchanges should be thoroughly investigated by law enforcement and eventually made public
for the sake of restoring transparency to politics.
Just as the Hillary Clinton campaign openly conspired to deprive Bernie Sanders of the
Democratic Party's nomination, so too did Donald Trump's campaign pay Cambridge Analytica to
conspire against the American voters using a calculated psychological manipulation campaign
that was made possible through the use of unethically obtained and stolen data.
While Facebook claims it was itself misled and consequently victimised by Cambridge
Analytica and has subsequently banned the firm from its platform, many, including Edward
Snowden have alleged that Facebook knew full well what Cambridge Analytica was doing with the
data retrieved from its Facebook apps. Already, the markets have reacted to the news and the
verdict is not favourble in terms of the public perception of Facebook as an ethical company.
Facebook's share prices are down over 7% on the S&P 500. This represents the biggest tumble
in the price of Facebook share prices since 2014. Moreover, the plunge has knocked Facebook out
of the coveted big five companies atop the S&P 500. Furthermore, Alex Stamos, Facebook's
security director has announced that he will soon leave the company.
The Trump myth and Russia myth exposed
Donald Trump has frequently boasted of his expert campaigning skills as being the reason he
won an election that few thought he could have ever won. While Trump was a far more charismatic
and exciting platform speaker than his rival Hillary Clinton, it seems that for the Trump
campaign, Trump ultimately needed to rely on the expensive and nefarious services of Cambridge
Analytica in order to manipulate the minds of American voters and ultimately trick them into
voting for him. It is impossible to say whether Trump would have still won his election without
Cambridge Analaytica's services, but the fact they were used, should immediately raise the
issue of Trump's suitability for office.
Ultimately, the Trump campaign did conspire to meddle in the election, only it was
not with Russia or Russians with whom the campaign conspired, it was with the British firm
Cambridge Analytica. Thus one sees that both the narrative about Trump the electoral "genius"
and the narrative about Trump the Kremlin puppet are both false. The entire time, the issue of
Trump campaign election meddling was one between a group of American millionaires and
billionaires and a sleaze infested British firm.
Worse than Watergate
In 1972, US President Richard Nixon conspired to cover-up a beak-in at the offices of his
political opponents at the Watergate Complex. The scandal ultimately led to Nixon's resignation
in 1974. What the Trump campaign did with Cambridge Analytica is far more scandalous than the
Watergate break-in and cover-up. Where Nixon's cronies broke into offices to steal information
from the Democratic party, Trump's paid cyber-thugs at Cambridge Analytica broke in to the
private data of 50 million people, the vast majority of whom were US citizens.
Richard Nixon, like Donald Trump, was ultimately driven by a love of power throughout his
life. Just as Trump considered running for President for decades, so too did Nixon try to run
in 1960 and lost to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, while he also failed to become governor of
California in 1962 election. By 1968 he finally got into the White House at the height of the
Vietnam War. When time came for his re-election, Nixon's team weren't going to take any chances
and hence the Watergate break-in was orchestrated to dig up dirt on Nixon's opponent. As it
turned out Nixon won the 1972 by a comfortable margin, meaning that the Watergate break-in was
probably largely in vain.
Likewise, Trump may well have won in 2016 even without Cambridge Analytica, but in his quest
for power, Trump has resorted to dealing with a company whose practices have done far more
damage to the American people than the Watergate break-in.
New laws are needed
While existing laws will likely be sufficient to bring the fiends at Cambridge Analytica to
justice, while also determining the role that Trump campaign officials, up to and including
Trump played in the scandal, new laws must be enshrined across the globe in order to put the
likes of Cambridge Analytica out of business for good.
The following proposals must be debated widely and ideally implemented at the soonest
possible date:
-- A total ban on all forms of data mining/harvesting for political purposes.
-- A total ban on the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in any political
campaign or for any political purpose.
-- A mandatory seizing of the assets of any company involved in data mining/harvesting for
political purposes, after which point such a company would be forcibly shut down
permanently.
-- A mandatory seizing of the assets of any company involved in the use of artificial
intelligence or algorithms in the course of a public political campaign.
-- A total ban on the use of internet based platforms, including social media by political
candidates and their direct associates for anything that could reasonably be classified as a
misinformation and/or manipulation scheme.
-- A total ban on politicians using third party data firms or advertising firms during
elections. All such advertising and analysis must be devised by advisers employed directly by
or volunteering for an individual candidate or his or her party political organisation.
-- A total ban on any individual working for a political campaign, who derives at least half
of his or her income from employment, ownership and/or shares in a company whose primary
purpose is to deliver news and analysis.
-- A total ban on anyone paid by a political candidate to promote his or her election from
an ownership or major share holding role in any company whose primary purpose is to deliver
news and analysis until 2 years after the said election.
If all of these laws were implemented along with thorough campaign finance reform
initiatives, only then can anything remotely resembling fair elections take place.
The elites eat their own
While many of the media outlets who have helped to publish the revelations of whistleblower
Christopher Wylie continue to defame Russia without any evidence about Russian linkage to the
2016 US election (or any other western vote for that matter), these outlets are nevertheless
exposing the true meddling scandal surrounding the Trump campaign which has the effect of
destroying the Russia narrative.
In this sense, a divided elite are turning against themselves. While the billionaire
property tycoon Donald Trump can hardly be described as anything but a privileged figure who
moved in elite public circles for most of his life, his personal style, rhetoric and attitude
towards fellow elites has served to alienate Trump from many. Thus, there is a desire on the
part of the mainstream media to expose a scandal surrounding Trump in a manner that would be
unthinkable in respect of exposing a cause less popular among western elites, for example the
brutal treatment of Palestine by the Zionist regime.
In this sense, Trump's own unwillingness or lack of desire to endear himself to fellow
elites and instead present himself as a 'man of the people', might be his penultimate undoing.
His rich former friends are now his rich present day enemies and many ordinary voters will be
completely aghast at his involvement with Cambridge Analytica, just as many Republicans who
voted for Nixon, became converts to the anti-Nixon movement once the misdeeds and dishonesty of
Richard Nixon were made public. Many might well leave the 'Trump train' and get on board the
'political ethics express'.
Conclusion
This scandal ultimately has nothing to do with one's opinion on Trump or his policies, let
alone any of the other politicians who have hired Cambridge Analytica. The issue is that a
company engaged in the most nefarious, dangerous, sleazy and wicked behaviour in the world, is
profiting from their destruction of political institutions that ought to be based on open
policy debates rather than public manipulation, brainwashing and artificial intelligence.
The issue is also one of privacy. 50 million people have been exploited by an unethical
company and what's more is that the money from the Trump campaign helped to empower this
unethical company. This is therefore as unfair to non-voters as it is to voters. Cambridge
Analytica must be shut down and all companies like it must restrict the scope of their
operations or else face the same consequence.
"... All this speech to stifle speech comes in reaction to the first publication in the start of WikiLeaks' "Vault 7" series. Vault 7 has begun publishing evidence of remarkable CIA incompetence and other shortcomings. This includes the agency's creation, at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, of an entire arsenal of cyber viruses and hacking programs -- over which it promptly lost control and then tried to cover up the loss. These publications also revealed the CIA's efforts to infect the public's ubiquitous consumer products and automobiles with computer viruses. ..."
"... President Theodore Roosevelt understood the danger of giving in to those "foolish or traitorous persons who endeavor to make it a crime to tell the truth about the Administration when the Administration is guilty of incompetence or other shortcomings." Such "endeavor is itself a crime against the nation," Roosevelt wrote. President Trump and his officials should heed that advice ..."
Mike Pompeo, in his first speech as director of the CIA, chose to declare war on free speech
rather than on the United States' actual adversaries. He went after WikiLeaks, where I serve as
editor, as a "non-state hostile intelligence service." In Pompeo's worldview, telling the truth
about the administration can be a crime -- as Attorney General Jeff Sessions quickly
underscored when he described my arrest as a "priority." News organizations reported that
federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring charges against members of WikiLeaks,
possibly including conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage
Act.
All this speech to stifle speech comes in reaction to the first publication in the start
of WikiLeaks' "Vault 7" series. Vault 7 has begun publishing evidence of remarkable CIA
incompetence and other shortcomings. This includes the agency's creation, at a cost of billions
of taxpayer dollars, of an entire arsenal of cyber viruses and hacking programs -- over which
it promptly lost control and then tried to cover up the loss. These publications also revealed
the CIA's efforts to infect the public's ubiquitous consumer products and automobiles with
computer viruses.
When the director of the CIA, an unelected public servant, publicly demonizes a publisher
such as WikiLeaks as a "fraud," "coward" and "enemy," it puts all journalists on notice, or
should. Pompeo's next talking point, unsupported by fact, that WikiLeaks is a "non-state
hostile intelligence service," is a dagger aimed at Americans' constitutional right to receive
honest information about their government. This accusation mirrors attempts throughout history
by bureaucrats seeking, and failing, to criminalize speech that reveals their own failings.
President Theodore Roosevelt understood the danger of giving in to those "foolish or
traitorous persons who endeavor to make it a crime to tell the truth about the Administration
when the Administration is guilty of incompetence or other shortcomings." Such "endeavor is
itself a crime against the nation," Roosevelt wrote. President Trump and his officials should
heed that advice .
Interesting information Guccifer II. He falsified the evidence.
Follow the money. Along with a smoke screen for Hillary political fiasco, Russiagate is a swindle to get more money for intelligence
agencies and MIC. For about 15 companies who run the US foreign policy.
Notable quotes:
"... The CIA and NSA, and other intelligence agencies all work on behalf of these corporate entities. There main objective is to keep us all uninformed and dumber than a bag of hammers, so they can extort all the wealth from our great nation ..."
"... If this video won't stop the brainless McCarthyist regressives from knowing the truth about Russiagate, nothing will. And I mean absolutely nothing. Except maybe if they come here to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NYC. We got lots of Russian immigrants here and they are just normal people ..."
"... Russiagate is an excuse to spend more on the military. Wow- surprising, yet somehow not surprising. American Empire is the biggest destabilizing force in the world ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 is the United States government. Either the CIA, FBI, NSA or DHS. I'd say it was the CIA with the NSA being a close second ..."
Also, when did Russian hackers become so stupid? Since when has the GRU being unable to get even the basics like the up to
date email list for the Clinton campaign, started using two-year-old obsolete malware instead of 0-day exploits, completely forgetting
that VPN's exist and how to spoof an IP address, and on and on and on. These aren't the guys who cloned Nasdaq!
Thank you jimmy so much for doing this interview and thank you Bill Binney for so clearly explaining the technical and structural
reasons why Russiagate is both false and ceaselessly pushed. Amazing interview!
My experience working on the Mississippi democratic party executive committee, the Hinds county Executive committee, and working
for the state employees union here in Mississippi has educated me on the fact that democratic reps and republican reps work together
to pass legislation to benefit the corporate class i.e. business. All you who have replied to my comment make sense, but we must
remember that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republician parties, they all work for their corporate masters.
The CIA and NSA, and other intelligence agencies all work on behalf of these corporate entities. There main objective is
to keep us all uninformed and dumber than a bag of hammers, so they can extort all the wealth from our great nation. In other
words they our commiting treason upon the American people and our constitution and all should be through in prison for the rest
of their lives and all ill-gotten wealth given back to the people of these great nation by rebuilding the infrastructure of America,
investing in the education of our people to secure a prosperous future, and provide healthcare for all Americans. We can ensure
this happens in two ways, pass the 28th amendment and pass FDR's 2nd bill of rights(worker's bill of rights). This will ensure
that corporations will never take control of our country again.
Can we please now move onto whom the person was that stole the data from the DNC? Can I take a stab in the dark (or maybe two
shots to the back of the head?) and guess his name was Seth Rich?
I know I commented this already in the last segment, but this guy is absolutely awesome. Everything he says is substantial,
non-speculative and supported by facts. You're becoming a proper journalist Jimmy. More of people like this please. I got my credit
card again. I will donate shortly. Keep up.
As long as they keep lying about Russia they can continue the sanctions against Russia. Russia is holding it's own even with
the sanctions but originally under Putin Russia had paid off all it's debt to the IMF (World Bank). Now their debt is increasing,
partly because of the sanctions and partly because of helping Syria and preparing for the US to cause a great war. Russia is a
threat to the IMF (World Bank). Russia and China want trade outside of the Petrol Dollar. When Russia was debt free from the IMF
(World Bank) it was completely independent of them. Russia did not have to take orders from the international bankers. That is
why they lie about Russia.
If this video won't stop the brainless McCarthyist regressives from knowing the truth about Russiagate, nothing will. And
I mean absolutely nothing. Except maybe if they come here to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NYC. We got lots of Russian immigrants
here and they are just normal people.
Russiagate is an excuse to spend more on the military. Wow- surprising, yet somehow not surprising. American Empire is
the biggest destabilizing force in the world
As I tried to tell you the previous time you had referenced the "conclusions" of the CIA groups, this data nonsense he is handwaving
about is all quite feasible, by using a nearby national server, and much skepticism is deserved! Also he doesn't seem to know
what he is talking about, from all of the paraphrasing.
I am also quite reminded of the psychological incorporation into personal behaviors by habit of the standards and policies
of the industry or professional standards, which for the US Intelligence community includes an explicit policy of disinformation
and dishonesty.
How the hell would the NSA's "man in the middle" logging servers see that the transfer occurs to a local USB2 drive (he assumes
this is the case because 40 megabytes per second is approximately the rate of the USB2 protocol of 400 megabits per second...
Very few USB flash drives were manufactured with solid state storage chips fast enough to reach that full transfer rate before
the widespread adoption of USB3, or the modern USB3.1. Essentially, your chosen headline title is a false clickbait, because as
of today there is insufficient evidence to draw ANY conclusion
Just as they smeared Joe Wilson & his wife, and other great Courageous Americans that came out AGAINST the invasion of Iraq!
Until we start DEMANDING those LIARS leave their seats in Washington, put on the Military Gear, and GO to the Countries they want
to invade! I am past FED UP with them sacrificing our Troops, they return home to be MISTREATED, and kicked to the curb! Americans,
wake up and DEMAND that they GO!
A very interesting interview. It is almost one year old.
When intelligence agencies use the phase "with high confidence" means that they do not have evidence. This is one of
the biggest lie intelligence agencies resort to. They are all professional liars and should be treated as such.
If DNC email offloading was done over Internet (which means it was a hack not an internal leak) NSA should have the direct evidence.
They do not. So this is a progpaganda move by Brennan and Clapper to unleash MSM witch hunt, which is a key part of the color revolution
against Trump.
Another question is who downloaded this information to Wikileaks. Here NSA also should have evidence. And again they do not.
They have already to direct attention from the main issues. Oversight of intelligence agencies is joke. They can lie with impunity.
BTW NSA has all Hillary emails, including deleted.
He also exposes the NSA penchant for "swindles", such as preventing the plugging of holes in software around the world, to preserve
their spying access.
It's almost comical to hear that they lie to each other. No wonder why these retards in the mid-east and every other third
world country gets the better of us.
The Clinton campaign to divert attention to Russia instead of her myriad of crimes that were revealed during the election must
be stopped and the alt media needs to start talking about her and Obama's crimes again and demand justice...control the dialogue
This is really a "soft coup", a color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages does incalculably more damage than that. ..."
"... We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State. ..."
"... More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate. ..."
"... But the main casualty is the FBI's 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama administration's Russia-gate intelligence "assessment," electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets ..."
"... Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for "evidence" of Russian-Trump collusion designed to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call "means, motive and opportunity ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly "hacked" Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario. ..."
"... on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that he said was compiled by "hand-picked" analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an "assessment" that Russia and President Putin were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency. ..."
"... Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking. He wrote at the time: "What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to 'trust us.'" ..."
"... Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free "assessment" was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian "hack." Even when that falsehood was belatedly acknowledged , the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the Russian "hack" conclusion. Shane's blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media's approved narrative of Russia-gate. ..."
"... Doubts about the Russian "hack" or dissident suggestions that what we were witnessing was a "soft coup" were scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about the weaknesses of the Russia-gate narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit of the goal of removing Trump from the White House. ..."
"... Justified or not, Trump's feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous -- particularly at a time when the most urgent need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals. ..."
"... On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of the Resistance's strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to "get Trump." ..."
"... Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment's storyline that there appears to be no room for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can't stop stoking the smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump's impeachment. ..."
"... Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of the "rule of law" and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the "rule of law" and "pursuit of truth" appear to have been reduced to high-falutin' phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack of evidence. ..."
"... In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page text-message exchange and told Mueller ..."
"... At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily cozy role as "overlook" committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today's technology permits blanket collection, and "Collect Everything" has become the motto. ..."
"... Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with almost four decades of membership in the House and Senate, openly warned incoming President Trump in January 2017 against criticizing the U.S. intelligence community because U.S. intelligence officials have "six ways from Sunday to get back at you" if you are "dumb" enough to take them on. ..."
"... If congressional investigators have been paying attention, they already know what former weapons inspector Scott Ritter shared with Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues this week; namely, that Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson, who commissioned the Russia dossier using Democratic Party money, said he reached out to Steele after June 17, just three days before Steele's first report was published , drawing on seven sources. ..."
"... How, you might ask, could Strzok and associates undertake these extra-legal steps with such blithe disregard for the possible consequences should they be caught? The answer is easy; Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? This was just extra insurance with no expectation of any "death benefit" ever coming into play -- save for Trump's electoral demise in November 2016. The attitude seemed to be that, if abuse of the FISA law should eventually be discovered -- there would be little interest in a serious investigation by the editors of The New York Times and other anti-Trump publications and whatever troubles remained could be handled by President Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... As you know Mr. McGovern the police state seldom loses. ..."
"... Compared to the criminal and corrupt US political system, the mafia is an honor society oriented on values. More and more evidence appears that the whole Russian Gate was precooked by the Obama and Clinton mafia together with crooks like Clapper, Brennan, Comey. Lynch and many of the top brass in the FBI and the DoJ. The installment of Bob Mueller who is hugely biased and a Comey body hired only Clinton supporters as his lawyers. But such a team shows how corrupt the US justice system has already become. ..."
"... Considering all the experience gleaned from 7+ decades of subverting and overthrowing governments around the world, the Deep State thugs must of thought securing the WH for their Killer Queen was a 'slam dunk.' ..."
"... The FBI answers to the CIA. This essay is absurd. ..."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin's
"puppet.
Special Report: In the Watergate era, liberals warned about U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics, but now
Trump-hatred has blinded many of them to this danger becoming real, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.
Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate, thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence
official Peter Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Ten illustrative texts from their exchange appear at the
end of this article.)
Despite his former job as chief of the FBI's counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones
could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through "Surity 101." Or perhaps he was busy texting during that class. Girlfriend Page
cannot be happy at being misled by his assurance that using office phones would be a secure way to conduct their affair(s).
It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing
the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest
of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages
does incalculably more damage than that.
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S.
democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not
the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters
sometimes called the Deep State.
More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly
has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate.
Besides forcing the removal of Strzok and Page, the text exposures also sounded the death knell for the career of FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, in whose office some of the plotting took place and who has already announced his plans to retire soon.
But the main casualty is the FBI's 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama
administration's Russia-gate intelligence "assessment," electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that
could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest
advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets.
Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand
evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for "evidence" of Russian-Trump collusion designed
to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to
keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call "means, motive and opportunity."
Even more unfortunately for Russia-gate enthusiasts, the FBI lovers' correspondence provides factual evidence exposing much of
the made-up "Resistance" narrative – the contrived storyline that The New York Times and much of the rest of the U.S. mainstream
media deemed fit to print with little skepticism and few if any caveats, a scenario about brilliantly devious Russians that not only
lacks actual evidence – relying on unverified hearsay and rumor – but doesn't make sense on its face.
The Russia-gate narrative always hinged on the preposterous notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw years ago what
no American political analyst considered even possible, the political ascendancy of Donald Trump. According to the narrative, the
fortune-telling Putin then risked creating even worse tensions with a nuclear-armed America that would – by all odds – have been
led by a vengeful President Hillary Clinton.
Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly "hacked"
Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to
use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario.
The Trump Shock
But the shock of Trump's election and the decision of many never-Trumpers to cast their lot with the Resistance led to a situation
in which any prudent skepticism or demand for evidence was swept aside.
So, on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that
he said was compiled by "hand-picked" analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an "assessment" that Russia and President Putin
were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency.
Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking.
He wrote
at the time: "What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence
to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies
essentially amounts to 'trust us.'"
But the "assessment" served a useful purpose for the never-Trumpers: it applied an official imprimatur on the case for delegitimizing
Trump's election and even raised the long-shot hope that the Electoral College might reverse the outcome and possibly install a compromise
candidate, such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the White House. Though the Powell ploy fizzled, the hope of somehow
removing Trump from office continued to bubble, fueled by the growing hysteria around Russia-gate.
Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free "assessment" was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record
repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian "hack." Even when that
falsehood was belatedly
acknowledged , the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the
Russian "hack" conclusion. Shane's blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media's approved
narrative of Russia-gate.
Doubts about the Russian "hack" or dissident suggestions that what we were
witnessing was a "soft coup" were
scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about
the weaknesses of the Russia-gate
narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit
of the goal of removing Trump from the White House.
It didn't even seem to matter when new
Russia-gate disclosures conflicted
with the original narrative
that Putin had somehow set Trump up as a Manchurian candidate. All normal journalistic skepticism was jettisoned. It was as if the
Russia-gate advocates started with the conclusion that Trump must go and then made the facts fit into that mold, but anyone who noted
the violations of normal investigative procedures was dismissed as a "Trump enabler" or a "Moscow stooge."
The Text Evidence
But then came the FBI text messages, providing documentary evidence that key FBI officials involved in the Russia-gate investigation
were indeed deeply biased and out to get Trump, adding hard proof to Trump's longstanding lament that he was the subject of a "witch
hunt ."
Peter Strzok, who served as a Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, second in command of counterintelligence.
Justified or not, Trump's feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous -- particularly at a time when the most urgent
need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche
to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of
the Resistance's strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to "get Trump."
Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment's storyline that there appears to be no room
for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can't stop stoking the
smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump's impeachment.
Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of
the "rule of law" and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the "rule of law" and "pursuit
of truth" appear to have been reduced to high-falutin' phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans
in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack
of evidence.
Strzok and Page
Peter Strzok (pronounced "struck") has an interesting pedigree with multiple tasks regarding both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.
As the FBI's chief of counterespionage during the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unauthorized use of
a personal email server for classified information, Strzok reportedly changed the words "grossly negligent" (which could have triggered
legal prosecution) to the far less serious "extremely careless" in FBI Director James Comey's depiction of Clinton's actions. This
semantic shift cleared the way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that
"no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton.
Then, as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, Strzok led the FBI's investigation into alleged Russian
interference in the U.S. election of 2016. It is a safe bet that he took a strong hand in hand-picking the FBI contingent of analysts
that joined "hand-picked" counterparts from CIA and NSA in preparing the evidence-free, Jan. 6, 2017 assessment accusing Russian
President Vladimir Putin of interfering in the election of 2016. (Although accepted in Establishment groupthink as revealed truth,
that poor excuse for analysis reflected the apogee of intelligence politicization -- rivaled only by the fraudulent intelligence
on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq 15 years ago.)
In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible
links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page
text-message exchange and told Mueller.
There is no little irony in the fact that what did in the FBI sweathearts was their visceral disdain for Mr. Trump, their cheerleading-cum-kid-gloves
treatment of Mrs. Clinton and her associates, their 1950-ish, James Clapperesque attitude toward Russians as "almost genetically
driven" to evil, and their (Strzok/Page) elitist conviction that they know far better what is good for the country than regular American
citizens, including those "deplorables" whom Clinton said made up half of Trump's supporters.
But Strzok/Page had no idea that their hubris, elitism and scheming would be revealed in so tangible a way. Worst of all for them,
the very thing that Strzok, in particular, worked so hard to achieve -- the sabotaging of Trump and immunization of Mrs. Clinton
and her closest advisers is now coming apart at the seams.
Congress: Oversee? or Overlook?
At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily
cozy role as "overlook" committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The
latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including
J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today's
technology permits blanket collection, and "Collect Everything" has become the motto.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with almost four decades of membership in the House and Senate, openly warned incoming President
Trump in January 2017 against criticizing the U.S. intelligence community because U.S. intelligence officials have "six ways from
Sunday to get back at you" if you are "dumb" enough to take them on.
Thanks to the almost 10,000 text messages between Strzok and Page, only a small fraction of which were given to Congress four
weeks ago, there is now real evidentiary meat on the bones of the suspicions that there indeed was a "deep-state coup" to "correct"
the outcome of the 2016 election. We now know that the supposedly apolitical FBI officials had huge political axes to grind. The
Strzok-Page exchanges drip with disdain for Trump and those deemed his smelly deplorable supporters. In one text message, Strzok
expressed visceral contempt for those working-class Trump voters, writing on Aug. 26, 2016, "Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart.
I could SMELL the Trump support. it's scary real down here."
The texts even show Strzok warning of the need for an "insurance policy" to thwart Trump on the off-chance that his poll numbers
closed in on those of Mrs. Clinton.
An Aug. 6, 2016 text message, for example, shows Page giving her knight in shining armor strong affirmation: "Maybe you're meant
to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace [Trump]." That text to Strzok includes a link
to a David Brooks
column
in The New York Times, in which Brooks concludes with the clarion call: "There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become
dishonorable. If you're not in revolt, you're in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids
will look away in shame."
Another text message shows that other senior government officials – alarmed at the possibility of a Trump presidency – joined
the discussion. In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on
Aug. 15, 2016, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he [Trump] gets
elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." Strzok added, "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die
before you're 40."
Insurance Policy?
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says he will ask Strzok to explain the "insurance policy" when he calls
him to testify. What seems already clear is that the celebrated "Steele Dossier" was part of the "insurance," as was the evidence-less
legend that Russia hacked
the DNC's and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails and
gave them to WikiLeaks .
If congressional investigators have been paying attention, they already know what former weapons inspector Scott Ritter shared
with Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues this week; namely, that Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson, who commissioned
the Russia dossier using Democratic Party money, said he reached out to Steele after June 17, just three days before Steele's
first report was published
, drawing on seven sources.
"There is a snowball's chance in hell that this is raw intelligence gathered by Steele; rather he seems to have drawn on a single
'trusted intermediary' to gather unsubstantiated rumor already in existence."
Another VIPS colleague, Phil Giraldi, writing out of his own experience in private sector consulting, added: "The fact that you
do not control your sources frequently means that they will feed you what they think you want to hear. Since they are only doing
it for money, the more lurid the details the better, as it increases the apparent value of the information. The private security
firm in turn, which is also doing it for the money, will pass on the stories and even embroider them to keep the client happy and
to encourage him to come back for more. When I read the Steele dossier it looked awfully familiar to me, like the scores of similar
reports I had seen which combined bullshit with enough credible information to make the whole product look respectable."
It is now widely known that the Democrats ponied up the "insurance premiums," so to speak, for former British intelligence officer
Christopher Steele's "dossier" of lurid -- but largely unproven -- "intelligence" on Trump and the Russians. If, as many have concluded,
the dossier was used to help justify a FISA warrant to snoop on the Trump campaign, those involved will be in deep kimchi, if congressional
overseers do their job.
How, you might ask, could Strzok and associates undertake these extra-legal steps with such blithe disregard for the possible
consequences should they be caught? The answer is easy; Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? This was just extra insurance with
no expectation of any "death benefit" ever coming into play -- save for Trump's electoral demise in November 2016. The attitude seemed
to be that, if abuse of the FISA law should eventually be discovered -- there would be little interest in a serious investigation
by the editors of The New York Times and other anti-Trump publications and whatever troubles remained could be handled by President
Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee of Judiciary on Crime and Terrorism, joined Sen.
Grassley in signing the letter referring Christopher Steele to the Justice Department to investigate what appear to be false statements
about the dossier. In signing, Graham noted the "many stop signs the Department of Justice ignored in its use of the dossier." The
signature of committee ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, however, was missing -- an early sign that a highly partisan
battle royale is in the offing. On Tuesday, Feinstein unilaterally released a voluminous transcript of Glenn Simpson's earlier testimony
and, as though on cue, Establishment pundits portrayed Steele as a good source and Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson as a victim.
The Donnybrook is now underway; the outcome uncertain.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.
He was an Army and CIA intelligence analyst for 30 years; prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan;
and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Thanks for the article, Mr. McGovern. I sure wish this could be published where some liberal eyeballs could get a look at it.
I would also be interested in your opinion on the strange stuff found in some of the John Podesta emails. Although I can understand
why you may not want to swim in those murky waters.
The world is controlled by Corporate Fascist Military Industrial Intelligence Police States. They will pick the leaders of the
world and no one will tell the differently. This FBI scandal goes through all the intelligence agencies and begins with Obama
who basically runs the government in his "third term." This entire election was rigged by Dems starting with the exclusion of
Sanders. Unfortunately, for the Dems their plan failed because Hillary was such a terrible candidate. If this is not brought out
in the open we will never have a chance of getting a legitimate candidate again.
As you know Mr. McGovern the police state seldom loses.
An excellent, factual summary. (And, in light of the last two weeks, prescient.) This is true journalism, long gone from the rotten
husks of what used to be known as the Press.
But the passages about Mr. Strzok helping to alter Mr. Comey's letter picked a scab: Why is there such widespread acceptance
of the notion that Mrs. Clinton can not now be charged? I don't believe that Mr. McGovern shares that notion, other than seeing
how immunizing people, etc., makes her prosecution more difficult. But many Americans on each "side" seem to see Mr. Comey's exercise
of what was Mrs. Lynch's discretion to begin with as the equivalent of a Presidential pardon. In the meantime, applicable statutes
of limitation run
The more sunlight, the better. But before getting your hopes up about any of this hullabaloo, or expecting any change in how
the USG functions, go back and look for those pictures of Mr. Trump golfing with Mr. Clinton, the Clintons at his wedding(s),
etc.
Compared to the criminal and corrupt US political system, the mafia is an honor society oriented on values. More and more
evidence appears that the whole Russian Gate was precooked by the Obama and Clinton mafia together with crooks like Clapper, Brennan,
Comey. Lynch and many of the top brass in the FBI and the DoJ. The installment of Bob Mueller who is hugely biased and a Comey
body hired only Clinton supporters as his lawyers. But such a team shows how corrupt the US justice system has already become.
The mainstream media are involved in this witch hunt against Trump from the very beginning. Perhaps some of its bog shots were
even paid for fabricated political reporting. The NYT, the Post, CNN, MSNBC and all the other so-called opinion leaders spread
fake news and kept the legend of "Russian collusion" going over a year, despite presenting not a single piece of evidence. Their
task was to manipulate and brainwash the American public.
Just listen to this interview. One understands what was and still is going on in this crooked US political system.
" thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence official Peter
Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page."
Despite the efforts to destroy a significant part of the data trail. You know, in the good old days, evidence of the affair
would be enough for their clearances to be revoked, and use of Government telecomms for such purposes would be grounds for firing.
Don't know what Sessions is waiting for, but this bubba would like some red meat already. For that matter, he should have told
Mueller where to put his subpeona. Sessions really is an empty suit.
Well in reality it began with Bush the Stupid and his remark that the Constitution was only a GD piece of paper and promptly
tore it up,and as long as we continue to have the best government "money can buy" nothing will change,anymore than it will change
under Trump, as he switches from the war on terror to the war on competitors (Russia and China)and world domination and its resources..
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the
U.S. democratic process.
Considering all the experience gleaned from 7+ decades of subverting and overthrowing governments around the world, the
Deep State thugs must of thought securing the WH for their Killer Queen was a 'slam dunk.' My believe is that Trump actually
got around 70% of the vote, a number that overwhelmed their computerized vote fixing.
All the grief, misery and destruction we've visited upon nations around the world is now coming back to haunt Americans. Only
part missing is the violent overthrow or assassination of a leader and don't put the Deep State thugs beyond that.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte
blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans.
This looks like a disingenuous conflation of Trump (and his handful of presumably more or less dependable allies/minions) with
the Ryan-Koch- US Chamber of Commerce GOP establishment. Despite what Jeff Flake says, he's not a dictator, so he has to make
concessions to the donor class-controlled wing of the party. This stuff is so obvious I'm embarrassed as I type it out.
Keep right on sucking up that kool-aid,the economy has an up-tick because of government spending, which of course will add
another $1.7 trillion (per David Stockman Reagan's budget directer) to the debt that you just wished onto your children,g children
and their children (ain't you proud/) and lol if you believe those government figures on the unemployment stats than you must
believe in the tooth fairy,and of course along with those bonuses comes the lay-offs, a thousand here a thousand there (on the
Lay-off list) as the work is out sourced to other countries,meanwhile a few more billion goes to the military/industrial group.Ah
yes utopia at last,well while it last that is .
"It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing
the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the
rest of us."
True One of the first thoughts I had was that these were, at most, highschool level communications. To think this is 'high
level' government in action is, at once, amusing and disturbing.
Now, many companies are cutting corners by using "contract workers" on a temporary basis.
Concur all, but this especially. In the DC area starting with the internet boom and dot.com busts of the late 90s, Indians
started coming in and all of a sudden, everyone in IT and computer technologies was being replaced with a contract. After spending
years getting certs and continuously upgrading skills and certs, people were ruined with imported contractors. It started at FannyMae
and Freddie Mac, the entire board and hierarchy there read like the New Delhi phone book for twenty years now. Between the Chins
and Indians, there's been an enormous overclass installed and it's not going anywhere. Someone here recently wrote an article
about it but it isn't recent. With the handwriting on the wall so long ago, I gave up chasing Microsoft certs and contracts and
went back to analog phone systems and infrastructure and electrical, but I saw a lot of people that tried to follow the professional
IT path ruined. Throw in the racial and sexual politics in the offices and the environment is pretty miserable anyway..
Pretty bad as is, but with AI coming about, whole classes of Democrat folks unconcerned with immigration will be replaced by
Bots of all sorts, making the immigration hardships look like Disney World.
"Strzok reportedly changed the words "grossly negligent" (which could have triggered legal prosecution) to the far less
serious "extremely careless" in FBI Director James Comey's depiction of Clinton's actions. This semantic shift cleared the
way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that "no reasonable prosecutor"
would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton."
It's a thin line between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness." While "gross negligence" usually involves unintentional
acts, they can border on intentional conduct by the very recklessness of the activity. A senior government moving vast amounts
of classified data on unsecured networks can't begin to assert she didn't know the risks she was taking. Semantics here are irrelevant:
The substance of the law is that HRC was grossly negligent.
As a seasoned lawyer, Comey would know that a prosecutor could very reasonably equate the two and charge on a violation of
18 USC 793 (Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information) There are a couple paragraphs that could be applied, but (f)
looks most likely. The mere act of storing classified data on a personal server could also be a violation of 18 USC 798 (Disclosure
of classified information). Destroying the same data might also be charged as violations of the 2009 Federal Records Act, and
there is plenty of reason to pursue the limb of Obstruction of Justice in light of the other serious charges that could reasonably
be made.
In order to be credible, justice must be seen to be done. The longer Sessions and Trump let this charade go uninvestigated
for fear that investigating it looks overtly political, the more political it actually becomes, and the less credible the rule
of law in America becomes ("Laws and regulations are for the little people!)
The deep state coup was the appointment of Trump or it could have been Clinton. You have no choice when you vote. The work of
retired spooks like McGovern is to convince you that you live in a Democracy where voting matters. There's no evidence that voting
serves anyone other than appearances for the ruling elite.
The FBI is an inherently political organization. I would expect the FBI to tweet things like " that motherfucker is goin' down"
or "fuck her" or "Orange son of a bitch, let's make some noise" or more racist "those nigger motherfuckers in the city" or "think
you're anonymous on the internet lil'boy?" Those would be the tweets of the FBI that we all know and love.
This interference into a presidential election by an agency such as the FBI raises the question of whether there's been manipulation
of other previous elections. Were some of our previous presidents installed through machinations of an intelligence agency?
Sure they are these companies and corporations are saving millions upon millions due to Trump and the republicans, while throwing
a few crumbs to the workers who are suppose to lick their hands, many who only make $10-$11 dollars per hour, and seeing they
are bonuses the government will take more than their share, and down the road these same workers will be paying it back in spades
,after all someone has to fund the military/industrial racket
Trump needs to be impeached. The entire Government is a bad bit of fiction, why not use the symbolic figure head of empire to
generate excitement in the mass of American sheep? To that end, throw up any accusation that will stick, make it sound like a
Constitutional crisis but simple enough for the average begrudged redneck to understand. The FBI has an agenda, what part of the
Government doesn't? The whole point of elections is to have different groups employ every tactic under the sun to manipulate said
sheep. Let's get the impeachment show started.
This whole affair also totally destroys the G-Man mythos. From the outside Strzok looks the part. Yet both he and Page write texts
like they're particularly dim 20 year old girls.
Strzok – God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.
Page– I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Page – He's not ever going to become president, right? Right?!
Strzok – OMG did you hear what Trump just said?
Page – Yep. Out to lunch with (redacted) We both hate everyone and everything.
Page – Just riffing on the hot mess that is our country.
Strzok– Donald just said "bad hombres"
This is the level of discourse (Of course this could just be a biased sample to humiliate Strzok but leave the really bad conspiring
out of frame) he has with his mistress on an FBI phone as he plans dirty tricks on his own country?
The sad part will be to see how they will all, one after the other, get away with everything they've done.
If any of them will even go to trial for anything other than some procedural point, they'll all make a deal with DC-Democratic
prosecutors, Hollywood will make a film casting them as heroes and they'll all get a slap on the wrist, a la Petraeus.
The politicians will claim that they have to hide the truth so that the public will not loose their 'trust' in these institutions,
they'll name some RINO as the 'compromise' candidate to lead these institutions and it'll be back to business as usual in the
heart of the empire, as in all previous times, see James Bovard's article:
Page– I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Such vacuous shallowness, imagining themselves to be the heroes of some cheap Hollywood movie, not even suspecting how 2 dimensional,
delusional, and sophomoric it all sounds (of course, it only sound moronic because we found out about it before the plan reach
its planned conclusion).
After 14 years of non-stop wars and mass murder, we find out the empire is run by the cheerleading squad, motivating each other
with high fives while trying to take 'democracy' down. Still, I suspect there were adults at table also who mad sure to say one
step out of the spotlight.
"It's a thin line between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness." "
Not in the context of legal language. In fact, it's a great divide. "Extremely careless" is not a federal criminal charge,
while "gross negligence" actually is. Never mind about the difference in degree when speaking of the two terms, one is a crime,
and the other is merely grounds for an investigation.
The is a single party of neoliberal oligarchy with two wings. Both are afraid of citizens and would like to sly on them.
Notable quotes:
"... Despite being in the minority, Democrats last week had enough Republican votes on their side to curb the president's ability, enhanced since 9/11, to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike. ..."
"... In the House, a majority of Democrats were willing to join a small minority of Republicans to do just that. But 55 Democrats – including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi; the minority whip, Steny Hoyer; and other Democratic leaders of the opposition to Trump – refused. ..."
"... After the House voted for an extension of the president's power to spy, a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans attempted to filibuster the bill. The critical 60th vote to shut down the filibuster was a Democrat. ..."
"... This is despite the fact that the surveillance bill gives precisely the sorts of powers viewers of an Academy Award-winning film about the Stasi from not long so ago ..."
"... Pelosi: 'We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted to Enable Them' ..."
"... But in the same way that discourse of authoritarianism misses the democratic forest for the anti-democratic tweets, so does it focus more on the rhetoric of an abusive man than the infrastructure of an oppressive state, more on the erosion of norms than the material instruments of repression. ..."
You'd think that Democrats in Congress would jump at the opportunity to impose a constraint on Donald Trump's presidency – one
that liberals and Democrats alike have characterized as authoritarian. Apparently, that's not the case.
Despite being in the minority, Democrats last week had enough Republican votes on their side to curb the president's ability,
enhanced since 9/11, to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike.
In the House, a majority of Democrats were willing to join a small minority of Republicans to do just that. But 55 Democrats
– including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi; the minority whip, Steny Hoyer; and other Democratic leaders of the opposition to
Trump – refused.
After the House voted for an extension of the president's power to spy, a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans
attempted to filibuster the bill. The critical 60th vote to shut down the filibuster was a Democrat.
With the exception of Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, a press that normally expresses great alarm over Trump's amassing and
abuse of power has had relatively little to say about this vote (or this vote or this vote).
This is despite the fact that the surveillance bill gives precisely the sorts of powers viewers of an Academy Award-winning
film about the Stasi from not long so ago would instantly recognize to a president whose view of the media a leading Republican
recently compared to Stalin.
It was left to the Onion to offer the best (and near only) comment:
Pelosi: 'We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted to Enable Them'
Last week, I wrote in these pages how the discourse of Trump's authoritarianism ignores or minimizes the ways in which democratic
citizens and institutions – the media, the courts, the opposition party, social movements – are opposing Trump, with seemingly little
fear of intimidation.
But in the same way that discourse of authoritarianism misses the democratic forest for the anti-democratic tweets, so does
it focus more on the rhetoric of an abusive man than the infrastructure of an oppressive state, more on the erosion of norms than
the material instruments of repression.
What a bombshell! Finally some truth about the "Justice system" in the US.
Following on from this should be the whole subsequent story of the DNC-Fusion-Steele dossier in detail, exposing the MSM too
for what it has been worth.
Perhaps then Trump dares to go against the deep state swamp and stop wars instead of following the dictates of CIA, Israel and
Military Industrialists. That would be a real POTUS PLUS result.
""It's troubling. It is shocking," North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows said. "Part of me wishes that I didn't read it because
I don't want to believe that those kinds of things could be happening in this country that I call home and love so much.""
***
Come on, child! Enough with that spectacle. Get real. Have the basic courage to know and to admit what everybody has known
about your country for ages!... The entire world already knows.
More proof, if any were needed, that the only threat to the people of the USA comes from their own government. The 'external
threat' is a fiction calculated to enslave the US population and enrich the Oligarchy.
Somebody's going to leak this in short order. Let's take a real look at what both Dems and Repubs just expanded, let's look
at the monster they are feeding in broad daylight.
"... Sally Yates essentially said 'all DOJ is subject to oversight, except the National Security Division'. ..."
"... In short, FISA "queries" from any national security department within government are allowed without seeking court approval. ..."
"... We know NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers became aware of an issue with unauthorized FISA-702(17) " About Queries " early in 2016. As a result of a FISA court ruling declassified in May of 2017 we were able to piece a specific timeline together. ..."
"... At the same time Christopher Steele was assembling his dossier information (May-October 2016), the NSA compliance officer was conducting an internal FISA-702 review as initiated by NSA Director Mike Rogers. The NSA compliance officer briefed Admiral Mike Rogers on October 20th 2016. On October 26th 2016, Admiral Rogers informed the FISA Court of numerous unauthorized FISA-702(17) "About Query" violations. Subsequent to that FISC notification Mike Rogers stopped all FISA-702(17) "About Queries" permanently . They are no longer permitted. ..."
"... Mike Rogers discovery becomes the impetus for him to request the 2016 full NSA compliance audit of FISA-702 use. It appears Fusion-GPS was the FBI contracted user identified in the final FISA court opinion/ruling on page 83. ..."
"... What plan came from that April 19th,2016 White House meeting? What plan did Mary Jacoby and Glenn Simpson present to use the information they had assembled? How and who would they feed their information to; and how do they best use that 'valuable' information? This appears to be where Fusion-GPS contracting with Christopher Steele comes in. ..."
"... Contacted by Fox News, investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) confirmed that Nellie H. Ohr, wife of the demoted official, Bruce G. Ohr, worked for the opposition research firm last year. ..."
"... The precise nature of Mrs. Ohr's duties – including whether she worked on the dossier – remains unclear but a review of her published works available online reveals Mrs. Ohr has written extensively on Russia-related subjects. HPSCI staff confirmed to Fox News that she was paid by Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016. ( link ) ..."
"... DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie Ohr had a prior working relationship with Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Together they worked on a collaborative CIA Open Source group project surrounding International Organized Crime. ( pdf here ) Page #30 Screen Shot Below . ..."
"... Nellie Ohr is a subject matter expert on Russia, speaks Russian, and also is well versed on CIA operations. Nellie Ohr's skills would include how to build or create counterintelligence frameworks to give the appearance of events that may be entirely fabricated. ..."
"... Knowing the NSA was reviewing FISA "Queries"; and intellectually accepting the resulting information from those queries was likely part of the framework put together by Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby; we discover that GPS employee Nellie Ohr applied for a HAM radio license [ May 23rd 2016 ] (screen grab below). ..."
"... Accepting the FBI was utilizing Fusion-GPS as a contractor, there is now an inherent clarity in the relationship between: FBI agent Peter Strzok, Fusion-GPS Glenn Simpson, and 'Russian Dossier' author Christopher Steele. They are all on the same team. ..."
"... The information that Fusion-GPS Glenn Simpson put together from his advanced work on the 'Trump Project', was, in essence, built upon the foundation of the close relationship he already had with the FBI. ..."
"... Simpson, Jacoby and Ohr then passed on their information to Christopher Steele who adds his own ingredients to the mix, turns around, and gives the end product back to the FBI. That end product is laundered intelligence now called "The Trump/Russia Dossier". ..."
"... The FBI turn around and use the "dossier" as the underlying documents and investigative evidence for continued operations against the target of the entire enterprise, candidate Donald Trump. As Peter Strzok would say in August 2016: this is their "insurance policy" per se'. ..."
"... In October 2016, immediately after the DOJ lawyers formatted the FBI information (Steele Dossier etc.) for a valid FISA application, the head of the NSD, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin, left his job . His exit came as the NSD and Admiral Rogers informed the FISC that frequent unauthorized FISA-702 searches had been conducted. Read Here . ..."
"... Yes, the FBI was working with Christopher Steele through their contractor Fusion-GPS. Yes, the FBI and Clinton Team were, in essence, both paying Christopher Steele for his efforts. The FBI paid Steele via their sub-contractor Fusion-GPS. ..."
"... Lastly, when the DOJ/FBI used the Steele Dossier to make their 2016 surveillance activity legal (the October FISA application), they are essentially using the outcome of a process they created themselves in collaboration with both Fusion GPS and the Clinton campaign. ..."
"... All research indicates the intelligence information the DOJ and FBI collected via their FISA-702 queries, combined with the intelligence Fusion GPS created in their earlier use of contractor access to FISA-702(17) "about queries", was the intelligence data delivered to Christopher Steele for use in creating "The Russian Dossier". ..."
"... Christopher Steele was just laundering intelligence. The Steele "dossier" was then used by the DOJ to gain FISA-702 approvals – which provided retroactive legal cover for the prior campaign surveillance, and also used post-election to create the "Russian Narrative". ..."
"... The ENTIRE SYSTEM of FISA-702 surveillance and data collection was weaponized against a political campaign. The DOJ and FBI used the FISA Court to gain access to Trump data, and simultaneously justify earlier FISA "queries" by their contractor, Fusion GPS. FISA-702 queries were used to gather information on the Trump campaign which later became FBI counterintelligence surveillance on the officials therein. ..."
Following the released transcript of Fusion-GPS Co-Founder Glenn Simpson's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee
by Senator Dianne Feinstein , several media outlets have begun questioning the relationship between the FBI investigators, Glenn
Simpson and dossier author Christopher Steele.
What we have discovered highlights the answer to those relationship questions; and also answers a host of other questions, including:
Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele? Yes, but now how media has stated. Was the FBI connected to the creation of the Steele Dossier?
Yes, but again, not the way the media is currently outlining.
"... The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein. ..."
"... Binney: We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July. First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know. Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything. ..."
"... The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a charade. It was a download and not a transfer across the Web. The Web won't manage such a high speed. It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed. You would have to have high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us. There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here. ..."
"... Bernstein: Let me come at this from the other side. Has the United States ever tried to hack into and undermine Russian operations in this way? ..."
"... Binney: Oh, sure. We do it as much as anybody else. In the Ukraine, for example, we sponsored regime change. When someone who was pro-Soviet was elected president, we orchestrated a coup to put our man in power. ..."
"... Did the US meddle in the Russian elections that brought Yeltsin to power? ..."
"... I believe they did. We try to leverage our power and influence elections around the world. ..."
"... Binney: Yes, to defend privacy but also to defend the Constitution. Right now, our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways. Mueller did it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution. ..."
"... Bernstein: There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate investigation. It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because the Russians undermined the election. ..."
"... Bernstein: It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election. You're saying it was actually selected individuals from just three agencies. Is there anything to the revelations that FBI agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president? ..."
"... Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a frame-up. It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself internally ..."
"... Bernstein: What concerns do you have regarding the Russia-gate investigation and the McCarthyite tactics that are being employed? ..."
"... Binney: Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars. I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly unconstitutional. ..."
The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked
Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts
say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein.
A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more
skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question
the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support
the dangerous claims about Russian 'hacking" of Democratic emails especially when some veteran
U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were
guilty.
One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency
intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary
breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W.
Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home
in 2007.
Even before Edward Snowden's NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had
access to telecommunications companies' domestic and international billing records, and that
since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden
has said: "I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the
rules."
I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with
spying and America's expanding
national security state.
Dennis Bernstein: I would like you to begin by telling us a little about your background at
the NSA and how you got there.
William Binney: I was in the United States Army from 1965 to 1969. They put me in the
Army Security Agency, an affiliate of the NSA. They liked the work I was doing and they put me
on a priority hire in 1970. I was in the NSA for 32 years, mostly working against the Soviet
Union and the Warsaw Pact. I was solving what were called "wizard puzzles," and the NSA was
sometimes referred to as the "Puzzle Palace." I had to solve code systems and work on cyber
systems and data systems to be able to predict in advance the "intentions and capabilities of
adversaries or potential adversaries."
Bernstein: At a certain point you ran amiss of your supervisors. What did you come to
understand and try to tell people that got you in dutch with your higher-ups?
Binney: By 1998-1999, the "digital issue" was basically solved. This created a
problem for the upper ranks because at the time they were lobbying Congress for $3.8 billion to
continue working on what we had already accomplished. That lobby was started in 1989 for a
separate program called Trailblazer, which failed miserably in 2005-2006. We had to brief
Congress on how we were progressing and my information ran contrary to the efforts downtown to
secure more funding. And so this caused a problem internally.
We learned from some of our staff members in Congress that several of the corporations that
were getting contracts from the NSA were downtown lobbying against our program in Congress.
This is the military industrial complex in action. That lobby was supported by the NSA
management because they just wanted more money to build a bigger empire.
But Dick Cheney, who was behind all of this, wanted it because he grew up under Nixon, who
always wanted to know what his political enemies were thinking and doing. This kind of approach
of bulk acquisition of everything was possible after you removed certain segments of our
software and they used it against the entire digital world. Cheney wanted to know who his
political enemies were and get updates about them at any time.
Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about
bugging. Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election? Can Trump thank
Russia for the result?
Binney: We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an
article on this in July. First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic
world, the NSA would know. Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points
on the fiber lines, taking in everything. Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T
facility in San Francisco.
This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens. If they wanted
only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they
surface on the coast of the United States. But they are not there, they are distributed among
the US population.
Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA
would absolutely know about it.
Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically,
in Russia or anywhere else. If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked
into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the
Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai. The NSA had
these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.
The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a
charade. It was a download and not a transfer across the Web. The Web won't manage such a high
speed. It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed. You would have to have
high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us.
There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here.
Bernstein: So was this a leak by somebody at Democratic headquarters?
Binney: We don't know that for sure, either. All we know was that it was a local
download. We can likely attribute it to a USB device that was physically passed along.
Bernstein: Let me come at this from the other side. Has the United States ever tried
to hack into and undermine Russian operations in this way?
Binney: Oh, sure. We do it as much as anybody else. In the Ukraine, for example, we
sponsored regime change. When someone who was pro-Soviet was elected president, we orchestrated
a coup to put our man in power.
Then we invited the Ukraine into NATO. One of the agreements we made with the Russians when
the Soviet Union fell apart was that the Ukraine would give them their nuclear weapons to
manage and that we would not move NATO further east toward Russia. I think they made a big
mistake when they asked Ukraine to join NATO. They should have asked Russia to join as well,
making it all-inclusive. If you treat people as adversaries, they are going to act that
way.
Bernstein:Did the US meddle in the Russian elections that brought Yeltsin to
power?
Binney:I believe they did. We try to leverage our power and influence elections
around the world.
Bernstein: What has your group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, been
up to, and what has been the US government's response?
Binney: We have been discussing privacy and security with the European Union and with a
number of European parliaments. Recently the Austrian supreme court ruled that the entire bulk
acquisition system was unconstitutional. Everyone but the conservatives in the Austrian
parliament voted that bill down, making Austria the first country there to do the right
thing.
A slide from material leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the Washington Post,
showing what happens when an NSA analyst "tasks" the PRISM system for information about a new
surveillance target.
Bernstein: Is it your goal to defend people's privacy and their right to communicate
privately?
Binney: Yes, to defend privacy but also to defend the Constitution. Right now,
our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways. Mueller did
it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution.
Back in the 1990's, the idea was to make our analysts effective so that they could see
threats coming before they happened and alert people to take action so that lives would be
saved. What happens now is that people go out and kill someone and then the NSA and the FBI go
on a forensics mission. Intelligence is supposed to tell you in advance when a crime is coming
so that you can do something to avert it. They have lost that perspective.
Bernstein: They now have access to every single one of our electronic conversations,
is that right? The human mind has a hard time imagining how you could contain, move and study
all that information.
Binney: Basically, it is achievable because most of the processing is done by machine
so it doesn't cost human energy.
Bernstein: There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate
investigation. It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because
the Russians undermined the election.
Binney: I have seen no evidence at all from anybody, including the intelligence
community. If you look at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, they state on the
first page that "We have high confidence that the Russians did this." But when you get toward
the end of the report, they basically confess that "our judgment does not imply that we have
evidence to back it up."
Bernstein: It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found
compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election. You're saying it was actually
selected individuals from just three agencies. Is there anything to the revelations that FBI
agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president?
Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a
frame-up. It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself
internally.
Bernstein: I take it you are not a big supporter of Trump.
Binney: Well, I voted for him. I couldn't vote for a warmonger like Clinton. She
wanted to see our planes shooting down Russian planes in Syria. She advocated for destabilizing
Libya, for getting rid of Assad in Syria, she was a strong backer of the war in Iraq.
Bernstein: What concerns do you have regarding the Russia-gate investigation and
the McCarthyite tactics that are being employed?
Binney: Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with
Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars.
I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the
fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to
start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly
unconstitutional.
"... The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden. ..."
"... In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the Washington Post . ..."
"... In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive. ..."
"... In August 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon, had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they invested in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon signed a $600 million deal to provide computing services for the CIA. ..."
"... The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is estimated to own a shameful $90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been a CIA front , George Soros' Open Society foundation is one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions" ..."
"... It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue. ..."
"... The Washington Post , which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded" with Trump. ..."
"... The revelation that the sole Russiagate "evidence" was the so-called Steele Dossier - i.e. opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign - which was used by the intelligence community to not only begin the public assertions of Trump's perfidy but to then initiate FISA approved surveillance on the Trump campaign, that is truly astonishing. Instructive then that the NY Times, Washington Post, etc have yet to acknowledge these facts to their readers, and instead have effectively doubled down on the story, insisting that the Russiagate allegations are established fact and constitute "objective reality." That suggests this fake news story will continue indefinitely. ..."
"... What we see here is these bastions of establishment thinking in the USA promoting "objective reality" as partisan - i.e. there is a Clinton reality versus a Trump reality, or a Russian reality versus a "Western" reality, facts and documentation be damned. This divorce from objectivity is a symptom of the overall decline of American institutions, an indicate a future hard, rather than soft, landing near the end of the road. ..."
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence
services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents
from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists,
Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the
Washington Post . Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian , others by Barton
Gellman in the Washington Post . Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of
NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.
In July 2013 the Guardian was
forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive.
In August 2013 Jeff Bezos
bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon,
had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they
invested
in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon
signed a $600 million
deal to provide computing services for the CIA.
In October 2013 Pierre Omidyar, the owner of Ebay, founded
First Look Media and hired Glenn Greenwald and Laura
Poitras. The total planned investment was said to be $250 million. It took up to February 2014 until the new organization launched
its first site, the Intercept . Only a few NSA stories appeared on it. The Intercept is a rather mediocre site.
Its management is
said to be chaotic . It publishes few stories of interests and one might ask if it ever was meant to be a serious outlet. Omidyar
has worked,
together with the U.S. government, to force regime change onto Ukraine. He had
strong ties with the Obama administration.
Snowden had copies of some
20,000 to 58,000 NSA files . Only 1,182 have been
published . Bezos and Omidyar obviously helped the NSA to keep more than 95% of the Snowden archive away from the public. The
Snowden papers were practically privatized into trusted hands of Silicon Valley billionaires with ties to the various secret services
and the Obama administration.
The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is
estimated to own a shameful
$90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use
of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been
a CIA front , George Soros' Open Society foundation is
one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions".
It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the
NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue.
The Interceptburned
a intelligence leaker, Realty Winner, who had trusted its journalists to keep her protected. It
smeared the President of Syria as neo-nazi based on an (intentional?) mistranslation of one of his speeches. It additionally
hired a Syrian supporter of the CIA's "regime change by Jihadis" in Syria. Despite its
pretense of "fearless, adversarial journalism" it hardly deviates from
U.S. policies.
The Washington Post , which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts
of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded"
with Trump.
Just today it provides two stories and one op-ed that lack any factual evidence for the anti-Russian claims made in them.
In
Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options the writers insinuate that some anonymous writer who
published a few pieces on Counterpunch and elsewhere was part of a Russian operation. They provide zero evidence to back that claim
up. Whatever that writer
wrote (see
list at end) was run of the mill stuff that had little to do with the U.S. election. The piece then dives into various cyber-operations
against Russia that the Obama and Trump administration have discussed.
A
second story in the paper today is based on "a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post." It claims that the Russian
military intelligence service GRU started a social media operation one day after the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally
removed from his office in a U.S. regime change
operation . What the story lists as alleged GRU puppet postings reads like normal internet talk of people opposed to the fascist
regime change in Kiev. The Washington Post leaves completely unexplained who handed it an alleged GRU report from 2014,
who classified it and how, if at all, it verified its veracity. To me the piece and the assertions therein have a strong odor of
bovine excrement.
An op-ed in the very same Washington Post has a similar smell. It is written by the intelligence flunkies Michael Morell
and Mike Rogers. Morell had hoped to become CIA boss under a President Hillary Clinton. The op-ed (which includes a serious misunderstanding
of "deterrence") asserts that
Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States :
Russia's information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here . But to get a sense of the
breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation
experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The author link to this page which claims to list Twitter
hashtags that are currently used by Russian influence agents. Apparently the top issue Russia's influence agents currently promote
is "#merrychristmas".
When the authors claim Russian operations are "more numerous than can be listed here" they practically admit that they have not
even one plausible operation they could cite. Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures
against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit
of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe.
If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn't Snowden spoken out about it yet? Surely he would
have said something about the Intercept and Greenwald keeping important stories buried by now. Yet, as far as I can tell, he has
a good relationship with Greenwald. I find it hard to believe hat a man who literally gave up everything he had in life to leak
important docs would remain silent for so long about a publishing cover up. I don't really like the Intercept and I think your
analysis of its content is accurate, but I do find it hard to believe that the NSA docs were "bought" back by the CIA.
If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn't Snowden spoken out about it yet?
_____________________________________________________
My understanding is that early on, Snowden placed his trove of documents in the exclusive care of Glenn Greenwald and his associates.
Although Snowden has since become a public figure in his own right, and his opinions on state-security events and issues are solicited,
as far as I know Snowden has no direct responsibility for managing the material he downloaded.
I haven't followed Snowden closely enough to know how familiar he may be with the contents of the reported "20,000 to 58,000
NSA files" turned over to GG/Omidyar. Snowden presumably took pains to acquire items of interest in his cache as he accumulated
classified material, but even if he has extraordinary powers of recall he may not remember precisely what remains unreleased.
FWIW, I was troubled from the first by one of the mainstays of GG's defense, or rationale, when it became clear that he was
the principal, and perhaps sole, executive "curator" of the Snowden material. In order to reassure and placate nervous "patriots"--
and GG calls himself a "patriot"-- he repeatedly emphasized that great care was being taken to vet the leaked information before
releasing it.
GG's role as whistleblower Snowden's enabler and facilitator was generally hailed uncritically by progressive-liberals and
civil-liberties advocates, to a point where public statements that should've raised skeptical doubts and questions were generally
passively accepted by complacent admirers.
Specifically, my crap detectors signaled "red alert" early on, when Greenwald (still affiliated with "The Guardian", IIRC)
took great pains to announce that his team was working closely with the US/UK governments to vet and screen Snowden's material
before releasing any of it; GG repeatedly asserted that he was reviewing the material with the relevant state-security agencies
to ensure that none of the released material would compromise or jeopardize government operatives and/or national security.
WTF? Bad enough that Greenwald was requiring the world to exclusively trust his judgment in deciding what should be released
and what shouldn't. He was also making it clear that he wasn't exactly committed to disclosing "the worst" of the material "though
the heavens fall".
In effect, as GG was telling the world that he could be trusted to manage the leaked information responsibly, he was also telling
the world that it simply had to trust his judgment in this crucial role.
To me, there was clearly a subliminal message for both Western authorities and the public: don't worry, we're conscientious,
patriotic leak-masters. We're not going to irresponsibly disclose anything too radical, or politically/socially destabilizing.
GG and the Omidyar Group have set themselves up as an independent "brand" in the new field of whistleblower/hacker impresario
and leak-broker.
Like only buying NFL-approved merchandise, or fox-approved eggs, the public is being encouraged to only buy (into) Intercept-approved
Snowden Leaks™. It's a going concern, which lends itself much more to the "modified limited hangout" approach than freely tossing
all the biggest eggs out of the basket.
GG found an opportunity to augment his rising career as a self-made investigative journalist and civil-liberties advocate.
Now he's sitting pretty, the celebrity point man for a lucrative modified limited hangout enterprise. What is wrong with this
picture?
@16 I just see no evidence of that aside from fitting the narrative of people who are convinced of a cover up in leaked docs.
Moreover, there is no way Russia would continue to offer Snowden asylum if he was gov agent. I'm sure Russian intelligence did
a very thorough background check on him.
@17 that's simply not true. He regularly tweets, gives online talks and publishes on his own. He has not used either Poitras
or Greenwald as a means of communication for years. And he has never dropped a single hint of being disappointed or frustrated
with how documents and info was published.
It just seems so implausible given the total lack of any sign of Snowden's dissatisfaction.
The revelation that the sole Russiagate "evidence" was the so-called Steele Dossier - i.e. opposition research funded by the
Clinton campaign - which was used by the intelligence community to not only begin the public assertions of Trump's perfidy but
to then initiate FISA approved surveillance on the Trump campaign, that is truly astonishing. Instructive then that the NY Times,
Washington Post, etc have yet to acknowledge these facts to their readers, and instead have effectively doubled down on the story,
insisting that the Russiagate allegations are established fact and constitute "objective reality." That suggests this fake news
story will continue indefinitely.
What we see here is these bastions of establishment thinking in the USA promoting "objective reality" as partisan - i.e.
there is a Clinton reality versus a Trump reality, or a Russian reality versus a "Western" reality, facts and documentation be
damned. This divorce from objectivity is a symptom of the overall decline of American institutions, an indicate a future hard,
rather than soft, landing near the end of the road.
G @ 1 and 18: My understanding is that Edward Snowden has been advised (warned?) by the Russian government or his lawyer in Moscow
not to reveal any more than he has said so far. The asylum Moscow has offered him may be dependent on his keeping discreet. That
may include not saying much about The Intercept, in case his communications are followed by the NSA or any other of the various
US intel agencies which could lead to their tracking his physical movements in Russia and enable any US-connected agent or agency
(including one based in Russia) to trace him, arrest him or kill him, and cover up and frame the seizure or murder in such a way
as to place suspicion or blame on the Russian government or on local criminal elements in Russia.
I believe that Snowden does have a job in Russia and possibly this job does not permit him the time to say any more than what
he currently tweets or says online.
There is nothing in MoA's article to suggest that Glenn Greenwald is deliberately burying stories in The Intercept. B has said
that its management is chaotic which could suggest among other things that Greenwald himself is dissatisfied with its current
operation.
@21 I'm not disputing that moneyed interests might have been leaned on by the CIA to stop publishing sensitive info. What I'm
disputing is the idea that people like Greenwald have deliberately with-held information that is in the public interest. I doubt
that, regardless of the strength of the Intercept as a publication.
@25 What interest would the Russian gov have in helping protect NSA? I assume Russia loves the idea of the US Intel agencies
being embarrassed. Snowden speaks his mind about plenty of domestic and international events in US. I have never seen him act
like he's being censored.
G @ 25: Moscow would have no interest in helping protect the NSA or any other US intel agency. The Russians would have advised
Snowden not to say more than he has said so far, not because they are interested in helping the NSA but because they can only
protect him as long as he is discreet and does not try to say or publish any more that would jeopardise his safety or give Washington
an excuse to pressure Moscow to extradite him back to the US. That would include placing more sanctions on Russia until Snowden
is given up.
There is the possibility also that Snowden trusts (or trusted) Greenwald to know what to do with the NSA documents. Perhaps
that trust was naively placed - we do not know.
b, a big exposition of facts, rich in links to more facts.
This is important material for all to understand.
Snowden is "the squirrel over there!" A distraction turned into a hope.
Compared to Assange, who is being slow-martyred in captivity, Snowden is a boy playing with gadgets.
Why did not Snowden make certain a copy of his theft went to Wikileaks? That would have been insurance.
Since he did not, it all could be just a distraction.
What is known about the Snowden affair is we received proof of what we knew. Not much else. For those who didn't know, they
received news.
And ever since, the shape of things from the Deep State/Shadow Government/IC has been lies and warmongering against American freedoms
and world cooperation among nations.
Fascism is corporate + the police state. The US government is a pure fascist tyranny that also protects the Empire and Global
Hegemony.
We connect the dots and it's always the same picture. It was this way in the 60s,70s,80s,90s, 00s, and this forlorn decade.
Fascism more bold each decade. Billionaires and millionaires have always been in the mix.
Russiagate witch hunt is destroying CIA franchise in Facebook and Twitter, which were used
by many Russians and Eastern Europeans in general.
One telling sign of the national security state is "demonizing enemies of the state" including
using neo-McCarthyism methods, typically for Russiagate.
In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence
for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely
gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since
the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it
probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people,
as the new Undermensch. If these people and US MSM recognized the reality that they are now
a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States
Notable quotes:
"... Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians." ..."
"... The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health. ..."
"... In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT. ..."
"... The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of those efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia that undertakes "strategic communications." ..."
"... Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. ..."
"... And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies, there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s when Sen. Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts with the Palestinians. ..."
"... The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives, who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran. ..."
"... After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed. ..."
"... Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a "regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia. ..."
"... The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian propaganda." ..."
"... America's Stolen Narrative, ..."
"... witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet. ..."
"... The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin. ..."
"... The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities. ..."
"... Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution. ..."
"... Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards' to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. ..."
"... Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle and Plato warned thousands of years ago. ..."
"... The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over, including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda. ..."
"... I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house -- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans -- were driven by Russia-Gate. ..."
"... Now, since the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing these all. ..."
"... Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state. There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against. ..."
"... Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?) Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary. ..."
"... It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's slander machine. ..."
"... At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the new order. ..."
"... The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association, and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon of McCarthyism."" ..."
"... Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners" in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake. ..."
"... In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more) ..."
"... Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States ..."
"... The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA This Roger Waters interview is worth watching. ..."
"... It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it. ..."
"... In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges, and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53) ..."
"... Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55) ..."
"... Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman? Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame. ..."
Special Report: Many American liberals who once denounced McCarthyism as evil are now learning
to love the ugly tactic when it can be used to advance the Russia-gate "scandal" and silence dissent,
reports Robert Parry.
The New York Times has finally detected some modern-day McCarthyism, but not in the anti-Russia
hysteria that the newspaper has fueled for several years amid the smearing of American skeptics as
"useful idiots" and the like. No, the Times editors
are accusing a Long Island Republican of McCarthyism for linking his Democratic rival to "New
York City special interest groups." As the Times laments, "It's the old guilt by association."
Yet, the Times sees no McCarthyism in the frenzy of Russia-bashing and guilt by association for
any American who can be linked even indirectly to any Russian who might have some ill-defined links
to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, in the same edition that expressed editorial outrage over that Long Island political
ad's McCarthyism, the Times ran two front-page articles under the headline: "A Complex Paper Trail:
Blurring Kremlin's Ties to Key U.S. Businesses."
Buried in the story's "jump" is the acknowledgement that Milner's "companies sold those holdings
several years ago." But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington
and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage.
On Monday, The Washington Post published
a page-one article entitled, "9 in Trump's orbit had contacts with Russians."
The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that's obviously
true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading
"Russian propaganda."
We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her
new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket
after Clinton's public fainting spell and worries about her health.
Though there was a video of Clinton's collapse on Sept. 11, 2016, followed by her departure from
the campaign trail to fight pneumonia – not to mention her earlier scare with blood clots – the
response from a group of 100 Clinton supporters was to question Brazile's patriotism: "It is
particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda,
spread by both the Russians and our opponents about our candidate's health."
In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear
anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT.
Pressing the Tech Companies
Just as Sen. Joe McCarthy liked to haul suspected "communists" and "fellow-travelers" before his
committee in the 1950s, the New McCarthyism has its own witch-hunt hearings, such as last week's
Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google for supposedly allowing Russians
to have input into the Internet's social networks. Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled
before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies
displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.
Twitter's general counsel Sean J. Edgett
told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism that Twitter adopted an "expansive
approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account."
Edgett said the criteria included "whether the account was created in Russia, whether the user
registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email address, whether the user's
display name contains Cyrillic characters, whether the user frequently Tweets in Russian, and whether
the user has logged in from any Russian IP address, even a single time. We considered an account
to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria."
The trouble with Twitter's methodology was that none of those criteria would connect an account
to the Russian government, let alone Russian intelligence or some Kremlin-controlled "troll farm."
But the criteria could capture individual Russians with no link to the Kremlin as well as people
who weren't Russian at all, including, say, American or European visitors to Russia who logged onto
Twitter through a Moscow hotel.
Also left unsaid is that Russians are not the only national group that uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
It is considered a standard script for writing in Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbo-Croatia and
Ukraine. So, for instance, a Ukrainian using the Cyrillic alphabet could end up falling into the
category of "Russian-linked" even if he or she hated Putin.
Twitter's attorney also said the company conducted a separate analysis from information provided
by unidentified "third party sources" who pointed toward accounts supposedly controlled by the St.
Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), totaling 2,752 accounts. The IRA is typically described
in the U.S. press as a "troll farm" which employs tech-savvy employees who combat news and opinions
that are hostile to Russia and the Russian government. But exactly how those specific accounts were
traced back to this organization was not made clear.
And, to put that number in some perspective, Twitter claims 330 million active monthly users,
which makes the 2,752 accounts less than 0.001 percent of the total.
The Trouble with 'Trolling'
While the Russia-gate investigation has sought to portray the IRA effort as exotic and somehow
unique to Russia, the strategy is followed by any number of governments, political movements and
corporations – sometimes using enthusiastic volunteers but often employing professionals skilled
at challenging critical information or at least muddying the waters.
Those of us who operate on the Internet are familiar with harassment from "trolls" who may use
access to "comment" sections to inject propaganda and disinformation to sow confusion, to cause disruption,
or to discredit the site by promoting ugly opinions and nutty conspiracy theories.
As annoying as this "trolling" is, it's just a modern version of more traditional strategies used
by powerful entities for generations – hiring public-relations specialists, lobbyists, lawyers and
supposedly impartial "activists" to burnish images, fend off negative news and intimidate nosy investigators.
In this competition, modern Russia is both a late-comer and a piker.
The U.S. government fields legions of publicists, propagandists, paid journalists,
psy-ops specialists , contractors and non-governmental organizations to promote Washington's
positions and undermine rivals through information warfare.
The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of
those
efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid
for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia
that undertakes
"strategic communications."
Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world
to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered
many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America's National
Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant
malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.
It's also ironic that the U.S. government touted social media as a great benefit in advancing
so-called "color revolutions" aimed at "regime change" in troublesome countries. For instance, when
the "green revolution" was underway in Iran in 2009 after the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
the Obama administration asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so the street protesters
could continue using the platform to organize against Ahmadinejad and to distribute their side of
the story to the outside world.
During the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, Facebook, Twitter and Skype won praise as a means of
organizing mass demonstrations to destabilize governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Back then,
the U.S. government denounced any attempts to throttle these social media platforms and the free
flow of information that they permitted as proof of dictatorship.
Social media also was a favorite of the U.S. government in Ukraine in 2013-14 when the Maidan
protests exploited these platforms to help destabilize and ultimately overthrow the elected government
of Ukraine, the key event that launched the New Cold War with Russia.
Swinging the Social Media Club
The truth is that, in those instances, the U.S. governments and its agencies were eagerly exploiting
the platforms to advance Washington's geopolitical agenda by disseminating American propaganda and
deploying U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, which
taught
activists how to use social media to advance "regime change" scenarios.
A White Helmets volunteer pointing to the aftermath of a military attack.
While these uprisings were sold to Western audiences as genuine outpourings of public anger –
and there surely was some of that – the protests also benefited from U.S. funding and expertise.
In particular, NED and USAID provided money, equipment and training for anti-government operatives
challenging regimes in U.S. disfavor.
One of the most successful of these propaganda operations occurred in Syria where anti-government
rebels operating in areas controlled by Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamic militants used social media
to get their messaging to Western mainstream journalists who couldn't enter those sectors without
fear of beheading.
Since the rebels' goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad meshed with the objectives of
the U.S. government and its allies in Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Western journalists
uncritically accepted the words and images provided by Al Qaeda's collaborators.
The success of this propaganda was so extraordinary that the White Helmets, a "civil defense"
group that worked in Al Qaeda territory, became the go-to source for dramatic video and even was
awarded the short-documentary
Oscar for an info-mercial produced for Netflix – despite evidence that the White Helmets were
staging some of the scenes for propaganda purposes.
Indeed, one argument for believing that Putin and the Kremlin might have "meddled" in last year's
U.S. election is that they could have felt it was time to give the United States a taste of its own
medicine.
After all, the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule
of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin. And there were the U.S.-backed street protests in Moscow
against the 2011 and 2012 elections in which Putin strengthened his political mandate. Those
protests earned the "color" designation the "snow revolution."
However, whatever Russia may or may not have done before last year's U.S. election, the Russia-gate
investigations have always sought to exaggerate the impact of that alleged "meddling" and molded
the narrative to whatever weak evidence was available.
The original storyline was that Putin authorized the "hacking" of Democratic emails as part of
a "disinformation" operation to undermine Hillary Clinton's candidacy and to help elect Donald Trump
– although
no hard evidence has been presented to establish that Putin gave such an order or that Russia
"hacked" the emails. WikiLeaks has repeatedly denied getting the emails from Russia, which also denies
any meddling.
Further, the emails were not "disinformation"; they were both real and, in many cases, newsworthy.
The DNC emails provided evidence that the DNC unethically tilted the playing field in favor of Clinton
and against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a point that Brazile also discovered in reviewing staffing and financing
relationships that Clinton had with the DNC under the prior chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The purloined emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta revealed the contents of Clinton's
paid speeches to Wall Street (information that she was trying to hide from voters) and pay-to-play
features of the Clinton Foundation.
A Manchurian Candidate?
Still, the original narrative was that Putin wanted his Manchurian Candidate (Trump) in the White
House and took the extraordinary risk of infuriating the odds-on favorite (Clinton) by releasing
the emails even though they appeared unlikely to prevent Clinton's victory. So, there was always
that logical gap in the Russia-gate theory.
Since then, however, the U.S. mainstream narrative has shifted, in part, because the evidence
of Russian election "meddling" was so shaky. Under intense congressional pressure to find something,
Facebook reported
$100,000 in allegedly "Russian-linked" ads purchased in 2015-17, but noted that only 44 percent
were bought before the election. So, not only was the "Russian-linked" pebble tiny – compared to
Facebook's annual revenue of $27 billion – but more than half of the pebble was tossed into this
very large lake after Clinton had already lost.
So, the storyline was transformed into some vague Russian scheme to exacerbate social tensions
in the United States by taking different sides of hot-button issues, such as police brutality against
blacks. The New York Times reported that one of these "Russian-linked" pages
featured photos of cute puppies , which the Times speculated must have had some evil purpose
although it was hard to fathom. (Oh, those devious Russians!).
The estimate of how many Americans may have seen one of these "Russian-linked" ads also keeps
growing, now up to as many as 126 million or about one-third of the U.S. population. Of course, the
way the Internet works – with any item possibly going viral – you might as well say the ads could
have reached billions of people.
Whenever I write an article or send out a Tweet, I too could be reaching 126 million or even billions
of people, but the reality is that I'd be lucky if the number were in the thousands. But amid the
Russia-gate frenzy, no exaggeration is too outlandish or too extreme.
Another odd element of Russia-gate is that the intensity of this investigation is disproportionate
to the lack of interest shown toward far better documented cases of actual foreign-government interference
in American elections and policymaking.
For instance, the major U.S. media long ignored the extremely well-documented case of Richard
Nixon colluding with South Vietnamese officials to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam
War peace talks to gain an advantage for Nixon in the 1968 election. That important chapter of history
only gained
The
New York Times' seal of approval earlier this year after the Times had dismissed the earlier
volumes of evidence as "rumors."
In the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan's team – especially his campaign director William Casey in
collaboration with Israel and Iran – appeared to have gone behind President Jimmy Carter's back
to undercut Carter's negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran and essentially
doom Carter's reelection hopes.
There were a couple of dozen witnesses to that scheme who spoke with me and other investigative
journalists – as well as documentary evidence showing that President Reagan did authorize secret
arms shipments to Iran via Israel shortly after the hostages were freed during Reagan's inauguration
on Jan. 20, 1981.
However, since Vice President (later President) George H.W. Bush, who was implicated in the scheme,
was well-liked on both sides of the aisle and because Reagan had become a Republican icon, the October
Surprise case of 1980 was pooh-poohed by the major media and dismissed by a congressional investigation
in the early 1990s. Despite the extraordinary number of witnesses and supporting documents, Wikipedia
listed the scandal as a "conspiracy theory."
Israeli Influence
And, if you're really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies,
there's the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost
any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s
when
Sen.
Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts
with the Palestinians.
If anyone doubts how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to pull the strings
of U.S. politicians, just watch one of his record-tying three addresses to joint sessions of Congress
and count how often
Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet in enthusiastic applause. (The only other foreign
leader to get the joint-session honor three times was Great Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)
So, what makes Russia-gate different from the other cases? Did Putin conspire with Trump to extend
a bloody war as Nixon did with the South Vietnamese leaders? Did Putin lengthen the captivity of
U.S. hostages to give Trump a political edge? Did Putin manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East
to entice President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and set the region ablaze, as Israel's Netanyahu
did? Is Putin even now pushing for wider Mideast wars, as Netanyahu is?
Indeed, one point that's never addressed in any serious way is why is the U.S. so angry with Russia
while these other cases, in which U.S. interests were clearly damaged and American democracy compromised,
were treated largely as non-stories.
Why is Russia-gate a big deal while the other cases weren't? Why are opposite rules in play now
– with Democrats, many Republicans and the major news media flogging fragile "links," needling what
little evidence there is, and assuming the worst rather than insisting that only perfect evidence
and perfect witnesses be accepted as in the earlier cases?
The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests
in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex,
which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives,
who view Russia as a threat to their "regime change" agendas for Syria and Iran.
After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten
down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed.
Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a
"regime change" in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country
might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western
client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear
strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia.
The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons
by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for Trump
and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have
blinded them to
the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the
hands of the war-hungry neocons.
A Smokescreen for Repression
There also seems to be little or no concern that the Establishment is using Russia-gate as a smokescreen
for
clamping down on independent media sites on the Internet. Traditional supporters of civil liberties
have looked the other way as the rights of people associated with the Trump campaign have been trampled
and journalists who simply question the State Department's narratives on, say, Syria and Ukraine
are denounced as "Moscow stooges" and "useful idiots."
The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants
will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing
and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting "Russian
propaganda."
The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-California,
warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms,
and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will."
As this authoritarian if not totalitarian future looms and as the dangers of nuclear annihilation
from an intentional or unintentional nuclear war with Russia grow, many people who should know better
are caught up in the Russia-gate frenzy.
I used to think that liberals and progressives opposed McCarthyism because they regarded it as
a grave threat to freedom of thought and to genuine democracy, but now it appears that they have
learned to love McCarthyism except, of course, when it rears its ugly head in some Long Island political
ad criticizing New York City.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated
Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative,
either in
print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and
barnesandnoble.com ).
Joe Tedesky , November 6, 2017 at 3:12 pm
I watched the C-Span 'Russian/2016 Election Investigation Hearings' in horror, as each congressperson
grilled the Hi-Tech executives in a way to suggest that our First Amendment Rights are now on
life support, and our Congress is ready to pull the plug at any moment. I thought, of how this
wasn't the America I was brought up to believe in. So as I have reached the age in life where
nothing should surprise me, I realize now how fragile our Rights are, in this warring nation that
calls itself America.
When it comes to Israel I have two names, Jonathan Pollard & the USS Liberty, and with that,
that is enough said.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:33 pm
This week's congressional hearings on "extremist content" on the Internet mark a new stage
in the McCarthyite witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies
and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet.
One after another, congressmen and senators goaded representatives of Google, Twitter and Facebook
to admit that their platforms were used to sow "social divisions" and "extremist" political opinions.
The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises
not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed
world, but rather from the actions of "outside agitators" working in the service of the Kremlin.
The hearings revolved around claims that Russia sought to "weaponize" the Internet by harnessing
social anger within the United States. "Russia," said Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, promoted
"discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues." It sought to "mobilize
real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests."
The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label
all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing
opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities.
Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing
organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in
treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution.
Watching this Orwellian tragedy play out in our American society, where our Congress is insisting
that disclaimers and restrictions be placed upon suspicious adbuys and editorial essays, is counterintuitive
to what we Americans were brought up to belief. Why, all my life teachers, and adults, would warn
us students of reading the news to not to believe everything we read as pure fact, but to research
a subject before coming to a conclusion toward your accepting an opinion to wit. And with these
warnings of avoiding us being suckered into a wrong belief, we were told that this was the price
we were required to pay for having a free press society. This freedom of speech was, and has always
been the bedrock of our hopes and wishes for our belief in the American Dream.
Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are 'moving towards'
to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of 'moving towards' to the
stark reality to be described as 'that now we are', and there you will have it that we have finally
arrived to becoming a full blown 'police state'. Little by little, and especially since 911
one by one our civil liberties were taken away. Here again our freedom of speech is being destroyed,
and with this America is now where Germany had been in the mid-thirties. America's own guilty
conscience is rapidly doing some physiological projections onto their imaginary villain Russia.
All I keep hearing is my dear sweet mother lecturing me on how one lie always leads to another
lie until the truth will finally jump up and bite you in the ass, and think to myself of how wise
my mother had been with her young girl Southside philosophy. May you Rest In Peace Mum.
Martin , November 7, 2017 at 3:21 pm
Yankees chicks are coming home to roost. So many peoples rights and lives had to be extinguished
for Americans to have the illusion of pursuing their happiness, well, what goes around comes around.
Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:39 pm
Gee wiz Adam Schiff you make it sound as if signing petitions and rallying to causes and civil
protests are unamerican or something. And Russians on the internet are harnessing social anger!
Pathetic. These jerks who would have us believe they are interested in "saving" democracy or stopping
fascism have sure got it backward.
Geoffrey de Galles , November 8, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Joe, Allow me please, respectfully, to add Mordecai Vanunu -- Israel's own Daniel Ellsberg
-- to your two names.
Erik G , November 6, 2017 at 3:55 pm
Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate
a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely
as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle
and Plato warned thousands of years ago.
It is especially significant that the zionists are the sole beneficiaries of this scam as well
as the primary sponsors of the DNC, hoping to attack Russia and Iran to support Israeli land thefts
in the Mideast. It is well established that zionists control US mass media, which never examine
the central issue of our times, the corruption of democracy by the zionist/MIC/WallSt influence
upon the US government and mass media. Russia-gate is in fact a coverup for Israel-gate.
Why did we ever believe that the democrat party was a defender of free speech? These bought
and paid for tools of the economic elites are only interested in serving their masters with slavish
devotion. Selfishness and immorality are their stock in trade; betraying the public their real
intention.
Cratylus , November 6, 2017 at 4:11 pm
Great essay.
But one disagreement. I may agree with Trump on very, very few things, among them getting rid
of the horrible TPP, one cornerstone of Hillary's pivot; meeting with Putin in Hamburg; the Lavrov-Tillerson
arranged cease-fire in SE Syria; the termination of the CIA's support for anti-Assad jihadis in
Syria; a second meeting with Putin at the ASEAN conference this week; and in general the idea
of "getting along with Russia" (a biggie) which Russia-gate is slowing to a crawl as designed
by the neocons.
But Trump as an "incompetent buffoon" is a stretch albeit de rigueur on the pages of the NYT,
the programs of NPR and in all "respectable" precincts. Trump won the presidency for god's sake
– something that eluded the 17 other GOP primary candidates, some of them considered very"smart"
and Bernie and Jill, and in the past, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul – and the supposedly "very smart"
Hillary for which we should be eternally grateful. "Incompetent" hardly seems accurate. The respectable
commentariat has continually underestimated Trump. We should heed Putin who marveled at Trump's
seemingly impossible victory.
Bill Cash , November 6, 2017 at 4:13 pm
How do you explain all the connections between Trump acolytes and Russia and their lying about
it. I think they've all lied about their contacts. Why would they do that?I lived through the
real McCarthyism and, so far, this isn't close to what happened then.
Bill , November 6, 2017 at 4:40 pm
Probably because they are corruptly involved. Thing is, the higher priority is to avoid another
decades-long cold war risking nuclear war. Do you remember how many close calls we had in the
last one?
I'm more suspicious of Trump than most here, but even I think we need some priorities. Far
more extensive corruption of a similar variety keeps occurring and no one cares, as Mr. Parry
points out here yet again.
As for McCarthyism, whatever the current severity, the result is unfolding as a new campaign
against dissenting voices on the internet. That's supremely not-okay with me.
Gregory Herr , November 7, 2017 at 8:46 pm
Right. Just because we don't yet have another fulll-fledged HUAC happening doesn't mean severe
perils aren't attached to this new McCarthyism. Censorship of dissent is supremely not-okay with
me as well.
That class of people lie as a matter of course; it's standard procedure. If you exacerbate
it by adding on the anti-Russia hysteria that was spewed out by the Democrats before the ink was
dry on the ballots, what possible reason would they have for being truthful?
The insanity of the entire "Russian hacking" narrative has been revealed over and over,
including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying
Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 7:10 pm
I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken
aback by the Hillary bots' accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her
apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone's house
-- which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans
-- were driven by Russia-Gate.
Obviously, Brazile, like millions of voters, saw these films and made appropriate inferences:
that Hillary's basic health and stamina were a question mark. Of course, Hillary also offered
Americans nothing in her campaign rhetoric. She came across as the mother-in-law from hell.
Was it also a Russia-Gate initiative when Hillary hid from her supporters on election night
and let Podesta face the screaming sobbing supporters? Too much spiked vodka or something? Our
political stage in the USA is a madhouse.
Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:20 pm
These people probably have "connections" with a relatively large number of people, and only
very small fraction of the people they have contact with are probably Russians. Now, since
the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in
the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere
of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today's United States. Furthermore, people who have
contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing
these all.
Today's political atmosphere in the United States probably has a lot in common with the Soviet
Union. There, people got in trouble if they had contacts with people from Western, capitalist
countries – and if they were asked and did not mention these contacts in order to avoid problems,
they could get in trouble even more.
I think it is absolutely clear that no one who takes part in this hateful anti-Russian campaign
can pretend to be liberal or progressive. The kind of society these xenophobes who detest pluralism
and accuse everyone who has opinions outside the mainstream of being a foreign agent is absolutely
abhorrent, in my view.
Leslie F , November 6, 2017 at 6:40 pm
Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian state.
There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the
US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I'm sure Mueller will
be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian
government is involved in any of it. "Russia-gate" implies Russian government involvement, not
just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against.
occupy on , November 7, 2017 at 12:47 am
Mr. Cash . I think George Papadopoulis, Trump's young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon
pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the
way to get the "system" back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was
rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?)
Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The
Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only
interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary.
In the meantime, Trump Jr. was connected with an evil Russian (Natalia), William Browder was
able to link the neocon-hated Trump Sr with neocon-hated, evil Russians (who currently have a
warrant out for Browder's arrest on a 15 [or 50?] million dollar tax evasion charge), and neocons
have a good chance of claiming victory out of chaos (as is their style and was their intent for
the Middle East [not Washington DC!] in the neocon Project For a New American Century – 1998).
Clinton may have lost power in Washington DC, but Clinton-supporting neocons may not have – thanks
to George Papadopoulis. We shall see. Something tells me the best is yet to come out of the Mueller
Investigations.
Roy G Biv , November 7, 2017 at 2:03 pm
You are seeing it clearly Bill. This site was once a go-to-source for investigative journalism.
Now it is a place for opinion screeds, mostly with head buried in the sand about the blatant Russian
manipulation of the 2016 election. The dominant gang of posters here squash any dissent and dissenting
comments usually get deleted within a day. I don't understand why and how it came to be so, but
the hysterical labeling of Comey/Mueller investigations as McCarthyism by Parry has ruined his
sterling reputation for me.
Stygg , November 7, 2017 at 2:24 pm
If this "Russian manipulation" was as blatant as everyone keeps telling me, how come it's all
based on ridiculous BS instead of evidence? Where's the beef?
anon , November 7, 2017 at 3:22 pm
Unable to substantiate anything you say nor argue against anything said here, you disgrace
yourself. Do you think anyone is fooled by your repeated lie that you are a disaffected former
supporter of this site? And you made the "Stygg" reply above.
Tom Hall , November 6, 2017 at 4:46 pm
It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist
witch hunt. Where they didn't gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while
the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped
in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy's
slander machine.
At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the
path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something
they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the
unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold
War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the
new order.
So it's no surprise that liberalism is the rallying point for a new wave of repression. The
dangerous buffoon currently occupying the White House stands as a perfect foil to the phony indignation
of the liberal leadership- Schumer, Pelosi et al.. The jerk was made to order, and they mean to
dump him as their ideological forebears unloaded old Tail Gunner Joe. In fact, Trump is so odious,
the Democrats, their media colleagues and major elements of the national security state believe
that bringing down the bozo can be made to look like a triumph of democracy. Of course, by then
dissent will have been stamped out far more efficiently than Trump and his half-assed cohorts
could have achieved. And it will be done in the name of restoring sanity, honoring the constitution,
and protecting everyone from the Russians. I was born in the fifties, and it looks like I'm going
to die in the fifties.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Truman started it. And he used it very well.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND ORIGINS OF ""McCARTHYISM
By Richard M. Freeland
This book argues that Truman used anti-Communist scare tactics to force Congress to implement
his plans for multilateral free trade and specifically to pass the Marshall Plan. This is a sound
emphasis, but other elements of postwar anti-Communist campaigns are neglected, especially anti-labor
legislation; and Freeland attributes to Truman a ""go-soft"" attitude toward the Soviets, which
is certainly not proven by the fact that he restrained the ultras Forrestal, Kennan, and Byrnes
-- indeed, some of Freeland's own citations confirm Truman's violent anti-Soviet spirit.
The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association,
and personally commanding loyalty programs, ""Truman and his advisors employed all the political
and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon
of McCarthyism."" Freeland's revisionism is confined and conservative: he deems the Soviets
most responsible for the Cold War and implies that ""subversion"" was in fact a menace.
You are one of the very few critical journalists today willing to print objective measures
of the truth, while the MSM spins out of control under the guise of "protecting America" (and
their vital sources), while at the same time actually undermining the very principles of a working
democracy they sanctimoniously pretend to defend. It makes me nostalgic for the McCarthy era,
when we could safely satirize the Army-McCarthy Hearings (unless you were a witness!). I offer
the following as a retrospective of a lost era.:
Top-Ten Criteria for being a Putin Stooge, and a Chance at Winning A One Way Lottery Ticket:to
the Gala Gitmo Hotel:
:
(1) Reading Consortium News, Truth Dig, The Real News Network, RT and Al Jeziera
(2) Drinking Starbucks and vodka at the Russian Tea Room with Russian tourists (with an embedded
FSS agent) in NYC.
(3) Meeting suspicious tour guides in Red Square who accept dollars for their historical jokes.
(4) Claiming to catch a cell phone photo of the Putin limousine passing through the Kremlin Tower
gate.
(4) Starting a joint venture with a Russian trading partner who sells grain to feed Putin's stable
of stallions. .
(5) Catching the flu while being sneezed upon in Niagara Falls by a Russian violinist.
(6) Finding the hidden jewels in the Twelfth Chair were nothing but cut glass.
(7) Reading War and Peace on the Brighton Beach ferry.
(8) Playing the iPod version of Rachmaninoff's "Vespers" through ear buds while attending mass
in Dallas, TX..
(9) Water skiing on the Potomac flying a pennant saying "Wasn't Boris Good Enough?"
(10) Having audibly chuckled even once at items (1) – (9). Thanks Bob, Please don't let up!
Lisa , November 6, 2017 at 7:47 pm
Howard,
I chuckled loudly more than once – but luckily, no one heard me! No witnesses! So you are acquainted
with the masterpiece "12 chairs"? Very suspicious.
David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:42 pm
I've heard that's Mel Brooks favorite among his own movies.
David G , November 6, 2017 at 8:48 pm
I always find it exasperating when I have to remind the waiter at the diner to bring Russian
dressing along with the reuben sandwich, but these days I wonder if my loyalty is being tested.
Dave P. , November 6, 2017 at 10:27 pm
David G –
They will change the name of dressing very soon. Remember 2003 when French refused to endorse
the invasion of Iraq. I think they unofficially changed the name of "French Fries" to "Freedom
Fries".
It is just the start. The whole History is being rewritten – in compliance with Zionist Ideology.
Those evil Russkies will be shown as they are!
Clearly, since I've published one book by a Russian, one by a now-deceased US ex-pat living
in Russia, and have our catalog made available in Russia via our international distributor, I
am a traitor to the US. If you add in my staunch resistance to the whole Russiagate narrative
AND the fact I post links to stories in RT America, I'm doomed.
I wish I could think I'm being wholly sarcastic.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:38 pm
You are not alone. Many of us live outside the open air prison and feel the same way
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 5:29 pm
Robert Parry has described "the New McCarthyism" having "its own witch-hunt hearings". In fact
"last week's Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google" was merely an exercise
in political theatre because all three entities already belong to the "First Draft" coalition:
Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council's Bellingcat as
a founding member, the "First Draft" coalition includes all the usual mainstream media "partners"
in "regime change" war propaganda: the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and
Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake.
In a remarkable post-truth declaration, the "First Draft" coalition insists that members will
"work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process".
In the "post-truth" regime of US and NATO hybrid warfare, the deliberate distortion of truth
and facts is called "verification".
The Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio, and "First Draft" coalition "partner" organizations'
zeal to "verify" US intelligence-backed fake news claims about Russian hacking of the US presidential
election, reveal the "post-truth" mission of this new Google-backed hybrid war propaganda alliance.
Hysterical demonization of Russia escalated dramatically after Russia thwarted the Israeli-Saudi-US
plan to dismember the Syrian state.
With the rollback of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorist proxy forces in Syria, and the failure of
Kurdish separatist efforts in Iraq, Israel plans to launch military attacks against southern Lebanon
and Syria.
South Front has presented a cogent and fairly detailed analysis of Israel's upcoming war in
southern Lebanon.
Conspicuously absent from the South Front analysis is any discussion of the Israeli planned
assault on Syria, or possible responses to the conflict from the United States or Russia.
Israeli propaganda preparations for attack are already in high gear. Unfortunately, sober heads
are in perilously short supply in Israel and the U.S., so the prognosis can hardly be optimistic.
"Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
Over time, IDF's military effectiveness had declined. [ ] In the Second Lebanon War of 2006
due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key
strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in
Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in
the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure
to reassert IDF's lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of
the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature only two sides, IDF and Hezbollah.
Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be
initiated by Israel.
"The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the
north and centre of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible
to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah
units will will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire
on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most
likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure
and some damage to Hezbollah's military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected
and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.
"Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless
of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare
systems will not be paralysed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic
communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war.
Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the
pre-defined call signs and codes.
"Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping
mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number
of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare
for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory
as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols
and checkpoints will cause further losses.
"The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure,
allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel's
missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough
of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon
IDF's Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the
bombardment of Israel with long-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah's Iranian solid-fuel rockets
do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel,
causing further losses.
"It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain
is that Israel shouldn't count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September's exercises.
Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that
they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.
"Conclusions
"The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli
public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would
be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities,
Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far
demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.
"Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are
paid for with soldiers' blood and commanders' careers. The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli
leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality,
Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous
neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah,
it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who
served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous
terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights,
tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.
"While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time
for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says:
'War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out'."
Yes, the latest "big fish" outed yesterday as an agent of the Kremlin was the U.S. Secretary
of Commerce (Wilbur Ross) who was discovered to hold stock in a shipping company that does business
with a Russian petrochemical company (Sibur) whose owners include Vladimir Putin's son-in-law
(Kirill Shamalov). Obviously the orders flow directly from Putin to Shamalov to Sibur to the shipping
company to Ross to Trump, all to the detriment of American citizens.
From RT (another tainted source!): "US Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in
a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners
include Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S.
Treasury Department as a member of Putin's inner circle," says the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the main publisher of the Paradise Papers. After the report
was published, some US lawmakers accused Ross of misleading Congress during his confirmation hearings."
Don't go mistaking the "International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for "Consortium
News." These guys are dedicated witch hunters, searching for anyone with six degrees of separation
to Vladimir Putin and his grand plan to thwart the United States and effect regime change within
its borders.
In a clear attempt to weasel out of his traitorous transgression, Ross stated "In a separate
interview with CNBC, that Sibur [which is NOT the company he owned stock in] was not subject to
US sanctions." 'A company not under sanction is just like any other company, period. It was a
normal commercial relationship and one that I had nothing to do with the creation of, and do not
know the shareholders who were apparently sanctioned at some later point in time,' he said." Since
when can we start allowing excuses like that? Not knowing that someone holds stock in a company
that does business with a company in which you own stock may at some later point in time become
sanctioned by the all-wise and all-good American federal government?
I can't wait till they make the first Ben Stiller comedy based on this fiasco twenty years
from now. It will be hilarious slap-stick, maybe titled "Can You Believe these Mother Fockers?"
President Chelea Clinton of our great and noble idiocracy will throw out the first witch on opening
day of the movie.
Danny Weil , November 6, 2017 at 6:27 pm
Let's be honest. Most Americans think McCarthy is a retail store. No education. And they think
Russia is the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Trump is in Japan to start war with N. Korea to hide the
blemishes or the canker on his ass. America is rapidly collapsing.
Adrian Engler , November 6, 2017 at 6:34 pm
In the beginning, "Russiagate" was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence
for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists
largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established
fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence
services, it probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian
people, anyone who is "Russian linked" by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia
or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that
they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States
But when people daily spew hate against anything and anyone "Russia linked" and still don't
recognize that they have gone over to the far right and even claim they are liberal or progressive,
this is completely absurd.
McCarthyism, as terrible as it was, at least originally was motivated by hatred against a certain
political ideology that also had its bad sides. But today's Russiagate peddlers clearly are motivated
by hatred against a certain ethnicity, a certain country, and a certain language. I don't think
there is any way to avoid the conclusion that with their hatred against anyone who is "Russia
linked", they have become right-wing extremists.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:46 pm
"Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world
to harass people who criticize the Zionist project."
Yes, very well organized.
In fact virtually every synagogue is a center for organizing people to harass others who are exercising
their First Amendment rights to diseminate information about Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The link below is to a protest and really, personal attack, against a Unitarian minister in Marblehead,
Mass., for daring to screen the film ""The Occupation of the American Mind, Israel's Public Relations
War in the United States." In other words, for daring to provide an dissenting opinion and, simply,
to tell the truth. Ironic is that the protesters' comment actually reinforce the basic message
of the film.
No other views on Israel will be allowed to enter the public for a good airing and discussion
and debate. The truth about the illegal Israeli occupation will be shouted down, and those who
try to provide information to the public on this subject will be vilified as "anti-semites." Kudos
to this minister for screening the film.
The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the United States (2016)
examines pro-Israel Hasbara propaganda efforts within the U.S.
This important documentary, narrated by Roger waters, exposes how the Israeli government, the
U.S. government, and the pro-Israel Lobby join forces to shape American media coverage in Israel's
favor.
Documentary producer Sut Jhally is professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts,
and a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is also the
founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation, a documentary film company that
looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes.
Jhally is the producer and director of dozens of documentaries about U.S. politics and media
culture, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian
Conflict.
The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel's decades-long battle
for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people – a battle that has only intensified
over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel's increasingly
right-wing policies.
Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 2:45 am
Abe –
The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish
some other artists get the courage to raise their voices. The link to the Roger Waters interview
is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA
This Roger Waters interview is worth watching.
It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered
the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned. It looks
to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every
where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy
witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it.
As a Canadian I could not get over, even though I was just a teenager back then, just how a
people in a supposedly advanced country could be so collectively paniced. I think back then it
was just a scam to get rid of unions and any kind of collective action against the owners of the
country, and this time around I think it is just a continuation of that scam, to frighten people
into subservience to the police state. I heard a women on TV today commenting on the Texas masscre,
she said " The devil never sleeps", well in the USA the 1/10 of 1% never sleeps when it comes
to more control, more pwoer and more wealth, in fact I think they are after the very last shekle
still left in the pockets of the bottom 99.9 % of the population. Those evil Russians are just
a ploy in the scam.
Litchfield , November 6, 2017 at 6:58 pm
"The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons
by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and "stop fascism." But their contempt for
Trump and their exaggeration of the "Hitler" threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses
have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they
are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons."
And they are driving more and more actual and potential Dem Party members away in droves, further
weakening the party and depriving it of its most intelligent members. Any non-senile person knows
that this is all BS and these people are not only turning their backs on the Dem Party but I think
many of them are being driven to the right by their disgust with this circus and the exposure
of the party's critical weaknesses and derangement.
Paolo , November 6, 2017 at 6:59 pm
You correctly write that "the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure
the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin". The irony is that a few years later
Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor, and presumably the 'mericans gave him a hand to win his
first term.
How extremely sad it is to see the USA going totally nuts.
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:00 pm
In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed
the noxious effect of McCarthyism: "McCarthy's carnival like four year spree of accusation charges,
and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after
his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame." (page 53)
Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called "free" press acquiesced to
McCarthy's masquerading: "The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the
Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part
of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead
of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless
McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him." (page 55)
Abe , November 6, 2017 at 9:15 pm
On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow and a news team at CBS produced a half-hour See It Now special
titled "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy".
Murrow interspersed his own comments and clarifications into a damaging series of film clips
from McCarthy's speeches. He ended the broadcast with a warning:
"As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves–as
indeed we are–the defenders of freedom, what's left of it, but we cannot defend freedom abroad
by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and
dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies, and whose fault
is that? Not really his. He didn't create the situation of fear; he merely exploited it, and rather
successfully. Cassius was right: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.'"
CBS reported that of the 12,000 phone calls received within 24 hours of the broadcast, positive
responses to the program outnumbered negative 15 to 1. McCarthy's favorable rating in the Gallup
Poll dropped and was never to rise again.
Gary , November 6, 2017 at 11:34 pm
Sad to see so many hypocrites here espousing freedom from McCarthyism while they continue to
vote for capitalist candidates year in year out. Think about the fact that in 2010 when Citizens
United managed to get the Supreme Court to certify corporations as people the fear among many
was that this would open US company subsidiaries to be infiltrated by foreign money. I guess it
is happening in spades with collusion between Russian money & Trump's organization along with
Facebook, Twitter & many others. How Mr. Parry can maintain that this parallels the 1950s anti-communist
crusade is quite ingenuous. When libertarians, the likes of Bannon, Mercer, Trump et al, with
their "destruction of the administrative state" credo are compared to the US communists of the
50s we know progressives have become about as disoriented as can be.
geeyp , November 7, 2017 at 3:30 am
I guess these "Paradise Papers" were released just yesterday, i.e., Sunday the 5th. Somehow
I didn't get to it.
john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 6:01 am
So it looks like Hillary will be crossing Putin off her Xmas card list this year! I sometimes
wonder if all we posters on here and other similar sites are on a list somewhere and when the
day of reckoning comes, the list will be produced and we will have to account for our treasonous
behaviour? Of course, one man's treason is another man's truth. I suppose in the end it boils
down to the power thing. If you have a perceived enemy you can claim the need for an army. If
you have an army you have power and with that power you can dispose of anyone who disagrees with
you simply by calling them the enemy.
Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 9:38 am
John, your post made me wonder whether I would be on a list of traitors. I've written three
posts, starting yesterday, and tried to explain something about the background of Yuri Milner,
mentioned in the article. After "your comment has been posted, thank you" nothing has appeared
on this thread.
Well, once more: Milner is known to me as a well-educated physicist from Moscow State University,
and the co-founder and financier of The Breakthrough Prize, handing out yearly awards to promising
scientists, with a much larger sum than the humble Nobel Prize. The awarding ceremony is held
in December in Silicon Valley.
john wilson , November 7, 2017 at 12:34 pm
Hi Lisa, I have just looked up Milner on Wiki and he appears to be into everything including
investment in internet companies. He is the co-founder of the "break through prize" that you mention
and seems to have backed face book and twitter in their start up. I don't see why you posts haven't
appeared as anyone can look Milner up on Wiki and elsewhere in great detail. You don't say where
you have tried to post, but I would have thought on this site you would have no trouble whatever.
If you have watched the last episode of 'cross talk' on RT you will see that anyone who as ever
mentioned Russia in a public place is regarded as some kind of traitor. I guess you and me are
due for rendition anytime now!! LOL
Lisa , November 7, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Hi John,
Naturally I had been trying to post on this site. First I tried three times in the comment space
below all other posts, and they never went through. Only when I posted a reply to someone else's
comment, my reply appeared. Maybe some technical problem on the site.
My motive was to show that Milner is doing worthwhile things with his millions, even if he
is an "evil Russian oligarch". The mentioned prize has its own website: breakthroughprize.org.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) is a board member.
The prize is certainly a "Putin conspiracy", as it has links to Russia. (sarc)
Zachary Smith , November 7, 2017 at 8:05 pm
Maybe some technical problem on the site.
Possibly that's the case. Disappearing-forever posts happen to me from time to time. For at
least a while afterwards I cut/paste what I'm about to attempt to "post" to a WORD file before
hitting the "post comment" button.
In any event, avoid links whenever possible. By cut/pasting the exact title of the piece you're
using as a reference, others can quickly locate it themselves without a link.
K , November 7, 2017 at 9:44 am
I'm a lifelong Democrat. I was a Bernie supporter. But logic dictates my thinking. The Russia
nonsense is cover for Hillary's loss and a convenient hammer with which to attack Trump. Not biting.
Bill Maher is fixated on this. The Rob Reiner crowd is an embarrassment. The whole thing is embarrassing.
The media is inept. Very bizarre times.
Excellent article which should shed light on the misunderstandings manifested to manipulate
and censor Americans. Personally, it's ludicrous to imply that Russia was the primary reason I
could not vote for Hillary. My interest in Twitter peaked when Sidney Blumenthal's name popped
up selling arms in Libya. He was on The Clinton Foundation's Payroll for $120K, while the Obama
Administration specifically told HRC Sidney Blumenthal was not to work for the State Department.
Further research showed Chris Stevens had no knowledge of Sidney Blumenthal selling arms in
Libya. Hillary NEVER even gave Chris Stevens, a candidate with an outstanding background for diplomatic
relations in the Middle East, her email. Chris Stevens possessed a Law Degree in International
Trade, and had previously worked for Senator Lugar (R). Senator Lugar had warned HRC not to co-mingle
State Department business with The Clinton Foundation.
To add salt to the wound Hillary choose to put a third rate security firm in Libya, changing
firms a couple of short weeks before the bombing. I think she anticipated the bombing, remarking
"What difference does it make? " at the congressional hearings.
If you remember Guccifer (that hacker) he said he'd hacked both Hillary and Sidney Blumenthal.
He also said he found Sidney Blumenthal's account more interesting.
That's just one reason why I started surfing the internet. Sidney Blumenthal was a name that
hung in the cobwebs of my memory, and I wanted to know what this scum-job of a journalist was
doing!
Then there was Clinton Cash, BoysonTheTracks, Clinton Chronicles, the outrageous audacity of
the Democrats Superdelegates voting before a single primary ballot had been cast, MSM bias to
Hillary, Kathy Shelton's video "I thought you should know." and maybe around September 2016, wondering
what dirty things Hillary had done with Russia since 1993?
So I guess it's true. In the end after witnessing what has transpired since the election I
would not vote for Hillary because she'd rather risk WWIII, than have the TRUTH come out why she
lost.
After living in Europe much of the last three years we've recently returned to the U.S. I must
say that life here feels very much like I'm living within a strange Absurdist theatre play of
some sort (not that Europe is vastly better). Truth, meaning, rationality, mean absolutely nothing
at this juncture here in the United States. Reality has been turned on its head. The only difference
between our political parties runs along identity politics lines: "do you prefer your drone strikes,
illegal invasions, regime change black-ops, economic warfare and massive government spying 'with'
or 'without' gender specific bathrooms?" MSM refer to this situation as "democracy" while of course
any thinking person knows we are actually living within a totalitarian nightmare. Theatre of the
Absurd as a way of life. I must admit it feels pretty creepy being home again.
I wish it wasn't asking too much, but I suspect it is. If the NYT was reporting it, I'd feel
better about our chances. But the Deep State controls the narrative, and thus controls Pompeo,
Trump's order notwithstanding. I hope I'm wrong.
Dave P. , November 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm
Yes Joe. It is rather painful to watch as you said this Orwellian Tragedy playing out in the
Country which has just about become a police state. For those of us who grew up admiring the Western
Civilization starting with the Greeks and Romans, and then for its institutions enshrining Individual
Rights; and its scientific, literary, and cultural achievements, it is as if it still happening
in some dream, though it has been coming for some time now – more than two decades now at least.
The System was not perfect but I think that it was good as it could get. The system had been in
decline for four decades or so now.
From Robert Parry's article:
"The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. "I don't think you get it," Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. "You bear this responsibility.
You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do
something about it. Or we will."
Diane Feinstein's multi-billionaire husband was implicated in those Loan and Savings scandals
of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush Era and in many other financial scandals later on but Law did not touch
him. He has a dual residency in Israel. These are very corrupt people.
Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Perle, Nulad-Kagan clan, Kristol, Gaffney . . . the list goes
on; add Netanyahu to it. In the Hollywood Harvey Weinstein, Rob Reiner. and the rest . . . In
Finance and wall Street characters like Sandy Weiss and the gang. The Media and TV is directly
or indirectly owned and controlled by "The Chosen People". So, where would you put the blame for
all what is going on in this country, and all this chaos, death, and destruction going on in ME
and many countries in Africa.
Any body who points out their role in it or utters a word of criticism of Israel is immediately
called an anti-semite. Just to tell my own connections, my wife youngest sister is married to
person who is Jewish (non-practicing). In all the relatives we have, they are closest to us for
more than thirty five years now. They are those transgender common restroom liberals, but we have
many common views and interests. In life, I have never differentiated people based on their ethnic
or racial backgrounds; you look at the principles they stand for.
As I see it, this era of Russia-Gate and witch hunt is hundred times worse than McCarthy era.
It seems irreversible. There is no one in the political establishment or elsewhere in Media or
academia left for regeneration of the "Body Politic". In fact, what we are witnessing here is
much worse than it was in the Soviet Union. It is complete degeneration of political leadership
in this country. It extends to Media and other institutions as well. People in Soviet Union did
not believe the lies they were told by the government there. And there arose writers like Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn in Soviet Union. What is left here now except are these few websites?
Maedhros , November 7, 2017 at 4:27 pm
If there is evidence, you should be able to provide some so that readers can analyze and discuss
it. Exactly what evidence has been provided that the Russian government manipulated the 2016 election?
CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 10:42 pm
Robert Parry You Nailed It!!!
I need to do a little research to see how far back you used the term "New McCarthyism" to describe
the next cold war with Russia. It was about the same time the first allegations of a Trump-Russia
conspiracy was floated by the MSM. I do not pretend to know how much airtime they spent covering
their coverup for all that the MSM did to profit from SuperPacs. They have webed a weave that
conspires to conceive to the tunes of billions of dollars spent to reprieve their intent to deceive
us and distract us away from their investment in Donald Trump which was the real influence in
the public spaces to gain mega profits from extorting the SuperPacs into spending their dollars
to defeat the trumped up candidate they created and boosted. One has to look no further than the
Main Stream Press (MSM) to find the guilty party with motive and opportunity to cash in on a candidacy
which if not for the money motive would not pass any test of journalistic integrity but would
make money for the Media.
The Russian Boogeyman was created shortly after the election and is an obvious attempt to shield
and defend the actions of the MSM which was the real fake news covered in the nightly news leading
up to the election which sought to get money rather than present the facts.
This is an example of how much power and influence the MSM has on us all to be able to upend
a National election and turn around and blame some foreign Devil for the results of an election.
The Russians had little to do with Trumps election. The MSM had everything to do with it. They
cast blame on the Russians and in so doing create a new Cold War which suits the power establishment
and suitably diverts all of our attention away from their machinations to influence the last presidential
election.
Win Win. More Nuclear Weapons and more money for the MIC and more money for all of the corporations
who would profit from a new Cold War.
Profit in times of deceit make more money from those who cheat.
CitizenOne , November 7, 2017 at 11:25 pm
Things not talked about:
1. James Comey and his very real influence on the election has never entered the media space
for an instant. It has gone down the collective memory hole. That silence has been deafening because
he was the person who against DOJ advice reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the
Servergate investigation after it had been closed by the FBI just days before the election.
The silence of the media on the influence on the election by the reopening of James Comey's
Servergate investigation and how the mass media press coverage implicating Hillary Clinton (again)
in supposed crimes (which never resulted in an indictment) influenced the National Election in
ways that have never been examined by the MSM is a nail in the coffin of media impartiality.
Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman?
Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his
own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken
of by the MSM? This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants
to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces
us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election
but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame.
It serves many interests. The MSM lies to all of us for the benefit of the MIC. It serves to
support White House which will deliver maximum investments in the Defense Industry. It does this
by creating a foreign enemy which they create for us to fear and be afraid of.
It is obvious to everyone with a clear eyed history of how the last election went down and
how the MSM and the government later played upon our fears to grab more cash have cashed in under
the present administration.
It is up to us to elect leaders who will reject this manipulation by the media and who will
not be cowed by the establishment. We have the power enshrined in our Constitution to elect leaders
who will pave the path forward to a better future.
Those future leaders will have to do battle with a media infrastructure that serves the power
structure and conspires to deceive us all.
Clear critical thinking must accompany free speech, however, and irrationality seems to have
beset Americans, too stuck in the mud of identity politics. Can they get out? I have hopes that
a push is coming from the new multipolar world Xi and Putin are advocating, as well as others
(but not the George Soros NWO variety). The big bully American government, actually ruled by oligarchy,
has not been serving its regular folks well, so things are falling apart. Seems like the sex scandals,
political scandals especially of the Democrat brand, money scandals are unraveling to expose underlying
societal sickness in the Disunited States of America.
It is interesting that this purge shakeup in Saudi Arabia is happening in 2017, one hundred
years since the shakeup in Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution. So shake-ups are happening everywhere.
I think a pattern is emerging of major changes in world events. Just yesterday I read that because
"Russia-gate" isn't working well, senators are looking to start a "China-gate", for evidence of
Trump collusion with Chinese oligarchs. Ludicrous. As Seer once said, "The Empire in panic mode".
Patricia, thanks for the info on Sid Blumenthal, HRC and the selling of arms from Libya to
ME jihadists, which seems to exonerate Chris Stevens from those dirty deeds and lays blame squarely
at Blumenthal's and Clinton's doorstep; changes my thinking. And thanks to Robert Parry for continuing
to push back at the participation of MSM and government players in the Orwellian masquerade being
pulled on the sheeple.
Truther , November 8, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Just the facts for those of you who have minds still open. suggest you bookmark it quickly
as the moderator will delete it within the hour.
"... In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California. ..."
"... Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story. ..."
"... Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats". ..."
"... US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China. ..."
"... The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth. ..."
"... The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect. ..."
"... In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site. ..."
Yellow journalism now employs "open source and social media investigation" scams foisted by
Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation site.
Bellingcat is allied with the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two principal mainstream
media organs for "regime change" propaganda, via the First Draft Coalition "partner network".
In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google-sponsored "post-Truth" Propaganda 3.0 coalition
declares that member organizations will "work together to tackle common issues, including ways
to streamline the verification process".
The New York Times routinely hacks up Bellingcat "reports" and pretends they're "verification"
Malachy Browne, "Senior Story Producer" at the New York Times, cited Bellingcat to embellish
the media "story" about the Khan Shaykhun chemical incident in Idlib Syria.
Before joining the Times, Browne was an editor at "social news and marketing agency" Storyful
and at Reported. ly, the "social reporting" arm of Pierre Omidyar's First Look Media.
Browne generously "supplemented" his "reporting" on the Khan Shaykun incident with "videos
gathered by the journalist Eliot Higgins and the social media news agency Storyful".
Browne encouraged Times readers to participate in the Bellingcat-style "verification" charade:
"Find a computer, get on Google Earth and match what you see in the video to the streets and buildings"
Browne of Storyful and Higgins of Bellingcat are founding members of the Google-funded "First
Draft" coalition.
Browne demonstrates how the NYT and other "First Draft" coalition media outlets use video to
"strengthen" their "storytelling".
In 2016, the NYT video department hired Browne and Andrew Glazer. a senior producer on the
team that launched VICE News, to help "enhance" the "reporting" at the Times.
Browne represents the Times' effort to package its dubious "reporting" using the Storyful marketing
strategy of "building trust, loyalty, and revenue with insight and emotionally driven content"
wedded with Bellingcat style "digital forensics" scams.
In other words, we should expect the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, UK Guardian, and
all the other "First Draft" coalition media "partners" to barrage us more Bellingcat / Atlantic
Council-style Facebook and YouTube video mashups, crazy fun with Google Earth, and Twitter campaigns.
Abe , September 16, 2017 at 7:00 pm
There is no reason to assume that the trollish rants of "Voytenko" are from some outraged flag-waving
"patriot" in Kiev. There are plenty of other "useful idiots" ready, willing and able to make mischief.
For example, about a million Jews emigrated to Israel ("made Aliyah") from the post-Soviet
states during the 1990s. Some 266,300 were Ukrainian Jews. A large number of Ukrainian Jews also
emigrated to the United States during this period. For example, out of an estimated 400 thousand
Russian-speaking Jews in Metro New York, the largest number (thirty-six percent) hail from Ukraine.
Needless to say, many among them are not so well disposed toward the nations of Russia or Ukraine,
and quite capable of all manner of mischief.
A particularly "useful idiot" making mischief the days is Sergey Brin of Google. Brin's parents
were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 when their
son was five years old.
Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns
YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.
In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC,
Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.
Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make
it universally accessible and useful".
In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey
Brin explained their "Don't be evil" culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: "We
believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not
only to the information people pay for you to see."
The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded
version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: "You can make money without doing evil".
This new gospel allows Google and its "partners" to make money promoting propaganda and engaging
in surveillance, and somehow manage to not "be evil". That's "post-truth" logic for you.
Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.
In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an "Investigathon" in New York City. Google
Ideas promoted Higgins' "War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations" song and dance via their
YouTube page.
Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat "findings" are "reaffirmed" by accessing imagery
in Google Earth.
Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided
by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections
to both the military and intelligence communities.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the
United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence
Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as "a true
mission partner in every sense of the word". Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital
Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA
Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the "Wi-Spy" scandal,
it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including
personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation
between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In
a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for
overriding privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty
the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as
little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.
Google is a joint venture partner with the CIA In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested
"under $10 million each" into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company
developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.
In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily
invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.
Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow
at the Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank. Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has "high
confidence" it was "Russian hackers". "But we don't have hard evidence," Alperovitch admitted
in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.
Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative
US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against
"threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats".
The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive
operations.
Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military
cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head
of the NSA.
US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting
public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create
a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.
The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have
been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations
are purely defensive is a myth.
Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty
and concern within the American government and population.
The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring
communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.
In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in
tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics
of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.
Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Higgins and Bellingcat receives direct funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded
by business magnate George Soros, and from Google's Digital News Initiatives (DNI).
Google's 2017 DNI Fund Annual Report describes Higgins as "a world–leading expert in news verification".
In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former "unemployed man" now
busy independently "Codifying social conflict data", Google neglects to mention Higgins' role
as a "research fellow" for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.
Despite their claims of "independent journalism", Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation
operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their "online investigations".
The Atlantic Council donors list includes:
– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.
– The NATO military alliance
– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical
– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million),
Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian
Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia
– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation),
Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at
Brookings Institution.
Higgins is a Research Associate of the Department of War Studies at King's College, and was
principal co-author of the Atlantic Council "reports" on Ukraine and Syria.
Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a
co-author with Higgins of the report, effusively praised Higgins' effort to bolster anti-Russian
propaganda:
Wilson stated, "We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none
of it provided by government sources. And it's thanks to works, the work that's been pioneered
by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we've been able to use social media
forensics and geolocation to back this up." (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)
However, the Atlantic Council claim that "none" of Higgins' material was provided by government
sources is an obvious lie.
Higgins' primary "pieces of evidence" are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set
of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the
Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official
Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Higgins and the Atlantic Council are working in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence's
"hybrid war" against Russia.
The laudatory bio of Higgins on the Kings College website specifically acknowledges his service
to the Atlantic Council:
"an award winning investigative journalist and publishes the work of an international alliance
of fellow investigators using freely available online information. He has helped inaugurate open-source
and social media investigations by trawling through vast amounts of data uploaded constantly on
to the web and social media sites. His inquiries have revealed extraordinary findings, including
linking the Buk used to down flight MH17 to Russia, uncovering details about the August 21st 2013
Sarin attacks in Damascus, and evidencing the involvement of the Russian military in the Ukrainian
conflict. Recently he has worked with the Atlantic Council on the report "Hiding in Plain Sight",
which used open source information to detail Russia's military involvement in the crisis in Ukraine."
While it honors Higgins' enthusiastic "trawling", King's College curiously neglects to mention
that Higgins' "findings" on the Syian sarin attacks were thoroughly debunked.
King's College also curiously neglects to mention the fact that Higgins, now listed as a Senior
Fellow at the Atlantic Council's "Future Europe Initiative", was principal co-author of the April
2016 Atlantic Council "report" on Syria.
The report's other key author was John E. Herbst, United States Ambassador to Ukraine from
September 2003 to May 2006 (the period that became known as the Orange Revolution) and Director
of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
Other report authors include Frederic C. Hof, who served as Special Adviser on Syrian political
transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator
for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East
Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in
the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed
the position as Director in May 2016.
There is no daylight between the "online investigations" of Higgins and Bellingcat and the
"regime change" efforts of the NATO-backed Atlantic Council.
Thanks to the Atlantic Council, Soros, and Google, it's a pretty well-funded gig for fake "citizen
investigative journalist" Higgins.
Ray McGovern raise important fact: DNC hide evidence from FBI outsourcing everything to CrowdStrike. This is the most unexplainable
fact in the whole story. One hypotheses that Ray advanced here that there was so many hacks into DNC that they wanted to hide.
Another important point is CIA role in elections, and specifically
John O. Brennan behaviour. Brennan's 25 years with the CIA
included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst and as station chief in Saudi Arabia.
McGovern thing that Brennon actually controlled Obama. And in his opinion Brennan was the main leaker of Trump surveillance information.
Notable quotes:
"... Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment. Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong. ..."
I really like Ray... I watch and listen , he seems to use logic, reason and facts in his assessments.. I'm surprised CIA and the
deep state allow him to operate ... stay safe Ray...
McGovern, you idiot. To try to put Trump on Hillary's level is complete stupidity. The war with Russia or nothing was avoided
with a Trump victory. Remember the NATO build up on the Russian border preparing for a Hillary win? Plus, if Hillary won, justice
and law in the USA would be over with forever. The Germans dont know sht about the USA to say their little cute phrase. Trump
is a very calm mannered man and his hands on the nuke button is an issue only to those who watch the fake MSM. And no the NSA
has not released anything either. Wrong on that point too.
The German expression of USA having a choice between cholera and plague is ignorant. McGovern is wrong ....everyone knew HRC
was a criminal. McGovern is wrong... Jill Stein in not trustworthy. A vote for Jill Stein was a vote away from Trump. If Jill
Stein or HRC were elected their would be no environment left to save. Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment.
Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern
is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong.
Another month or so and the DHS may offer a color-coding system to help the sheeple understand various levels of confidence.
Green - Moderate Confidence Blue - High Confidence Yellow - Very High Confidence Orange - Extremely High Confidence Red - Based
on Actual Fact
The last category may be one of the signs of the apocalypse.
This is the review of the book of David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise
of America's Secret Government by one of Moon of Alabama readers.
Looks like the course on making The USA imperial power (which was related later in Washington consensus and Wolfowitz doctrine)
was taken directly after WWII. Cold War was just a smoke screen under which the USA tried to establish hegemony over the world. Both
documents could well be written by Alan Dulles himself.
Any president who dare to deviate from this is ostracized , impeached or killed. So the political role of intelligence agencies
since their establishment by Truman was to serve as the brain center if USA imperial beuracracy (as well as the tools for projecting
it abroad)
The CIA is a hybrid of an intelligence service that gathers and analyzes foreign intelligence and a clandestine service that
conducts covert operations. Both functions are essential to creating pretexts for wars and for expanding the US influence abroad for
multinationals, and that is what they have done for 70 years (Dulles came from Wall Street). Among other things it
deliberately creates small wars just to demonstrate the US military might. Neoconservative theorist and intelligence operative
Michael Ledeen suggested that every 10 years or so, the United States "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it
against the wall, just to show we mean business."
Another book deserves to mentioned here too here too. Prouty book
The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control
of the United States and the World (which was suppressed in 1973 when irt was published and did not see shelves before
republishing in 2011) is described like the the U.S.'s aggressive and illegal war policy conducted by CIA has finally provoked
a real military threat to the U.S., albeit one that has emerged only in response to U.S. war plans
U.S. Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty was the chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1955 to 1964,
managing the global military support system for the CIA in Vietnam and around the world. described how the CIA infiltrated the U.S.
military, the State Department, the National Security Council and other government institutions, covertly placing its officers in
critical positions to ensure that its plans are approved and that it has access to whatever forces, weapons, equipment, ammunition
and other resources it needs to carry them out.
Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... We find Dulles attempting to convince his superiors of the need and advantages of dealing with "moderate Nazis" like Reinhard
Gehlen, so today there are personalities in our government following a policy of working with "moderate Islamists" and "moderate ultra-nationalists"
to achieve our goals. ..."
"... Perhaps someone looking for more focus on Dulles the man might be disappointed by this, but for someone like myself interested
in the history and insights of era Dulles lived in. The era covered is approximately the 1930s through the 1969. ..."
"... the ruling elite of the US was deeply split. ..."
"... A large portion of the US elite was sympathetic to the Nazis. Indeed, the pro-Nazi segment of the US elite had built up ties
with Germany during the inter-war period. The bonds were economic, political and even ideological - indeed, these links were so important
that likely Germany would not have been able to rearm itself without the help of these "patriotic" Americans (Talbot makes clear that
in some cases this kinship was evident even during the war itself!). ..."
"... And no one represents the fascist sympathizing segment of the US elite like Allen Dulles. ..."
"... Talbot covers this topic well and makes a very good case for Dulles involvement - including revealing (from his day calendar)
the fact that "fired" and "retired" from the CIA Allen Dulles, spent the weekend - from the time Kennedy was shot and killed Friday
through the hours that Oswald was gunned down - at a CIA command facility in Virginia. ..."
I just finished listening to the audio book of David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard. Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise
of America's Secret Government . It was very good I think.
I'll spare you a full review, but the Dulles era has some very important and interesting similarities with our own (in fact,
the ties are most certainly those first formed during the Dulles brothers tenure at State and CIA). Talbot doesn't delve deeply
into these more recent aspects, but he does acknowledge them. And the similarities are quite clear. We find Dulles attempting
to convince his superiors of the need and advantages of dealing with "moderate Nazis" like Reinhard Gehlen, so today there are
personalities in our government following a policy of working with "moderate Islamists" and "moderate ultra-nationalists" to achieve
our goals.
Initially I had heard that it was a Allen Dulles biography, and though there is a lot of detail about his personal life, his
marriage, and even his kids, I would say it strays from what one might consider a "standard" biography and is more about Dulles
and his times. For instance, there are a couple of chapters devoted just to the Kennedy Assassination, another on Oswald, and
one on the "Generals' putsch" in France in '61. Perhaps someone looking for more focus on Dulles the man might be disappointed
by this, but for someone like myself interested in the history and insights of era Dulles lived in. The era covered is approximately
the 1930s through the 1969.
Talbot uses Dulles life as the base to build up the important (and to my mind misunderstood and misconstrued) stories in recent
US history. That story is, of course, the following: despite the impression most Americans have of our country fighting the ultimate
"good war" against universally despised enemies - that fact is that the ruling elite of the US was deeply split.
A large portion of the US elite was sympathetic to the Nazis. Indeed, the pro-Nazi segment of the US elite had built up
ties with Germany during the inter-war period. The bonds were economic, political and even ideological - indeed, these links were
so important that likely Germany would not have been able to rearm itself without the help of these "patriotic" Americans (Talbot
makes clear that in some cases this kinship was evident even during the war itself!).
And no one represents the fascist sympathizing segment of the US elite like Allen Dulles. And Talbot tracks this key
figure's fascist ties as he rises in the US power structure from his early years as an OSS man wheeling and dealing with Nazi
generals in Bern, Switzerland and on through Dulles' creation and/or support of fascist governments in Latin America, the Middle
East, and Africa during the Cold War. Talbot covers the events surrounding Dulles life excellently. Especially moving was his
chapter on Guatemala - the tragedy of the Arbenz family as a mirror of the tragedy of Guatemala is covered through the eyes of
the grandson of Arbez.
Talbot covers the horror stories of the results of America working closely with dictators like Trujillo, the Shah, Mobutu Sese
Seko, and Batista (he misses Indonesia though, an operation that caused the death of 1,000,000 Indonesians). But of course, as
an American, the most important question to Talbot is that of Dulles role in the Kennedy assassination. Talbot covers this
topic well and makes a very good case for Dulles involvement - including revealing (from his day calendar) the fact that "fired"
and "retired" from the CIA Allen Dulles, spent the weekend - from the time Kennedy was shot and killed Friday through the hours
that Oswald was gunned down - at a CIA command facility in Virginia.
Allen Dulles papers released by CIA to Princeton are now online
Posted on January 23, 2008 by Dan Linke
The Central Intelligence Agency has released to Princeton University some 7,800 documents covering the career of Allen W.
Dulles, the agency's longest-serving director, which now can be viewed online at
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/st74cq497
Dulles (1893-1969), a Princeton alumnus who headed the CIA from 1953 to 1961, was renowned for his role in shaping U.S.
intelligence operations during the Cold War. Last March, the CIA released to Princeton a collection of letters, memoranda,
reports and other papers - some still redacted - that the agency had removed from Dulles' papers after his death and before
their transfer to the University in 1974.
The Internet surveillance program collects data from online providers including e-mail, chat services,
videos, photos, stored data, file transfers, video conferencing and log-ins, according to classified
documents obtained and posted by
The Washington Post and then
The
Guardian on Thursday afternoon.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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