May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Bigger doesn't imply better. Bigger often is a sign of obesity, of lost control, of overcomplexity, of cancerous
cells
Total Surveillance Regime: Big Uncle is Watching You
Mass surveillance is equal to totalitarism. As Joseph Goebbels professed:
"if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"
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.
US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency over Huawei, which he has deemed a
national security threat. His new executive order makes it more difficult for US companies to
do business with the Chinese tech giant. RT America's Manila Chan chats with investigative
journalist Ben Swann, who says no evidence exists for the Trump administration's claim.
#RTAmerica#InQuestionRT#QuestionMore
U.S. cannot spy via Chinese made technology products. That is the problem. When did
competition against American technology get to be a national security threat? It is about
creating a monopoly of only certain products in America. I hope American companies fight
back. Prices in American stores have already started to rise. Monopolies mean high
prices.
In the age of technology...any country
who doesn't SPY on other countries or their own citizens is LYING thru their teeth! USA is NO
DIFFERENT than CHINA.....they both are rogue nations, competing for the same thing,
TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP! The problem is....HUAWEI just got the upper hand in 5G technology
before the US can compete...so as such, the US threatens other countries with scare tactics
until the US can develop and deploy 5G technology to compete with CHINA. It's all about MONEY
and BUSINESS.
USA has dishonestly gathered more data on it's own civilians than it can access or
understand in several lifetimes, they have the gaul to attack others without proof?
UNREAL
"... In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four , there is an all-encompassing surveillance state that keeps a watchful eye on everyone, in search of possible rebels and points of resistance. ..."
"... Censorship is the norm in this world, and is so extreme that individuals can become "unpersons" who are essentially deleted from society because their ideas were considered dangerous by the establishment. This is an idea that is very familiar to activists and independent journalists who are being removed from the public conversation for speaking out about government and corporate corruption on social media. ..."
"... Orwell is famous for coining the term "double-speak," which is a way to describe the euphemistic language that government uses to whitewash their most dirty deeds. For example, in Orwell's story, the ministry of propaganda was called the Ministry of Truth, just as today the government agency that was once known as "The Department of War," is now called the "Department of Defense." ..."
"... "Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors, and smells." ..."
"... Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided by politics that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state. ..."
"... "We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party." -Emmanuel Goldstein ..."
This month, George Orwell's legendary novel
Nineteen Eighty-Four turns
70 years old, and the warnings contained within the story are now more relevant than ever. Orwell's predictions were so spot on that
it almost seems like it was used as some type of accidental instruction manual for would-be tyrants.
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four , there is an all-encompassing surveillance state that keeps a watchful eye on everyone,
in search of possible rebels and points of resistance.
Censorship is the norm in this world, and is so extreme that individuals can become "unpersons" who are essentially deleted
from society because their ideas were considered dangerous by the establishment. This is an idea that is very familiar to activists
and independent journalists who are being removed from the public conversation for speaking out about government and corporate corruption
on social media.
Orwell is famous for coining the term "double-speak," which is a way to describe the euphemistic language that government
uses to whitewash their most dirty deeds. For example, in Orwell's story, the ministry of propaganda was called the Ministry of Truth,
just as today the government agency that was once known as "The Department of War," is now called the "Department of Defense."
There was also never-ending war in Orwell's story, the conditions of which would change on a regular basis, keeping the general
population confused about conflicts so they give up on trying to understand what is actually going on. Some of these predictions
were merely recognitions of patterns in human history, since the idea of "unpersons" and war propaganda is nothing new. However,
Orwell had an incredible understanding of how technology was going to progress over the 20th century, and he was able to envision
how technology would be used by those in power to control the masses.
The technological predictions made in the book were truly uncanny, as they give a fairly accurate description of our modern world.
Orwell described "telescreens," which acted as both an entertainment device and a two-way communication device. This type of technology
was predicted by many futurists at the time, but Orwell's prediction was unique because he suggested that these devices would be
used by the government to spy on people, through microphones and cameras built into the devices.
Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided by politics
that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state. This police state was also a strong deterrent in the world of
Nineteen Eighty-Four , because although many of the citizens in the book had a positive opinion of "big brother," it was still something
that they feared, and it was a force that kept them in control. Of course, this is not much different from the attitude that the
average American or European has when confronted with police brutality and government corruption.
Many of the ideas about power and authority that were expressed in Orwell's classic are timeless and as old as recorded history
; but his analysis of how technology would amplify the destructive nature of power was incredibly unique, especially for his time.
Not to stray too far, I always liked the part in Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes":
"Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin.
There are smiles and smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time
he's covering up. He's had his fun and he's guilty. And men do love sin, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes,
sizes, colors, and smells."
The laugh shouter is one of those government or corporate chuckle-heads that goes along, gets along, and usually spends less
than an hour a day actually doing his job. You see them on TV and in every office. Everything out of their mouths has to be punctuated
with a chuckle.
The thing I remember from the novel was the "versificator" which was a typewriter-like device that allowed historical events
to be changed as needed . . . very much like the networked computer.
Facebook recently made me an UnPerson, not joking. I had deleted my acct some years ago, re-registered to man a business page
and...haha they rejected me, recent photo and all.
There are a few other books and booklets and letters that also seem eerily prescient. Following modern-day protocols, however,
it's best not to mention them in polite company. ;-)
Unfortunately, just like in Orwell's book, people in the modern world are so distracted by entertainment and the divided
by politics that they have no idea they are living in a tyrannical police state.
Exactly...
"We are not at war with Eurasia. You are being made into obedient, stupid slaves of the Party." -Emmanuel Goldstein
I plan on voting in the local elections, especially for Sheriff and the bond issues. Also, I still think that voting for the
quality Libertarian candidates is a better option than not voting, but I do understand your point. But when all else fails, you
better be prepared to vote from the rooftops...
Good info. Very interesting. I was aware of Mike Rogers role but I discounted it
because:
1) It came too late (October 2016) and got little real media attention before the election.
2) Although NSA discovered irregularities in the Spring, they didn't get aired until
October? Maybe because he reports to the President?
3) It is said that Rogers informed Trump. Yet Trump didn't little if anything as a
result.
In the end, "Russiagate" continued despite Rogers info. Almost as though the Deep State
consensus was to initiate a new McCarthyism - which has been my operating theory for months.
<> <> <> <> <> <> <>
Will anyone be prosecuted for "Russiagate"? I doubt it. Everyone involve will say they
were doing their jobs. Their "intent" based on patriotic duty.
An interesting video. clearly shows the danger of over-centralization. Although technology now
allow automatic creation of dossier those are of very limited value because to distinguish signal
from noise is almost impossible. Aesop language complicates decoding of the conversation greatly
and unless long series is available (enough to established the context for used code words; like
"bottle of milk" term in this video) it is practically undecodable. In such cases all you have is
an envelope. Which is powerful information (tell me who you are calling and who call you and I
will tell you who you are ;-), but if person is alert to the fact that NSA is listening (which in
after Snowden world that category includes all people who has something to hide) that is also of
limited value. In such cases the key conversations are moved from phone to direct contact or to
private encrypted channels.
The mere existence of NSA gave huge stimulus for developing to steganography. Also foreign
embassies and multinationals located outside of the USA now know that they are dealing with an
extremely sophisticated opponent and use appropriate precautions. For example compression of the
pain text before applying the cipher recently became the standard practice makes breaking
generally beyond NSA capabilities as (if headers are destroyed and the type of compression is
unknown or randomly chosen) . Because compression removes lion share of redundancy in the plain
text.
Notable quotes:
"... It's exactly like Enemy of the State you Liars and you would still be lying if Edward Snowden hadn't exposed it ..."
Al CIA da brought to you by the U.S. government! 9/11 was never met to be stopped! The Patriot
Act was sitting on the shelf just waiting for 9/11 to be pulled off!
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?
"... I don't think the US government should use operating systems made in China for the same reason that most governments shouldn't use operating systems made in the US and in fact we just got proof since Microsoft is now known to be telling the NSA about bugs in Windows before it fixes them. ..."
"... All the major western tech companies cooperate with the western security services. In Murder in Samarkand I gave the first public revelation that the government can and does listen through your mobile phone microphone even when the phone is ostensibly switched off, a fact that got almost no traction until Edward Snowden released documents confirming it six years later. China is full of western devices with backdoors that are exploited by western intelligence. That the tables turn as Chinese technology advances is scarcely surprising. ..."
Theresa May almost certainly sacked Gavin Williamson not just on the basis of a telephone billing record showing he had a phone
call with a Telegraph journalist, but on the basis of a recording of the conversation itself.
It astonishes me that still, after Snowden and his
PRISM revelations, after Wikileaks
Vault 7 releases , and after numerous other sources including
my own humble contribution, people still manage to avoid the cognitive dissonance that goes with really understanding how much we
are surveilled and listened to. Even Cabinet Ministers manage
to pretend
to themselves it is not happening.
The budget of the NSA, which does nothing else but communications intercept, is US $14.2 billion this year. Think about that enormous
sum, devoted to just communications surveillance, and what it can achieve. The budget of the UK equivalent, GCHQ, is £1.2 billion,
of which about 10% is paid by the NSA. Domestic surveillance in the UK has been vastly expanded and many taboos broken. But the bedrock
of the system with regard to domestic intercepts is still that legal restrictions are dodged, as the USA's NSA spies on UK citizens
while the UK's GCHQ spies on US citizens, and then the information is swapped. It was thus probably the NSA that harvested Williamson's
phone call, passing the details on. Given official US opposition to the UK employing Huawei technology, Williamson's call would have
been a "legitimate" NSA target.
Mass surveillance works on electronic harvesting. Targeted phone numbers apart, millions of essentially random calls are listened
to electronically using voice recognition technology and certain key words trigger an escalation of the call. Williamson's call discussing
Huawei, China, the intelligence services, and backdoors would certainly have triggered recording and been marked up to a human listener,
even if his phone was not specifically targeted by the Americans – which it almost certainly was.
Williamson of course is relying on the security services' secrecy about their methods to maintain his protests of innocence, secure
in the knowledge that the recording of him would not be produced. The existence of the recording – of which I am extremely confident
– is the only possible explanation for May's degree of certainty and swift action against one of her very few loyal allies.
All of which of course throws into stark relief the stunning hypocrisy of those who are worried that Huawei will be used for electronic
eavesdropping, when they are up to their ears in electronic eavesdropping themselves. One of my heroes is the great Richard Stallman,
who put it this way six years ago:
RMS: Well, it's perfectly reasonable suspicion to me. I don't think the US government should use operating systems made in
China for the same reason that most governments shouldn't use operating systems made in the US and in fact we just got proof since
Microsoft is now known to be telling the NSA about bugs in Windows before it fixes them.
RSS: I was just going to bring this up exactly, so I was saying that the NSA recently received notifications about the zero-day
holes in advance and [incomprehensible] the NSA and the CIA to just crack PCs abroad for espionage purposes.
RMS: Now, [incomprehensible] that this proves my point, which is that you have to be nuts if you were some other country and
using Windows on your computers. But, you know, given that Windows has a universal back door in it, Microsoft would hardly need
to tell the NSA about any bugs, it can tell the NSA about the mal-feature of the universal back door and that would be enough
for the NSA to attack any computer running Windows, which unfortunately is a large fraction of them.
All the major western tech companies cooperate with the western security services. In Murder in Samarkand I gave the first public
revelation that the government can and does listen through your mobile phone microphone
even when the phone is ostensibly switched off, a fact that got almost no traction until Edward Snowden released documents confirming
it six years later. China is full of western devices with backdoors that are exploited by western intelligence. That the tables turn
as Chinese technology advances is scarcely surprising.
Personally I do not want the Chinese, Americans, Russians or British eavesdropping on me, or on each other, and I wish that they
would stop. The spy games will of course continue, as they make money for a lot of well-connected people. But for any side to claim
moral superiority in all of this is just nonsense.
"It is the ultimate irony that how the old Soviet Union's judiciary used to function is
now becoming standing operating procedure in the United States."
When you consider how many of today's Democrat luminaries were self described as dedicated
Communists in the 60's, 70's, and 80's it is not surprising at all.
If, the information in this article is true, I feel bad for this young lady getting hemmed
up in international shenanigans.
If a person loves her country (her home), wants the opportunity for fellow citizens to be
free with a right to bare arms, and seeks out the assistance of the USA both as a model for
having the 2nd Amendment, and an organization that leads in advocating for personal firearms
ownership, the NRA, how is she committing any crime? She should not be locked up for pursuing
God given, inalienable rights for her fellow countrymen. She should be encouraged and
sponsored by Pro2A groups and manufacturers. Again, if the information as presented is
true.
Thank you DOJ. There's no need for guns in Russia. These people intoxicated by the alcohol
and hard drugs will kill one another by the thousands. I feel for Masha Butina, but as far
away she is from Russia, as better for this poor country. Luckily she is in US and even
better in prison. Thank you Russophobes, warmongers and sheep that neocons will send to the
slaughterhouse, you can not do any better.
Our courts are totally corrupt. There's a prosecutor/FBI/judge cabal which convicts 98+%
of its victims at trials. The excessive long sentences are used to convince the large
majority unable to afford a slightly possible defense to bargain a plea. The Exceptional
morons selected for juries think, why would the FBI lie. They lie to be promoted. What do you
think happens to an agent whose testimony aids the defense?
Kangaroo courts would be more honest in their convictions.
If a case is merely "plausible", that's not enough to indict.
Based on that thread-bare criterion, the FBI could probably come up with "plausible" cause
to indict half the US population for something or other. Never mind Russians, all of whom
might "plausibly" be suspected as secret agents for the Kremlin because they know other
Russians.
The true criminals are attempting to cover their tracks through diversion. The magnitude
of the scheme they are executing now is commensurate with the magnitude of their own crimes
against the United States.
I agree, it was much more scary in the 80's hiding under our desks at school and learning
each week how many times one country could blow up the world, multiple times over. Now, so
many people around the world call ********, not because MAD doesn't exist, but everyone
realized no matter the quality of your bunker and fortitude of cement, those things only mean
you die slower than those outside near the big flash. Hypersonic weapons seem like a step
backwards in the whole 'my missile is bigger than your missile' game of Coldwar 2.0.
...The American wing of the movement sees big tech as an attractive target of attack; for
them, Silicon
Valley is a bizarre mix of greedy capitalists and "cultural Marxists", keen on
indoctrinating their users into leftwing ideas while getting filthy rich off everyone's
data.
Populists in the rest of the world, in contrast, see Silicon Valley's platforms as their
best chance of escaping the intellectual hegemony of their own domestic "cultural Marxists",
firmly ensconced in elite institutions, such as the media, the academia, and the Deep
State.
In an August 2018 interview
with CNN, Steve Bannon called people leading "evil" Silicon Valley "complete narcissists" and
"sociopaths"; the data grabbed by their companies, he insisted, should be "put in a public
trust". He also predicted that big tech would be one of the main themes of the 2020
presidential election.
Given that the anger towards Silicon Valley is also growing on the left – Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the latest sensation of American leftist politics, memorably
attacked New York City's $3bn welcome package to Amazon – it seems like a reasonable
prediction. Silicon Valley appears to be a perfect enemy for non-centrist forces in America, as
bashing it helps to delegitimize the legacy of Obama and Clinton, seen as its primary
enablers.
Others on the right endorse Bannon's opinions. Brad Parscale, the digital media director of
Trump's 2016 campaign, has
complained that "Big tech monsters like Google and Facebook have become nothing less than
incubators for far-left [neo]liberal ideologies and are doing everything they can to eradicate
conservative ideas and their proponents from the internet."
Recent bans on far-right and conservative personalities by social media and online
fundraising platforms have only amplified such perceptions of Silicon Valley.
Even Donald Trump complained that Google was "suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding
information and news that is good" – a "very serious situation" that, he promised, "will
be addressed".
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive officer of Google, will
head a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing Silicon Valley innovation and best
practices to the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday.
Feb 12, 2019 · The plan depends on the Pentagon working closely with the tech
industry to ... experts, chaired by Eric Schmidt, previously chairman and CEO of Google.
Timing is everything- Barr is ready to throw the " hammer" on traitors of USA .... All
allies of Eric Schmidt ( lynn Rothschild sings his praises at every interview with Chinas
University )
Eric Schmidt List of colleagues
1-lynn Rothschild ( Hillarys 1000,000 plate fund raiser)
2- Obama- white house digital services
3- Sillicon Valley ( facebook- template for winning aka Hillary)
4- pentagon-
The JAIC was initially proposed in 2017 by the department's Defense Innovation Board of
tech industry experts, chaired by Eric Schmidt, previously chairman and CEO of Google. It was
structured in large part by Brendan McCord, previously head of machine learning at the
Defense Innovation Unit, a kind of Silicon
Valley embassy for the Pentagon. McCord is also the primary author of the department's AI
strategy.
Lt. Gen. John "Jack" Shanahan, who leads the JAIC, said the unit will focus on rapidly
deploying existing AI algorithms and tools, often contracted from technology companies, in
military scenarios.
Remember- the axis of evil within our own Government who tried to over throw our sitting
zpresident.... They don't give up easily.
They ( military propaganda and war machine ) just found a weak link and intend to
weaponize it against the Trump administration. Venezula interference bad move except for
military complex and who funds them??? Think two or three steps ahead... Don't get caught off
guard... They are slimy littler fquers.
"... Remember, historically The Washington Post is the preferred outlet for the CIA and Intelligence Community within Deep State to dump their "leaks" and stories. The State Department "leaks" to CNN for the same purposes. ..."
Did NSA Admiral Mike Rogers Warn Trump On
November 17th, 2016?
Sometimes the utilization of Timelines means you have to look at the new information with
a keen awareness of specific events. In hindsight, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers may
have notified Team Trump of Obama's Intelligence Community (James Clapper and John
Brennan) spying on their activity.
As you look at the FISA request dates below, it's important to note that NSA Director
Admiral Mike Rogers would be keenly aware of both the June request – Denied, and the
October request – Granted. Pay specific attention to the October request.
"October"!
.
June 2016: FISA request.
The Obama administration
files a request
with the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump
and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.
October 2016: FISA request.
The
Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a
computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found --
but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at
National
Review
later
notes
.
The
Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the
high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.
♦
On Tuesday November 8th, 2016 the election was held. Results announced Wednesday November
9th, 2016.
♦
On Thursday November 17th, 2016, NSA Director Mike Rogers traveled to New York and met
with President-Elect Donald Trump.
♦
On Friday November 18th
The Washington Post reported
on a
recommendation in "October"
that Mike Rogers be removed from his NSA position:
The heads of the Pentagon and the nation's intelligence community have recommended to
President Obama that the director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael S. Rogers,
be removed.
The recommendation, delivered to the White House
last month
, was made by Defense
Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr.,
according to several U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
[ ]
In a move apparently unprecedented for a military officer,
Rogers, without
notifying superiors, traveled to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday at Trump Tower
.
That caused consternation at senior levels of the administration, according to the
officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel matters.
(
link
)
Remember, historically The Washington Post is the preferred outlet for the CIA and
Intelligence Community
within Deep State
to dump their "leaks"
and stories. The State Department "leaks" to CNN for the same purposes.
On Saturday November 19th
Reuters reported
on the WaPo Story and
additional pressure by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and DNI James Clapper to fire Mike
Rogers.
[ ]
The Washington Post reported that a decision by Rogers to travel to New York to meet
with Trump on Thursday without notifying superiors caused consternation at senior levels
of the administration, but the recommendation to remove him predated his visit. (
link
)
The Intelligence Community -at the direction of President Obama- made a request to
a FISA court for the NSA to spy on Donald Trump in June 2016. It was denied.
In October the Intelligence Community (NSA) -at the direction of President Obama-
made a second request to the FISA court for the NSA to spy on Donald Trump. It was
approved.
At around the same time (October), as the second request to FISA, (Def Sec) Ash
Carter and (DNI) James Clapper tell President Obama to dump NSA Director Mike Rogers.
A week after the election, Mike Rogers makes a trip to Trump Tower without telling
his superior, James Clapper; which brings about new calls (November media leaks to WaPo)
for President Obama to dump Mike Rogers.
Occam's Razor
.
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers didn't want to participate in the spying scheme (Clapper,
Brennan, Etc.), which was the baseline for President Obama's post presidency efforts to
undermine Donald Trump and keep Trump from digging into the Obama labyrinth underlying his
remaining loyalists. After the October spying operation went into effect, Rogers unknown
loyalty was a risk to the Obama objective. 10 Days after the election Rogers travels to
President-Elect Trump without notifying those who were involved in the intel scheme.
Did NSA Director Mike Rogers wait for a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information
Facility) to be set up in Trump Tower, and then notify the President-elect he was being
monitored by President Obama?
.Seems likely.
"... Former American spies have been complaining for years that capturing the keystrokes of all people in America 24/7 produces information overload -- too much data to sift through when searching for those trying to harm our way of life. ..."
But the American intelligence community should have known. It captures all the fiber optic
communications of all people in America. This mass suspicionless surveillance is unlawful and
unconstitutional, but the leadership of our 60,000-person strong domestic spying apparatus has
persuaded every president since George H.W. Bush that all this spying keeps America safe. We
now know that it doesn't. It didn't find a single Russian spy bent on influencing the
election.
Former American spies have been complaining for years that capturing the keystrokes of
all people in America 24/7 produces information overload -- too much data to sift through when
searching for those trying to harm our way of life.
"Once the Mueller report is put to bed, and it will be soon, this committee is going to look long and hard at how all of this
started," Graham said. "We're going to look at the FISA warrant process. Did Russia provide Christopher Steele the information about
Trump, that turned out to be garbage, that was used to get a warrant on an American citizen and if so, how did the system fail? Was
there a real effort between Papadopoulos and anybody in Russia to use the Clinton e-mails stolen by the Russians, or is that thought
planted in his mind? I don't know, but we're going to look."
"... That report is going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and there are going to be criminal referrals in it. ..."
"... The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it... ..."
"... He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to [Attorney General] Bill Barr already. ..."
It is about the rule of law and privacy. The Obama administration for more than four years
before the 2016 election allowed four contractors working for the FBI to illegally surveil
American citizens -- illegally. The FISA court has already found that. There is the Horowitz
report coming out in May or possibly early June. There's another report that everyone has
forgotten about involving James Comey alone. That will be out in two weeks. That report is
going to be a bombshell. It is going to open up the investigation on a very high note, and
there are going to be criminal referrals in it.
The FISA court abuse is the center of this entire abuse of governmental power, and the chief
judge in that court has already ruled that the FBI broke the law and that the people at the
head of the justice department, Sally Yates, John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for
national security all knew about it and lied to the FISA court about it...
There's a hero in this story and it is not a lawyer. There is a hero. His name is Admiral
Mike Rogers. He was the head of the National Security Agency.
He [Rogers] discovered the illegal spying. He went personally to the FISA court and briefed
the Chief Judge and worked with her for months to uncover the people who did it. The FISA court
has already told the Justice Department who lied to that court and that has been given to
[Attorney General] Bill Barr already.
Any time more information becomes available and analysis gets easier, governments are interested – and not just authoritarian
ones. In the U.S., for instance, the 1970s saw revelations that government agencies – such as the FBI, CIA and NSA – had set up
expansive domestic
surveillance networks
to monitor and harass civil rights protesters, political activists and Native American groups. These
issues haven't gone away: Digital technology today has deepened the ability of even more agencies to conduct even more intrusive
surveillance.
... ... ...
AI and Disinformation
In addition to providing surveillance capabilities that are both sweeping and
fine-grained, AI can help repressive governments manipulate available information and spread disinformation.
These campaigns can be automated or automation-assisted, and deploy
hyper-personalized messages
directed at – or against –
specific people
or groups.
Muddying the waters between truth and fiction may become useful in
a tight election, when one candidate could create fake videos showing an opponent doing and saying things
that never actually happened.
An early deepfake video shows some of the dangers of advanced technology.
In my view, policymakers in democracies should think carefully about the risks of AI systems to their own
societies and to people living under authoritarian regimes around the world. A critical question is how many
countries will adopt China's model of digital surveillance. But it's not just authoritarian countries
feeling the pull. And it's also not just Chinese companies spreading the technology: Many U.S. companies,
Microsoft included, but
IBM, Cisco and Thermo Fisher
too, have provided sophisticated capabilities to nasty governments. The
misuse of AI is not limited to autocratic states
Storing your minute-by-minute travels carries privacy risks and has been used by police to
determine the location of suspects -- such as a warrant that police in Raleigh, North Carolina,
served on
Google last year to find devices near a murder scene. So the company lets you "pause" a
setting called Location History.
Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's
support page
on the subject states: "You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location
History off, the places you go are no longer stored."
That isn't true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store
time-stamped location data without asking. (It's possible, although laborious,
to delete it .)
For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app.
Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some
searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science
kits," pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude -- accurate to the square foot -- and save
it to your Google account.
The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google's Android
operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for
maps or search.
Storing location data in violation of a user's preferences is wrong, said Jonathan Mayer, a
Princeton computer scientist and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications
Commission's enforcement bureau. A researcher from Mayer's lab confirmed the AP's findings on
multiple Android devices; the AP conducted its own tests on several iPhones that found the same
behavior.
"If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all
the places where you maintain location history should be turned off," Mayer said. "That seems
like a pretty straightforward position to have."
Google says it is being perfectly clear.
"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's
experience, including: Location History, Web and App Activity, and through device-level
Location Services," a Google spokesperson said in a statement to the AP. "We provide clear
descriptions of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete
their histories at any time."
Google's explanation did not convince several lawmakers.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told the AP it is "frustratingly common" for technology
companies "to have corporate practices that diverge wildly from the totally reasonable
expectations of their users," and urged policies that would give users more control of their
data. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey called for "comprehensive consumer privacy and data
security legislation" in the wake of the AP report.
To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off
another setting, one that does not specifically reference location information. Called "Web and
App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety of information from Google
apps and websites to your Google account.
When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But
leaving "Web & App Activity" on and turning "Location History" off only prevents Google
from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily travels. It does
not stop Google's collection of other location markers.
You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have
to select them individually, unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.
You can see the stored location markers on a page in your Google account at
myactivity.google.com, although they're typically scattered under several different headers,
many of which are unrelated to location.
To demonstrate how powerful these other markers can be, the AP created a visual map of the movements
of Princeton postdoctoral researcher Gunes Acar, who carried an Android phone with Location
history off, and shared a record of his Google account.
The map includes Acar's train commute on two trips to New York and visits to The High Line
park, Chelsea Market, Hell's Kitchen, Central Park and Harlem. To protect his privacy, The AP
didn't plot the most telling and frequent marker -- his home address.
Huge tech companies are under increasing scrutiny over their data practices, following a
series of privacy scandals at Facebook and new data-privacy rules recently adopted by the
European Union. Last year, the business news site Quartz found that Google was
tracking Android users by collecting the addresses of nearby cellphone towers even if all
location services were off. Google changed the practice and insisted it never recorded the data
anyway.
Critics say Google's insistence on tracking its users' locations stems from its drive to
boost advertising revenue.
"They build advertising information out of data," said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial
analyst at Dstillery, a rival advertising technology company. "More data for them presumably
means more profit."
The AP learned of the issue from K. Shankari, a graduate researcher at UC Berkeley who
studies the commuting patterns of volunteers in order to help urban planners. She noticed that
her Android phone prompted her to rate a shopping trip to Kohl's, even though she had turned
Location History off.
"So how did Google Maps know where I was?" she asked in a
blog post .
The AP wasn't able to recreate Shankari's experience exactly. But its attempts to do so
revealed Google's tracking. The findings disturbed her.
"I am not opposed to background location tracking in principle," she said. "It just really
bothers me that it is not explicitly stated."
Google offers a more accurate description of how Location History actually works in a place
you'd only see if you turn it off -- a popup that appears when you "pause" Location History on
your Google
account webpage . There the company notes that "some location data may be saved as part of
your activity on other Google services, like Search and Maps."
Google offers additional information in a popup that appears if you re-activate the "Web
& App Activity" setting -- an uncommon action for many users, since this setting is on by
default. That popup states that, when active, the setting "saves the things you do on Google
sites, apps, and services ... and associated information, like location."
"... It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information ," James said in a statement , claiming the social media company " has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers' information while at the same time profiting from mining that data ." ..."
"... Facebook admitted last week that it " unintentionally uploaded " 1.5 million new users' email address books since 2016, potentially slurping up hundreds of millions of people's contact information – including non-Facebook users ..."
"... That investigation continues, while the Federal Trade Commission, which opened its own probe following the Cambridge Analytica revelations alleging violation of a 2011 " consent decree ," is reportedly negotiating a settlement with Facebook. According to the company's first-quarter earnings report, Facebook expects to pay $3 to $5 billion in penalties – the largest FTC settlement ever for a tech company. ..."
New York Attorney General Letitia James is opening an investigation into Facebook's "unintentional"
upload of up to 1.5 million users' contact lists, vowing to hold it accountable for its cavalier
attitude toward user privacy.
"
It is time Facebook is held accountable for how it handles consumers' personal information
,"
James said in a
statement
, claiming the social media company "
has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect
for consumers' information while at the same time profiting from mining that data
."
Facebook admitted last week that it "
unintentionally uploaded
" 1.5 million new users'
email address books since 2016, potentially slurping up hundreds of millions of people's contact
information – including non-Facebook users – which was then used for targeted advertising and to
suggest potential "
friends
" based on email connections. The platform gained access to the
contacts by asking users for their email passwords after they clicked on a link to verify their
account, but did not ask the users before hoovering up their contact lists.
Facebook claims it is deleting the offending address book data and says it has notified people who
had their contacts copied. It says the contacts were not shared with anyone.
New York is one of several states currently investigating Facebook based on the March 2018
revelations that Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data scraped from millions of users without their
consent to assist the Donald Trump presidential campaign. That investigation continues, while the
Federal Trade Commission, which opened its own probe following the Cambridge Analytica revelations
alleging violation of a 2011 "
consent decree
," is reportedly negotiating a settlement with
Facebook. According to the company's first-quarter earnings report, Facebook expects to pay $3 to $5
billion in penalties – the largest FTC settlement ever for a tech company.
The company has been plagued with non-stop scandals since Cambridge Analytica, with users learning
last month hundreds of millions of passwords had sat, unencrypted, on an internal server for the past
seven years and reports from ex-employee whistleblowers accusing the site of "
de-boosting
"
conservative political content. Facebook has responded to users' worries about privacy by hiring one
of the authors of the notorious USA PATRIOT Act as its new general counsel.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Donald Trump
has apparently accused the UK of conspiring to help the Obama administration spy on his presidential
campaign, saying "when the truth comes out, it will be a beauty!".
The US president promoted the conspiracy
theory on Twitter by quoting a right-wing US news organisation's headline, which according to Mr Trump read: "Former
CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump
Presidential Campaign."
Mr Trump added: "WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a
beauty!"
GCHQ, the UK government's chief digital spying organisation, branded the allegation "utterly ridiculous".
"As we have previously stated, the allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct 'wire tapping' against the then
President Elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," the agency told Reuters.
The claim appears to stem from Mr Johnson, a former CIA analyst who is a longtime critic of US intelligence and a
defender of Russia.
Mr Johnson has previously claimed without providing evidence the CIA, and not Moscow, may have been behind
the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, and has frequently appeared on Russian state media to reject US
intelligence conclusions of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Guardian
reported in 2017 Britain's intelligence agencies had alerted their US counterparts to
suspicious "interaction" between figures connected to the Trump campaign and Russian agents, but that it was part of
a "routine exchange" of information and that CGHQ never carried out a targeted operation against Mr Trump or his
team. There is no evidence the Obama administration conducted a spying operation against the Trump campaign.
Mr Trump's tweet followed one last month in which he suggested Britain had
invented Russian election interference
in order to "bait" the US into taking a hard line against Moscow.
It comes two years after GCHQ was
forced to deny it "wire tapped" Trump Tower
in 2016, after the White House promoted a Fox News pundit's
allegation Barack Obama bypassed US intelligence by using the UK's spy centre to obtain details of Mr Trump's
conversations.
"They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored," GCHQ said at the time.
The president, who has access to information provided by the world's most powerful intelligence agencies, later
told reporters "you should be talking to Fox" when asked about the claim.
Mr Trump's tweet comes just 40 days before he is due in the UK on a state visit.
While all of this may seem relatively mundane, one has to keep in mind that Amazon/Bezos has a connection to the U.S. government
intelligence network. In 2013, Amazon signed a
$600 million, ten year contract with the
Central Intelligence Agency to develop a computing cloud service that would service all seventeen agencies that comprise the American
intelligence community. In November 2017, Amazon Web Services made the
following announcement
:
The AWS Secret Region has the ability to work with and store government/intelligence data that is classified up to the Secret level.
According to Amazon, AWS Secret Region is "readily available to the U.S. Intelligence Community through the intelligence community's
Commercial Cloud Services contract with AWS". AWS touts itself as the first and only commercial cloud provider to offer regions to
serve government data classified as Unclassified, Sensitive, Secret and Top Secret. Given that Amazon is a dominant cloud infrastructure
vendor through AWS, it is highly likely that it will bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI Cloud, a $10 billion
contract to develop a cloud infrastructure for the Department of Defense as shown
here :
Amazon is rotten to the core. Already no stranger to sweetheart deals, Amazon which has lined the pockets of its CEO Jeff Bezos
at taxpayer expense is quietly moving in a direction that is destined to create even more controversy. Amazon through its lobbying
efforts is on the verge of winning a multibillion-dollar advantage over rivals by taking over large swaths of federal procurement.
When you couple the voice of the Washington Post with a company so deeply involved with discovering and archiving detailed
files and information about individuals and politicians across America you command a great deal of muscle and clout. The article
below delves into why it is time to face the fact Amazon needs to be curtailed.
Monday, April 15, 2019Facebook
and Its Close Links to Washington With Facebook taking a very strong stance against
so-called fake news and foreign interference in what passes for democracy in the United States
and particularly given its
recent association with the Atlantic Council and its Digital Forensic Research Lab. I would
be remiss if I didn't thank Matt
Agorist at the Free Thought Project, one of the entities that was
purged by Facebook in October 2018, for inspiring this posting
In no particular order, let's look at some of Facebook's key personnel and their relationship
to Washington:
1.) Katie Harbath : Ms.
Harbath is currently Director of Global Politics and Government Outreach at Facebook as shown
here:
...and has very close links to the Republican Party (a relative rarity among Facebook key
personnel) including Deputy eCampaign Director for Rudy Giuliani's run at the Oval Office both
before and during her tenure at Facebook as shown here:
It was Ms. Harbath who
announced Facebook's "exciting new partnership" with the Atlantic Council on May 17,
2018:
" Today, we're excited to launch a new partnership with the Atlantic Council, which has a
stellar reputation looking at innovative solutions to hard problems. Experts from their Digital
Forensic Research Lab will work closely with our security, policy and product teams to get
Facebook real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from
around the world. This will help increase the number of "eyes and ears" we have working to spot
potential abuse on our service -- enabling us to more effectively identify gaps in our systems,
preempt obstacles, and ensure that Facebook plays a positive role during elections all around
the world ."
2.) Nathaniel Gleicher : Mr.
Gleicher is Head of Cybersecurity Policy at Facebook as shown here:
...and was former Director for Cybersecurity Policy for the National Security Council at the
White House, Senior Counsel for Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section at the United
States Department of Justice and a Law Clerk for Senator Patrick Leahy as shown here:
Just so you can get a sense of Mr. Gleicher's belief system, here is what he said in a blog
posting on January 17, 2019 entitled " Removing Coordinated
Inauthentic Behaviour from Russia ":
" Today we removed 364 Facebook Pages and accounts for engaging in coordinated
inauthentic behavior as part of a network that originated in Russia and operated in the
Baltics, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central and Eastern European countries. The Page
administrators and account owners primarily represented themselves as independent news Pages or
general interest Pages on topics like weather, travel, sports, economics, or politicians in
Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. Despite their misrepresentations of their
identities, we found that these Pages and accounts were linked to employees of Sputnik, a news
agency based in Moscow, and that some of the Pages frequently posted about topics like
anti-NATO sentiment, protest movements, and anti-corruption." (my bolds)
Yes, imagine being anti-NATO and anti-corruption! That's totally unAmerican not to mention
totally without merit !
3.) David Recordon :
Mr. Recordon lists himself as a "doer" on his Linkedin page as shown here:
...however, his "real position" is Engineering Director for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a
company founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan which has the goal of "advancing
human potential and promoting equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research
and energy".
Between March 2015 and January 2017, Mr. Recordon was the Special Assistant to the President
and Director of White House IT and a consultant for the U.S. Digital Service at the White House
as you can see here:
Please note that prior to his tenure with the federal government, Mr. Recordon was Engineering
Director at Facebook.
4.) Aneesh Raman : Mr.
Raman is currently the Head of Economic and Social Impact at Facebook as you can see here:
...and was the former speechwriter to President Obama and worked in Strategic Communications at
the Pentagon as shown here:
5.) Meredith Carden :
Ms. Carden is currently working on Facebook's News Integrity Partnerships as shown here:
..and spent two years working in the Office of First Lady Michelle Obama and spent seven months
as a Press Intern for Obama For America as shown here:
6.) Joel Benenson: Mr. Benenson, founder of Benenson Strategy Group , is conducting research for the Chan
Zuckerberg Initiative as shown here:
...and was a former senior strategist to Hillary Clinton during her most recent run for the
Oval Office as well as doing research and polling programs for President Obama's 2008 and 2012
campaigns and working on President Bill Clinton's campaign during the 1996 election as shown
here :
Let's close with this. Remembering that Facebook is now tied to the Atlantic Council who
functions as its censor, here is a
screen capture that shows the close links between Washington and the Atlantic Council when
it comes to leadership:
...and funding:
While I'm quite certain that there are other examples of the very close links between
Washington and Facebook, I believe that you have enough information from this posting to come
to the conclusion that Facebook is far from a benign, private entity. Facebook put in place an
inordinate number of men and women who hail from the federal government and, as such, one might
almost conclude that the publicly traded Facebook functions as an extension of the federal
government and, more pointedly, the Democratic Party. Perhaps that's why Facebook has had its
proverbial "panties in a knot" about Russian-sourced fake news since Hillary Clinton lost the
election that was supposed to be hers.
Monday, April 22, 2019Iran and the
CIA's Worst Nightmare While the world was distracted by all things Mueller, there was a
significant news event that took place in Iran. Here
is the news item as reported by Iran's Presstv:
Note that the news item refers to a November 2018 report on Yahoo which you can find
here :
Let's look at some some key details from Yahoo's lengthy article: "From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling
intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means
for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The
previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries,
and was left unrepaired -- despite warnings about what was happening -- until more than two
dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence
and national security officials. The disaster ensnared every corner of the national security bureaucracy -- from multiple
intelligence agencies, congressional intelligence committees and independent contractors to
internal government watchdogs -- forcing a slow-moving, complex government machine to grapple
with the deadly dangers of emerging technologies.... A former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the compromise said it had
global implications for the CIA. "You start thinking twice about people, from China to Russia
to Iran to North Korea," said the former official. The CIA was worried about its network
"totally unwinding worldwide." Yahoo News' reporting on this global communications failure is based on conversations with
eleven former U.S. intelligence and government officials directly familiar with the matter who
requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. Multiple former intelligence officials
said that the damage from the potential global compromise was serious -- even catastrophic --
and will persist for years. More than just a question of a single failure, the fiasco illustrates a breakdown that was
never properly addressed. The government's inability to address the communication system's
insecurities until after sources were rolled up in China was disastrous. "We're still dealing
with the fallout," said one former national security official. "Dozens of people around the
world were killed because of this." " (my bolds)
In September 2009, the Obama Administration announced that Iran had a secret underground
nuclear enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom. This facility was located in an
underground tunnel complex on the grounds of an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base and was
slated to enrich uranium in 2874 centrifuges . Here is how
the Guardian reported the news:
The letter from Iran stated that the facility would not enrich uranium beyond the 5 percent
level. On the eve of a showdown meeting with Iran, Barack
Obama demanded that the IAEA be given access to the plant, stating that Iran was breaking
the rules and not living up to its international responsibilities.
This breach of secrecy resulted in the Iranians looking for foreign spies that may have passed
the information to the West. Unfortunately for the CIA, the communication system being used to
communicate with its agents was flawed and was easily breached by the sophisticated
counterintelligence technology being used by other nations. As a result of this negligence,
Iran was able to identify and dismantle a CIA network in Iran, arresting a significant number
of intelligence officers and CIA assets in May and November 2011 as shown
here :
....and here :
According to two former U.S. intelligences officials, the Iranians recruited a double agent who
led them to the CIA communications system. This system allowed CIA officers to communicate
remotely in dangerous operational environments like Iran where person-to-person meetings are
risky. Interestingly, it is believed that the Iranians used Google to identify the website that
the CIA was using to communicate with its agents. From there, Iran's intelligence services
searched the internet for other websites with similar components, eventually allowing them to
locate other secret CIA websites. From there, Iran was able to track who was visiting these
websites, allowing them to unravel the CIA's network.
What is ironic about this (and particularly so given the intelligence community issues that
were raised after the September 11, 2001 attacks) is that John Reidy, a contractor at the CIA,
advised his employer in 2009 - 2010 that there were potential
serious security weaknesses in the CIA's communications network. For this, he was punished
by being fired, resulting in his appeal to the intelligence community inspector general as
shown here
:
Ultimately, this breach of security discovered by the Iranians led to the execution and
imprisonment of some of the CIA's informants and forced the CIA to exfiltrate others.
Let's close by looking at one last quote from the Presstv's coverage of the most recent
revelations about the CIA's global intelligence network:
' Iran's intelligence minister specifically highlighted a quote from American national
security analyst Irvin McCullough, who described the major American intelligence setback as
"one of the most catastrophic intelligence failures" since the September 11 attacks in
2001.Alavi said that further details of the operations would be publicized soon,
adding that a similar successful counter-espionage operation had been carried out against
Britain's MI6 intelligence service. The Iranian minister added that the breakthrough comes as his ministry has shifted from
focusing on defensive operations to conducting offensive counter-intelligence operations, some
of which had even "expanded deep" into Israel. Iran has been successful in protecting itself from the spillover of terrorism and
foreign-backed conflict -- constant features of life in a number of regional countries -- due
to high vigilance by its intelligence and security forces." (my bolds)
It is unfortunate that the Central Intelligence Agency seems incapable of learning from its
past mistakes.
Posted by A Political Junkie at 8:30 AM Labels: CIA , Iran , United States1 comment:
Why would the Obama administration announce that Iran had a secret underground nuclear
enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom without at least extracting any agents
involved?
This is a horrible level of incompetence. Has no one in the CIA ever read about Enigma
and how it was used in WWII? Added to by not totally killing the system immediately.
The relase of Valut 7 files is probably the biggerst achivement of Asssanege. It really
shows how nasty the govermnet can behave and how vulnerable are consumer systems; essentially
transperat for eacdropping.
It also stimulated drive for offf-line storage of sensitive information, such as tax returns
and such and usage of a separate computer for financial transactions.
for the US Gov to maintain a legal position in this day and age of zero privacy for you
and twist it around so that it is illegal to "steal" information is too rich for my blood.
The US Gov has all the info it ever wanted on everyone and everything.
Yet somehow it is illegal to have reciprocal information. So that's one big bad.
Another is the very concept of illegal. Illegal is only illegal if it is caught in most
cases.
In government affairs however, it should not be so. The government is answerable to us and
we need to go back to square one and establish that fact.
Julian Assange was in the process of doing that in his own way, as are most journalists,
but he hit a very raw nerve and now they are going to make him pay for it. It is a travesty
of both justice and "government".
And there are all the usual sneaky sleaze balls lined up to get Assange. From the
infuriated democrats to the terrified republicans. Look at the mix. Brett Kavanaugh, Wm.
Barr, to Nancy Pelosi; John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, – there isn't one familiar face
standing up for Assange. Even Bernie doesn't go overboard. The stakes are so high that we are
now in a nasty trade war with the EU to see who can rat out the other faster.
And it is a
good cover for Nancy Pelosi to act like she is defending our "sacred institutions" (please
spare me Nancy) and go to London and give a speech that the UK "cannot count on a trade deal
with the US" when it goes full Brexit. She's acting like she's a friend of Ireland. But this
is the first I ever heard of it. I think what Nancy is saying is that if the UK doesn't toe
the line with Assange the US won't do a trade deal at all. I've never seen Nancy expose her
inner Nancy so emphatically. And recently Bolton told the ICC to just fuck straight off
– they would never have jurisdiction over our leaders (primarily it is the Bushes is
who we are talking about here). It's a showdown. Chickens coming home in a big clucking
rush.
If Assange is extradited the game might not be up even then. I assume he still has cards
to play in terms of making a deal, as with the Vault 7 releases.
The country was divided before Mueller Report. Now it is even more divided.
Notable quotes:
"... We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud, seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the genesis of the FBI's " operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous Trump Tower meeting , and hired Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had gathered against Trump while working for Fusion , according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony. ..."
"... Now the dossier -- financed by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee , and compiled by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele -- is likely to face new, possibly harsh scrutiny from multiple inquiries . - NYT ..."
"... The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier. ..."
"... And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded in part by George Soros . ..."
"... Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit. ..."
"... after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it. ..."
"... As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed? ..."
"... the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT ..."
"... There was no 'hack.' That is the big, anti-Russia, pro-MIC lie which all the other lies serve. ..."
"... Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance. ..."
"... Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was on site during Roger Stones invasion. ..."
"... So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's Russia's fault"?! ..."
As we now shift from the "witch hunt" against Trump to 'investigating the investigators' who spied on him - remember this; Donald
Trump was supposed to lose the 2016 election by almost all accounts. And had Hillary won, as expected, none of this would have seen
the light of day .
We wouldn't know that a Clinton-linked operative, Joseph Mifsud,
seeded Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos with the rumor that Russia had 'Dirt' on Hillary Clinton - which would later be
coaxed out of Papadopoulos by a Clinton-linked Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, and that this apparent 'setup' would be the
genesis of the FBI's "
operation crossfire hurricane " operation against the Trump campaign.
We wouldn't know about the role of Fusion GPS - the opposition research firm hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign to commission
the Steele dossier. Fusion is also linked to the infamous
Trump Tower meeting , and hired
Nellie Ohr - the CIA-linked wife of the DOJ's then-#4 employee, Bruce Ohr. Nellie fed her husband Bruce intelligence she had
gathered against Trump while working for Fusion ,
according to transcripts of her closed-door Congressional testimony.
And if not for reporting by the Daily
Caller 's Chuck Ross and others, we wouldn't know that the FBI sent a longtime spook, Stefan Halper, to infiltrate and spy on
the Trump campaign - after the Obama DOJ paid him over $400,000
right before the 2016 US election (out of more than $1 million he received while Obama was president).
According to the New
York Times , the tables are turning, starting with the Steele Dossier.
[T]he release on Thursday of
the report
by the special counsel , Robert S. Mueller III, underscored what had grown clearer for months -- that while many Trump aides
had welcomed contacts with the Russians, some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were
impossible to prove . Mr. Mueller's report contained over a dozen passing references to the document's claims but no overall assessment
of why so much did not check out.
While Congressional Republicans have vowed to investigate, the DOJ's Inspector General is considering whether the FBI improperly
relied on the dossier when they used it to apply for a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The IG also wants
to know about Steele's sources and whether the FBI disclosed any doubts as to the veracity of the dossier .
Attorney General Barr, meanwhile, said he will review the FBI's conduct in the Russia investigation after saying the agency
spied on the Trump
campaign .
Doubts over the dossier
The FBI's scramble to vet the dossier's claims are well known. According to an April, 2017
NYT report , the FBI agreed
to pay Steele $50,000 for "solid corroboration" of his claims . Steele was apparently unable to produce satisfactory evidence - and
was ultimately not paid for his efforts:
Mr. Steele met his F.B.I. contact in Rome in early October, bringing a stack of new intelligence reports. One, dated Sept.
14, said that Mr. Putin was facing "fallout" over his apparent involvement in the D.N.C. hack and was receiving "conflicting advice"
on what to do.
The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts,
according to two people familiar with the offer. Ultimately, he was not paid . -
NYT
Still, the FBI used the dossier to obtain the FISA warrant on Page - while the document itself was heavily shopped around to various
media outlets . The late Sen. John McCain provided a copy to Former FBI Director James Comey, who already had a version, and briefed
President Trump on the salacious document. Comey's briefing to Trump was then used by CNN and BuzzFeed to justify reporting on and
publishing the dossier following the election.
Let's not forget that in October, 2016, both Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman John Podesta promoted the conspiracy theory
that a secret Russian server was communicating with Trump Tower.
The report was debunked after internet sleuths traced the IP address to a marketing server located outside Philadelphia, leading
Alfa Bank executives to file a lawsuit against Fusion GPS in October 2017, claiming their reputations were harmed by the Steele Dossier.
And who placed the Trump-Alfa theory with various media outlets? None other than former FBI counterintelligence officer and Dianne
Feinstein aide Dan Jones - who is currently working with Fusion GPS and Steele to continue their Trump-Russia investigation funded
in part by
George Soros .
Russian tricks? The Times notes that Steele "has not ruled out" that he may have been fed Russian disinformation while assembling his dossier.
That would mean that in addition to carrying out an effective attack on the Clinton campaign, Russian spymasters hedged their
bets and placed a few land mines under Mr. Trump's presidency as well.
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
In short, Steele is being given an 'out' with this admission.
A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, says that the Mueller report substantiated the "core reporting" in the Steele memos - namely
that "Trump campaign figures were secretly meeting Kremlin figures," and that Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin, had directed
"a covert operation to elect Donald J. Trump."
Of course, when one stops painting with broad brush strokes, it's clear that the dossier was fabricated bullshit.
The dossier tantalized Mr. Trump's opponents with a worst-case account of the president's conduct. And for those trying to
make sense of the Trump-Russia saga, the dossier infused the quest for understanding with urgency.
In blunt prose, it suggested that a foreign power had fully compromised the man who would become the next president of the
United States.
The Russians, it asserted, had tried winning over Mr. Trump with real estate deals in Moscow -- which he had not taken up --
and set him up with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013, filming the proceedings for future exploitation. A handful of aides
were described as conspiring with the Russians at every turn.
Mr. Trump, it said, had moles inside the D.N.C. The memos claimed that he and the Kremlin had been exchanging intelligence
for eight years and were using Romanian hackers against the Democrats , and that Russian pensioners in the United States were
running a covert communications network . -
NYT
And after a nearly two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and roughly 40 FBI agents and other specialists, no
evidence was found to support the dossier's wild claims of "DNC moles, Romanian hackers, Russian pensioners, or years of Trump-Putin
intelligence trading ," as the Times puts it.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, and key Democrats backing away from talks of impeachment, let's see if lady justice will
follow the rest of us down the rabbit hole.
This is why the whole FISA court is a joke. What is their remedy if their power is abused? What happens. Well,... the FISA
courts was lied to and found out about it in the early 2000's. Mueller was FBI chief. So they got a strongly worded dressing-down,
a mark in their permanent record from high school, and NO ONE was fired... no one was sanctioned, no agent was transferred to
Alaska.
Fast forward 10 or 12 years and the FBI is doing this **** again. Lying to the court... you know the court where there are
no Democrat judges or Republican judges.. they are all super awesome.... and what is the remedy when the FISA court is told they've
been lied to by the FBI and used in a intel operation with MI6, inserting assets, into a freaking domestic Presidential campaign!!!
and then they WON. Good god.
And what do we hear from our court? Nadda. Do we hear of some Federal Judges hauling FBI and DOJ folks in front of them and
throwing them in jail? Nope. It appears from here... that our Federal Justices are corrupt and have no problem letting illegal
police-state actions go on with ZERO accountability or recourse. They could care less evidently. It's all secret you know... trust
us they say.. Why aren't these judges publicly making loud noises about how the judiciary is complicit , with the press, in wholesale
spying and leaking for political reasons AND a coup attempt when the wrong guy won.???
Where is awesome Justice Roberts? Why isn't he throwing down some truth on just how compromised the rule of law in his courts
clearly are in the last 10 years? The FISA court is his baby. It does no good for them to assure us they are concerned too, and
they've taken action and sent strongly worded letters. Pisses me off. ? Right? heck of rant...
When did Russians interfere in our elections?? 2016. Who was president when Russians interfered with elections?? oobama. Who
was head of the CIA?? Brennan. Who was National Intelligence director?? Clapper. Who was head of the FBI when the Russians interfered
in our elections?? Comey. The pattern is obvious. When Trump was a private citizen the oobama and all his cabinet appointees and
Intel Managers had their hands on all the levers and instruments of Government..and did nothing . Your oobama is guilty of treason
and failing his Oath Of Office...everybody knows this.
This article is still a roundabout gambit to blame Russia.
Fair enough, where's Bill Browder? In England. Browder's allegations were utilized to try and damage Russia, even though Russia
(not the USSR), is about the most reliable friend America has.
Russia helped Lincoln, and were it not for that crucial help, there'd be no America to sanction Russia today. The Tsar paid
for that help with his dynasty, when Nicholas II was murdered, and dethroned.
Americans are truly ungrateful brutes..
Now, sanctions, opprobrium, and hatred are heaped on Russia, most cogently by chauvinistic racists, who look down their noses
at Rus (Russ) and yet, cannot sacrifice 25 millions of their own people, for the sake of others.
Russians are considered subhuman, and yet, the divine spark of humanity resides solely in their breasts. The zionists claim
a false figure of 6 million for a faux holocaust, and yet, nobody pays attention to the true holocaust of 25 millions, or the
many millions before that disastrous instigated war.
That the Russians are childlike, believing others to be like them, loyal, self sacrificing, and generous, has now brought the
world to the brink of armageddon, and still, they bear the burden of proof, though their accusers, who ought provide the evidence,
are bereft of any..
Thomas Jefferson it was, who observing whatever he observed, exclaimed in cogent agitation, that "I fear for my countrymen,
when I remember that God is Just, and His Justice does not repose forever".
Investigate Jared and Ivanka Kushner, along with Charles Kushner, and much ought be clear, no cheers...
I don't buy that "Few bad apples at the top", "Good rank and file" Argument. I have never seen one. We should assume everyone
from the top to the bottom of FBI, DOJ, and State, just to get started, probably every other three better agency is bad. At least
incompotent, at worst treasonous.
As there was spying, there must necessarily also have been channels to get the information thus gathered back to its original
buyer - the Clinton campaign. Who passed the information back to Clinton, and what got passed?
the NYTt prints all the news a scumbag would. remember Judith Miller, the Zionazi reporter the NYT used to push
the Iraq war with all sorts of ********? after the war was determined to be started under a false premise and became common knowledge
there were no wmds in iraq the nyt came forward and reported the war was ******** as if they were reporting breaking news.
they have done the same thing here. they pushed the russiagate story with both barrels even though the informed populace knew
it was ******** before trump was sworn in as potus. now that the all the holes in the story are readily apparent the nyt comes
forward with breaking revelation that something is wrong with the story.
The Seth Rich investigation; where is it now? Murder of a campaign staffer; tampering with or influencing an election, is it
not? Hmmm... When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.
Once upon a time there was a Bernie supporter. And his name was Seth Rich. Then there was a "botched robbery", which evidence
that was concluded on, I have no idea. Do you? Anyhow, The End.
Seth Rich had the means and the motive. So did Imran Awan, but it would make no sense for Awan to turn anything over to
wikileaks . . .he would have kept them as insurance.
Why wouldn't Assange name the source for the DNC emails? Is this a future bargaining chip? And what if he did name Seth Rich?
He would have to prove it. Could he?
They've got Assange now...Maybe they should ask him if it was Seth Rich who gave him the emails?
Maybe even do it under oath and on national television. I don't think it's still considered "burning a source" if your source
has already been murdered....
Until the real criminals are processed and the media can be restored you don't have a United States. This corruption is
beyond comprehension. You had the (((media)) providing kickbacks to the FBI for leaked information. These bribes are how CNN was
on site during Roger Stones invasion.
Treason and Sedition is rampant in America and all SPY roads lead to Clapper, Brennan and Obama...This needs attention.
The media is abusive and narrating attacks on a dully elected president
Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who now lives outside Washington, saw that as plausible. "Russia has huge experience
in spreading false information," he said. -
NYT
You have got to be ******* kidding me. So now the narrative is, "We were wrong about Russian collusion, and that's
Russia's fault"?!
"... John Pilger, among few others, has already stressed how a plan to destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was laid out as far back as 2008 – at the tail end of the Cheney regime – concocted by the Pentagon's shady Cyber Counter-Intelligence Assessments Branch. ..."
"... But it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic; that's when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA's vast hacking/cyber espionage repertoire. ..."
"... This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart. ..."
"... The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was that "the Russians" hacked the DNC servers. Assange was always adamant; that was not the work of a state actor – and he could prove it technically. ..."
"... The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI director James Comey killed it. The question is why. ..."
"... Some theoretically sound reconstructions of Comey's move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew – via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it was a leak. ..."
"... Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again (see here ) how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources; one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel. ..."
"... he release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in "Grasshopper" and the "Marble Framework" were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran, or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework "destroys this story about Russian hacking." ..."
"... No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a "non-state hostile intelligence agency" ..."
"... Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7, has not faced a US court yet. There's no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he aggress to testify against Julian Assange. ..."
"... George Galloway has a guest who explains it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VvPFMyPvHM&t=8s ..."
"... Escobar is brain dead if he can't figure out that Trumpenstein is totally on board with destroying Assange. As if bringing on pukes like PompAss, BoltON, and Abrams doesn't scream it. ..."
The Made-by-FBI indictment of
Julian Assange does look like a dead man walking. No evidence. No documents. No surefire
testimony. Just a crossfire of conditionals...
But never underestimate the legalese contortionism of US government (USG) functionaries. As
much as Assange may not be characterized as a journalist and publisher, the thrust of the
affidavit is to accuse him of conspiring to commit espionage.
In fact the charge is not even that Assange hacked a USG computer and obtained classified
information; it's that he may have discussed it with Chelsea Manning and may have had the
intention to go for a hack. Orwellian-style thought crime charges don't get any better than
that. Now the only thing missing is an AI software to detect them.
Assange legal adviser Geoffrey Robertson – who also happens to represent another
stellar political prisoner, Brazil's Lula – cut
straight to the chase (at 19:22 minutes);
"The justice he is facing is justice, or injustice, in America I would hope the British
judges would have enough belief in freedom of information to throw out the extradition
request."
That's far from a done deal. Thus the inevitable consequence; Assange's legal team is
getting ready to prove, no holds barred, in a British court, that this USG indictment for
conspiracy to commit computer hacking is just an hors d'oeuvre for subsequent espionage
charges, in case Assange is extradited to US soil.
All about Vault 7
John Pilger, among few others, has already stressed how a plan to
destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was laid out as far back as 2008 – at the tail end
of the Cheney regime – concocted by the Pentagon's shady Cyber Counter-Intelligence
Assessments Branch.
It was all about criminalizing WikiLeaks and personally smearing Assange, using "shock
troops enlisted in the media -- those who are meant to keep the record straight and tell us the
truth."
This plan remains more than active – considering how Assange's arrest has been covered
by the bulk of US/UK mainstream media.
By 2012, already in the Obama era, WikiLeaks detailed the astonishing "scale of the US Grand
Jury Investigation" of itself. The USG always denied such a grand jury existed.
"The US Government has stood up and coordinated a joint interagency criminal investigation
of Wikileaks comprised of a partnership between the Department of Defense (DOD) including:
CENTCOM; SOUTHCOM; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); Defense Information Systems Agency
(DISA); Headquarters Department of the Army (HQDA); US Army Criminal Investigation Division
(CID) for USFI (US Forces Iraq) and 1st Armored Division (AD); US Army Computer Crimes
Investigative Unit (CCIU); 2nd Army (US Army Cyber Command); Within that or in addition,
three military intelligence investigations were conducted. Department of Justice (DOJ) Grand
Jury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of State (DOS) and Diplomatic
Security Service (DSS). In addition, Wikileaks has been investigated by the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Office of the National CounterIntelligence
Executive (ONCIX), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the House Oversight Committee; the
National Security Staff Interagency Committee, and the PIAB (President's Intelligence
Advisory Board)."
But it was only in 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went totally ballistic;
that's when WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 files – detailing the CIA's vast
hacking/cyber espionage repertoire.
This was the CIA as a Naked Emperor like never before – including the dodgy
overseeing ops of the Center for Cyber Intelligence, an ultra-secret NSA counterpart.
WikiLeaks got Vault 7 in early 2017. At the time WikiLeaks had already published the DNC
files – which the unimpeachable Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
systematically proved was a leak, not a hack.
The monolithic narrative by the Deep State faction aligned with the Clinton machine was
that "the Russians" hacked the DNC servers. Assange was always adamant; that was not the work
of a state actor – and he could prove it technically.
There was some movement towards a deal, brokered by one of Assange's lawyers; WikiLeaks
would not publish the most damning Vault 7 information in exchange for Assange's safe passage
to be interviewed by the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
The DoJ wanted a deal – and they did make an offer to WikiLeaks. But then FBI
director James Comey killed it. The question is why.
It's a leak, not a hack
Some theoretically sound
reconstructions of Comey's move are available. But the key fact is Comey already knew
– via his close connections to the top of the DNC – that this was not a hack; it
was a leak.
Ambassador Craig Murray has stressed, over and over again (see
here ) how the DNC/Podesta files published by WikiLeaks came from two different US sources;
one from within the DNC and the other from within US intel.
There was nothing for Comey to "investigate". Or there would have, if Comey had ordered the
FBI to examine the DNC servers. So why talk to Julian Assange?
T he release by WikiLeaks in April 2017 of the malware mechanisms inbuilt in
"Grasshopper" and the "Marble Framework" were indeed a bombshell. This is how the CIA inserts
foreign language strings in source code to disguise them as originating from Russia, from Iran,
or from China. The inestimable Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, stressed how Marble Framework
"destroys this story about Russian hacking."
No wonder then CIA director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a "non-state hostile
intelligence agency", usually manipulated by Russia.
Joshua Schulte, the alleged leaker of Vault 7,
has not faced a US court yet. There's no question he will be offered a deal by the USG if he
aggress to testify against Julian Assange.
It's a long and winding road, to be traversed in at least two years, if Julian Assange is
ever to be extradited to the US. Two things for the moment are already crystal clear. The USG
is obsessed to shut down WikiLeaks once and for all. And because of that, Julian Assange will
never get a fair trial in the "so-called 'Espionage Court'" of the Eastern District of
Virginia, as
detailed by former CIA counterterrorism officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Meanwhile, the non-stop demonization of Julian Assange will proceed unabated, faithful to
guidelines established over a decade ago. Assange is even accused of being a US intel op, and
WikiLeaks a splinter Deep State deep cover op.
Maybe President Trump will maneuver the hegemonic Deep State into having Assange testify
against the corruption of the DNC; or maybe Trump caved in completely to "hostile intelligence
agency" Pompeo and his CIA gang baying for blood. It's all ultra-high-stakes shadow play
– and the show has not even begun.
Not to mention the Pentagram has silenced 100,000 whistleblower complaints by
Intimidation, threats, money or accidents over 5 years . A Whistleblower only does this when
know there is something seriously wrong. Just Imagine how many knew something was wrong but
looked the other way.
Maybe President Trump will maneuver the hegemonic Deep State into having Assange testify
against the corruption of the DNC; or maybe Trump caved in completely to "hostile
intelligence agency" Pompeo and his CIA gang baying for blood.
Escobar is brain dead if he can't figure out that Trumpenstein is totally on board with
destroying Assange. As if bringing on pukes like PompAss, BoltON, and Abrams doesn't scream it.
assange and wikileaks are the real criminals despite being crimeless. the **** is a
sanctioned criminal, allowed to be criminal with the system because the rest of the
sanctioned criminals would be exposed if she was investigated.
this is not the rule of laws. this is the law of rulers.
"... The debate over whether Snowden was a traitor is fatuous. As a result of Snowden's revelations, we learned that the National Security Agency logged domestic phone calls and emails for years, recorded the metadata of correspondence between Americans, and, in some cases, exploited the content of emails. The case against Private Manning was similarly fatuous. Manning provided evidence of the US cover-up of torture by our Iraqi allies; a US Army helicopter opening fire on a group of civilians, including two Reuters journalists; and the use of an air strike to cover up the execution of civilians. Some of these acts were war crimes. ..."
"... According to US law, the term "whistleblower" applies to anyone who "reasonably believes" he or she is disclosing a violation of law or gross mismanagement, gross waste, or abuse of authority. My testimony documented for the first time the intentional distortion of intelligence by CIA director William Casey and Deputy Director Gates in order to serve the agenda of Ronald Reagan and his administration. ..."
"... Being a contrarian was easy and natural for me. In fact, no one should think about entering the intelligence profession without good contrarian instincts. Such instincts would include an innate skepticism, the doubting of conventional wisdom and a willingness to challenge authority, which translates to an ability to tell truth to power. These contrarian instincts are essential to the success of any intelligence organization. As Rogers and Hammerstein would have it, it was "doing what comes naturally!" ..."
"... My book The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA was the first insider account from an intelligence analyst regarding the skewed and politicized assessments of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence -- the Agency's analytic arm. I also exposed the strategic failure of covert actions that were never intended to be a part of President Harry Truman's CIA ..."
"... The political pliancy of these directors fully compromised the intelligence mission of the CIA, and it was political pliancy that made directors such as Gates and Tenet so attractive to Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. ..."
"... In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President Kennedy, Truman wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post to document the wrongs of the CIA He concluded that his efforts to "create the quiet intelligence arm of the Presidency" had been subverted by a "sinister" and "mysterious" agency that was conducting far too many clandestine activities in peacetime. I lectured at the Truman Library in the summer of 2014, and found a note in Truman's hand that stated the CIA was not designed to "initiate policy or to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized." ..."
"... In The Failure of Intelligence , I documented the CIA's resistance to reform and the corruption in both the analytical and operational directorates. I made a case for starting over at the CIA, not dissimilar from the case made by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 25 years ago as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Not every agency or department of government can be reformed, and it is possible that the intricate web of habits, procedures, and culture places the CIA in the non-reformable category. Once the political culture of an institution such as the CIA has been broken, it is extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to rebuild or repair it. ..."
In this excerpt, , former CIA intelligence analyst Melvin A. Goodman ponders the meanings of the words whistleblower, dissident
and contrarian, how they apply to himself and others, and whether the CIA can ever be repaired or rebuilt.
Whistleblowers. Dissidents. Contrarians.
The terms are used synonymously by pundits and the public, and I've been all three at one time or another in order to expose improprieties
and illegalities in the secret government, and to inform the American public of policies that compromise the freedom and security
of US citizens and weaken US standing in the global community.
I have never liked the terms contrarian or dissident. I've always believed that my criticism should be conventional wisdom. The
term whistleblower is more complex because it often raises questions of patriotism or sedition. Chelsea Manning received commutation
from her 35-year prison sentence for revealing so-called secrets that documented the terror and violence of the baseless US war in
Iraq. Members of the Bush administration who launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003 are considered honorable members of our society,
although their acts involved the corruption of intelligence; caused the death of thousands of US soldiers and foreign civilians;
terrorized civilian populations; perpetrated the criminal use of torture and abuse; sanctioned use of secret prisons and extraordinary
rendition; and caused the destabilization of the region that has set the stage for strategic advances by Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Edward Snowden, if he had remained in the United States, would have faced an even longer prison sentence because he revealed the
massive NSA surveillance program that was illegal and immoral, and that violated the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal
seizures and searches. Manning and Snowden admit to breaking US laws, but their actions were never as serious as the law-breaking,
including massive violations of privacy, that they exposed.
The debate over whether Snowden was a traitor is fatuous. As a result of Snowden's revelations, we learned that the National Security
Agency logged domestic phone calls and emails for years, recorded the metadata of correspondence between Americans, and, in some
cases, exploited the content of emails. The case against Private Manning was similarly fatuous. Manning provided evidence of the
US cover-up of torture by our Iraqi allies; a US Army helicopter opening fire on a group of civilians, including two Reuters journalists;
and the use of an air strike to cover up the execution of civilians. Some of these acts were war crimes.
There is no more compelling evidence of the unconscionable behavior of US personnel in Iraq than the callous dialogue between
the crew members of the helicopter regarding the civilian deaths and particularly the firing on those Iraqis who came to recover
the dead bodies of Iraqi civilians. Manning's documents exposed this behavior, but her efforts were ridiculed by former secretary
of defense Robert Gates, who described it as examining war by "looking through a straw."
To make matters worse, American journalists have criticized their colleagues (Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald
[then of The Guardian]) who brought the Snowden-Manning revelations to the attention of the public. David Gregory, then host of the
venerable "Meet the Press" on NBC, asked Greenwald "to the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden ... why shouldn't you ...
be charged with a crime?"
Jeffrey Toobin, a lawyer who labors for CNN and The New Yorker, called Snowden a "grandiose narcissist
who belongs in prison" and referred to Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, who was detained by British authorities for nine hours
under anti-terror laws, the equivalent of a "drug mule."
The king of calumny is Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent for Time, who wrote on Twitter that he couldn't "wait to write
a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." The New York Times also targeted Assange, although the paper cooperated
with WikiLeaks in 2010 in publishing reams of information from Private Manning's revelations. Of course, if Time or the New York
Times had broken these stories, they would have built new shelves to hold their Pulitzer Prizes.
Their hypocrisy was exposed by David
Carr of the New York Times, who expressed shock at finding Assange and Greenwald "under attack, not just from a government bent on
keeping its secrets, but from friendly fire by fellow journalists."
I didn't reveal abuses as great as those revealed by Manning and Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, but I do claim status as a whistleblower
because of my revelations before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during confirmation hearings for Bob Gates, who was
nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991 to be director of central intelligence.
According to US law, the term "whistleblower"
applies to anyone who "reasonably believes" he or she is disclosing a violation of law or gross mismanagement, gross waste, or abuse
of authority. My testimony documented for the first time the intentional distortion of intelligence by CIA director William Casey
and Deputy Director Gates in order to serve the agenda of Ronald Reagan and his administration.
Bob Gates was an old friend, but the friendship ended when he routinely distorted intelligence throughout the 1980s as deputy
director for intelligence and deputy director of the CIA In destroying the political culture of the CIA, he created a toxic and corrupt
environment at the Agency, and the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA detention and torture reminds us that the Agency
hasn't recovered.
Being a contrarian was easy and natural for me. In fact, no one should think about entering the intelligence profession without
good contrarian instincts. Such instincts would include an innate skepticism, the doubting of conventional wisdom and a willingness
to challenge authority, which translates to an ability to tell truth to power. These contrarian instincts are essential to the success
of any intelligence organization. As Rogers and Hammerstein would have it, it was "doing what comes naturally!"
My book The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA was the first insider account from an intelligence
analyst regarding the skewed and politicized assessments of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence -- the Agency's analytic arm. I
also exposed the strategic failure of covert actions that were never intended to be a part of President Harry Truman's CIA
I wrote
the book for many reasons, including the need to describe the inability of journalists to take into account, let alone understand,
the dangers of politicization and the actions of CIA directors such as Casey, Gates, and more recently Goss and Tenet. The political
pliancy of these directors fully compromised the intelligence mission of the CIA, and it was political pliancy that made directors
such as Gates and Tenet so attractive to Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.
For the past quarter century, my testimony and writings have exposed the failure to honor President Truman's purpose in creating
a CIA to provide policymakers with accurate, unbiased accounts of international developments, and have highlighted the CIA's readiness
to cater to the White House. This view is not original with me; in fact, it was President Truman who first acknowledged that the
CIA he created in 1947 had gotten off the tracks under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy in the 1950s and early
1960s.
In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President Kennedy, Truman wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post
to document the wrongs of the CIA He concluded that his efforts to "create the quiet intelligence arm of the Presidency" had been
subverted by a "sinister" and "mysterious" agency that was conducting far too many clandestine activities in peacetime. I lectured
at the Truman Library in the summer of 2014, and found a note in Truman's hand that stated the CIA was not designed to "initiate
policy or to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized."
In The Failure of Intelligence , I documented the CIA's resistance to reform and the corruption in both the analytical
and operational directorates. I made a case for starting over at the CIA, not dissimilar from the case made by Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan 25 years ago as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Not every agency or department of government can
be reformed, and it is possible that the intricate web of habits, procedures, and culture places the CIA in the non-reformable category.
Once the political culture of an institution such as the CIA has been broken, it is extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to
rebuild or repair it.
Originally from: The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report April 18, 2019 •
12 Commentsave
Like Team Mueller's indictment last July of Russian agents, the full report reveals questions about Wikileaks' role that
much of the media has been ignoring, writes Daniel Lazare.
The five pages that the special prosecutor's report devotes to WikiLeaks are essentially lifted from Mueller's
indictment last July of 12 members of the Russian military
intelligence agency known as the GRU. It charges that after hacking the Democratic National Committee, the GRU used a specially-created
online persona known as Guccifer 2.0 to transfer a gigabyte's worth of stolen emails to WikiLeaks just as the 2016 Democratic
National Convention was approaching. Four days after opening the encrypted file, the indictment says, "Organization 1 [i.e. WikiLeaks]
released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC network by the Conspirators [i.e. the GRU]."
Attorney General William Barr holding press conference on full Mueller report, April 18, 2019. (YouTube)
Mueller's report says the same thing, but with the added twist that Assange then tried to cover up the GRU's role by
suggesting that murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich may have been the source and by telling a congressman
that the DNC email heist was an "inside job" and that he had "physical proof" that the material was not from Russian.
All of which is manna from heaven for corporate news outlets eager to pile on Assange, now behind bars in London. An April 11,
2019, New York Timesnews analysis ,
for instance, declared that "[c]ourt documents have revealed that it was Russian intelligence – using the Guccifer persona – that
provided Mr. Assange thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee," while another Timesarticle published shortly after
his arrest accuses the WikiLeaks founder of "promoting a false cover story about the source of the leaks."
But there's a problem: it ain't necessarily so. The official story that the GRU is the source doesn't hold water, as a timeline
from mid-2016 shows. Here are the key events based on the GRU indictment and the Mueller report:
June 12: Assange
tells
Britain's ITV that another round of Democratic Party disclosures is on the way: "We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton,
which is great. WikiLeaks is having a very big year." June 14: The Democratic National Committee
accuses Russia of hacking its computers. June 15: Guccifer 2.0 claims credit for the hack. "The main part of the papers, thousands
of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks ," he
brags . "They will publish them soon."
June 22: WikiLeaks tells Guccifer via email: "Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact
than what you are doing." July 6: WikiLeaks sends Guccifer another email: "if you have anything hillary related we want it
in the next tweo [ sic ] days prefable [ sic ] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and
she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after."Replies Guccifer: "ok . . . i " July 14: Guccifer sends WikiLeaks an
encrypted file titled "wk dnc link1.txt.gpg." July 18: WikiLeaks confirms it has opened "the 1Gb or so archive" and will release
documents "this week." July 22: WikiLeaks
releases more than 20,000 DNC emails and 8,000 other attachments.
According to Mueller and obsequious news outlets like the Times , the sequence is clear: Guccifer sends archive, WikiLeaks
receives archive, WikiLeaks accesses archive, WikiLeaks publishes archive. Donald Trump may not have colluded with
Russia, but Julian Assange plainly did. [Attorney General Will Barr, significantly calling WikiLeaks a publisher, said at
his Thursday press conference: " Under applicable law, publication of these types of materials would not be criminal unless the publisher
also participated in the underlying hacking conspiracy."]
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announcing in 2018 the grand jury indictment of 12 GRU agents. (Wikimedia Commons)
Avoiding Questions
The narrative raises questions that the press studiously avoids. Why, for instance, would Assange announce on June 12 that a big
disclosure is on the way before hearing from the supposed source? Was there a prior communication that Mueller has not disclosed?
What about the reference to "new material" on June 22 – does that mean Assange already had other material in hand? After opening
the Guccifer file on July 18, why would he publish it just four days later? Would that give WikiLeaks enough time to review some
28,000 documents to insure they're genuine?
Honor Bob Parry's legacy by
donating
to our Spring Fund Drive.
"If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty
observes , "Wikileaks' reputation would have been in tatters." There's also the question that an investigator known as Adam Carter
poses in Disobedient
Media : why would Guccifer brag about giving WikiLeaks "thousands of files" that he wouldn't send for another month?
The narrative doesn't make sense – a fact that is crucially important now that Assange is fighting for his freedom in the U.K.
New Yorker staff writer Raffi Khatchadourian sounded
a rare note of caution last summer when he warned that little about Guccifer 2.0 adds up. While claiming to be the source for
some of WikiLeaks ' most explosive emails, the material he released on his own had proved mostly worthless – 20 documents
that he "said were from the DNC but which were almost surely not," as Khatchadourian puts it, a purported Hillary Clinton dossier
that "was nothing of the sort," screenshots of emails so blurry as to be "unreadable," and so forth.
John Podesta: Target of a phishing expedition. (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)
While insisting that "our source is not the Russian
government and it is not a state party, Assange told Khatchadourian that the source was not Guccifer either. "We received quite a
lot of submissions of material that was already published in the rest of the press, and people seemingly submitted the Guccifer archives,"
he said somewhat cryptically. "We didn't publish them. They were already published." When Khatchadourian asked why he didn't put
the material out regardless, he replied that "the material from Guccifer 2.0 – or on WordPress – we didn't have the resources to
independently verify."
No Time for Vetting
So four days was indeed too short a time to subject the Guccifer file to proper vetting. Of course, Mueller no doubt regards this
as more "dissembling," as his report describes it. Yet WikiLeaks has never been caught in a lie for the simple reason that honesty
and credibility are all-important for a group that promises to protect anonymous leakers who supply it with official secrets. (See
"Inside WikiLeaks : Working with the Publisher that Changed the World,"
Consortium News , July 19, 2018.) Mueller, by contrast, has a rich history of mendacity going back to his days as FBI
director when he sought to cover up
the Saudi role
in 9/11 and assured Congress on the eve
of the 2003 invasion that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction pose "a clear threat to our national security."
Mueller with President George W. Bush on July 5, 2001, as he is being appointed FBI director. (White House)
So if the Mueller narrative doesn't hold up, the charge of dissembling doesn't either. Indeed , as ex-federal prosecutor Andrew
C. McCarthy
observes in The National Review , the fact that the feds have charged Assange with unauthorized access to a government
computer rather than conspiring with the Kremlin could be a sign that Team Mueller is less than confident it can prove collusion
beyond a reasonable doubt. As he puts it, the GRU indictment "was more like a press release than a charging instrument" because the
special prosecutor knew that the chances were
zero that Russian intelligence agents would surrender to a U.S. court.
Indeed, when Mueller charged 13 employees and three companies owned by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin with interfering
in the 2016 election, he clearly didn't expect them to surrender either. Thus , his team seemed taken aback when one of the alleged
" troll farms
" showed up in Washington asking to be heard. The prosecution's initial response, as McCarthy
put it , was to seek
a delay "on the astonishing ground that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown
up in court and asked to be arraigned." When that didn't work, prosecutors tried to limit Concord's access to some 3.2 million pieces
of evidence on the grounds that the documents are too "
sensitive " for Russian eyes to see. If they are again unsuccessful, they may have no choice but to drop the charges entirely,
resulting in yet another " public relations
disaster " for the Russia-gate investigation.
None of which bodes well for Mueller or the news organizations that worship at his shrine. After blowing the Russia-gate story
all these years, why does the Times continue to slander the one news organization that tells the truth?
Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and
other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique
and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .
"... Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's national security state. ..."
"... Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That country is, of course, Israel." ..."
Behind the Omar Outrage: Suppressed History of the pro-Israel Lobby
Max Blumenthal's article and his 2019 book, The Management of Savagery: How America's
National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (2019), is an
impressive exercise in burying the lede.
Blumenthal does chronicle a decades-long panoply of active measures by numerous pro-Israel
Lobby figures, groups and think tanks. Yet he fails to explicitly recognize the connection
between pro-Israel Lobby efforts and the covert operations and overt invasions of America's
national security state.
Julian Assange of Wikileaks was more explicit. Assange named the "country that has
interfered in U.S. elections, has endangered Americans living or working overseas and has
corrupted America's legislative and executive branches. It has exploited that corruption to
initiate legislation favorable to itself, has promoted unnecessary and unwinnable wars and
has stolen American technology and military secrets. Its ready access to the mainstream media
to spread its own propaganda provides it with cover for its actions and it accomplishes all
that and more through the agency of a powerful and well-funded domestic lobby [ ] That
country is, of course, Israel."
"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
If Trump pardoned Assange, I would consider that draining the swamp. But Orange Jewlius is
a Deep State **** socket, so the swamp has grown to a lagoon
Clearly the US government has zero respect for Australia, Australian Law or Australian
citizens. The case is shite, else they would allow Assange to be deported to Australia and
the extradition hearing to be heard there. They refuse because they know their case is shite
and they would have to prove it in Australia before they could get extradition.
The USA is not an ally of Australia because it does not respect Australian law, not in the
least. Prove US respect of Australians by deporting Assange to Australia and holding the
extradition hearings there, else look as guilty as shite and never ever to be trusted by
Australians.
The US Govt respects NOBODY but its own Interests. It's the Australian Govt that's
complicit in this travesty of Nil justice. The Gutless Australian Govt has NO interest in
helping Julian Assange because they were persuaded NOT to by their American masters. It hurts
that your own Govt are total A$$holes & follow USA into Crimes with out question. The
Australian Govt has a History of lip service only when assistance Overseas is required. ****
them !
Assange probably is a narcissist. So what? All the people criticizing him are, too. At
least he's an honest narcissist. In everything he's published, not a single item has even
been allegedly false. Can any of these other so-called "journalists" demonstrate that level
of accuracy?
Here is a good article on Assange. Explains the cat. Things were okay for him under the
real elected president of Ecuador, except no sunlight thanks to US spooks.
There were two last visits. During the first I was led in by a new young assistant, Ethan,
who was keen to agree with everything being said. Our conversation was mainly about Edward
Snowden. There are few subjects on which Julian would be reluctant to take what you might call
a paternalistic position, but over Snowden, whom he's never met but has chatted with and feels
largely responsible for, he expressed a kind of irritable admiration. 'Just how good is he?' I
asked.
'He's number nine,' he said.
'In the world? Among computer hackers? And where are you?'
'I'm number three.' He went on to say that he wondered whether Snowden was calm enough,
intelligent enough, and added that he should have come to them for advice before fleeing to
Hong Kong.
A fair reading of the situation might conclude, without prejudice, that Assange, like an
ageing movie star, was a little put out by the global superstardom of Snowden. He has always
cared too much about the fame and too much about the credit, while real relationships and real
action often fade to nothing. Snowden was now the central hub and Julian was keen to help him
and keen to be seen to be helping him. It's how the ego works and the ego always comes first.
Snowden, while grateful for the advice and the comradeship, was meanwhile playing a cannier
game than Julian. He was eager for credit, too, but behaving more subtly, more amiably, and
playing with bigger secrets. Julian said he hoped that others, I took him to mean the
Guardian and Glenn Greenwald, didn't claim too much credit for the flow of secrets. He
said he wanted me to help him get a film going, an account of what actually happened in Hong
Kong, how he helped Snowden. He said he had all the inside information and connections and it
would make a fantastic thriller. We discussed it at length and I told him the way to get movie
interest in such a thing was to get behind a big piece in Vanity Fair . He agreed and
said he would set aside time to get down to it. But I knew he wouldn't. It was odd the way he
spoke about Snowden, almost jealously, as if the younger man didn't quite understand what he
was about, needing much more from Julian than he knew how to ask for. I recognised the familiar
anxiety about non-influence: 'Snowden should have been with us from the beginning,' he said.
'He's flailing.' But they were now making up for lost time. As we spoke, Sarah was in Moscow
Airport, where Snowden was being held without a passport. 'I sent Sarah over,' said Julian in
his favourite mode. All he needed at that point was a white cat to stroke.
Snowden was everywhere in the news the last time I decided to drop in on Julian after I'd
been out in his neighbourhood. The embassy was quiet. I brought a couple of bottles of beer up
from the street and we sat in the dark room. It was a Friday night and Julian had never seemed
more alone. We laughed a lot and then he went very deeply into himself. He drank his beer and
then lifted mine and drank that. 'We've got some really historic things going on,' he said.
Then he opened his laptop and the blue screen lit his face and he hardly noticed me
leaving.
Washington recklessly accuses Russia and China of hacking while providing no evidence
backing its claims.
At the same time, it's silent about most Internet servers located in America, facilitating
its espionage, including hacking to obtain unauthorized data. Washington rules mandate doing
what "we" say, not what "we" do.
Russian Security Council secretary explained the problem, saying "(w)e have been fixing
growing attempts from external forces to damage Russian information systems. Those are cases
of hacking, and also unauthorized collection of data."
"This is done with active involvement of global operators and providers, and the methods
used are constantly evolving."
"For example, the Obama administration groundlessly accuses Russia of hacking attacks,
deliberately ignoring the fact that most Internet servers are located inside the US, and are
used by Washington for spying and other purposes aimed at protecting that country's dominant
position in the world."
Patrushev hopes Trump will change things responsibly, Moscow and Washington cooperating in
combating terrorism instead of pursuing opposite objectives for so long.
"We have confirmation of" Obama's administration supporting, not fighting terrorism,
Patrushev explained. Changing this policy is essential for improving Russian/US
relations.
If Trump governs responsibly, Moscow welcomes an ally in counterterrorism activities,
information security, trade and other areas of mutual interest.
If Trump wants improved ties, "we will be ready to resume full-format consultations with
US partners of the Russian Security Council," Patrushev explained.
"The Obama administration sought domina(nce) (internationally, its policies amounting to)
reckless schemes."
"Unfriendly actions (violating) international law resulted in a frenzy of terrorism
(causing) humanitarian disasters in certain states and regions."
Does Trump intend changing things or continuing Obama's reckless agenda? Will he wage
endless wars or responsibly work with Russia and other nations in resolving ongoing ones?
Exactly. " keep democracy safe" while supporting the erection of a Gov't by coup for
Venezuelans. He's talking out of both sides of his mouth the hypocrite.
@wayfarer Good share wayfarer. January 10, 2014 *500* Years of History Shows that Mass
Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent *It's Never to Protect Us From Bad Guys*
No matter which government conducts mass surveillance, they also do it to crush dissent,
and then give a false rationale for why they're doing it.
Vindictiveness not always play in the vindictive party favour.
You may love Assange you may hate Assange for his WikiLeaks revelation (And Vault 7 was a
real bombshell), but it is clear that it will cost Trump some reputation out of tini share that
still left, especially in view of Trump declaration "I love Wikileaks"
For seven years, we have had to listen to a chorus of journalists, politicians and "experts"
telling us that Assange was nothing more than a fugitive from justice, and that the British and
Swedish legal systems could be relied on to handle his case in full accordance with the law.
Barely a "mainstream" voice was raised in his defence in all that time.
... ... ...
The political and media establishment ignored the mounting evidence of a secret grand jury
in Virginia formulating charges against Assange, and ridiculed Wikileaks' concerns that the
Swedish case might be cover for a more sinister attempt by the US to extradite Assange and lock
him away in a high-security prison, as had happened to whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
... ... ...
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador, as
well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy, using
his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No "mainstream" journalist or
politician thought this significant either.
... ... ...
They turned a blind eye to the news that, after refusing to question Assange in the UK,
Swedish prosecutors had decided to quietly drop the case against him in 2015. Sweden had kept
the decision under wraps for more than two years.
... ... ...
Most of the other documents relating to these conversations were unavailable. They had been
destroyed by the UK's Crown Prosecution Service in violation of protocol. But no one in the
political and media establishment cared, of course.
Similarly, they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in the
embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a case to
answer in Sweden. They told us -- apparently in all seriousness -- that he had to be arrested
for his bail infraction, something that would normally be dealt with by a fine.
... ... ...
This was never about Sweden or bail violations, or even about the discredited Russiagate
narrative, as anyone who was paying the vaguest attention should have been able to work out. It
was about the US Deep State doing everything in its power to crush Wikileaks and make an
example of its founder.
It was about making sure there would never again be a leak like that of Collateral Murder,
the military video released by Wikileaks in 2007 that showed US soldiers celebrating as they
murdered Iraqi civilians. It was about making sure there would never again be a dump of US
diplomatic cables, like those released in 2010 that revealed the secret machinations of the US
empire to dominate the planet whatever the cost in human rights violations.
Now the pretence is over. The British police invaded the diplomatic territory of Ecuador --
invited in by Ecuador after it tore up Assange's asylum status -- to smuggle him off to jail.
Two vassal states cooperating to do the bidding of the US empire. The arrest was not to help
two women in Sweden or to enforce a minor bail infraction.
No, the British authorities were acting on an extradition warrant from the US. And the
charges the US authorities have concocted relate to Wikileaks' earliest work exposing the US
military's war crimes in Iraq -- the stuff that we all once agreed was in the public interest,
that British and US media clamoured to publish themselves.
Still the media and political class is turning a blind eye. Where is the outrage at the lies
we have been served up for these past seven years? Where is the contrition at having been
gulled for so long? Where is the fury at the most basic press freedom -- the right to publish
-- being trashed to silence Assange? Where is the willingness finally to speak up in Assange's
defence?
It's not there. There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just
curious, impassive -- even gently mocking -- reporting of Assange's fate.
And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed
anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to crush
Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn't care. In fact, they happily conspired in
paving the way for today's kidnapping of Assange.
They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for ordinary
people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They don't care about
any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system that rewards them with
money and influence. They don't want an upstart like Assange kicking over their applecart.
Now they will spin us a whole new set of deceptions and distractions about Assange to keep
us anaesthetised, to keep us from being incensed as our rights are whittled away, and to
prevent us from realising that Assange's rights and our own are indivisible. We stand or fall
together.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include
"Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East"
(Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .
This should be an uncomfortable time for the “journalists” of the
Establishment. Very few will speak up as does Mr. Cook. Watch how little is said about the
recent Manning re-imprisonment to sweat out grand jury testimony. Things may have grown so
craven that we’ll even see efforts to revoke Mr. Assange’s awards.
This is also a good column for us to share with those people who just might want not to
play along with the lies that define Exceptionalia.
… from the moment Julian Assange first sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in
London, they have been telling us we were wrong, that we were paranoid conspiracy
theorists. We were told there was no real threat of Assange’s extradition to the
United States, that it was all in our fevered imaginations.
It all reminds me of Rod Dreher’s Law of Merited Impossibility: “That’ll
never happen. And when it does , boy won’t you deserve it!”
Equally, they ignored the fact that Assange had been given diplomatic status by Ecuador,
as well as Ecuadorean citizenship. Britain was obligated to allow him to leave the embassy,
using his diplomatic immunity, to travel unhindered to Ecuador. No “mainstream”
journalist or politician thought this significant either.
Why would they? They don’t even recognize diplomatic status for heads of state who
get in their way! Remember what they did to President Evo Morales of Bolivia back when he was
threatening to grant asylum to Ed Snowden? Here’s a refresher:
People who just watch corporate media think Julian Assange is a bad guy who deserves life
in prison, except those who watch the great Tucker Carlson. Watch his recent show where he
explains why our corporate media and political class hate Assange.
He is charged with encouraging Army Private Chelsea Manning to send him embarrassing
information, specifically this video of a US Army Apache helicopter gunning down civilians in
broad daylight in Baghdad.
But there is no proof of this, and Manning has repeatedly said he never communicated to
Assange about anything. Manning got eight years in prison for this crime; the Apache pilots
were never charged. and now they want to hang Assange for exposing a war crime. I have
recommend this great 2016 interview twice, where Assange calmly explains the massive
corruption that patriotic FBI agents refer to as the “Clinton Crime Family.”
This gang is so powerful that it ordered federal agents to spy on the Trump political
campaign, and indicted and imprisoned some participants in an attempt to pressure President
Trump to step down. It seems Trump still fears this gang, otherwise he would order his
attorney general to drop this bogus charge against Assange, then pardon him forever and
invite him to speak at White House press conferences.
“… they ignored the fact that Assange was forced to hole up for years in
the embassy, under the most intense form of house arrest, even though he no longer had a
case to answer in Sweden.”
Meh! Assange should have walked out the door of the embassy years ago. He might have ended
up in the same place, but he could have seized the moral high ground by seeking asylum in
Britain for fear of the death penalty in the US, which was a credible fear given public
comments by various US officials. By rotting away in the Ecuadorian embassy, be greatly
diminished any credibility he might have had to turn the UK judicial system inside out to his
favour. Now he’s just a creepy looking bail jumper who flung faeces against the wall,
rather than being a persecuted journalist.
@Johnny Rottenborough Millionaire politicians on both sides of the political fence get
very emotional about anything that impacts their own privacy & safety and the privacy
& safety of their kin, while ignoring the issues that jeopardize the privacy & safety
of ordinary voters. While corporate-owned politicians get a lot out of this game,
ordinary voters who have never had less in the way of Fourth Amendment privacy rights, and
whose First Amendment rights are quickly shrinking to the size of Assange’s, do not get
the consolation of riches without risk granted to bought-off politicians in this era’s
pay-to-play version of democracy. It’s a lose / lose for average voters.
Mr Cook’s criticism of the mainstream media (MSM) is absolutely justified.
It seems to me that their hatred of Mr Assange reflects the unfortunate fact that, while
he is a real journalist, they actually aren’t. Instead, they are stenographers for
power: what Paul Craig Roberts calls “presstitutes” (a very happy coinage which
exactly hits the bull’s eye).
The difference is that real journalists, like Mr Assange, Mr Roberts and Mr Cook, are
mainly motivated by the search for objective truth – which they then publish, as far as
they are able.
Whereas those people who go by the spurious names of “journalist”,
“reporter”, “editor”, etc. are motivated by the desire to go on
earning their salaries, and to gain promotion and “distinction” in society. (Sad
but true: social distinction is often gained by performing acts of dishonesty and downright
wickedness).
Here are some interesting quotations that cast some light on this disheartening state of
affairs. If you look carefully at their dates you may be surprised to find that nothing has
changed very much since the mid-19th century.
‘Marr: “How can you know that I’m self-censoring? How can you know that
journalists are…”
‘Chomsky: “I’m not saying you’re self censoring. I’m sure
you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed
something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re
sitting”’.
‘If something goes wrong with the government, a free press will ferret it out and it
will get fixed. But if something goes wrong with our free press, the country will go straight
to hell’.
‘There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in
country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who
dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it
would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am
connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should
allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before
twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write
honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New
York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at
the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is
about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be
toasting an “Independent Press”! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind
the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents,
our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual
prostitutes’.
‘The press today is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with
journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier
obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader
neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role
that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined.
Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is
only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty’.
– Oswald Spengler, “The Decline of the West” Vol. II, trans. C.F.
Atkinson (1928), p. 462
‘How do wars start? Wars start when politicians lie to journalists, then believe
what they read in the press’.
Very good article. There is one point that I would like to make: Assange asked for asyl
before he went to the embassy of Ecuador and Ecuador gave him asylum. This meant that they
had an obligation to protect him. It’s really unbeliavable that a country gives asylum
to someone and half way tells that they have changed their mind and will let the person be
arrested. ” We told you you would be safe with us, but now we just changed our
mind”. Assange also became a citizen of Ecuador and this possibly means that Ecuador
couldn’t have let him been arrested in their embassy by the police of another country
without a process against him in Ecuador and without him having the right to defend himself
in a court. Many countries don’t extradit their citizens to other countries.
Another remark. For years there were uncountable articles about Assange in The Guardian.
Those articles were read by many people and got really many comments. There were very fierce
discussions about him with thousends of comments. With time The Guardian turned decisively
against him and published articles againt him. There were people there who seemed to hate
him. In the last days there were again many articles about him. They pronounce themselves
discretely against his extradition to the US even if showing themselves to be critical of him
as if trying to justify their years of attacks against him. But one detail: I didn’t
find even one article in The Guardian where you can comment the case. Today for instance you
can comment an article by Gaby Hinsliff about Kim Kardashian. Marina Hyde talks in an article
about washing her hair (whatever else she wants to say, with 2831 comments at this moment).
But you don’t find any article about Assange that you can comment. 10 or 8 or 5 years
ago there were hundreds of articles about him that you could comment.
UK PM May said about Assange – “no one is above the law” –
proving she is a weak sister without a clue.
No one is above the law except the British government, which ignored the provisions of the
EU Withdrawal Act requiring us to leave on March 29th.
No one is above the law except for the US and the UK which have illegally deployed forces
to Syria against the wishes of the government in Damascus.
And Tony Blair, a million dead thanks to his corruption. He should be doing time in a
Gulag for his evil crimes.
And of course, the black MP for Peterborough – Fiona Onasanya – served a mere
three weeks in jail for perverting the course of justice, normally regarded as a very serious
offence. But she was out in time – electronic tag and curfew notwithstanding – to
vote in the House of Commons against leaving the EU.
"... 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.
With Bolsanaro in charge in Brazil, Glenn Greenwald could be next. Something I am sure he is very aware. It's also curious that
no more of Snowden's documents have been published. I've wondered if they have threatened Greenwald and he is withholding the
information, to keep himself out of some dungeon somewhere.
"I've wondered if they have threatened Greenwald and he is withholding the information, to keep himself out of some dungeon
somewhere."
No one needs to threaten Greenwald to get him to withhold information. He withholds out of elitist conviction. In his way he's
just as much of an elite gatekeeper as anyone at any MSM outlet. (And really an outfit like the Intercept is just a thinly veiled
extension of the MSM.)
It's amazing how for many people, even going to work for a predatory billionaire as Greenwald has, or collaborating as part
of that billionaire's project as Snowden has, doesn't automatically peg one as a system stooge.
1. Information "piracy" may have to take to the high seas.
2. Maybe it would be best to release the rest of Snowden's documents now. Tit for tat.
Posted by: Cynica | Apr 11, 2019 8:38:05 AM | 35
This WILL NOT happen. Greenwald, his billionaire backer (who owns the docs technically as crazy as that sounds) and his website
are all an example of the "acceptable" counter narrative. Greenwald should deserve no respect, he chose money and fame over integrity.
That much has become clear. I think the same of Scahill and a few others, though I hear little from him now.
Sad days. Money will buy a LOT of people. Even those we believe it won't as they are "principled" or once carried conviction
. Hell, I imagine most of us are vulnerable to that as well.
1. Information "piracy" may have to take to the high seas.
2. Maybe it would be best to release the rest of Snowden's documents now. Tit for tat.
Posted by: Cynica | Apr 11, 2019 8:38:05 AM | 35
This WILL NOT happen. Greenwald, his billionaire backer (who owns the docs technically as crazy as that sounds) and his website
are all an example of the "acceptable" counter narrative. Greenwald should deserve no respect, he chose money and fame over integrity.
That much has become clear. I think the same of Scahill and a few others, though I hear little from him now.
Sad days. Money will buy a LOT of people. Even those we believe it won't as they are "principled" or once carried conviction
. Hell, I imagine most of us are vulnerable to that as well.
It's amazing how for many people, even going to work for a predatory billionaire as Greenwald has, or collaborating as part of
that billionaire's project as Snowden has, doesn't automatically peg one as a system stooge.
Posted by: Russ | Apr 11, 2019 8:37:22 AM | 34
I don't know. I still read Greenwald on twitter. You just have to pick through where he is dancing on a thin line and in some
places openly speaking truth.
Pretty hard to live on next to nothing and get heard and also enjoy a bit of life as well.
Obviously he is getting paid very well but I don't see him as a MSM stooge and propagandist.
I don't bother with the intercept.
I doubt that Trump will have to intervene. If we cast our minds back to David Hicks and Chelsea Manning, the Yanks wanted both
of them to rot in jail for Eternity but 'time served' for both was considerably less. There was also a swarthy, savvy, well-educated
bespectacled Brit picked up about the same time as Hicks. I've forgotten his name but he was released in response to strident
demands from UK.gov. Ozzies were very pissed off with the Liberal Govt for not following UK.gov's example re David Hicks.
Superficially, at least, it seems that the US is happy to 'prove' its relentless invincibility, to as wide an audience as possible,
when pursuing The AmeriKKKan Way regarding certain 'evildoers' and then going back to sleep.
If there's a short-term bright note to this story it's the fact that Scum Mo announced the start of Oz Federal Election campaign
yesterday and Assange will become an election issue. Scum Mo's Liberals are already in deep doodoo with the electorate for delaying
the Banking Royal Commission for almost 2 years. The RC found that all of the big banks and other financial institutions had been
engaged in widespread deception, theft and fraudulent behavior. The Royal Commission was given a limited time to produce a report
and did NOT set up a compensation body or procedure for the tens of thousands of victims of bank malfeasance.
So Scum Mo will be tempted to grow a pair and demand that Trump send Assange back to Oz because the Libs were going to be toast
anyway and Saving Julian might help some people to forget what greedy dishonest assholes the Libs are.
I'm not sure Assange will end up in solitary in a U.S. Supermax prison as many so-called progressive Clintonists are hoping and
gloating over. From memory the ECHR regards solitary as torture particularly over long periods and the United Kingdom judiciary
(who will make the decision) have an established policy of not extraditing prisoners who will be tortured. So, my assessment is,
he will be extradited once the US DoJ has given assurances he will not be held in solitary, but it will be a very sad day for
press freedom in the United Kingdom.
"Pretty hard to live on next to nothing and get heard and also enjoy a bit of life as well."
I've heard about the lavish "next to nothing" Greenwald lives on. Doesn't quite sound the same as my next-to-nothing. As for
getting heard, that's mathematical: There's an direct relationship between one's utility to the empire and how much one "gets
heard".
In this case, Greenwald collaborated with the NYT, WaPo and Guardian to curate Snowden's alleged trove (which stopped appearing
at all long before it was supposed to be exhausted), in order to release heavily censored portions in a form these MSM elitists
judged was suitable for the people to see.
The basic message, which Snowden himself also has spewed in many speeches, is that the Deep State is basically good, and certainly
necessary, it just has committed some abuses and needs "reform" and "oversight".
That's Greenwald's #1 service for the empire so far, to be the lead man in co-opting the whole Wikileaks-whistleblower movement,
since so many people are so interested in "leaks" (even though they never tell us anything we didn't already know from plain sight).
We do all hope that Assange's arrest will motivate all those with access to other incriminating data to release those, via Wikileaks
or other. The first comment here accurately describes it: (the UK and) the US - and let's add the whole silly 'five eyes' and
western front - has become the new Soviet Union. Roles have reversed; it's not about ideology but about power structure.
Here's for Assange to become the Sakharov of our time. However, that would mean we foster the hope or expect that our western
hemisphere could birth a Gorbachev-type idealist who can attain power long enough to destroy the power base.
Christian J Chuba , Apr 11, 2019 9:57:12 AM |
link
Reading the user comments on Assange's arrest in the 'Washington Post' story, all I can say is that we in the U.S.
are a bunch of jingoistic morons. We are exceptionally narcissistic and small minded.
Indeed. It's almost as if the Snowden--Greenwald affair were an intended or at least foreseen and allowed limited hangout operation
one aim of which was to discredit the "irresponsible" leaking of Assange while establishing Greenwald as paradigm for all correct
left-libertarian critiques of the US.
On the other hand, if the Snowden--Greenwald *were* simply a limited hangout thing, then it was far more successfully and realistically
contrived than most of our current very mediocre intelligence agency operations have been. The rush to apprehend Snowden en route
to Central America, the forced detainment of Greenwald's partner in the UK, the MI5-6 destruction of the Guardian servers and
subsequent takeover of the newspaper...all these events really happened and clearly were much more serious endeavors than the
obvious staged operations like Steele, Russiagate, Skripal which followed after.
So I think that the Snowden--gGreenwald---Poitras thing started as genuine and then was subsequently coopted and controlled
via Greenwald and Omidar's Intercept. What I don't know is whether Greenwald entered the Snowden affair already coopted or whether
he became so willingly sometime later. For lots of people like Greenwald--achievement oriented, desirous of public fame and respect,
interested in obtaining personal wealth and stability--a very "soft" touch is all that's needed by our intelligence ops to arrive
at an understanding between them.
If one were to change the calendar to 1938 or so, and the names to Goebbels et al, one would recognize the character of the criminals.
This is a typical nazi "action" against people who have failed to conceal evidence of major war crimes. Their "crime" is reporting
crime.
The German nazis were curated by CoL and Wall-Street bankers to ruin USSR and loot Russia. As we see this remains a basic,
essential, nazi goal of the Anglo-Saxon nazi heartland, er. "Heimat" - England and their servile willing US accomplices.
- Madeline Albright: "We think it's worth it" to kill 500,000 children.
- Bush Admin and neocons lied to start the war a war that cost trillions of dollars wasted; thousands of deaths
- Multiple grievous human rights abuses now engraved in memory: Abu Grave; Faluja; Rendition and Torture; Guantanamo, etc.
And the same lousy criminal asshats brought us the Afghanistan debacle, color revolutions, and the Syrian Jihadi proxy war.
As long as the real criminals walk free, they will continue to drive their criminal agenda.
In the indictment, the government alleges that Assange worked with Chelsea Manning to obtain classified documents. Prosecutors
say that Manning accessed classified government files, provided them to Assange, and later worked with Assange in an attempt
to crack the password of a classified government network.
The indictment outlines communications between Manning and Assange from the spring of 2010. WikiLeaks later released a major
cache of State Department cables, and
Prosecutors also argue that Assange actively encouraged Manning to access files, at one point saying, "curious eyes never
run dry in my experience."
Currently, the only charge Assange faces is one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The maximum penalty for
the violation is five years in prison, but the government could bring additional charges against Assange at a later date.
A friend of mine is a retired intelligence asset. What he has to say may upset lots of you. So be it. Everyone wants heroes but
others say no more heroes anymore.
WikiLeaks is accused of releasing the DNC mails via a Russian hack but the Wikileaks organization denies Russia was the source
yet declines to offer proof, allowing the false perception to persevere. Why does Wikileaks persevere in concealing the otherwise
well known fact it was the assassinated Seth Rich leaked the DNC mails? Is it because Assange's currency as an intelligence agency
asset isn't yet entirely exhausted?
Possibility 1) As stated at this website previously, the point of charging Assange with an older crime could be to bury the
prime witness (Assange) in maximum security where any testimony threatening John Brennan's CIA invented DNC 'hack' narrative will
never come to light.
Possibility 2) This is part of a staged event by the USA's neocon/Christian Zionist alliance in the CIA, working with MOSSAD
(recalling Assange's MOSSAD connections attested to by former CIA clandestine services officer Robert Steele) to sink the neoliberal
element of the USA's intelligence establishment; where Trump will pardon Assange for Assange's cooperation with the Justice Department
in sinking the Obama/Clinton/John Brennan clique behind 'Russiagate' (finally resolving the DNC mails.)
Consider this: certain alternative media stars either fail to realize or selectively black out the fact Julian Assange was
a critical gear in the intelligence agency (primarily CIA & MOSSAD) information operations responsible for the so-called 'Arab
Spring' leading to not only revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt but also the overthrow of Gaddafi and the Syrian 'civil
war.' How do alternative media stars Glen Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Caitlin Johnstone, Vanessa Beeley and Raul Ilargi Meijer (among
others), when defending their perception of Assange as a hero, drive that square peg into the round hole of Wikileaks supported
the intelligence agency geopolitical engineering called the Arab Spring?
Many readers here will be hearing from Glenn Greenwald about the arrest of Assange as if He(Greenwald)just loves Julian so much
and is just so upset by his arrest. DO NOT BELIEVE HIM. Take the time to look back at what Greenwald has said - such as claiming
that Assange is not a journalist because he does ont "curate" the material he receives for anything other than authenticity.
According to Snowden and Greenwald if a journalist does not contact the government in advance and agreed to censor the material
for "sources and methods" then they are not journalists.
Glenn Greenwald has made a fortune off Snowden - including $250 million from Pierre Omidyar an oligarch for The Intercept which
clearly supports the oligarchy and its interests. Greenwald has stated clearly in the past that he does not consider Wikileaks
a journalistic operation. Greenwald still has perhaps thousands of Snowden documents which he refuses to release - then he gets
$250 million from the oligarchy. Sure there is "journalism" as long as the CIA can review what you publish first. One of the founders
of the Intercept is Laura Pordris who produced a psyco-hit piece on Assange.
In this environment if you Trust these people without question you are risking being mislead. Like a good propagandist Greenwald
is out now singing the tune which will gain him trust so he can slip in the propaganda effectively when the time comes.
@AnonJ ust for a
more important record -- no surprise here -- my quick scan of the index of file names of that
"massive data dump at Wikileaks" found quite a few files about Scientology, one about tuition
increase at "uofa," another concerning Hawaii's announcement about Obama's birth certificate,
and a "yes-we-can mp4," but nothing at all about the World Trade Center or 9/11 that I could
find.
The arrest probably means that WikiLeaks was thoroughly infiltrated and the US authorities
are sure that there are no "unexploded bombs" in their arsenal.
Indeed. It's almost as if the Snowden--Greenwald affair were an intended or at least
foreseen and allowed limited hangout operation one aim of which was to discredit the
"irresponsible" leaking of Assange while establishing Greenwald as paradigm for all correct
left-libertarian critiques of the US.
On the other hand, if the Snowden--Greenwald *were* simply a limited hangout thing, then
it was far more successfully and realistically contrived than most of our current very
mediocre intelligence agency operations have been. The rush to apprehend Snowden en route to
Central America, the forced detainment of Greenwald's partner in the UK, the MI5-6
destruction of the Guardian servers and subsequent takeover of the newspaper...all these
events really happened and clearly were much more serious endeavors than the obvious staged
operations like Steele, Russiagate, Skripal which followed after.
So I think that the Snowden--gGreenwald---Poitras thing started as genuine and then was
subsequently coopted and controlled via Greenwald and Omidar's Intercept. What I don't know
is whether Greenwald entered the Snowden affair already coopted or whether he became so
willingly sometime later. For lots of people like Greenwald--achievement oriented, desirous
of public fame and respect, interested in obtaining personal wealth and stability--a very
"soft" touch is all that's needed by our intelligence ops to arrive at an understanding
between them.
"I've wondered if they have threatened Greenwald and he is withholding the information,
to keep himself out of some dungeon somewhere."
No one needs to threaten Greenwald to get him to withhold information. He withholds out
of elitist conviction. In his way he's just as much of an elite gatekeeper as anyone at any
MSM outlet. (And really an outfit like the Intercept is just a thinly veiled extension of
the MSM.)
It's amazing how for many people, even going to work for a predatory billionaire as
Greenwald has, or collaborating as part of that billionaire's project as Snowden has,
doesn't automatically peg one as a system stooge.
1. Information "piracy" may have to take to the high seas.
2. Maybe it would be best to release the rest of Snowden's documents now. Tit for tat.
Posted by: Cynica | Apr 11, 2019 8:38:05 AM | 35
This WILL NOT happen. Greenwald, his billionaire backer (who owns the docs technically as
crazy as that sounds) and his website are all an example of the "acceptable" counter
narrative. Greenwald should deserve no respect, he chose money and fame over integrity.
That much has become clear. I think the same of Scahill and a few others, though I hear
little from him now.
Sad days. Money will buy a LOT of people. Even those we believe it won't as they are
"principled" or once carried conviction . Hell, I imagine most of us are vulnerable to that
as well.
We do all hope that Assange's arrest will motivate all those with access to other
incriminating data to release those, via Wikileaks or other. The first comment here
accurately describes it: (the UK and) the US - and let's add the whole silly 'five eyes'
and western front - has become the new Soviet Union. Roles have reversed; it's not about
ideology but about power structure.
Here's for Assange to become the Sakharov of our time. However, that would mean we foster
the hope or expect that our western hemisphere could birth a Gorbachev-type idealist who
can attain power long enough to destroy the power base.
- Madeline Albright: "We think it's worth it" to kill 500,000 children.
- Bush Admin and neocons lied to start the war a war that cost trillions of dollars wasted;
thousands of deaths
- Multiple grievous human rights abuses now engraved in memory: Abu Grave; Faluja;
Rendition and Torture; Guantanamo, etc.
And the same lousy criminal asshats brought us the Afghanistan debacle, color
revolutions, and the Syrian Jihadi proxy war.
As long as the real criminals walk free, they will continue to drive their
criminal agenda.
Many readers here will be hearing from Glenn Greenwald about the arrest of Assange as if
He(Greenwald)just loves Julian so much and is just so upset by his arrest. DO NOT BELIEVE
HIM. Take the time to look back at what Greenwald has said - such as claiming that Assange
is not a journalist because he does ont "curate" the material he receives for anything
other than authenticity.
According to Snowden and Greenwald if a journalist does not contact the government in
advance and agreed to censor the material for "sources and methods" then they are not
journalists.
Glenn Greenwald has made a fortune off Snowden - including $250 million from Pierre
Omidyar an oligarch for The Intercept which clearly supports the oligarchy and its
interests. Greenwald has stated clearly in the past that he does not consider Wikileaks a
journalistic operation. Greenwald still has perhaps thousands of Snowden documents which he
refuses to release - then he gets $250 million from the oligarchy. Sure there is
"journalism" as long as the CIA can review what you publish first. One of the founders of
the Intercept is Laura Pordris who produced a psyco-hit piece on Assange.
In this environment if you Trust these people without question you are risking being
mislead. Like a good propagandist Greenwald is out now singing the tune which will gain him
trust so he can slip in the propaganda effectively when the time comes.
But the case against Assange is not about justice. His publication of state secrets was
obviously an act of journalism and free speech. But the deep state was embarrassed and
demands revenge
Assange gave us graphic video of the US Army shredding a couple of unarmed Iraqi
journalists (and others) with 30mm canon fire. memory that can't be deleted.
As a US citizen I loath the mendacity and actions of the elites that have left us with
nothing to hope for or believe in for some decent future with the US striding across the
world sowing fear, hatred, and war. The reality of the depraved elites is such that I am
usually right to first assume they are lying whatever they say. This all applies to the UK
as well.
"This is a real test for the American media. Can they separate their personals feelings
toward Assange from the question of whether it is okay to prosecute a publisher for
publishing? Matt is right, this is extremely dangerous."
The above was made in reply to Matthew Yglesias who clearly hates Assange:
"Assange sucks but prosecuting publishers seems extremely dangerous and troubling to
me." And he calls himself a journalist. He has as much honor as Moreno. The resulting
threads are educational and revelatory. Lots of very confused, screwed up minds showing few
morals mixed in with a few good eggs.
"Today, I stand with Julian Assange and Wikileaks."
Please see tweet for entire statement. As with other threads on this topic, the comments
are educational and revelatory. It's rather amazing how many utterly weak minds are in
positions of responsibility. Some have lapped up so much propaganda Koolaid that they're
now delusional.
To those posting about Glenn Greenwald; I don't know what Greenwald really stands for any
more and no longer read his stuff, but you might be interested in this pathetic and
predictable end to the Greenwald/Omidyar conservatorship of the Snowden documents. A month
ago, Greenwald announced via twitter that The Intercept/First Look was now officially
shutting down access to the Snowden archives and has laid off the group of employees that
secured and curated the cache. (It cost First Look $400,000/year to maintain the files,
which is 1.5% of its 2019 budget.)
Greenwald did not even consult Snowden on this decision. So, without much fanfare, the
cache is simply disappeared, without ever being fully opened to the public, although
Greenwald claims in his tweet that he's looking for the "right partner – an academic
institution or research facility – that has the funds to robustly publish." (Which,
one might have supposed, would be the sort of funds that a news site such as The Intercept
might enjoy given that they have the resources of their own billionaire founder behind
them.)
They did not allow Poitras to attend the company meeting held on the subject after they
made this announcement, and kept her in the dark until the announcement was rolled out.
Poitras, recall, also has a copy of the archives and was one of the founding editors of
Intercept. She is objecting to the move. Although given that the Intercept has merely sat
on the cache for so long, it hardly matters now.
I thought from the beginning of the Intercept/First Look/Omidyar site that the eventual
disappearance of the files was the very purpose behind Omidyar buying off Greenwald (and
his valuable Snowden material along with him) in the first place.
Anyway, poof go the Snowden files, without most of the material ever being released to the
public.
There will be no indignation at the BBC, or the Guardian, or CNN. Just curious, impassive
reporting of Assange's fate.
And that is because these journalists, politicians and experts never really believed
anything they said. They knew all along that the US wanted to silence Assange and to
crush Wikileaks. They knew that all along and they didn't care. In fact, they happily
conspired in paving the way for today's kidnapping of Assange.
They did so because they are not there to represent the truth, or to stand up for
ordinary people, or to protect a free press, or even to enforce the rule of law. They
don't care about any of that. They are there to protect their careers, and the system
that rewards them with money and influence. They don't want an upstart like Assange
kicking over their applecart.
In fact it seems to me the reason he is being changed with conspiracy is so that they
can avoid defence claims that his publishing information is covered by the 1st Amendment of
the US Constitution. Any worthwhile lawyer would paste it on thick for the jury that
convicting Assange for publication would be a deep betrayal of their much beloved
Constitution. It also means that the information on war crimes in the famous video would be
once more broadcast to the world, and more importantly to the jury. Imagine what a fiasco
and embarrassment US Govt would face if after all the fuss, Assange was acquitted by a US
Jury?
Furthermore,in common law countries, such as the UK, a typical court condition of
agreement to extradite is that the accused will only be charged with crimes exhibited in
the extradition warrant. That being the case, the maximum sentence he would face is 5 and a
half years I believe.
Some posters here criticise Asssange/Wikileaks for not being critical of Israel or
supporting Catalonia independence but the Wikileaks website isn't really like that.
Wikileaks is a non-redacted searchable database of documents that have been leaked. Most
of these documents are dry and it really depends on what you a looking for and what you
find. It is rare to find a single document that by itself clearly reveals a scandal or a
plot of some sort. Also, there is no editorial from Wikileaks. It is up to the user to
search, find and interpret.
For instance, I just did a search and found a US cable dated 30th Jan 2008
which describes Erdogan's concerns about an armed deep state extra-legal grouping which has
a suspected overlap with a cold war Gladio group and which is protected by the Turkish
judiciary. So, obviously, subversion was an issue long before the attempted coup in 2016,
but it's up to me to make a story out of it.
There is plenty of stuff about Israel, for instance there seems to be quite a number of
incidents concerning Obama and/or Clinton trying to get Netanyahu to apologise for
something that matters very little and Netanyahu invariable refusing.
The easiest way for a body, such as the CIA, to manipulate Wikileaks is just be
selective about what information is leaked.
If you're looking for dirt on Israel, Clinton, Trump, Erdogan, Putin, Catalonia, etc.
just go and look for it.
"Today's arrest and indictment of Julian Assange undermines freedom of the press, and
seeks to silence whistleblowers and the journalists who publish their information. This
sets a dangerous precedent of criminal prosecution of journalists or news organizations who
publish information the government doesn't like, while also opening the door for other
countries to extradite US journalists who publish their country's secrets," said Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard. "We must protect whistleblowers and freedom of the press, and exercise oversight
over our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to ensure our Constitutional rights are
upheld."
"why do you think Assange supported the invasion and destruction of Syria"
This is very simple. Back at the time of Arab Spring, most of the Western opinion, be it
left or right, supported overthrowing a dictator. Assange, for better or worse, was in the
lopsided majority, hardly strange.
"how do you explain Assange´s strong support for the Independence of
Catalonia...."
This was not a majority opinion, but not rare. More importantly, tracing it to the needs
of "deep state" is very speculative. On the other hand, the rage of established political
circles against the very idea of Wikileaks was palpable, and what Wikileaks did was
perceived as "very damaging". Even if independence of Catalonia were in some mysterious
ways a priority of the sinister and hardly known deep state that you postulate, Assange had
scant influence on that happening. So the putative plan of using leaks to Wikileaks to
build up its stature and to use that to further the causes of fragmenting Syria and Spain
would be weird indeed: huge losses for speculative gains.
One has to understand the nature of the rage against Wikileaks. Any conceivable deep
stater depends on secrecy. To them, secrecy is like air for birds and water for fish -- a
necessary element that makes their ecological niche habitable. An organization that
facilitates dissemination of secret is, to them, a blasphemous existence.
One has to understand that what we call "deep state" is hardly secret in the outline.
Its member go back and forth from private sector (corporations, think tanks, media,
academic gig etc.) and the government leaving a large visible trail that is in the public
view. That said, they need many secrets because the wide public in democratic countries
needs to have pure, trusting, uncomplicated minds. Like making children, implementation of
most of policies requires some f...ng activity
Remember George Orwell's "1984" describes a dismal future when most of the world population
have become victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and media
propaganda. Interesting that Orwell's arch protagonist (Emmanuel Goldstein) and his "Theory
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" sees the three "opposing" ideologies as
functionally identical and each superstate being powerful enough that even shifting
alliances (of two against one) only results in a continuing stalemate dynamic.
Are we there yet? I think Julian Assange might be feeling it so and this latest saga
looks like an ominous tipping point indicator for those who think they live in a western
democracy with press freedom to hold government (by the people) accountable.
Correspondence with Edward Snowden, and
the key to freedom for Julian Assange
A member of our Belgian Jewish community is in touch with Edward Snowden in Russia, both
sharing the role of being significant global dissidents who used to live in the USA.
We are publishing here a copy of some of that correspondence between those two figures,
as it discusses the likelihood of how both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are being betrayed
and actively harmed by the American lawyers and US-UK media companies claiming to 'represent'
them, including America's ACLU (America's Civil Liberties Union), the UK Guardian and New York
Times newspapers, and Glenn Greenwald.
All these groups and journalists, are apparently hiding thousands of pages of legal files,
about the corruption and bribery of US federal (national) judges who are the same judges who
would put Julian Assange or Edward Snowden on trial ... even though these lawyers and
journalists all know that exposing the crimes of the bribed US judges, is the quick key to
releasing Julian Assange from threats that confine him to his refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy
in London, and key to more safety and freedom for Snowden as well.
US Attorney General Eric Holder is accused of sponsoring criminal acts of deception against
the UK, Sweden, Russia and other countries, hiding 'smoking gun' evidence of US judge bribery,
in order to harm and destroy both Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Google Inc has agreed to
censor and hoax the internet and hide dozens of web pages about this.
This bribery is said to be funded by Britain's Pearson plc, with the Guardian and New York
Times accused of accepting Pearson-funded bribes to print fake 'news' to obstruct and pervert
justice so that the UK will not prosecute Pearson's bribery of US high judges and
government.
Mr Snowden is also facing the terrifying possibility that his name is being abused by
these parties, New York Times, Guardian and Greenwald, for the sake of entrapping other
dissidents and whistleblowers into 'trusting' these journalists, who might then convey
dissident names to the US regime in order to silence and murder them. It seems possible the
Guardian and New York Times have already given Snowden files back to the US regime.
The correspondence with Edward Snowden makes reference to the police file with several EU
countries, who are beginning investigations and prosecutions, starting in Finland, of the
CIA-tied Wikipedia website, for fundraising fraud ... that police file significantly discusses
the evidence of bribery of US federal judges who are the same judges who would put Edward
Snowden and Julian Assange on trial in America, and how Wikipedia, actually an American
CIA-controlled 'Trojan horse' for inserting lies on targeted topics, has been used to plant
lies about that judicial bribery - the police dossier text is here:
Here is a screenshot of a Google Inc 'search results' page, with tiny text at the bottom
admitting that Google is censoring a large number of search results, about Edward Snowden's
correspondent, a major witness to the crimes involving the same US judges who would put Edward
Snowden or Julian Assange on trial:
"... Attorney General Barr stated the obvious--law enforcement and intelligence agencies spied on Donald Trump's campaign ..."
"... I had learned in December 2016 from friends inside the intelligence community that there was collaboration with the Brits to collect and disseminate intel on persons on the Trump campaign. With Trump's tweet making news, I was invited by RT (i.e., Russia Today) to come on one of their news programs and discuss the matter that same afternoon. ..."
"... I then shared what I had learned about British intelligence ops to intercept U.S. communications on people affiliated with the Trump campagin with members of VIPS—i.e., Veteran Intelligence Professionals. One of these colleagues shared my analysis without my knowledge with Judge Andrew Napolitano. ..."
"... The Brits reportedly initiated collection on their own. The “collection” from those intercepted conversations and emails were shared with the Obama Administration through normal intelligence channels—i.e., principally the NSA. It is important to note that the Brits targeting and collecting on Americans is not illegal. We are foreigners as far as they are concerned. They can collect anything. ..."
"... The Independent ..."
"... I felt sorry for the Judge and knew he was being railroaded. But I did not expect a phone call from him, asking for my help. He called and asked me to help. Prior to the phone call on Thursday, March 16, 2017, I had never spoken to the Judge. We were not even casual acquaintances. ..."
"... Grynbaum is a classic example of what is wrong with the journalism today. For starters, he manufactured the “Frederick Forsyth” quote. I said no such thing. Besides fabricating a quote, he refused to address the substance of my information regarding the activities and conduct of British GCHQ. Instead, he went for the “Whitey” smear. ..."
"... This was a dark period for me. People I thought I could rely on abandoned me. I was on my own. But not for long. Rescue came via Judge Napolitano and an unlikely source, The Guardian—a left leaning British newspaper. The Judge was brought back on air at Fox on March 29, 2017 and stood his ground: ..."
"... On Wednesday morning, Napolitano returned to the network, making an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” His first order of business? Doubling down on the claims that got him suspended in the first place. (From the Washington Post, 29 March 2017, Amy Wang). ..."
"... Two weeks later, on April 13 th , The Guardian not only confirmed what I had said about GCHQ (note, in some of my on air interviews I stupidly and mistakenly called the British spy agence GHCQ) but identified other countries as well who were collecting intelligence, i.e., intercepting communications : ..."
"... There is a simple bottomline—My information was accurate and reliable. Also, I had the story before anyone else. Journalists and pundits were unwilling to listen. ..."
"... Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN. ..."
"... Do you understand what this means? If you have never had a clearance and had access to NSA material then you probably fail to understand how profound this is. Let me explain. There were multiple intelligence reports released by the NSA. I am pretty certain all were classified as Top Secret. Some of these may have been generated by NSA, but most, according to the Guardian piece I mentioned above, were from foreign liaison. The names of the American citizens were initially obscured--e.g., Subject 1 or Subject 2. Hence the "request" to unmask. In other words, identify the nameless person by name. That, boys and girls, is known as spying. ..."
"... Bill Barr is now getting the Larry Johnson treatment for daring to speak a simple, self-evident truth. One big difference. Barr can set in motion the legal process to indict and prosecute those American traitors in the law enforcement and intelligence community who violated their oath to uphold the Constitution and used their positions to launch a political witch-hunt. Stay tuned. ..."
"... Thank you for this clarifying account. I used to read NoQuarter back in the day, and had been mystified when it was taken down. Now I understand, and am glad that Col. Lang has facilitated your return to blogging. ..."
Attorney General Barr stated the obvious--law enforcement and intelligence agencies spied on Donald Trump's campaign -- and touched
off an incredible display of stupidity and obtuseness among the Trump haters. Me? I was cheering because Bill Barr confirmed what
I said two years ago. Unfortunately, for daring to speak a simple truth in the spring of 2017 I immediately was a target of the hate
Trump media mob.
I was attacked for telling the public the truth that foreign intelligence--the British to be precise--were spying on the Trump
campaign and passing this info along to US intelligence. But the Brits were not acting unilaterally. There was full cooperation and
activity by U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI. Another word for this is "COLLUSION."
My speaking out brought about a furious counter attack by the media. People inside the Department of Justice reached out to my
business partner and denounced me as a crank and conspiracy theorist. Because of that backlash I took down my blog, NoQuarter, and
"retired" from blogging. Thanks to generosity of Colonel Lang, I eventually climbed back onto the blogging saddle.
Let me take you back to the events that unfolded after Donald Trump tweeted on March 4, 2017 that he was being wiretapped by the
FBI. The media establishment erupted in laughter and saw this as just one more piece of evidence proving Trump's mental instability.
But I had a different take.
I had learned in December 2016 from friends inside the intelligence community that there was collaboration with the Brits to collect
and disseminate intel on persons on the Trump campaign. With Trump's tweet making news, I was invited by RT (i.e., Russia Today)
to come on one of their news programs and discuss the matter that same afternoon.
Worth noting that my appearance on RT made no waves and generated no pushback. That tells you everything you need to know about
RT’s alleged influence over public and punditry opinion as an alleged arm of Russian propaganda.
I then shared what I had learned about British intelligence ops to intercept U.S. communications on people affiliated with the
Trump campagin with members of VIPS—i.e., Veteran Intelligence Professionals. One of these colleagues shared my analysis without
my knowledge with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Napolitano went on Fox on Monday, March 13, 2017 and declared:
On Monday, Fox News Channel judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano alleged that three intelligence sources
had confirmed to him that the Obama administration used GCHQ (Britain's NSA) to spy on President Trump during the 2016 election so
that there would be no paper trail.
"Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the 'chain of command' to conduct the surveillance
on Trump," he said. "Obama didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use the Department of
Justice."
"What happened to the guy who ordered this? Resigned three days after Trump took office," he added.
The Judge got some key nuances wrong. Obama, to my knowledge, did not ask the Brits/GCHQ to do anything on his behalf. The Brits
reportedly initiated collection on their own. The “collection” from those intercepted conversations and emails were shared with the
Obama Administration through normal intelligence channels—i.e., principally the NSA. It is important to note that the Brits targeting
and collecting on Americans is not illegal. We are foreigners as far as they are concerned. They can collect anything.
The Judge’s comments set off a firestorm. In a matter of hours, Fox News Corporation, responding to pressure from the British
Government, took Napolitano off the air.
The Independent, a British newspaper, reported as follows:
A legal analyst who claimed British intelligence could have helped spy on
Donald Trump during his bid to become US president has been taken off
the air.
The Independent understands that Mr Napolitano is not expected to appear on the Fox News
Channel anytime in the near future.
The analyst's claim that GCHQ had helped former
president Barack Obama bug Trump Tower was cited last week by White
House press secretary Sean Spicer, sparking a diplomatic incident.
I felt sorry for the Judge and knew he was being railroaded. But I did not expect a phone call from him, asking for my help. He
called and asked me to help. Prior to the phone call on Thursday, March 16, 2017, I had never spoken to the Judge. We were not even
casual acquaintances.
Judge Napolitano, clearly smarting over the public lashing he was receiving, asked if I would be willing to speak to a New York
Times reporter, Michael Grynbaum, about the matter. I agreed to do so. That was a mistake. Here is how Grynbaum reported
what I did not say:
Mr. Napolitano also has a taste for conspiracy theories, which led him to Larry C. Johnson, a former
intelligence officer best known for spreading a hoax about Michelle Obama. . . .
But Mr. Johnson, who was himself once a Fox News contributor, said in a telephone interview that Mr.
Napolitano called him on Friday and requested that he speak to The New York Times. Mr. Johnson said he was one of the sources for
Mr. Napolitano’s claim about British intelligence.
Mr. Johnson became infamous in political circles after he spread false rumors in 2008 that Michelle
Obama had been videotaped using a slur against Caucasians. In the interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson acknowledged his notoriety, but
said that his knowledge of surveillance of Mr. Trump came from sources in the American intelligence community. Mr. Napolitano, he
said, heard about his information through an intermediary.
“It sounds like a Frederick Forsyth novel,” Mr. Johnson said.
Grynbaum is a classic example of what is wrong with the journalism today. For starters, he manufactured the “Frederick Forsyth”
quote. I said no such thing. Besides fabricating a quote, he refused to address the substance of my information regarding the activities
and conduct of British GCHQ. Instead, he went for the “Whitey” smear.
If you are not familiar with that episode, permit me to refresh your memory or create a new one for you. It is a simple story—I
allowed myself to be used by Clinton campaign, Sid Blumenthal in particular, to spread a rumor that turned out to be untrue.
I was an ardent supporter of Hillary in 2007 and 2008. I had previously briefed her in 2007 on the war in Iraq and found her,
at least in a one-on-one setting, to be very intelligent and very well informed. But that was then. Her subsequent conduct as the
Secretary of State, especially how she mishandled the Benghazi incident, ended any chance that I would ever support her for any role
in which the lives of American military, diplomats or intelligence officers are on the line.
After that briefing, I found myself as an unofficial member of the Clinton for President team via my friendship with Sid Blumenthal.
I had enormous respect for Sid and his wife. I thought they were good people. The only thing I now know for certain is that they
are fiercely loyal to the Clintons.
As the contest between Hillary and Barach Obama heated up, Sid would call me from time to time with suggestions of articles I
could write or pieces that could be run on my now defunct blog--NoQuarterUSa.net. I was more than happy to help. I believed then
(and have been vindicated by the passage of time) that Barack Obama was just a pretty face with no significant experience and he
would be a terrible President.
Then came the fateful phone call from Sid Blumenthal in late May 2008. He told me he had learned of a tape that was circulating
in restricted circles that featured Michelle Obama using the derogatory phrase, “whitey.” Armed with that tidbit of gossip I turned
to an old friend in the media community and he too confirmed he had heard the same thing (stupidly, I never considered the possibility
that Sid was spreading this far and wide and that I was getting blowback).
When I mentioned the possible existence of this tape to a Republican friend of mine and former CIA colleague in California, I
was shocked when he said, “I have a friend who has seen and heard the tape. That was enough for me. Based on these two sources, I
wrote the story up at NoQuarterUSA.net.
It went viral. But nothing surfaced. I became uneasy. So I went back to Sid and pressed him for more information. He in turn sent
me to David Brock of Media Matters. (I had met Brock previously at the Blumenthal home watching election returns in 2006.) Brock
told me that the information came from female friend who insisted she had seen and heard the slur by Michelle Obama.
The matter became more confused when the Obama campaign sent out an email to their campaign workers claiming that Michelle said
“WHY DID HE” rather than the pejorative, “WHITEY.” That led me to believe there was substance to the Blumenthal/Brock rumor.
Ultimately the story died out. No tape surfaced, but I bore the blame as the “Whitey” guy. With the benefit of hindsight I now
understand that I was an unwitting but willing tool in a David Brock dirty trick. No such tape ever surfaced. I can only conclude
that the desperation of the Clinton campaign to win was so extreme that they would stoop to use a racist meme to smear Obama.
I regret what I did in writing the story up. But it did not originate with me. It started with David Brock. Which brings me back
to the Napolitano affair.
After Grynbaun identified me as one of Judge Napolitano’s sources, it was open season on me. Not one of the media outlets—except
for CNN and the Politico — even took the time to reach out to me and ask me to tell my side of the story. Instead, they recirculated
talking points from Media Matters.
Here is what I told Brian Stelter during this period:
Talk about Chutzpah. David Brock started the Whitey rumor (I will happily take a polygraph on that point) and then has the audacity
to attack me and dismiss my information (via Media Matters) simply because I had passed on rumors where he was the original source:
Media Matters first traced Napolitano's wiretapping conspiracy back to an interview on the state-sponsored Russian television
network RT with the former CIA analyst and discredited conspiracy theorist Larry C. Johnson, who previously promoted false claims
that Michelle Obama used a racial slur against Caucasian people.
This was a dark period for me. People I thought I could rely on abandoned me. I was on my own. But not for long. Rescue came via
Judge Napolitano and an unlikely source, The Guardian—a left leaning British newspaper. The Judge was brought back on air at Fox
on March 29, 2017 and stood his ground:
On Wednesday morning, Napolitano returned to the network, making an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
His first order of business? Doubling down on the claims that got him suspended in the first place. (From the Washington Post, 29
March 2017, Amy Wang).
Two weeks later, on April 13th, The Guardian not only confirmed what I had said about GCHQ (note, in some of my on
air interviews I stupidly and mistakenly called the British spy agence GHCQ) but identified other countries as well who were collecting
intelligence, i.e.,
intercepting communications:
Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts
between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.
GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious
“interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said.
This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.
Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information
on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians, sources said.
There is a simple bottomline—My information was accurate and reliable. Also, I had the story before anyone else. Journalists and
pundits were unwilling to listen.
We know a lot more today then we did in the Spring of 2017. George Papadopoulos was targeted by a MI-6 covert action designed
to portray him as a lackey of Russia and promoting Russia to the Trump campaign. Carter Page was spied upon under four separate FISA
warrants that were based on the fictitious Steel Dossier. And a CIA "contractor", Stefan Halper, played the role of an agitator trying
to lure Papadopoulos into implicating himself in a Russian plot.
Former national security adviser Susan Rice privately told House
investigators that she unmasked the identities of senior Trump officials to understand why the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates
was in New York late last year, multiple sources told CNN.
The New York meeting preceded a separate effort by the UAE to facilitate a back-channel communication between Russia and the incoming
Trump White House.
Do you understand what this means? If you have never had a clearance and had access to NSA material then you probably fail to understand
how profound this is. Let me explain. There were multiple intelligence reports released by the NSA. I am pretty certain all were
classified as Top Secret. Some of these may have been generated by NSA, but most, according to the Guardian piece I mentioned above,
were from foreign liaison. The names of the American citizens were initially obscured--e.g., Subject 1 or Subject 2. Hence the "request"
to unmask. In other words, identify the nameless person by name. That, boys and girls, is known as spying.
Bill Barr is now getting the Larry Johnson treatment for daring to speak a simple, self-evident truth. One big difference. Barr can
set in motion the legal process to indict and prosecute those American traitors in the law enforcement and intelligence community
who violated their oath to uphold the Constitution and used their positions to launch a political witch-hunt. Stay tuned.
Thank you for this clarifying account. I used to read NoQuarter back in the day, and had been mystified when it was taken down.
Now I understand, and am glad that Col. Lang has facilitated your return to blogging.
And just in time to see some of your tormentors - and unsurprisingly the very same tormentors of our constitutional republic
- be (hopefully) called to account for their actions.
The Lame Stream Media have much for which to answer concerning their part in all of this; they have abrogated their role as
even-handed watchdogs through their open-eyed and monolithic dissemination of hyper-partisan, cultural marxist agitprop, much
of it focused on character assassination of those who did not share their beliefs, and yet more noxiously by throttling the expression
of contrary argumentation across the board.
But the genuine opprobium should be reserved for those officers and officials, sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution,
who determinedly worked to instead disregard and undermine the Constitution, and the constitutional republic which it undergirds.
Amazon is rotten to the core. Already no stranger to sweetheart deals, Amazon which has
lined the pockets of its CEO Jeff Bezos at taxpayer expense is quietly moving in a direction
that is destined to create even more controversy. Amazon through its lobbying efforts is on
the verge of winning a multibillion-dollar advantage over rivals by taking over large swaths
of federal procurement.
When you couple the voice of the Washington Post with a company so deeply involved with
discovering and archiving detailed files and information about individuals and politicians
across America you command a great deal of muscle and clout. The article below delves into
why it is time to face the fact Amazon needs to be curtailed.
"... Media consolidation itself has played an enormous role in driving up the cost of political campaigns. How did we get to this second Gilded Age and what lessons can we infer regarding our democratic prospects? ..."
"... Notre Dame University 's Philip Mirowski Never Let a Serious Crisis G to Waste has provided a careful and detailed analysis of this neoliberal movement in American politics. ..."
"... Adam Smith and JS Mill saw markets as non-coercive means to allocate resources and produce goods and services. Neoliberals regarded markets as perfect information processing machines that could provide optimal solutions to all social problems ..."
"... Market is miraculous and a boon to many, but paradoxically only a strong state can assure its arrival and maintenance. Sometimes it may appear that the market is yielding iniquitous or unsustainable outcomes, which my lead to premature or disastrous rejection of its wisdom ..."
"... The neoliberal deification of markets has many parents. This mindset encouraged and was encouraged by a revolt against democracy. The wealthy had always been concerned that a propertyless working class might vote to expropriate them, but neoliberalism gave them further reason to bypass democracy. Markets were seen as better indicators of truth than democratic elections, though that point was seldom expressed as directly ..."
"... Here is FA Hayek's oblique expression of this concern: "if we proceed on the assumption that only the exercises of freedom that the majority will practice are important, we would be certain to create a stagnant society with all the characteristics of unfreedom." ..."
Why "free" why not "fair". Neoliberals are as dangerious as Big brother in 1994. Actually
neoliberal state is as close to Big Brother regine described in 1994. We have total
surveillance, with technological capabiltiies which probably exceed anything rulers of 1984
world possessed, Russiagate as "hour of anger", permanent war for permanent people (and total
victory of "democracy") , and of course "[neoliberal] freedom is [debt[ slavery..." in
neoliberal MSM.
Fast forward from one Gilded Age to another. Citizens United, granting unions and
corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for and against
political candidates, is often regarded as a singularly dangerous challenge to our democratic
norms, especially with its infamous assertion that money is speech. Less attention, however,
is pad to the context in which this decision occurred, including corporate consolidation in
most sectors of the economy, obscene levels of economic inequality, and near religious
reverence for deregulated markets.
Media consolidation itself has played an enormous role in
driving up the cost of political campaigns. How did we get to this second Gilded Age and what
lessons can we infer regarding our democratic prospects?
The post World War II decades saw white working class gains in income made possible by
unionization, the GI bill, and a federal commitment to full employment. Positive as these
gains were, they carried with them unintended consequences. Workers and employers, having
less fear of depression, periodically drove wages and prices up.
Bursts of inflation and an
unprecedented profit squeeze led to unemployment even in the midst of inflation, an
unprecedented and unexpected circumstance. Blacks had been left out of the full benefits of
the New Deal welfare state and raised demands not only for political equality but also for
economic opportunity, one of Reconstruction's forgotten promises.
These events provided an opening for a group of academics who had long despised the New
Deal welfare state. Notre Dame University 's Philip Mirowski Never Let a Serious Crisis G to
Waste has provided a careful and detailed analysis of this neoliberal movement in American
politics.
These neoliberals shared with their nineteenth- century predecessors a faith in markets,
but with an important difference. Adam Smith and JS Mill saw markets as non-coercive means to
allocate resources and produce goods and services. Neoliberals regarded markets as perfect
information processing machines that could provide optimal solutions to all social problems.
Hence a commitment not only to lift rent control on housing but also to privatize prisons,
water and sewer systems, and to deregulate all aspects of personal finance and treat
education and health care as commodities to be pursued on unregulated markets. An essential
part of this faith in markets is the post Reagan view of corporate consolidation.
Combinations are to be judged only on the basis of cheap products to the consumer.
Older
antitrust concerns about worker welfare or threat to democracy itself are put aside.
Corporate mergers and the emergence of monopoly are seen as reflections of the omniscient
market. In practice, however as we shall see, such a tolerant attitude is not applied to
worker associations.
Neoliberals differ from their classical predecessors in a second important way. Market is
miraculous and a boon to many, but paradoxically only a strong state can assure its arrival
and maintenance. Sometimes it may appear that the market is yielding iniquitous or
unsustainable outcomes, which my lead to premature or disastrous rejection of its wisdom. The
answer to this anger is more markets, but that requires a strong state staffed by
neoliberals. They would have the capacity and authority to enact and impose these markets and
distract the electorate and divert them into more harmless pursuits. Recognition of the need
for a powerful state stands in partial contradiction to the neoliberal's professed
deification of pure markets and was seldom presented to public gatherings. As Mirowski put
it, neoliberals operated on the basis of a dual truth, an esoteric truth for its top scholars
and theorists and an exoteric version for then public. Celebration of the spontaneous market
was good enough for Fox News, whereas top neoliberal scholars discussed how to reengineer
government in order to recast society.
The signs of neoliberalism are all around us. Worried about student debt? There is a
widely advertised financial institution that will refinance your loan. Trapped in prison with
no money for bail. There are corporations and products that will take care of that. Cancer
cures, money for funerals and burial expenses can all be obtained via the market. Any problem
the market creates the market can solve. The implications of this view have been ominous for
democracy and social justice.
The neoliberal deification of markets has many parents. This mindset encouraged and was
encouraged by a revolt against democracy. The wealthy had always been concerned that a
propertyless working class might vote to expropriate them, but neoliberalism gave them
further reason to bypass democracy. Markets were seen as better indicators of truth than
democratic elections, though that point was seldom expressed as directly.
Here is FA Hayek's
oblique expression of this concern: "if we proceed on the assumption that only the exercises
of freedom that the majority will practice are important, we would be certain to create a
stagnant society with all the characteristics of unfreedom."
The revolt against democracy has occurred on several different levels of the political
process. The question of who can vote is just as contested as during Reconstruction, and not
just in the South. As during Reconstruction, it does not take the form of explicit racial
appeals. The strategy includes further limiting the time polls are open, reduction in the
number of polling places, voter identification cards that take time and money to obtain. Who
can vote is also a function of the racist legacy of our history, with prohibitions on voting
by felons serving to exclude large numbers of potential voters, disproportionately
minorities. It should be mentioned more than it is that these techniques also work to the
disadvantage of poor whites. Political scientists Walter Dean Burnham and Thomas Ferguson
point out: "In Georgia in 1942, for example, turnout topped out at 3.4 percent (that's right,
3.4 percent; no misprint). Why is no mystery: the Jim Crow system pushed virtually all
African-Americans out of the system, while the network of poll taxes, registration
requirements, literacy tests and other obstacles that was part of that locked out most poor
whites from voting, too. Since the civil rights revolution, turnouts in the South have risen
fitfully to national levels, amid much pushback, such as the raft of new voter ID
requirements (though these are not limited to the South)."
Minorities, poor, and even substantial segments of the working class are further
disadvantaged by efforts to defund the labor opposition. Unions have been the one big money
source that Democrats had available, but as the party from Bill Clinton on increasingly
became a kind of neoliberalism light, embracing corporate trade agreements with a little bit
of job training assistance thrown in, unions lost members, many corporations forced
decertification elections. Democrats lost not only financial resources but also the ground
troops that had mobilized their voters.
One result of and partial driving force behind these changes is that both parties become
big money parties. Burnham and Ferguson-( December 2014)- The President and the Democratic
Party are almost as dependent on big money – defined, for example, in terms of the
percentage of contributions (over $500 or $1000) from the 1 percent as the Republicans. To
expect top down money-driven political parties to make strong economic appeals to voters is
idle. Instead the Golden Rule dominates: Money-driven parties emphasize appeals to particular
interest groups instead of the broad interests of working Americans that would lead their
donors to shut their wallets.
As David Stockman, President Reagan's Budget Director once all but confessed,
"in the
modern era the party has never really pretended to have much of a mass constituency. It wins
elections by rolling up huge percentages of votes in the most affluent classes while seeking
to divide middle and working class voters with various special appeals and striving to hold
down voting by minorities and the poor."
Challenging this bipartisan money driven establishment becomes even more difficult as
state level ballot access laws are notoriously hostile to third parties. Add to this the
private, deceptively named Presidential Debate Commission, which specializes in depriving
even candidates about whom large segment s of the population are curious access to the widely
watched debates. Unfortunately the celebrated voting reform proposal, HR1, though containing
some democratic initiatives such as early voting and automatic voter registration, makes it
own contribution to economic and political consolidation.
Bruce Dixon, editor of Black Agenda
Report, maintains that only two provisions of this bill are likely to become law and both are
destructive: "by raising the qualifying amount from its current level of $5,000 in each of 20
states to $25,000 in 20 states. HR 1 would cut funding for a Green presidential candidate in
half, and by making ballot access for a Green presidential candidate impossible in several
states it would also guarantee loss of the party's ability to run for local offices." Dixon
also predicts that some Democrats "will cheerfully cross the aisle to institutionalize the
Pentagon, spies and cops to produce an annual report on the threat to electoral security.
Dixon maintains:
"Democrats are a capitalist party, they are a government party, and this
is how they govern. HR 1 reaches back a hundred years into the Democrat playbook politicians
created a foreign menace to herd the population into World War 1, which ended in the Red
Scare and a couple of red summers, waves of official and unofficial violence and deportations
against US leftists and against black people. The Red Scare led to the founding of the FBI,
the core of the nation's permanent political police . Fifty years ago these were the same
civil servants who gave us the assassinations, the disinformation and illegality of
COINTELPRO, and much, much more before that and since then. HR 1 says let's go to the
Pentagon and the cops, let's order them to discover threats to the electoral system posed by
Americans working to save themselves and the planet."
Dixon is surely right that both parties are capitalist parties, but capitalism itself has
taken different forms. New Deal and neoliberal capitalism had far different implications for
working class Americans. The New Deal itself was heavily influenced by Norman Thomas and the
socialist tradition. In this regard, if what Paul Wellstone used to call the democratic wing
of the Democratic Party wishes to see its ideals translated into practice, it must resist
efforts to exclude third parties or to deny primary opponents an even playing field.
I am not claiming that there has been a carefully coordinated conspiracy among the
individuals and groups that supported these policies, but leaders did act out of a general
animus toward popular movements that further reinforced their reverence for corporate
markets, and the faith in markets drove the worries about popular movements.
One positive conclusion to be drawn is that if this attack on democracy exists on several
levels, activism might be fruitful in many domains and may have a spillover effect. Unions
are still not dead, and there is a fight now for the soul of the Democratic Party and that
fight might stimulate voter access and eligibility reforms. These in turn could reshape the
party's orientation and ideology. Even at the Federal level Dark money is worrisome to many
voters and could be an incentive to mobilize for better disclosure laws. There are ample
fronts on which to fight and good reason to keep up the struggle.
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December
2012.
Prism Photograph: Guardian
The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the
targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people
outside the US.
It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.
Disclosure of the Prism program follows a leak to the Guardian on Wednesday of a top-secret court order compelling telecoms provider
Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of US customers.
The participation of the internet companies in Prism will add to the debate, ignited by the Verizon revelation, about the scale
of surveillance by the intelligence services. Unlike the collection of those call records, this surveillance can include the content
of communications and not just the metadata.
Some of the world's largest internet brands are claimed to be part of the information-sharing program since its introduction in
2007. 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.
Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting[1]) is the act of blocking or partially blocking
a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.
By making a user's contributions invisible or less prominent to other members of the service, the hope may be that in the
absence of reactions to their comments, the problematic or otherwise out-of-favour user will become bored or frustrated and leave
the site.
< More and more "resistance" type Twitteratti get shadowbanned, that is, their posts dont appear in the Twitter feed though they
are visible on their profiles. Find out if you are shadowbanned here:>
Until recently I didn't know the word "shadowbanning", but that was what happened to me several years ago. The managers of
the Indianapolis Star had given their forum to the tender care of a mix of Libertarians, rightwingnuts, and devoted followers
of the Holy Cesspool south of Syria. Gradually I realized nobody was responding to my posts, and only by accident did I learn
those posts were invisible to everybody else. Only when I was logged in could I see them myself.
So that's why I have gone cold turkey on the only Indianapolis newspaper. I'd recommend it only for folks whose parakeets need
a lining for the bottom of the bird's cage. Their editorial page works best for that application.
Yeah I first encountered the phenom during the last days of the 2014 Euromaidan while reposting info on Facebook about sniper
fire coming from opp held rooftops. I couldnt understand why interaction on the subject stopped until someone confirmed via the
chat that none of my posts with the word "Ukraine" appeared in the feed. They must've triggered FBs early filter algorithm. I
have since left the Ministry of Truth..
"... Patrick Berlinquette Founder of a NY digital marketing agency (like we need another). Finding humor in marketing tech's depravity. Send vitriol: patrickberlinsem[at]gmail[dot]com ..."
Once you click on an ad, your information
passes through to search engine marketers, where it's forever stored in an AdWords account, never to be
erased.
In case you were starting to feel a semblance
of happiness, what with the holidays around the corner, here is a complete checklist of everything Google
knows about you -- thereby all the ways you're tracked -- as of December 2018:
Your age
Your income
Your gender
Your parental status
Your relationship status
Your browsing history (long-term and
short-term)
Your device (phone, tablet, desktop,
TV)
Your physical location
The age of your child (toddler, infant,
etc.)
How well you did in high school
The degree you hold
The time (of day) of your Google usage
The language you speak
Whether you've just had a major life
event
Your home ownership status
Your mobile carrier
The exact words you enter into Google
search
The context and topics of the websites
you visit
The products you buy
The products you have almost bought
Your Wi-Fi type
Your proximity to a cell tower
Your app installation history
The amount of time you spend on certain
apps
Your operating system
The contents of your email
The time you spend on certain websites
Whether you're moving (e.g., into a new
home)
Whether you're moving (e.g., walking or
on a train)
*
The
above targeting methods are made available to search engine marketers by Google within marketers' Ads UI.
Info is also freely available
here
.
For as long as you've been using Google,
Google has been building a "citizen profile" on you. This profile contains:
In
2019, we will be coming close to realizing the Holy Grail of search
engine marketing: multidevice attribution. When this tech is realized, ads will follow searchers
seamlessly -- not only across channels (e.g., social, organic, and email) but across devices (e.g., from
mobile to tablet to laptop to TV to desktop).
Depending on your brand loyalty, for example,
your TV will emit a hyper-frequency during certain commercials. Undetectable by your obsolete human ear,
this signal can only be picked up by a nearby cell phone
. If a Nike commercial plays on your TV, and
then you pick up your phone and Google "Nike shoes," your conversion path has been linked from TV to
phone. Nice.
Despite the surveillance bleeding into nearly every aspect of our lives, there's little information
available to the public about what's really going on.
Marketers already
know
if you're a daily commuter. And
they show you ads for products that daily commuters would be interested in buying, like headphones,
pre-worn leather laptop bags, and handkerchiefs to hoarsely sob into. How do marketers know you're a
commuter? Easy: The frequency your cell phone pings passing cell towers. If the pings occur close
together, a marketer can conclude that you're standing in an object moving at a great rate of speed, with
infrequent interruptions -- also known as a train. (If it's the Long Island Rail Road you're riding,
interruptions might be frequent. Heh.)
Search for a product on your phone and then
physically walk into a store. Do that, in that order, and chances are Google used your phone's GPS data
to connect your ad click and your in-store purchase.
In order to provide marketers
with further detail about your in-store (offline) purchases, Google has acquired (
paid
millions for
) Mastercard credit card data. The company has acknowledged it has access to about
70 percent
of U.S. credit and debit card sales through "third-party partnerships." We will look back
on this number and consider it quaint.
B
ack in December 2008, Hal Roberts, a fellow at the Berkman Klein
Center for Internet & Society at Harvard,
spoke about Google Ads
as a form of "gray surveillance." Roberts described Google as "a system of
collective intelligence" that, along with marketers, hoarded and exploited your data.
But unlike other forms of surveillance,
Google couldn't kill you with it or throw you in jail.
Google Ads was gray surveillance because the
exploitation, Roberts said, was hard to detect on the individual level. But, he said, it was already
playing "a central role in the creation of social discourse online." And 10 years later, the exploitation
on Google Ads is even harder to detect. Despite the surveillance bleeding into nearly every aspect of our
lives, there's little information available to the public about what's really going on.
In 2019, I'd like to change that.
People tell Google things they confess nowhere else -- not to their spouses, doctors, or shrinks.
Through this series, I will reveal
everything I know about the dark side of search engine marketing. I will explain, in everyday language,
how Google and Google Ads work "under the hood" to track your data.
Then I will expose, from an insider's
perspective, what the vast majority of the public doesn't know: how Google Ads is abused by search engine
marketers and how people are essentially bought and sold through this platform. I will cover what Google
has tried to do to fix Google Ads. Finally, I will provide readers with all the steps they need to
protect themselves from exploitation on Google -- including how to take back control of their data from
insidious advertisers and those search engine marketers who rig the game.
Today, people tell Google things they confess
nowhere else -- not to their spouses, doctors, or shrinks. But Google users would not be so forthright with
the search engine if they understood how far down this rabbit hole goes. With the insider information I
will provide, I hope readers can return to a place where Google is not the only option available to tell
their fears, regrets, hopes, and dreams.
By the end of this series, readers will be
equipped with the knowledge to rethink their relationship with Google. And if some readers decide that
Google is still their search engine of choice,
they'll
be able
to use
the
system
,
instead of the other way around.
Patrick BerlinquetteFounder of a NY digital marketing agency (like we need another). Finding
humor in marketing tech's depravity. Send vitriol: patrickberlinsem[at]gmail[dot]com
>
"... The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con. ..."
"... The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter. ..."
We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated transparent public utilities available to all or
they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.
The RussiaGate Narrative has been revealed as a Big Con (a.k.a. Nothing-Burger), but what's dangerously real is the censorship
that's being carried out by the for-profit monopolies Facebook and Google on behalf of the status quo's Big Con.
This site got a taste of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship back in 2016 when a shadowy
fake-news site called PropOrNot aggregated every major alt-media site that had published anything remotely skeptical of the coronation
of Hillary Clinton as president and labeled us all shills for Russian propaganda.
Without any investigation of the perps running the site or their fake-news methodology, The Washington Post (Jeff Bezos' plaything)
saw fit to promote the fake-news on Page One as if it were journalistically legitimate. Why would a newspaper that supposedly values
the integrity of its content run with such shameless fake-news propaganda? Because it fit the Post's own political agenda and biases.
This is the essence of Facebook-Google-Big-Media's Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship: sacrifice accepted journalistic
practice, free speech and transparency to promote an absurdly obvious political and social agenda.
If there was any real justice in America, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai should be wearing prison jumpsuits
for what Facebook and Google have done to American democracy. Both of these monopolies have manipulated news feeds, search results
and what individuals are shown in complete secret, with zero public oversight or transparency .
The damage to democracy wrought by Facebook and Google is severe: free speech no longer exists except in name, and what individuals
see in search and social media feeds is designed to manipulate them without their consent or knowledge--and for a fat profit. Whether
Facebook and Google are manipulating users for profit or to buy off Status Quo pressures to start regulating these monopolistic totalitarian
regimes or to align what users see with their own virtue-signaling, doesn't matter.
What matters is that no one can possibly know how Facebook and Google have rigged their algorithms and to what purpose. The typical
corporation can buy political influence, but Facebook and Google are manipulating the machinery of democracy itself in three ways:
1. They are secretly censoring alternative media and skeptics of the status quo narratives.
2. They are selling data and ads to anyone interested in manipulating voters and public opinion.
3. They are providing data to the National Security organs of the state which can then use this data to compile dossiers on
"enemies of the people," i.e. skeptics and dissenters who question the "approved" context and narrative.
That's a much more dangerous type of power than buying political influence or manipulating public opinion by openly publishing
biased "commentary."
We all understand how America's traditional Corporate Media undermines democracy: recall how every time Bernie Sanders won a Democratic
primary in 2016, The New York Times and The Washington Post "reported" the news in small typeface in a sidebar, while every Hillary
Clinton primary win was trumpeted in large headlines at the top of page one.
But this sort of manipulation is visible; what Google and Facebook do is invisible. What their algorithms do is invisible, and
the shadow banning and other forms of invisible censorship cannot be easily traced.
A few of us can trace shadow banning because we have access to our site's server data. Please consider the data of Google searches
and direct links from Facebook to oftwominds.com from November 2016 and November 2018:
Nov. 2016: Google Searches: 36,779
Nov. 2016: links from Facebook: 9,888
Nov. 2018: Google Searches: 12,671
Nov. 2018: links from Facebook: 859
Oftwominds.com has been around since 2005 and consistently draws around 250,000 page views monthly (via oftwominds.com and my
mirror site on blogspot, which is owned/operated by Google. Interestingly, traffic to that site has been less affected by shadow
banning ; Coincidence? You decide....).
Given the consistency of my visitor traffic over the years, it's "interesting" how drastically the site's traffic with Google
and Facebook has declined in a mere two years. How is this shadow banning not Orwellian Authoritarian-Totalitarian censorship? It's
akin to China's Orwellian Social Credit system but for private profit .
It wouldn't surprise me to find my photo airbrushed out of group photos on Facebook and Google just as the Soviet propaganda organs
did when someone fell out of favor in the 1930s.
Fortunately, oftwominds.com isn't dependent on Facebook or Google for its traffic; other content creators who were skeptical of
RussiaGate are not so fortunate. One of the implicit goals of shadow banning and filters is to destroy the income of dissenting sites
without the content creators knowing why their income plummeted.
Strip dissenters of their income and you strip them of the ability to dissent. Yea for "free speech" controlled by for-profit
monopolies!
Where's the "level playing field" of free speech? As long as Facebook and Google are free to censor and filter in secret, there
is no free speech in America. All we have is a simulacrum of free speech in which parroting "approved" narratives is promoted and
dissent is censored/banned--but without anyone noticing or even being able to tell what's been filtered, censored or banned.
So when are we going to tackle privately held monopolies which are selling user data to the highest bidder, obliterating free
speech in secret and manipulating news feeds and search to promote hidden agendas? I've argued (see links below) that the solution
is very simple:
1. Regulate Facebook and Google as public utilities. Ban them from collecting and selling user data to anyone, including federal
agencies.
2. Allow a modest profit to each firm via display adverts that are shown equally to every user.
3. Require any and all search/content filters and algorithms be made public, i.e. published daily.
4. Any executive or employee of these corporations who violates these statutes will face criminal felony charges and be exposed
to civil liability lawsuits from users or content providers who were shadow-banned or their right to free speech was proscribed
or limited by filters or algorithms.
There is no intrinsic right for privately held corporations to establish monopolies that can manipulate and filter free speech
in secret to maximize profits and secret influence. We either take down Facebook and Google and turn them into tightly regulated
transparent public utilities available to all or they will destroy what little is left of American democracy.
I recently addressed these invisible (but oh-so profitable) mechanisms in a series of essays:
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
