In the wake of the disclosure of a massive surveillance program ordered by the Obama Administration of all calls by all citizens using Verizon, there is a new disclosure of an equally large data-mining operation where the government has seized e-mail, photos and other private communications from some of the biggest Internet companies. Even in the wake of the attack on the free press and the surveillance of all citizens in the Verizon scandal, Democratic leaders are rallying around Obama in the rejection of the least remnants of principle in the party. We are now at the tipping point for a free nation as President Obama and leaders like Dianne Feinstein assure citizens that there is nothing to fear in our new fishbowl society.
According to the media reports, the government demanded and received access to nine major firms, including Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook under the program called PRISM. The article states that the program has been running since 2007 and has undergone “exponential growth.”
When confronted over the massive government surveillance, Feinstein was dismissive and said “It’s called protecting America”. Others would call it the harbinger to an authoritarian state but Feinstein has long been criticized for her presumed knowledge of the torture program and other abuses of civil liberties.
These programs reveal the creation of huge databanks that can be used to make the movements and associations transparent to the government. After years of apathy and blind loyalty to Obama, these scandals will test whether Americans have any remaining commitment to privacy and civil liberties in the face of the mantra (repeated today by the Administration) that these programs make them safer.
As in the past, Congress has proven a willing participant in the erosion of civil liberties. It will be up to citizens whether we go quietly into this night. As I previously wrote, it is becoming increasingly difficult to call this the “land of the free” as we allow the rise of security state in this country.
By the way, you may remember Obama running for president the first time in the aftermath of reports of the NSA mining Internet communications. He promised voters: “For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and “wiretaps without warrants.” He would now make Richard Nixon blush.
Source: CNN
Meanwhile, in Europe:
U.S. Internet Spying Draws Anger, and Envy
By ERIC PFANNER and JAMES KANTER
Published: June 7, 2013
SERRAVAL, France — Europe’s reaction Friday to news of a sweeping international digital surveillance program by the U.S. government ranged from the outrage of citizens and politicians to the muted envy of some law enforcement agencies on this side of the Atlantic.
Privacy is an emotional issue in Europe, where memories of state-sponsored snooping by communist and fascist regimes still linger. And so the revelation Thursday that the U.S. National Security Agency had obtained routine access to e-mail, Web searches and other online data from many of the biggest U.S. Internet companies — whose users stretch far beyond U.S. shores — prompted hand-wringing about America’s moral authority.
“If the U.S. complains about foreign governments spying and then it turns out it is doing the same thing — well, what are you complaining about?” said Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey, where anger over restrictions on civil liberties has fueled anti-government protests.
The Guardian, the British news organization that first reported existence of the U.S. snooping program on Thursday, noted in an editorial that its report appeared on June 6, the anniversary of D-Day in 1944 — the beginning of the end of Hitler’s police state.
“The young Americans who fought their way up the Normandy beaches rightly believed they were helping free the world from a tyranny,” The Guardian wrote. “They did not think that they were making it safe for their own rulers to take such sweeping powers as these over their descendants.”
… article continues…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/business/global/us-internet-spying-draws-anger-and-envy.html?ref=global-home&_r=0
“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” -Obama
People can’t… many people don’t, people shouldn’t… and here’s the thing. I can tell you — beyond the shadow of any doubt — there’s a program in play across the U.S. that runs counter to the Constitution and rule of law. As to “due process”… well, … surely he jests.
Thanks, Jill. As always, your comments are “on point” and appreciated.
During a NY roundtable yesterday, Tim Byrnes — a political science professor from Colgate — repeatedly and emphatically made the point that Americans are not supposed to trust their government.
Here’s one source for the particular statement that you highlighted above — Obama’s remark about “people not trusting” the three branches of government.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/06/07/obama-on-surveillance-if-americans-dont-trust-government-were-going-to-have-some-problems-n1615443
“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.” Obama added that the National Security agents behind the surveillance programs “cherish our Constitution…You can shout Big Brother or program run amok, but if you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance,” he explained.
I can tell you this. I know about one of the government’s programs — one that hasn’t yet come to light. One that will “shock the conscience” of most Americans. And I will tell you this. Obama is either an idiot — and someone’s pulling the wool over his eyes — or he’s a liar.
On the way home yesterday, I heard an excerpt from the threatener in chief. He said, (a close paraphrase) “if you don’t trust the executive, if you don’t trust the Congress, if you don’t trust the judiciary, we have a problem.”
What the hell does that mean? As a citizen I’m not required to trust any member of my govt. Looking at the actions of this govt. I think it would be really bizarre to trust them. That’s not a problem, that’s paying attention.
They are trying to vilify people who don’t “trust” the untrustworthy! This is one more example of the govt. turning our system upside down through propaganda. There is no loyalty oath to individual members of govt. and for Obama to proclaim lack of loyalty as a “problem” is simply wrong.
He however, did take an oath to the Constitution. The fact that neither the executive, most of Congress nor the judiciary will honor that oath is a problem.
Here’s the argument I hear alot: “If I can go about my business a surveillance state is fine with me. That statement gets to the heart of the matter.
This argument is positing a reality that does not exist. A surveillance state guarantees precisely that you will not be able to simply go about your business. Why is that? Because in a totalitarian system where the govt. acts in secret and is unaccountable to the law, is that same govt. who will determine whether you meet the criteria of a person who is allowed to go about her business.
Since the govt. is claiming they have the right to know everything everyone is doing, and they have the right, up to and including killing you, in secret, without trial or evidence, and they are the ones who get to say who is a “terrist”–exactly where does your freely going about your business come into this picture?
The rule of law and an open system of justice would prevent exactly what has happened from happening.
Apropos of the topic, I just came across an article by Jason Ditz entitled, Obama: Mass Surveillance Protects Civil Liberties, in which President Newspeak himself rules out the application of Orwell’s “Big Brother” metaphor in cases where President Newspeak’s Big Brother behavior does nothing so much as validate Orwell’s metaphor. In other words:
A meaning is its contradictory opposite.
Huh? Say what?
Doublethink? Sort of like the political equivalent of psychotic double bind schizophrenia? Well, according to the master:
President Blackwhite. President Doublethink. President Newspeak. Did George Orwell tell us we’d have this guy in our future, or what?
Elaine, good links! The statement in the first one:
“But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don’t exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case,….”
doesn’t need buzzfeed’s qualifier “don’t exclude the possibility” if todays Guardian is to be believed; one of the leaked slides indicates that PRISM intellegence has been shared with the British since June of 2010.
“UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation
Exclusive: UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world’s biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/07/uk-gathering-secret-intelligence-nsa-prism
Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks
Exclusive: Top-secret directive steps up offensive cyber capabilities to ‘advance US objectives around the world’
By Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill
guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 June 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/obama-china-targets-cyber-overseas
Excerpt:
Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.
The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.
It says the government will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power”.
The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency.
Public Documents Contradict Claim Email Spying Foiled Terror Plot
Defenders of “PRISM” say it stopped subway bombings. But British and American court documents suggest old-fashioned police work nabbed Zazi.
Posted on June 7, 2013
http://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/public-documents-contradict-claim-email-spying-foiled-terror
Excerpt:
Defenders of the American government’s online spying program known as “PRISM” claimed Friday that the suddenly controversial secret effort had saved New York City’s subways from a 2009 terrorist plot led by a young Afghan-American, Najibullah Zazi.
But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim, which appears to be the latest in a long line of attempts to defend secret programs by making, at best, misleading claims that they were central to stopping terror plots. While the court documents don’t exclude the possibility that PRISM was somehow employed in the Zazi case, the documents show that old-fashioned police work, not data mining, was the tool that led counterterrorism agents to arrest Zazi. The public documents confirm doubts raised by the blogger Marcy Wheeler and the AP’s Adam Goldman, and call into question a defense of PRISM first floated by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who suggested that PRISM had stopped a key terror plot.
I got to go to Den Haag with my half blind guy Pal who happens to do some work in international law. Our case is to create a new nation on the West Bank of the Mississippi. There is a nice library in Den Haag with much of the Nuremburg War Trial archives. Discussion amongst international lawyers often comes round to the dumbing down and decline of American Exceptionalism. Cheney and several others are cause for discussion.
I do have a suggestion for those of you who wish to fool or throw a wrinkle into the snoops who read your emails. Do what itchinBayDog has to do to get by WordPress. Speak in Pig Latin on the phone or on the internet. igglyPay igglyWay is Pig Latin for Piggly Wiggly for example. You all know what an artFAy is, but this might just throw the snoops in the federal government off when they are reading your mail. lindBay uYg and I were in a actCay house in Amsterdam and he got aidLayed while I stood guard.
It is the little things in life that throw off the fox and hounds.
Several months back BarkinDog made several references to the Nuremberg War Trials and specifically the trials which occurred after the joint trials with the Russians and French where America went after Nazi civilians and military for crimes against humanity not heretofore ever brought. If you Google: The Judges Trial – Nuremberg some of these trials will be available to you. Few on the blog here seemed interested in BarkinDog’s little history references. Maybe now that some of you are waking up to the human rights violations of America the Exceptional Nation you might take interest. But, if that is just some old history that does not matter then just say like Rosann Rosann did on Saturday Night Live: Never Mind.
The finances and the ability to manipulate the finances of nearly any country and to spy on their spies, is present in the backdoors of the PROMIS software that lets you use an ATM anywhere.
My next 1984 prediction is that the data gathered by PRISM will be used to set all our computer cameras to spy on us and to have our computers talk back to us to tell us what we’ve done wrong.
Dredd,
Yes, the Collective.
Okay!
So the Militia exists to shoot the renters’ carrier pigeons.
It all makes sense now!
SlingTrebuchet
1, June 7, 2013 at 5:28 pm
I always thought the Second Amendment had two parts: A) The Militia B) The People. The Militia was for Congress to decide the where and when and the People was to protect their property; Property defined as 1) plot of land/possessions 2) wife and childern(property!) and of course 3) Your SLAVE!
Since SLAVERY has been done away with, officially, and womens have their Rights unto themselves, ‘cept reproduction, that’s an all male panel to decide, shouldn’t the second amendment be opened up to renters, too?
anonymously posted
1, June 7, 2013 at 3:53 pm
(from that article)
My understanding of the environment/motive for the 2nd Amendment is that it was more about the ability to resist oppressive government rather than about hunting.
As for coming to the assistance of a legit governmen…. who is going to invade …. and do you seriously think that your 9mm hand-gun is going to shoot down the alien mothership?
Anyone with a clue has been certain for years that the NSA was harvesting everything – because they can.
I take it that the NRA is all about (1) ensuring profits for the arms business and (2) arms-assisted masturbation.
I’ve always been gobsmacked that any element of “2nd Amendment aka resist oppressive government” within the NRA has not been agitating about the survillance state.
The next revolution will have to be tweeted. No – not on Twitter – but by carrier pigeon.
Hints:
Do not pay for your carrier pigeons by credit card.
Do not order them online. Do not search for pigeon sources online.
When you get carrier pigeons, breed them. Use only the offspring for messaging.
Also bear in mind that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. This is because you are stupid.
bill mcwilliams,
Royalty. Like Bush.