President Barack Obama said that he wanted to “reset” relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the countries closer together. He appears to have succeeded. Yesterday, Putin defended Obama in creating a warrantless surveillance system that is much like Russia’s. In the meantime, a leading Chinese dissident in the United States has said that the program reminds him not of Russia but the police state in China. It appears that Obama can finally claim to have broken down the differences between the United States and both Russia and China in his new America. All we had to do is change our whole notion of privacy (as well as other legal concepts like perjury).
Putin was delighted that the United States was reinvented itself in his image and complimented the massive surveillance system as “the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism.” He added that he loved how the New York government crushed the Occupy Wall Street movement: “That’s the way it’s done in the U.S., and that’s the way it’s done in Russia.”
Putin loves the two publicly confirmed surveillance programs since “[t]hat’s more or less the way a civilized society should go about fighting terrorism with modern-day technology. As long as it is exercised within the boundaries of the law that regulates intelligence activities, it’s alright.”
If that wasn’t enough for Obama and his congressional allies, leading Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei says that he also recognizes the system being maintained by Obama: the police state in China. He added “I lived in the United States for 12 years. This abuse of state power goes totally against my understanding of what it means to be a civilised society, and it will be shocking for me if American citizens allow this to continue.”
I wish I could say that we share that shock but, as said by the Chinese curse, we are living in interesting times.
Oro Lee 1, June 14, 2013 at 10:16 am
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Great song.
thanks.
Hopefully the president will adopt this fine Russian program as a model on how to process those Kill Lists:
DownEast Liberator 1, June 14, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Dredd,
Don’t be surprised if that new super storage facility isn’t called Minas Morgul.
I feel that virtually every electronic transaction we do is collected, identified, parsed and stored. Everything. Everything …
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Indeed.
Eschelon was the Military Spying on Americans 1.0 … now we have Eschelon on steroids and the military is attacking hundreds of millions of Americans by seizing our privacy.
While demanding to be called heroes.
Reblogged this on SiriusCoffee and commented:
Who knew Obama was such a diplomat?
If the king says its so….is it perjury…… Not a whole lot of differences between the constitution of Russia and ours…. China on the other hand…. I can’t say….
Apparently the old boy didn’t get the word. He probably hasn’t had a confidential phone call since shortly after 9/11.
There’s nothing domestic about this particular surveillance system.
Germany’s got their panties knotted up every which way. Apparently they got the word.
Dredd,
Don’t be surprised if that new super storage facility isn’t called Minas Morgul.
I feel that virtually every electronic transaction we do is collected, identified, parsed and stored. Everything. Everything. The shocking part is that up to now, we haven’t seen [or heard] is a wholesale intelegence “fart” that IDs and then targets a massive number of citizens whose only connection is [OOPS! guess I was mistaken!]
Maybe Vlad Putin can present President Obama with an Order of Lenin award.
Golly gee, I guess we’re all friends now. I say the hell with NATO. We can forge a new mutual defense pact with China and Russia, and just imagine all of the intelligence information we can share with each other.
Above all Mr. Turley believes what Putin says is the absolute truth.
Obama created the surveillance program? In 2001? 1 senator voted against it.
Obama has Congressional allies? like the vast majority who voted for this? Do you follow politics?
Your dislike of the president impedes your judgement and you spew opinion. Let’s get back in the courtroom.
Remember what J. Edgar Hoover did with a lot less technology? Unless you are living off the grid and using cash you’re in a database somewhere, health records, grocery purchases, credit data, phone data, email, voice mail, employment history, salary data etc.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Is it dissent or dissident?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanship-propaganda-prism
Glenn Greenwald today:
“I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency’s previously secret surveillance activities:
“What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . . . I can’t speak to what we learned in there, and I don’t know if there are other leaks, if there’s more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it’s the tip of the iceberg . . . . I think it’s just broader than most people even realize, and I think that’s, in one way, what astounded most of us, too.”
The Congresswoman is absolutely right: what we have reported thus far is merely “the tip of the iceberg” of what the NSA is doing in spying on Americans and the world. She’s also right that when it comes to NSA spying, “there is significantly more than what is out in the media today”, and that’s exactly what we’re working to rectify.
But just consider what she’s saying: as a member of Congress, she had no idea how invasive and vast the NSA’s surveillance activities are. Sen. Jon Tester, who is a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the same thing, telling MSNBC about the disclosures that “I don’t see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever” and adding: “quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn’t aware of before because I don’t sit on that Intelligence Committee.”
How can anyone think that it’s remotely healthy in a democracy to have the NSA building a massive spying apparatus about which even members of Congress, including Senators on the Homeland Security Committee, are totally ignorant and find “astounding” when they learn of them? How can anyone claim with a straight face that there is robust oversight when even members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are so constrained in their ability to act that they are reduced to issuing vague, impotent warnings to the public about what they call radical “secret law” enabling domestic spying that would “stun” Americans to learn about it, but are barred to disclose what it is they’re so alarmed by? Put another way, how can anyone contest the value and justifiability of the stories that we were able to publish as a result of Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing: stories that informed the American public – including even the US Congress – about these incredibly consequential programs? What kind of person would think that it would be preferable to remain in the dark – totally ignorant – about them?”
Putin, maybe?
oops, [we’re]
totalitarianism = Russia, China, United States. Well, I suppose were up there in select company now.
We’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.
If people dont see the ominous sign based on the two comments from Putin and Ai Weiwei then we are sooooo screwed!
Well, at least we’re getting along better with the Russians. I’ll sleep easier knowing that.
Not.