National Security Agency has been reeling from leaks showing massive warrantless surveillance programs capturing communications for every American. These disclosures have further shown that officials like National Intelligence Director John Clapper committed perjury before Congress, though the White House and Congress have protected him from any charge in America’s Animal Farm system. Now, NSA director General Keith Alexander has indicated that he has a solution. With the public saying that it is more afraid of the government than terrorists and NSA workers balking at participating in such authoritarian programs, Alexander wants to replace the workers with machines. Machines don’t leak. Indeed, they have no sympathy or morals at all. They are perfect. That would leave citizens as simply the objects rather than the objectors for surveillance. So, the Obama Administration has finally found the barrier to the creation of the perfect government: the citizens themselves.
With Democrats now joining Republicans in attacking privacy and civil liberties, the only unpredictable element left for the government is people. Without pesky people, government will run far more smoothly. It appears citizens are to be monitored not listened to in the new American political system. Presumably, with an automated system of warrantless surveillance and the courts allowing the Administration to classify evidence to dismiss challenges, Alexander will simply outsource constitutional complaints to India where customer service will ask them to call back later.
Alexander is quoted as saying that he wants to reduce human administrators by 90 percent to be replaced by machines. What he sees as the “problem” is not the false statements by Obama, Clapper, or our leaders. It is those troublesome humans with their nagging consciences and individual will. He explained that his new machine operators
“cuts down number of system administrators. That would address vulnerabilities. It would also address the number of system administrators we have, not fast enough, but we plan to reduce the number of system administrators by 90 percent to make networks more defensible and secure . . . At the end of the day it’s about people and trust and I think we can get that almost perfect but we can’t solve that issue.”
The vulnerability is the involvement of humans. The government will finally create the perfect automatons to do such work without question or complaint. Congress will then be able to continue to mislead the public without fear of contradiction and continue to expand the burgeoning security apparatus that is pouring billions into the pockets of contractors and companies and agencies.
It is also another wonderful example of the open hypocrisy on display in our government. On the even of declaring, “Whistleblower Day” Congress and the White House are moving to make whistleblowers impossible. Machines don’t blow whistles. They don’t speak to reporters. They carry out any abusive or unconstitutional act that you ask of them. In other words, problem solved.
Getting less subtle
With each line of verse I write.
The Japanese weep
Haiku Ain’t Noh Kabuki
The NSA looks
For needles in a haystack
By adding more hay
The President says
He wants a free discussion.
Comedy has died.
Senator Feinstein:
In charge of her committee
Sees and hears nothing
The Chinese say when
A hen crows in the morning
The U.S. won’t lie
Back at the haystack
The NSA finds more straws
Having put them there
Embassies closed now
The NSA heard “chatter.”
We look terrified
Vladimir Putin
Handed Snowden as a gift
Gratefully accepts
Lame duck Obama.
And You-Know-Her has not yet
Started campaigning.
Blood in the water
[Fill in ugly metaphor]
Soon the sharks will come
End of the empire.
The demise did not take long:
Bush and Obama
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller”
Michael Murry is
the Misfortune teller
Summer relief from the cant
i see no one remembers that about 10 yrs before terminator there was the movie ” bad seed’ the story line being a family who installed a artificial intelligence security system who decided she was in love with the dad and set about getting rid of wife and kids so she could run her life the way she wanted…but hey in the brainwashing of the humanity.. ITS ONLY A MOVIE IT DOESNT HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE.. didnt enemy of the state teach us anything?
The only winning move is not to play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeOHEU7Ykyg
(BTW, at 1:39 check out the two most nonchalant end-of-civilization dudes)
From zerohedge.com 9 August, in part:
“Meanwhile,…………….. I am sad to report that a number of secure email platforms like Lavabit and Silent Circle, have now folded under intense pressure from the United States government.
Lavabit was an email service used by Edward Snowden. From the very cryptic message that CEO Ladar Levison left on his website, it appears that he has been approached by the NSA to turn over email records.
Rather than work with the NSA, Levison has shuttered his operations.
And to boot, Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke announced that his organization was pre-emptively discontinuing its email platform ‘Silent Mail’.
Janke says he sees the writing on the wall and knows “USG [US government] would come after us.”
It’s incredible that two businesses essentially have to commit suicide in order to keep from violating their promises to their customers.
Just another week in the free world. Have you hit your breaking point yet?”
So I wonder when the US Government is going to begin having the NSA break open, copy and read every single letter and small package entering the USA through the postal service.
The Snowden Effect, Cont’d
By Charles P. Pierce
8/9/13
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Snowden_Effect_And_Today_At_The_White_House
I hate to give the president advice, but this really should be the last time he ever mentions the name “Edward Snowden” in public again.
At a press conference this afternoon, President Obama announced that he’s taking a series of steps to restore Americans’ trust in the U.S. intelligence community and safeguard their privacy. But his agenda may have been obscured when he was asked if he thought NSA leaker Edward Snowden was a patriot. Obama replied, “No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.”
The question was stupid. It never should have been asked, but it really never should have been answered. The president should leave the decision on Snowden’s patriotism, or lack thereof, to the people of the country to fight about. He was out there trying to pitch his program for increased transparency in the programs that Snowden revealed to the people who pay for them, and all he did was get back into the ongoing mudfight over whether or not Snowden should have a statue on the mall or a cell in Pelican Bay. If this administration has done anything right in this whole mess, it’s damned sure eluded me what it is. Just shut up and let the guy remain the guest of lifetime ACLU member, Vladimir Putin.
Otherwise, the president’s proposals are about as far as any president is likely to go in our lifetimes. The FISA process is a mess, its purpose completely twisted from the original, which was supposed to guard people against programs like the ones the NSA has been running. The FISA court now serves only as another vehicle for the metastasizing secrecy within which the mischief gets done. Having someone come into a secret court proceeding and argue against the government’s case for a secret warrant based on secret evidence, and then (probably) making sure that the case against the warrant is classified, too, doesn’t get us very far out of the rabbit hole. And the “privacy officer” at the NSA is going to be the loneliest person in Washington. One thing that we know now, and we know it because of Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage, is that the surveillance state is a permanent factor in our lives. Hanging pretty curtains on the blockhouse windows doesn’t really help very much.
“president’s proposals are about as far as any president is likely to go in our lifetimes”
Well, maybe it is as far as any president is likely to go. But we are still left with a response much like republicans who conclude they only have to do a better job getting their message out.
The president has not acknowledged vast spying is wrong. He hasn’t said the spying on US citizens will stop.
On the contrary he has promised the programs will continue with only minimal changes for window dressing.
The phone metadata program will get better audit controls.
The FISA court will get, in effect, a public defender. But without real people directing their own lawyers, public review of opinions, and standing to appeal, where exactly is the adversarial process?
There may be some kind of privacy advisory council, likely made up of the kind of industry executives who have already cooperated with NSA.
Sure the administration is presenting these proposals because they are worried. But these proposals are so much window dressing, that assure no real change, intended to pacify people who don’t see or do not want to see the foundation of the police state.
We can do better.
LoL!
August Moon shining
Wearing Male and Female masks
It is Noh big thing!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl reporter
The mouse squeeks shrilly
As summer fades sadly
No one is listening
@MichaelM
Oh, I love the little barbs!!! “Then imprison them!” LOL! I have to work to keep mine from being too subtle. It takes a fine touch which I have do not have. But:
The crypt is empty
A lonely bugle blows Taps
Enigmas abound
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky,
Nice Haiku. Good imagery and a suitable ambiguity. I especially liked the third line, which works on several levels. Personally, I don’t do Haiku all that well, even though I’ve studied quite a bit of the Japanese language. The right English words just seem to have too many syllables for the format and tend towards precision of meaning rather than oblique suggestion. Or perhaps I just think too literally. But, as you say: “What the heck!” Hence:
A Couple of NSA Haiku
Of course we should know.
But then they’d have to kill us.
Let’s have a debate!
Encouraged by Mao:
Let a hundred flowers bloom!
Then imprison them.
About seven years ago on my birthday, I thought I would try my hand at the haiku verse format. President George “Deputy Dubya” Bush finally making it to North Vietnam set me off for obvious reasons. So this happened:
But back to the National Surveillance Agency:
Keith Alexander:
“Machines leak less than people.”
See Fukushima
A Guide to What We Now Know About the NSA’s Dragnet Searches of Your Communications
By Brett Max Kaufman, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project, 08/09/2013
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/guide-what-we-now-know-about-nsas-dragnet-searches-your-communications
Government of the machine, by the machine, for the machine. Sure.
Another example of what you get when an active-duty military officer somehow winds up running a government agency with power over civilian citizens. Well, this citizen does not answer to military officers and never will again. Nearly six years of having to do that cured me of any respect for “the military mind.” Screw General Keith Alexander and the white pig he rode in on. I say fire him and replace him with a stopped watch. At least that broken machine tells the correct time twice a day, whereas General Keith Alexander — even at full functioning capacity — can’t manage to tell the truth even once in 24 hours.
@MichaelMurray:
That was a cool little poem! I was thinking about an NSA Haiku, but those are sooo oblique. But oh, what the heck!
Skies crying, crying
While one wheel turns another
For your eyes only
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
(PS: That’s supposed to make you think of rain falling, and mill wheels, and the cogs of machinery running on tears. Or, a bicycle wreck on a wet street. Either one.)
I thought this was an insightful comment
From this article, which is also a good read.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/corporate-government-data-collection?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Old computer-programmer’s Aphorism #1:
“When a man makes a mistake, he makes a mistake. When a machine makes a mistake … makes a mistake … makes a mistake … makes a …”
As for computer viruses, how about this one in BASIC:
START: GO TO START
But there I go again with my bitter critique of the “military mind” and “commanders-in-brief”.
In other words:
Old computer-programmer’s Aphorism #2:
G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
But there I go again with my bitter critique of officially “classified” U.S. government “intelligence.”
it does make things like Operation Iraqi Liberation easier. takes the human lying out of the equation.
we just put all the relevant data into the machine and it says to invade.
http://www.georgewbushlibrary.smu.edu/Visit/Exhibits.aspx
(can’t wait until it comes out in 3-D)
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter 1, August 9, 2013 at 6:02 pm
“A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.” Sir Barnett Cocks
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
================================
I have always wondered where your Squeeky came Fromm, Girl Reporter.
Butt I never said nuttin’.
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE …
“A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.” Sir Barnett Cocks
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
nick spinelli 1, August 9, 2013 at 4:02 pm
I thought there would be @ least one Rage Against the Machine fan here w/ a link to their metal sound.
=============================
You are definitely prescient Mr. Spinelli.