I'm establishing this blog to discuss just one concept:
The United States collects and can analyze all voice & electronic communications that pass through our country, a system called "PRISM", in an effort to prevent terrorism. Supposedly originating from a handful of fanatics living in caves, terrorism -- though it is a shocking and heinous crime -- kills fewer Americans than does lightning strikes. On the other hand -- as documented extensively by many reporters such as Matt Taibbi and Bill Moyers -- currency manipulation, front-running, insider trading, rate-fixing, public bid-rigging, and related types of financial fraud have stolen many scores of billions or likely hundreds of billions of dollars over the past ten years alone, from the pockets of nearly every single citizen in the First World, on a daily basis, still ongoing. Yet nobody seems to think we can do anything about that.
Wouldn't the eavesdropping technology be a good match for the crime of sophisticated financial fraud?
I propose that the US Government, presumably through an Act of Congress, order the NSA, who runs the PRISM system, to share its database and its analysis capability with financial law enforcement agencies, such as the SEC, FinCEN, national and local Consumer Protection agencies, even FERC and the FEC, including regional or local law enforcement such as State Attorney Generals, for the express purpose of combating inter-State and international finance collusion, bid-rigging, market manipulation, energy price-gouging, election rigging, and similar crimes.
Please bring this proposal to the attention of your Federal representatives, senators, your neighbors, and the media voices you listen to.
Showing posts with label basic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basic. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Monday, October 31, 2016
Reasons Why
Here are some reasons why I believe this proposal is important, appropriate, and why it would help improve our country. Here are some answers to some common objections I anticipate.
* The reason PRISM scoops up all US communications, they say, is simply because the majority of world communications pass through our computers even when sent between people outside the US. This is certainly true of financial communications.
* The reason PRISM proponents say that the eavesdropping overrides privacy concerns, such as the 4th Amendment, is because terrorism costs lives, threatens the security and stability of entire countries, and is one of the most illegal activities on the planet. Even though many sophisticated financial frauds exist in legal gray areas... rate-fixing, bid-rigging, and many similar practices are also blatantly illegal. And as their damage piles up to tens of billions of dollars in the middle of a worldwide recession, surely these activities are also a clear and present threat to the security and stability of communities, industries, and even entire countries, including our own. Arguably this threat is even more important than the threat of terrorism, which while heinous and shocking, is far more rare. Fraudulent financial communication over electronic networks occurs virtually every hour of every single day.
* The reason PRISM scoops up all US communications, they say, is simply because the majority of world communications pass through our computers even when sent between people outside the US. This is certainly true of financial communications.
* The reason PRISM proponents say that the eavesdropping overrides privacy concerns, such as the 4th Amendment, is because terrorism costs lives, threatens the security and stability of entire countries, and is one of the most illegal activities on the planet. Even though many sophisticated financial frauds exist in legal gray areas... rate-fixing, bid-rigging, and many similar practices are also blatantly illegal. And as their damage piles up to tens of billions of dollars in the middle of a worldwide recession, surely these activities are also a clear and present threat to the security and stability of communities, industries, and even entire countries, including our own. Arguably this threat is even more important than the threat of terrorism, which while heinous and shocking, is far more rare. Fraudulent financial communication over electronic networks occurs virtually every hour of every single day.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Superb vintage, this wine...
Following on the theme of, is Edward Snowden a traitor or a hero --
Chris Hedges published his introductory statement to a debate on that subject at Oxford University (which his side won, against a team of former US intelligence officials and pundits). It's brief and worth a read.
Worth remembering, if Snowden had really wanted to damage the US, he could easily have done an helluvalot more to damage us than he actually did. How do we know he didn't? Well, apart from Snowden and Greenwald's assurances, it's been almost 2 years since the date his documents were downloaded... the NSA has started to compile a list of what he took... do you think anybody would sit on that information for 2 years, and we wouldn't hear about the sudden checkmating of all our strategic operations, or else the ransom they wanted in exchange?
When I assert that Manning and Snowden have done no damage worth speaking of (compared to the value of their revelations), opponents tend to fall back on "Well they broke their oath to keep these things secure, that makes them traitors." Yet every elected official swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, including the 4th Amendment, howcome you're not calling them the oathbreakers? Manning and Snowden simply felt their oaths required them to reveal this stuff, while President Obama and security officials all the way down, felt their oaths permitted them to violate the plain intent of the 4th Amendment, and keep it all hushed up. Breaking an oath is not so clear-cut an issue as conservatives would like to believe.
Chris Hedges published his introductory statement to a debate on that subject at Oxford University (which his side won, against a team of former US intelligence officials and pundits). It's brief and worth a read.
Snowden had access to the full roster of everyone working at the NSA. He could have made public the entire intelligence community and undercover assets worldwide. He could have exposed the locations of every clandestine station and their missions. He could have shut down the surveillance system, as he has said, “in an afternoon.” But this was never his intention. He wanted only to halt the wholesale surveillance, which until he documented it was being carried out without our consent or knowledge.
Worth remembering, if Snowden had really wanted to damage the US, he could easily have done an helluvalot more to damage us than he actually did. How do we know he didn't? Well, apart from Snowden and Greenwald's assurances, it's been almost 2 years since the date his documents were downloaded... the NSA has started to compile a list of what he took... do you think anybody would sit on that information for 2 years, and we wouldn't hear about the sudden checkmating of all our strategic operations, or else the ransom they wanted in exchange?
When I assert that Manning and Snowden have done no damage worth speaking of (compared to the value of their revelations), opponents tend to fall back on "Well they broke their oath to keep these things secure, that makes them traitors." Yet every elected official swears an oath to uphold the Constitution, including the 4th Amendment, howcome you're not calling them the oathbreakers? Manning and Snowden simply felt their oaths required them to reveal this stuff, while President Obama and security officials all the way down, felt their oaths permitted them to violate the plain intent of the 4th Amendment, and keep it all hushed up. Breaking an oath is not so clear-cut an issue as conservatives would like to believe.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The Fourth Estate, now a broken home
Yet another reason we can't just sit around, read these NSA revelations, and say "Oh well, of course the government's going to spy on everybody, whatchoogonnadooo..."
NSA actions pose 'direct threat to journalism,' leading watchdog warns
The government has never before had the ability to unmask every confidential reporter/source connection as a blanket rule. Whether or not this was the case when they requisitioned the Associated Press records recently -- the "4th Estate" (the Press) in the US is no longer free or independent, if the government can simply Hoover up all a reporter's connections passively... along with all the rest of the citizens. What this means is an end to whistleblowing. Who will want or be able to disclose legitimate cases of government abuses, if they know their disclosure can be traced?
Even if you happen to believe that people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden really are traitors -- despite how I've shown that the "harm" they did to national security is nonexistent -- even if you believe that anyway, then surely you can see how this policy quashes future dissent and legitimate internal reform.
We already know that the Obama Administration, despite sympathetic rhetoric, has been more hostile to whistleblowers than any previous American Presidential administration. So what happens when some other Administration, one that we trust less than Obama, gets into power?
Yes, yes, on January 17, Obama gave an address where he called for the NSA to relinquish control over the phone portion of the nation's data. (Not to stop collecting it, mind you, but to relinquish direct control.) As Ted Rall says, this is too little, too late. Obama proposes that the NSA hand over control to access of this data, back to the FISA court. You know, the rubberstamp court, that meets in secret, the one which has rejected 11 government requests for your data -- out of roughly 34,000-- since 1979, and none within the past three years.
It is a key facet of the definition of totalitarianism, when the State seeks to prevent anyone from going outside the system to expose abuses. That's the "total" in Totalitarianism. And that's the difference between a sane, democratic country's security policy, and ours. Innocent until proven guilty. You only launch an investigation in response to a specific crime or harm. You don't just Hoover up all communications in the hope that somewhere, somehow in that big pile, you can find something interesting. The latter is paranoia, and totalitarianism. The latter is the first concrete, tangible step towards subjugating all citizens, and treating them as a national resource to be controlled and managed, rather than free independent people.
NSA actions pose 'direct threat to journalism,' leading watchdog warns
The government has never before had the ability to unmask every confidential reporter/source connection as a blanket rule. Whether or not this was the case when they requisitioned the Associated Press records recently -- the "4th Estate" (the Press) in the US is no longer free or independent, if the government can simply Hoover up all a reporter's connections passively... along with all the rest of the citizens. What this means is an end to whistleblowing. Who will want or be able to disclose legitimate cases of government abuses, if they know their disclosure can be traced?
Even if you happen to believe that people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden really are traitors -- despite how I've shown that the "harm" they did to national security is nonexistent -- even if you believe that anyway, then surely you can see how this policy quashes future dissent and legitimate internal reform.
We already know that the Obama Administration, despite sympathetic rhetoric, has been more hostile to whistleblowers than any previous American Presidential administration. So what happens when some other Administration, one that we trust less than Obama, gets into power?
Yes, yes, on January 17, Obama gave an address where he called for the NSA to relinquish control over the phone portion of the nation's data. (Not to stop collecting it, mind you, but to relinquish direct control.) As Ted Rall says, this is too little, too late. Obama proposes that the NSA hand over control to access of this data, back to the FISA court. You know, the rubberstamp court, that meets in secret, the one which has rejected 11 government requests for your data -- out of roughly 34,000-- since 1979, and none within the past three years.
It is a key facet of the definition of totalitarianism, when the State seeks to prevent anyone from going outside the system to expose abuses. That's the "total" in Totalitarianism. And that's the difference between a sane, democratic country's security policy, and ours. Innocent until proven guilty. You only launch an investigation in response to a specific crime or harm. You don't just Hoover up all communications in the hope that somewhere, somehow in that big pile, you can find something interesting. The latter is paranoia, and totalitarianism. The latter is the first concrete, tangible step towards subjugating all citizens, and treating them as a national resource to be controlled and managed, rather than free independent people.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Fighting Back against Surveillance
This site's been silent for too many months, due to apparent lack of an audience. But as I predicted many months ago, this issue will not simply evaporate and be forgotten. It affects everyone, it impacts almost everything we do in this digital age. This issue isn't going to go away. So today, somebody-or-other has called a "Day of Resistance" against electronic surveillance. I might as well join the festivities, since I've been working on this issue for the better part of a year.
Conversely, in another example of fighting back against surveillance, let's consider the actions of the people that the surveillance is supposed to catch.
I heard the well-worn canard just a couple of days ago: "Edward Snowden ought to be shot, because he revealed our tactics to our enemies. That's treason, and that's a capital offense."
Guess what, my friend, everybody else -- most especially including our enemies -- already knew about our tactics, besides apparently you. The people whom these tactics are used against, figure them out pretty quick.
Conversely, in another example of fighting back against surveillance, let's consider the actions of the people that the surveillance is supposed to catch.
I heard the well-worn canard just a couple of days ago: "Edward Snowden ought to be shot, because he revealed our tactics to our enemies. That's treason, and that's a capital offense."
Guess what, my friend, everybody else -- most especially including our enemies -- already knew about our tactics, besides apparently you. The people whom these tactics are used against, figure them out pretty quick.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
About This Proposal -- and What Do I Think Will Happen
I don't believe it is constitutional for the US government to be engaging in massive surveillance of its citizens. But most people seem to agree that the government is going to do this no matter what, and many people argue it's necessary for American safety. If it must be done, then, let's apply it equally. As I imply elsewhere, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If all 300 million of us Americans' private communications need to be monitored in order to protect our personal safety against a threat that is about as common as shark attacks, then it seems only fair and appropriate that our financial apparatchiks' communications should all be monitored too. In order to prevent a clear and present crime that is not only picking people's pockets directly, as well as depleting the budgets of our States and Cities and major retirement funds, but also sapping tens of billions of dollars from the world economy in a time of incredibly severe economic downturn.
I suspect our politicians and our financial elite share a common belief: that surveillance is for the "little people", that they themselves are above the law and above reproach. I don't believe the financial elites will want this high-tech scrutiny turned upon them, and I believe the financial elites have the power to make sure it doesn't happen.
So if we manage to insert this concept into the public political discussion -- and if we are successful to the point where perhaps some Senators start drafting legislation that would bring this about... it's going to be fun to watch...
I suspect our politicians and our financial elite share a common belief: that surveillance is for the "little people", that they themselves are above the law and above reproach. I don't believe the financial elites will want this high-tech scrutiny turned upon them, and I believe the financial elites have the power to make sure it doesn't happen.
So if we manage to insert this concept into the public political discussion -- and if we are successful to the point where perhaps some Senators start drafting legislation that would bring this about... it's going to be fun to watch...
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Cynicism in school and marriage
Taibbi writes an article about how a big new Education initiative from the President actually relates to the whole NSA and Wikileaks morass. Taibbi's point is that Obama is going into full-court press across the country over yet another rather nebulous plan for Education that won't take effect for five years, and the press is just lapping it up. Instead of having the press revisit the NSA and Manning scandals, which each had significant developments last week. Is that a cynical mastery of the 24-hour news cycle? Toss the press a new bone when you want to get their minds off of something bad you did last week?
>> Barack Obama is so frustrating. He can give quite a speech. He says just enough of the right things to give pause, and sometimes genuinely seems to be in touch with the pain of the vanishing middle class. He has the appearance, on occasion, of the politician of your dreams – intelligent, forward-thinking, even-keeled, just. You want to believe in him, you really do. But just taking this week for instance, there's just no way around the math... that the White House has been engaged all summer in a lunatic defense of a vast and apparently illegal domestic espionage program and tossed a young soldier in prison for three decades for exposing war crimes and torture.
Monday, August 26, 2013
We are all Chelsea
The Chelsea [née Bradley] Manning issue may be a bit of a tangent for this blog, but it's related, because Manning, like Snowden, helped us spy on the Powers-That-Be, which is what I recommend on this blog. I'm not recommending breaking laws to do so, and Manning's methods were against military code -- I'll get back to that.
Meanwhile, let's examine Manning's trial and his pre-sentencing apology...
A lot of my right-wing friends started wondering within hours of "Chelsea" (formerly Bradley) Manning's announcement, "How the hell could our government give top security clearance to somebody who's obviously bonkers?"
How Not To React
Well, thankfully my right-wing friends aren't making a living as psychiatrists, since a desire for gender re-assignment is not in and of itself evidence of mental problems. If it were, of course, Manning could likely have gotten off scott free with an insanity plea, so think about that for a moment before you make sweeping pronouncements, my friends.
Meanwhile, let's examine Manning's trial and his pre-sentencing apology...
A lot of my right-wing friends started wondering within hours of "Chelsea" (formerly Bradley) Manning's announcement, "How the hell could our government give top security clearance to somebody who's obviously bonkers?"
How Not To React
Well, thankfully my right-wing friends aren't making a living as psychiatrists, since a desire for gender re-assignment is not in and of itself evidence of mental problems. If it were, of course, Manning could likely have gotten off scott free with an insanity plea, so think about that for a moment before you make sweeping pronouncements, my friends.
Can't Be Overturned
So I got a comment [offline] that my crusade here is hopeless and ill-advised for two reasons.
#1, it's written into the Constitution that the Executive Branch can break any law it needs to, in the name of National Security. Since the surveillance is in the name of National Security, all this is perfectly legal and cannot be overturned.
On the other hand, wiretapping bank executives is not relevant to National Security, so I shouldn't open a can of worms and use the bulldozer of National Security on things that don't fall into that category.
#2, if I make a stink abut this, all I'm doing is helping the Opposing Political Party get elected, which will turn out much worse than the situation we have now. Especially if that Opposing Party gets to pick more Supreme Court justices.
Anyone who knows me, ought to know that argument #2 is one of my red hot-buttons.
#1, it's written into the Constitution that the Executive Branch can break any law it needs to, in the name of National Security. Since the surveillance is in the name of National Security, all this is perfectly legal and cannot be overturned.
On the other hand, wiretapping bank executives is not relevant to National Security, so I shouldn't open a can of worms and use the bulldozer of National Security on things that don't fall into that category.
#2, if I make a stink abut this, all I'm doing is helping the Opposing Political Party get elected, which will turn out much worse than the situation we have now. Especially if that Opposing Party gets to pick more Supreme Court justices.
Anyone who knows me, ought to know that argument #2 is one of my red hot-buttons.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Do Two Wrongs Make a Right??
I've read several people telling me that this campaign is pointless, and more recently I've read several people telling me that my proposal is immoral because it essentially is adding another wrong to the wrong already being committed. If we truly respect the 4th Amendment, people say, we can't in good conscience propose that we break the 4th Amendment, even if targeted against our political "enemies", in this case, the bankers and financiers committing illegal acts that threaten our entire nation.
Obviously, I disagree with this reasoning, so this is my soapbox to explain why.
In brief: The government is already promulgating the abuse, and my argument revolves around the fact that this abuse is one-sided. Proposing to share the abuse against those in power is, I believe, rectifying the abuse, not adding further abuse.
Recall, the government is already collecting, monitoring, and analyzing the financial data in question. I am not proposing to further the abuse by collecting new data -- nobody is -- that would not be possible, because the government is collecting all existing data. What we are talking about is a different abuse or crime: that of selective law enforcement.
If you acquiesce to selective law enforcement without any protest, you are laying the foundation for the establishment of tyranny. The NSA can get dirt on us, but _we_ can't get dirt on the powerful. In that situation, we are establishing a protected, privileged class who is not accountable. As the Founding Fathers knew, that is a recipe for tyranny of a few connected, privileged elites.
Obviously, I disagree with this reasoning, so this is my soapbox to explain why.
In brief: The government is already promulgating the abuse, and my argument revolves around the fact that this abuse is one-sided. Proposing to share the abuse against those in power is, I believe, rectifying the abuse, not adding further abuse.
Recall, the government is already collecting, monitoring, and analyzing the financial data in question. I am not proposing to further the abuse by collecting new data -- nobody is -- that would not be possible, because the government is collecting all existing data. What we are talking about is a different abuse or crime: that of selective law enforcement.
If you acquiesce to selective law enforcement without any protest, you are laying the foundation for the establishment of tyranny. The NSA can get dirt on us, but _we_ can't get dirt on the powerful. In that situation, we are establishing a protected, privileged class who is not accountable. As the Founding Fathers knew, that is a recipe for tyranny of a few connected, privileged elites.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
More news roundup
I see I have a few hundred page views, but I don't know if anybody is hanging on waiting for me to update this blog anymore... Haven't received any comments.
But the basic issue continues to simmer on the back burner of our collective attention, at least, as reflected in the news media. I don't think this issue is going to go away. Every other day comes some new revelation that we are being spied upon to a degree that was never before technologically possible.
The one thing the news media does not do, as they report these revelations, is speculate about what is the motive and what are the overseers going to do with this information.
Because I mean, you can't really expect me to believe the Federal Government needs the passwords to my accounts, even as it is already intercepting and decrypting my messages.
Feds Tell Web Firms To Turn Over User Account Passwords
You can't really expect me to believe the police are monitoring all the movements of our automobiles in all our cities just in order to track terrorists.
The Cops Are Tracking My Car -- And Yours
You can't really expect me to believe that opening my safe deposit box is necessary to fight terrorism.
DHS Claims Authority To Open Safe Deposit Boxes Without Warrants
So yeah, terrorism terrorism terrorism, but I just don't see these steps as being a necessary part of the battle against terrorism.
Sure the concept of broad surveillance may have originated (long before 9/11) as a misguided idea to fight terrorism. But I don't think that's the true, ultimate purpose of it anymore. As the examples above show, it's really going beyond plausibility to think that our government urgently needs to do these things, all without a warrant or court oversight, in order to fight terror.
Of course part of it is just for the money. We're Americans, and what Americans have done for the past 100 years is to take serious, bloody, moral and ethical issues and find ways to make profits off them, profits which of course are amoral. It's easy to convince yourself that spying on your fellow citizens is moral if your salary is paid by people who are buying your surveillance cameras.
Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash
I wrote before, that surveillance is equivalent to pornography for people in positions of power. Because the surveillance isn't about monitoring anymore than pornography is about cinematography. Surveillance is ultimately all about control. You have to use this data for something, and as I wrote, if the actual thing you're fighting is pretty small and elusive, you as a government overseer are going to find new uses for the data. You're going to use it, in secret, against people you personally don't like or disagree with. It's not even a slippery slope, it's a highway directly to Hell. It's just how human nature works when granted social authority at the same time as technological miracles. You're just bound to abuse it, no question.
The actual incidence of terrorism is small, and obviously they make themselves hard to find. So those doing the surveillance find themselves going out on a limb and provoking the thing they claim to be defending us from.
Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren't Invented by Al Qaeda -- They're Manufactured by the FBI [Sting Operations]
As other people have written, one of the major problems with permitting things like torture, assassination and surveillance against "foreign enemies" is that all those things inevitably return back home to be used against the citizens.
DHS confirms it's spying on 'anti-government' Americans
And so if there aren't enough real traitors and terrorists among the domestic citizenry to justify the massive, bloated security operation -- inevitably, the government starts to declare more and more people as enemies and terrorists. It's happened in every repressive totalitarian regime that I know of.
How the US Turned Three Pacifists [an 82-year-old Catholic nun and two elderly vegetarians] into Violent Terrorists
Yet again I have to repeat, this is how empires fall. When the government slowly convinces itself that the citizens are the enemy instead of their employers. That situation can't last for long, historically speaking. One thing or the other has got to change.
But the basic issue continues to simmer on the back burner of our collective attention, at least, as reflected in the news media. I don't think this issue is going to go away. Every other day comes some new revelation that we are being spied upon to a degree that was never before technologically possible.
The one thing the news media does not do, as they report these revelations, is speculate about what is the motive and what are the overseers going to do with this information.
Because I mean, you can't really expect me to believe the Federal Government needs the passwords to my accounts, even as it is already intercepting and decrypting my messages.
Feds Tell Web Firms To Turn Over User Account Passwords
You can't really expect me to believe the police are monitoring all the movements of our automobiles in all our cities just in order to track terrorists.
The Cops Are Tracking My Car -- And Yours
You can't really expect me to believe that opening my safe deposit box is necessary to fight terrorism.
DHS Claims Authority To Open Safe Deposit Boxes Without Warrants
So yeah, terrorism terrorism terrorism, but I just don't see these steps as being a necessary part of the battle against terrorism.
Sure the concept of broad surveillance may have originated (long before 9/11) as a misguided idea to fight terrorism. But I don't think that's the true, ultimate purpose of it anymore. As the examples above show, it's really going beyond plausibility to think that our government urgently needs to do these things, all without a warrant or court oversight, in order to fight terror.
Of course part of it is just for the money. We're Americans, and what Americans have done for the past 100 years is to take serious, bloody, moral and ethical issues and find ways to make profits off them, profits which of course are amoral. It's easy to convince yourself that spying on your fellow citizens is moral if your salary is paid by people who are buying your surveillance cameras.
Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash
I wrote before, that surveillance is equivalent to pornography for people in positions of power. Because the surveillance isn't about monitoring anymore than pornography is about cinematography. Surveillance is ultimately all about control. You have to use this data for something, and as I wrote, if the actual thing you're fighting is pretty small and elusive, you as a government overseer are going to find new uses for the data. You're going to use it, in secret, against people you personally don't like or disagree with. It's not even a slippery slope, it's a highway directly to Hell. It's just how human nature works when granted social authority at the same time as technological miracles. You're just bound to abuse it, no question.
The actual incidence of terrorism is small, and obviously they make themselves hard to find. So those doing the surveillance find themselves going out on a limb and provoking the thing they claim to be defending us from.
Most Terrorist Plots in the US Aren't Invented by Al Qaeda -- They're Manufactured by the FBI [Sting Operations]
As other people have written, one of the major problems with permitting things like torture, assassination and surveillance against "foreign enemies" is that all those things inevitably return back home to be used against the citizens.
DHS confirms it's spying on 'anti-government' Americans
And so if there aren't enough real traitors and terrorists among the domestic citizenry to justify the massive, bloated security operation -- inevitably, the government starts to declare more and more people as enemies and terrorists. It's happened in every repressive totalitarian regime that I know of.
How the US Turned Three Pacifists [an 82-year-old Catholic nun and two elderly vegetarians] into Violent Terrorists
Yet again I have to repeat, this is how empires fall. When the government slowly convinces itself that the citizens are the enemy instead of their employers. That situation can't last for long, historically speaking. One thing or the other has got to change.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Corporate-Government Spying Nexus
When I write about the asymmetry in this electronic surveillance, and I say that "We ought to be able spy on _them_ like they spy on us," some readers may think I'm being glib. You may think I am mixing up or conflating the Government agencies who do the eavesdropping, the NSA, with purely financial players such as the big banks and investment brokers. Of course there's an indirect chain of logic there; the rich bankers and big companies make campaign contributions to the politicians who allegedly control the NSA, so one could make an indirect argument that there's a chain of influence and we could influence the politicians by inconveniencing the banks.
You may think I'm making a roundabout political point by lumping the banks along with the government as "The Powers That Be".
You'd be wrong. There is a direct connection and I'm making a direct argument.
The UK Guardian is right, I consider this stuff just as mind-blowing as Edward Snowden's revelations about PRISM and wiretapping. Bank of America can't possibly be the only corporate giant who considered assembling a mercenary cadre "Intelligence Team" to dig up dirt and _initiate_ smears against _political_ adversaries. And guess what? They retained Booz Allen Hamilton (the private contractor who employed Snowden on behalf of the NSA), Palantir, Stratfor, all the same contractors who do the spying for the government. If you think that we can trust big companies like Google and Bank of America with our personal data because they're private companies, but you also think the government shouldn't be monitoring your personal and financial data.... THERE IS NO DISTINCTION ANYMORE. If you think private companies don't have an incentive to engage in personal attacks, abuse your personal data or share it with government agencies, because there's no way it would help their bottom line... you got another think coming.
Barrett Brown's Revelations Every Bit As Explosive As Edward Snowden's
You may think I'm making a roundabout political point by lumping the banks along with the government as "The Powers That Be".
You'd be wrong. There is a direct connection and I'm making a direct argument.
The UK Guardian is right, I consider this stuff just as mind-blowing as Edward Snowden's revelations about PRISM and wiretapping. Bank of America can't possibly be the only corporate giant who considered assembling a mercenary cadre "Intelligence Team" to dig up dirt and _initiate_ smears against _political_ adversaries. And guess what? They retained Booz Allen Hamilton (the private contractor who employed Snowden on behalf of the NSA), Palantir, Stratfor, all the same contractors who do the spying for the government. If you think that we can trust big companies like Google and Bank of America with our personal data because they're private companies, but you also think the government shouldn't be monitoring your personal and financial data.... THERE IS NO DISTINCTION ANYMORE. If you think private companies don't have an incentive to engage in personal attacks, abuse your personal data or share it with government agencies, because there's no way it would help their bottom line... you got another think coming.
Barrett Brown's Revelations Every Bit As Explosive As Edward Snowden's
Brown made a splash in February 2011 by helping to uncover "Team Themis", a project by intelligence contractors retained by Bank of America to demolish the hacker society known as Anonymous and silence sympathetic journalists like Glenn Greenwald... The campaign reportedly involved a menagerie of contractors: Booz Allen Hamilton, a billion-dollar intelligence industry player and Snowden's former employer; Palantir, a PayPal-inspired and -funded outfit that sells "data-mining and analysis software that maps out human social networks for counterintelligence purposes"; and HBGary Federal, an aspirant consultancy in the intelligence sector.
The Team Themis story began in late 2010, when Julian Assange warned WikiLeaks would release documents outlining an "ecosystem of corruption [that] could take down a bank or two." Anticipating that it might be in Assange's sights, Bank of America went into damage-control mode and, as the New York Times reported, assembled "a team of 15 to 20 top Bank of America officials … scouring thousands of documents in the event that they become public." To oversee the review, Bank of American brought in Booz Allen Hamilton.
Spying: the Drunk Says The Light Is Better Over Here
It bears consideration to think about the day-to-day operations when people decide what to look for, amid the mountains of eavesdropped conversations collected by PRISM and other local or corporate surveillance operations.
When you consider the deadliest terror attacks, in terms of taking lives, in recent history -- from 9/11 to the Boston Bombings, from the Anthrax letters to Timothy McVeigh to the Spanish train bombings... they were generally perpetrated by a few individuals, at most small rogue groups, operating within a relatively small network. They didn't smear their plans all over communications systems. They relied on their own systems and networks, their own resources, because they already knew the US and other Western countries were pretty good at monitoring transactions within their own systems. So by traditional wiretapping methods, that made them hard to catch, and that was their plan. The surveillance authorities' response was, we have to Hoover up ever more information in order to catch the tiniest rarified interactions that these dangerous people have with the rest of our bigger System.
A much easier and more tempting target for eavesdropping authorities is, of course, the large networks of political dissenters working within the system. According to the logic of bureaucracy, well, it's difficult and expensive to try and ferret out these Black Swan threats like terrorists that come from nowhere. So we can show our paymasters much better results if we spy on publicly known organizations that our paymasters don't happen to like, e.g., political protesters. According to this chain of logic, if YOU contribute a few bucks to the Sierra Club every month, that means you're ecologically minded, which means there's a small chance you may have some connection to the Earth-First! people who burn SUV's in dealerships at night and set fire to unfinished apartment complexes. And then from those crimes, somehow we move from there to assuming there's a connection to political terror bombings that actually take lives. So therefore, because the real bomb-throwing political terrorists are hard to find, we can "show results" and "get promoted" if we monitor a lot of normal, peaceful citizens who might have some convoluted connections to a disfavored ideology. By the twisted logic of economics and statistics, if we just monitor a few hundred million Sierra Club fans, we're more likely to hit upon an actual terrorist, than by doing police work. Or at least, the electronic monitoring _costs_ less money, so let's go for it.
As you can guess, this logic ends up being pretty much equivalent to that old joke about the drunkard looking for his lost keys under a lamp-post. He probably dropped them over in the darkness by his car, but he's searching under the lamp-post because "The light is better over here". These wiretapping authorities keep expecting the next big terror attacks to emanate from Greenpeace or, to be fair to the other side of the aisle, they expect geriatric Tea Partiers to jump up off their Rascal scooters and bomb a Federal building. To the credit of both organizations, Greenpeace and the Tea Partiers keep disappointing the eavesdroppers.
So it makes you wonder, when the government says "PRISM has averted 50 terrorist attacks this year," how many of those supposed terror plots actually rose much above the level of environmentalists slashing SUV tires or Tea Partiers super-gluing the doors to an IRS building.
I've already touched-on, briefly, the fact that PRISM, gigantic as it is, is only a part of an even more massive data-gathering plan -- what else should I call it? A "culture" on the part of large agencies? A "movement"? A "lifestyle"?? -- where everyone from your local police to your ISP to your grocery store, seeks to amass your data and communications. And even if we believe the Federal Government when it swears it's only using your eavesdropped data for purposes of combating terrorism, the other agencies -- including your local police department -- may not be so nobly motivated.
Boston Police Accused of Spying on Protesters and Intimidating Dissidents
When you consider the deadliest terror attacks, in terms of taking lives, in recent history -- from 9/11 to the Boston Bombings, from the Anthrax letters to Timothy McVeigh to the Spanish train bombings... they were generally perpetrated by a few individuals, at most small rogue groups, operating within a relatively small network. They didn't smear their plans all over communications systems. They relied on their own systems and networks, their own resources, because they already knew the US and other Western countries were pretty good at monitoring transactions within their own systems. So by traditional wiretapping methods, that made them hard to catch, and that was their plan. The surveillance authorities' response was, we have to Hoover up ever more information in order to catch the tiniest rarified interactions that these dangerous people have with the rest of our bigger System.
A much easier and more tempting target for eavesdropping authorities is, of course, the large networks of political dissenters working within the system. According to the logic of bureaucracy, well, it's difficult and expensive to try and ferret out these Black Swan threats like terrorists that come from nowhere. So we can show our paymasters much better results if we spy on publicly known organizations that our paymasters don't happen to like, e.g., political protesters. According to this chain of logic, if YOU contribute a few bucks to the Sierra Club every month, that means you're ecologically minded, which means there's a small chance you may have some connection to the Earth-First! people who burn SUV's in dealerships at night and set fire to unfinished apartment complexes. And then from those crimes, somehow we move from there to assuming there's a connection to political terror bombings that actually take lives. So therefore, because the real bomb-throwing political terrorists are hard to find, we can "show results" and "get promoted" if we monitor a lot of normal, peaceful citizens who might have some convoluted connections to a disfavored ideology. By the twisted logic of economics and statistics, if we just monitor a few hundred million Sierra Club fans, we're more likely to hit upon an actual terrorist, than by doing police work. Or at least, the electronic monitoring _costs_ less money, so let's go for it.
As you can guess, this logic ends up being pretty much equivalent to that old joke about the drunkard looking for his lost keys under a lamp-post. He probably dropped them over in the darkness by his car, but he's searching under the lamp-post because "The light is better over here". These wiretapping authorities keep expecting the next big terror attacks to emanate from Greenpeace or, to be fair to the other side of the aisle, they expect geriatric Tea Partiers to jump up off their Rascal scooters and bomb a Federal building. To the credit of both organizations, Greenpeace and the Tea Partiers keep disappointing the eavesdroppers.
So it makes you wonder, when the government says "PRISM has averted 50 terrorist attacks this year," how many of those supposed terror plots actually rose much above the level of environmentalists slashing SUV tires or Tea Partiers super-gluing the doors to an IRS building.
I've already touched-on, briefly, the fact that PRISM, gigantic as it is, is only a part of an even more massive data-gathering plan -- what else should I call it? A "culture" on the part of large agencies? A "movement"? A "lifestyle"?? -- where everyone from your local police to your ISP to your grocery store, seeks to amass your data and communications. And even if we believe the Federal Government when it swears it's only using your eavesdropped data for purposes of combating terrorism, the other agencies -- including your local police department -- may not be so nobly motivated.
Boston Police Accused of Spying on Protesters and Intimidating Dissidents
Sunday, June 23, 2013
First They Ignore You...
Well at least the meme is spreading! Even if it's spreading as satire. I am reminded of the apocryphal saying attributed to Ghandi: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
A piece just appeared in "Reader Supported News" which was labeled several times as "SATIRE". Problem is, I don't think most of this is satire. I thought this was important enough to devote an entire post to this article individually.
RSN: Make Big Brother Our Friend
A piece just appeared in "Reader Supported News" which was labeled several times as "SATIRE". Problem is, I don't think most of this is satire. I thought this was important enough to devote an entire post to this article individually.
Latest Evidence, #3 in a series
In this post I'm straying away from the evidence about the financial crimes -- the financial crimes including insider trading, front-running, currency manipulation, bid-rigging etc. being the reason for the proposal, so I'm straying from my original purpose.
But I'm bringing these things into the discussion because there is an equality aspect, which I will focus on in another post today.
With these articles, I am attempting to show that the PRISM surveillance operation is intrusive on people's lives, even if they think of themselves as not committing crimes. Now there is a special type of inequality involved here. When a government performs pretty much universal surveillance, and can keep all the data on every single citizen in storage indefinitely -- this has just been a sci-fi dystopian fantasy in the past, until now, until PRISM. But the implications of the inequality aspects have been thought out, as I mentioned in that book review post at the bottom of the list.
When all our data is collected and stored indefinitely, a future government can search back through it and begin causing problems for people based on things people had no idea would run them afoul of the government at the time they did them. Heck, even with present laws, this can happen.
Wired: Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance
But I'm bringing these things into the discussion because there is an equality aspect, which I will focus on in another post today.
With these articles, I am attempting to show that the PRISM surveillance operation is intrusive on people's lives, even if they think of themselves as not committing crimes. Now there is a special type of inequality involved here. When a government performs pretty much universal surveillance, and can keep all the data on every single citizen in storage indefinitely -- this has just been a sci-fi dystopian fantasy in the past, until now, until PRISM. But the implications of the inequality aspects have been thought out, as I mentioned in that book review post at the bottom of the list.
When all our data is collected and stored indefinitely, a future government can search back through it and begin causing problems for people based on things people had no idea would run them afoul of the government at the time they did them. Heck, even with present laws, this can happen.
Wired: Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance
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