Month: June 2013

The NSA’s Complete Lack of Oversight

Since Edward Snowden leaked information regarding the National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM program the state has been ensuring us that a great deal of oversight exists between the NSA’s agents and private communications. As it turns out, that isn’t the case:

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.

That is a major point to note. If the NSA “inadvertently” collects data on people living in the United States, the very same people the NSA claims it’s not spying on, it can use that data without so much as a warrant. I ask you, what motivation does the NSA have not to collect domestic communications? If there’s no punishment for doing so then there is no motivation against doing it. What makes this even worse is that this policy comes from the top:

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target “non-US persons” under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

Is anybody surprised that Eric Holder has authorized the NSA to collect data on people living in the United States? After all the skeletons that have been pouring out of his closet I doubt anybody is even slightly shocked by this revelation. Just how far does this authority go? Pretty damned far:

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

• Preserve “foreign intelligence information” contained within attorney-client communications;

• Access the content of communications gathered from “U.S. based machine[s]” or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

In other words, there is no real oversight or any form of protection against the NSA spying on people residing in the United States. Most of us have suspected this for a long time but until now we’ve been unable to surface proof.

We’re Accountable Because We Say We’re Accountable

Whenever anarchists challenge statists about rampent abuses of power such as the National Security Agency (NSA) spying on anybody and everybody, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) creating terrorist so it has somebody to bust, or the United States bombing of children in the Middle East the standard response is that a more accountable state is needed. An accountable state is a paradox because a state maintains a monopoly on creating and enforcing laws. In order to be prosecuted the state must first find itself guilty of breaking the law.

Case in point, agents of the FBI has been involved in numerous shootouts but not once has the FBI decided any of those agents were in error:

But if such internal investigations are time-tested, their outcomes are also predictable: from 1993 to early 2011, F.B.I. agents fatally shot about 70 “subjects” and wounded about 80 others — and every one of those episodes was deemed justified, according to interviews and internal F.B.I. records obtained by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The last two years have followed the same pattern: an F.B.I. spokesman said that since 2011, there had been no findings of improper intentional shootings.

In most of the shootings, the F.B.I.’s internal investigation was the only official inquiry. In the Orlando case, for example, there have been conflicting accounts about basic facts like whether the Chechen man, Ibragim Todashev, attacked an agent with a knife, was unarmed or was brandishing a metal pole. But Orlando homicide detectives are not independently investigating what happened.

How can a monopoly holder of justice ever be held accountable? Advocates of democracy will claim the people can hold the state accountable by voting out agents that do wrong. The first problem with such a claim is that most employees of the state, including FBI agents, aren’t elected officials. The second problem is that justice becomes a decision of a voting majority. If a voting majority believe a murder was justified then the murderer remains unaccountable.

Monopoly holders of justice can’t be held accountable because they hold a monopoly on the very thing that would otherwise make them accountable and that’s one of the biggest failures of statism.

More on the Marriage of the State and the Private Sector

Last week I mentioned the trend of the state and private enterprise merging to assist one another in spying on us. This week it was revealed that Skype was working with the state to place a back door in its software in 2008:

Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.

Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.

News like this shouldn’t surprise anybody but the real concern this story raises, as Bruce Schneier pointed out is that Skype denied such allocations previously, meaning they, along with every other tech company, can’t be trusted:

Reread that Skype denial from last July, knowing that at the time the company knew that they were giving the NSA access to customer communications. Notice how it is precisely worded to be technically accurate, yet leave the reader with the wrong conclusion. This is where we are with all the tech companies right now; we can’t trust their denials, just as we can’t trust the NSA — or the FBI — when it denies programs, capabilities, or practices.

We’re in a pretty bad situation since we can’t trust the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Microsoft, Apple, Google, or anybody else that’s part of this unholy mess of a spying operation.

Why Third Parties Will Never Succeed in Politics

Inevitably, when people become disenfranchised with one or both of the two major political parties, somebody suggests that they go a third party to “really change things.” While working in a third party is certainly better than one of the two major parties that reason is simply because third parties are impotent so people working in them aren’t able to use the state’s capacity for violence to inflict their will on the general populace. The reason for their impotency is because the two major parties already control the state and can rewrite the rules whenever they want:

Last year, Republican Jonathan Paton lost his bid for Congress to Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick by about 9,000 votes. Meanwhile, Libertarian Kim Allen in the race got just over 15,000 votes.

But for the Libertarian, Paton would be a congressman today – assuming, as Republicans do, that Libertarian votes would logically slide over to the R column.

What’s a good Republican to do about a bunch of spoilers who are keeping them from electoral glory?

Well, today we found out.

This afternoon, Gov. Jan Brewer signed an elections bill that basically wipes out Libertarian and other third-party candidates, boosting their signature requirements to unattainable levels. Green Party candidates would actually have to collect more signatures than they have party members.

This is exactly the kind of shenanigan that I predicted would happen if Gary Johnson would have obtained anywhere near the 5% of the popular vote needed to qualify for federal campaign funds. Whenever a third party begins to obtain any meaningful power the two major parties rewrite the rules. In Arizona the Green Party is effectively through since they need more signatures than they have party members and, if the Libertarian Party is able to achieve anywhere near enough signatures, the requirement will be increased again.

Working within the political system will never lead to liberty because the system is rigged against change.

Most People Seem to Be Comfortable with Firearms

Apparently there’s a very slight uproar because gun rights activists here in the Twin Cities are planning to openly carry their firearms at the Open Streets event. For those of you unfamiliar with the event it’s a day where several major streets in Minneapolis are shutdown to motorized vehicles so bikers, skaters, and pedestrians can traverse them unopposed. As a biker and a gun rights activists this story intersects two of my interests. While a few people have been rather hysterical about the fact that there will be people openly carrying guns at the event, the president of the Minneapolis Bike Coalition demonstrates the general response I’ve noticed to open carry:

The idea that the events were being turned into a gun-toting event came as a surprise Tuesday to Ethan Fawley, president of the Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition, which first hosted Open Streets two years ago. This year, Open Streets joined with the city for the series of events.

“It’s an open event,” he said. “It’s a family friendly, fun, kid-oriented event and we want healthy, active living to be the focus of the event. We don’t want sideshows. We want people to be out enjoying their neighbors and playing in the streets.

“My initial reaction to this is that it’s a distraction and it’s unfortunate from that perspective. We hope people will come out and be safe and have fun.”

“We’re expecting thousands of people at each event,” he said. “We had 10,000 people on Lyndale last year.”

Priem said Open Street organizers will not ask the gun owners not to attend. “Everyone is welcome at Open Streets,” she said.

People openly carrying firearms should be a non-issue and Mr. Fawley seems to be treating it as such. I open carry whenever I ride my bike, not because I’m trying to be a gun rights activist on the trails but because concealing a firearm while riding a bicycle is an exercise in futility. My act of openly carrying a firearm on bike trails has been met with no negative interactions. Nobody has screamed in terror, ran off the trail, or otherwise acted in an irrational manner. Some people have asked me for directions and made small talk with me while we waited for cars to pass at street intersections. Most people ignore my existence just as they ignore everybody else.

Open carry, at least in the Twin Cities area, seems to be becoming a non-issue for most people, which is great in my opinion. Since Minnesota created a legal means for individuals to carry firearms no notable incidents have arisen involving permit holders using their firearm in a violent manner. Minnesotans are learning a lesson that was well-known in history, just because somebody is armed doesn’t mean they’re violent.

I think this general acceptance of, or at least willingness to ignore, armed individuals is due, at least in part, to years of open carry activism. Some gun rights activists like to bitch about open carrying harming gun rights in general but, based on what I’ve seen, the opposite appears to be true. People are paying far less attention to armed individuals and that was the goal from the start.

There’s Something Fishy Going on Around Here

Michael Hastings, the journalist who effectively ended Stanley McChrystal’s career, died in a car crash early this week. What makes this story even more interesting is that Mr. Hastings had supposedly contacted WikiLeaks shortly before his death and was concerned that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was stalking him:

CULVER CITY (CBSLA.com) — Questions persist following the death of Michael Hastings Tuesday, after reports that the award-winning journalist told WikiLeaks the government was watching him.

WikiLeaks tweeted a message to their millions of followers Wednesday stating that the 33-year-old author and war correspondent had contacted the organization’s lawyer to say he was being watched by the FBI.

Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.—
WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 19, 2013

“Michael Hastings was a journalist who definitely gave the government trouble, the Pentagon trouble, so if they were surveilling him it wouldn’t be that surprising,” said friend and fellow journalist Cenk Uygur.

Had this occurred last year I would have likely written Mr. Hastings’s death off as a coincidence. I was more ignorant of the federal government’s corruption back then. Things have obviously changed since then. We now know that the National Security Agency (NSA) have worked in cooperation with private corporations to intercept our communications, actively listen to our phone conversations, and exploiting flaws in at least one operating system before patches are released. We also know that the FBI has been creating terrorists for years, arming Mexican drug cartels, and spying on Americans with drones. In other words, the federal government is completely out of control and currently accountable to nobody.

Today I take the whispers that Mr. Hastings was murdered by the federal government seriously. If the federal government is willing to go so far as to develop an advanced surveillance state and create terrorists in order to drum up fear then it’s no small stretch to believe it would also knock off people who became inconvenient. We live in dark, albeit interesting, times.

Using the Legal System to Maintain Monopolies

People seem to mistaken the legal system in the United States for a justice system. The legal system isn’t setup to administer justice, it’s setup to protect monopolies. Whenever competition threatens a major corporation that corporation turns to the state for protection and the state is always willing to listen to anybody with deep pockets. Meet Rajul Zaparde, Shri Graneshram, and Kevin Petrovic the founders of FlightCar:

The idea was this: At every major airport, acres of cars sit idle, left parked by owners who have jetted off. Why couldn’t these same cars be rented to arriving travelers? Rates could be dramatically cheaper than those charged by traditional car rental companies, since, under this model, the rental company wouldn’t have to pay for or maintain the fleet.

Owners would have a fourfold incentive to participate: free parking, a free car wash, a cut of the rental fee and a guarantee their car would be waiting for them when they returned.

With financing from angel investors, FlightCar, the trio’s brainchild, began renting cars in February to passengers arriving at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), for rates start as low as $21 a day, depending on the make and model of the car.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal. I wish FlightCar would have been available where I’ve flown to because paying $21.00 for a car is far better than almost $100.00. As you can guess this business was looking to succeed so it was inevitable that somebody was going to sue them:

Foes of FlightCar, however, have started to shoot back.

It’s easy to see how traditional rental companies might not be amused to have their prices undercut. But San Francisco International is crying foul, as well.

Doug Yakel, public information officer for SFO, tells ABC News that FlightCar refuses to play by the rules that govern other rental car companies. It doesn’t pay the same fees, he says, and it doesn’t abide by the same regulations.

SFO’s objections have taken the form of a complaint filed last month against FlightCar by the city attorney of San Francisco.

When the San Francisco International (SFO) airport says FlightCar isn’t playing by the rules it really means FlightCar isn’t giving it a piece of the action:

or example, SFO wants FlightCar to pay it 10 percent of its gross profit and a $20 fee for each rental car transaction — the same as what the airport gets from every other rental car company.

The fact that FlightCar operates from a base outside airport property, Yakel says, makes no difference: SFO has three other rental companies that also operate off-property. According to the complaint, those three paid SFO over $2 million in fees in 2012. FlightCar, too, should pay, thinks Yakel.

What makes SFO think it has any right to expropriate wealth from other entities, especially when those entities aren’t on its property? While the three rental companies currently paying SFO fees may be doing so willingly, likely for preferential treatment involving direct shuttle access from the airport to the rental car center, there is no reason SFO is entitled so such fees. I’m sure SFO is worried that FlightCar will succeed and that success will drive its competitors out of business, which would deprive SFO of roughly $2 million annual.

A justice system would have thrown this complaint out the window as soon as it was informed that FlightCar isn’t stationed on SFO property. Sadly, judging by the history of similar legal issues in this country, SFO, which is owned by the city and county of San Francisco and therefore the same entities that own the local legal system, is likely to win this case or, at least, drag it on long enough to bankrupt FlightCar (in court, if you can’t beat them you can bankrupt them).

The Police Will Murder Your Dog Over Expired License Tabs

Do you want to see an example of the violence inherent in the system? I’m guessing you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog, so here you go:

LIBERTY HILL — Vinny is German Shepherd with a bullet wound on the back of his neck. On Monday, a Leander police officer shot Vinny when he says the dog and another German Sheppard came running at him while trying to serve a warrant.

“He said they were growling, and closing distance very quickly,” said Lt. Derral Partin, a spokesperson for Leander Police.

However, Vinny’s owners Renata and Chris Simmons, say Vinny has never acted aggressively.

“This dog wasn’t after him. This dog was just running up going ‘hey what are you doing?’ and they have a right to do that. This is my yard; this man should not have even been there. He could have killed my husband’s best friend,” said Renata Simmons.

The Simmons also tell KVUE — KENS 5’s sister station in Austin — they have never heard of the man that police were looking for.

The warrant was for a man named Bradly Neal Simpson, who is wanted for an expired vehicle registration.

The address on the warrant is in Cedar Park, not Liberty Hill where the Simmons have lived for nine years. However, Leander Police say their database shows Simpson’s last known address as the same one where the Simmons live.

Many people have pointed out the incorrect address as the primary failure here but the primary failure, in my opinion, is issuing a kidnapping order warrant for expired license tabs. It’s pretty messed up to send men with guns to cuff a man and lock him in a cage for failing to pay the state an annual fee to register his vehicle. What’s even more messed up is that the men sent to kidnap the offender apparently wanted to shoot something so badly that they jumped at the opportunity to put a bullet in a dog. If somebody can explain to me how this is an effective justice system I’m all ears.

Gun Rights Advocacy I Can Get Behind

Longtime readers of this blog know that I’ve given up on the political means to defend gun rights. The state has too many reasons to disarm the people to be reliable upon to uphold the right to keep and bear arms. Instead of begging politicians to carve out a few exceptions in their plan to leave the people defenseless I advocate the people perform acts of civil disobedience. When the Colorado politicians passed several restrictive gun control measures, including a prohibition against standard capacity magazines, I advocated the people of Colorado to start manufacturing standard capacity magazines and buying them from surrounding states. As it turns out, I’m not the only person following this line of thinking:

At least two formal events have popped up on Facebook that are encouraging Colorado gun owners to engage in civil disobedience and break the recent law that prohibits the sale or transfer of gun magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds.

The events encourage participants from Colorado and other surrounding states to buy, sell and swap magazines that can hold more than 15 rounds in disobedience of the law.

Actions like this stand a far better chance of rendering Colorado’s magazine ban irrelevant than any political activism. First, buying standard capacity magazines from another state means you’ll have standard capacity magazines immediately whereas relying on political activism means you may not have standard capacity magazines for years or ever. Second, thumbing your nose at the law demonstrates how impotent the state really is. The state may catch one or two people to make an example out of but, as with any law, the state will be unable to catch a vast majority of offenders. Demonstrating the state’s impotency is the best way to encourage more people to ignore its decrees.

As they say, Rosa Parks didn’t vote her way to the front of the bus. In the same way gun owners aren’t going to vote their way to more freedom. When you want freedom you must take it.

Dismissing Criticisms You Can’t Counter

A couple of weeks ago Michael Lind, an writer for Salon, thought he had the ultimate trump card against libertarianism. He asked why no libertarian countries exist. As I, and many other libertarians explained, libertarianism is a philosophy built upon the idea of non-aggression, which is ultimately incompatible with statism. Mr. Lind, looking to generate more page hits from outraged libertarians, decided he would attempt to rebut that argument:

An unscientific survey of the blogosphere turns up a number of libertarians claiming in response to my essay that, because libertarianism is anti-statist, to ask for an example of a real-world libertarian state shows a failure to understand libertarianism. But if the libertarian ideal is a stateless society, then libertarianism is merely a different name for utopian anarchism and deserves to be similarly ignored.

The caricature created by Mr. Lind is that everybody who advocates anti-statism is a utopian anarchist and therefore can be dismissed without argument. It’s a classic straw man fallacy. Apparently Mr. Lind is not able to argue against the claim so he has created a much easier caricature to argue against.

Most anarchists, myself included, are not utopian. We don’t claim that a stateless society will be perfect. There will always been some amount of theft, rape, murder, and other acts of violence. Likewise, fraud and other nonviolent transgressions will almost certainly be ever present in human society.

What we do argue is that statism, being a system based on violence, is worse than a system based on mutual cooperation. In my previous post I provided several examples of societies that succeeded without a state, one of which still exists today. The fact that such societies have existed and continue to exist today demonstrates that statelessness isn’t an impossible reality that can be dismissed without argument. If Mr. Lind doesn’t believe anarchism can succeed he needs to provide some argumentation to backup his claim. Simply labeling anarchists as utopians doesn’t count since most of us aren’t utopians.

Seeing Mr. Lind’s dismissal of anarchism also raises a question, why does he think statism is the best foundation to base a society on? Why is a society that has one group of individuals ruling over everybody else better than a society where nobody rules of anybody else better? I could never find a satisfactory answer to those questions, which is why I eventually became an anarchist.