Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

No Honor Amongst Thieves

They say there’s no honor amongst thieves. It’s not surprising then to see that the biggest thief of data, the National Security Agency (NSA), has been acting less than honorable:

Staff working at America’s National Security Agency – the eavesdropping unit that was revealed to have spied on millions of people – have used the technology to spy on their lovers.

The employees even had a code name for the practice – “Love-int” – meaning the gathering of intelligence on their partners.

With all the recent news about impending war with Syria, coverage of the NSA’s misdeeds has dwindled a bit. But we’re still learning about the extent of the NSA’s operations. At this point we should assume that the NSA is spying on everybody and anybody who is in a relationship with an employee of the NSA should really consider whether or not they can trust that person.

Bloodletting

Anarchists understand that the state is behind the times. When it comes to medical science the United States is practically in the medieval period. Upon creating or hearing news that the Syrian regime may have used chemical weapons the United States diagnosed the country with a severe case of violence. Instead of applying modern medical techniques, the United States opted for an ancient medical procedure known as bloodletting. In the eyes of American politicians the disease of violence in Syria can be cured if enough blood is removed from the country. In lieu of leeches the United States plans to use cruise missiles. My only hope is that the patient recovers before they bleed out.

The Nonissue of Chelsea Manning

You have to give the state’s propaganda arm credit, they known how to cover up an important story with a unimportant one. If you were to believe the media you would think the news that the person formerly known as Bradley Manning is now Chelsea Manning is new. Truth be told, everybody who has been following this story has known that, during her deployment to Iraq, Chelsea had communications with a gender councilor. Manning even contacted her master sergeant, Paul Adkins, and informed him that she was suffering from gender dysphoria. So this news isn’t new.

But the media is giving it wall-to-wall coverage. Why? I’m unable to read minds but I’m guessing the reason major media outlets are covering this story is to discredit Manning. In the United States people suffering gender dysphoria are often treated as weird or somehow lesser. This attitude is strong enough in some people that they will now view Manning negatively no matter what good deeds she did or does.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Manning, regardless of her gender identity, is a hero. She provided proof that supported the accusations of war crimes being made against the United States. In my opinion she was executing a warrant against a suspected wrongdoer. Now that the collected evidence has been sifted through and proof has been found of criminal activity we should be focusing all of our attention of prosecuting the evildoers. Instead we’re wasting our time with nonissues, such as Manning’s preferred gender, and prosecuting the person who brought us the evidence.

Lying is Habitual

The National Security Agency (NSA) was caught lying to Congress earlier this year. As most of us know lying become habitual so it should come as no surprise that the NSA also lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the secret organization tasked with approving nefarious government surveillance activities:

Beyond the many instances of NSA malfeasance, the most damning aspect of the opinion is its lack of effect on future behavior. What does make it past the redaction details repeated wrongdoing that even the FISA Court, long perceived to be the NSA’s rubber stamp, found egregious.

A footnote on page 16 points out that the agency had “substantially misrepresented” the extent of its “major collection program” (including the harvesting of “internet transactions”) for the third time in less than three years. The same set of footnotes attacks the so-called “big business records” collection, accusing the agency of using a “flawed depiction” of how it used the data to basically fleece the FISA court since the program’s inception in 2006.

At this point the only proper corrective action is to abolish the NSA. Those calling for additional oversight are fools. Oversight is impossible if the agency being watched continuously lies to those watching it. Even if an audit committee is created it’s clear that agencies within the NSA would simply conceal incriminating information from the committee.

35 Years in a Cage for Revealing War Crimes

35 years in a cage. That’s the reward Bradley Manning received for revealing war crimes to the world:

The US soldier convicted of handing a trove of secret government documents to anti-secrecy website Wikileaks has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Historical whistleblowers, such as Daniel Ellsberg, have been targeted for informing the public of ongoing misdeeds but none were caged for several decades. When Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers the state had the decency to at least publicly admit it did something incorrectly and leave it at that. Yes, he was run through the ringer needlessly but remained free afterwards.

Bradley Manning, who did the same thing as Ellsberg, wasn’t so lucky. He decided to blow the whistle a few decades too late. America is no longer that land of the free and the government no longer pretends to have any decency left in it. This country is a police state and any dissidence is ruthlessly crushed under its heel.

Every person involved in the prosecution of Manning should be brought up on charges of aiding and abetting war criminals. Adrian Lamo, the traitorous bastard who reported Manning to the state, deserves a special place in Hell. Manning confided in him, thinking his history of being a hacker would make in somewhat sympathetic, and he threw him to the wolves. Had Lamo not done that there is a good chance that Manning wouldn’t have suffered three years of torture while he awaited a sham trial.

This entire trial has been a mockery of justice. The only reason it was called was so the state could cover up the real crimes that were revealed by Manning.

The Detention of David Miranda

Anybody who has continued to follow the surveillance state fiasco that became prominent thanks to Glenn Greenwald has probably already heard that David Miranda, Mr. Greenwald’s partner, was detained for nine hours at Heathrow airport:

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Considering the person who was detained and the length of time he was detained it’s pretty obvious what was going on. The state, embarrassed by the National Security Agency (NSA) slides that were published by Mr. Greenwald, has resorted to a tactic favored by tyrants throughout history: intimidation. What’s particularly funny is that the same state that wasn’t bashful about detaining Mr. Miranda (who, for us Americans, has a rather ironic last name) has still decided to “investigate” the matter:

Senior politicians and an independent reviewer have said police must explain why David Miranda was detained for nine hours at Heathrow Airport.

The explanation is quite simple. As enforcers for the same people demanding an explanation, the guards at Heathrow airport decided to send Mr. Greenwald a message. The message itself was quite simple, the state can get to the people Mr. Greenwald cares about the most. It’s the same tactic used by mafia henchmen in the movies. When somebody falls out of favor with the local mafia a few henchmen are dispatched to pick up that person’s children from school and drive them home. The parent understands that the mafia is letting him or her know that they could easily kill his or her children at any time. From there the parent can decide to fall into line with the mafia or risk having his or her children killed.

Detaining Mr. Miranda was a coward’s move, which are the only moves the state knows. I’m sure several higher ups in the British government ensured that Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Miranda were added to a watch list so they would be harassed whenever they traveled by air. After the target has been entered into the computer it is up to the ordinance, in this case airport security personnel, to hit its mark. The nice thing about this methodology is it allows politicians to feign innocence. They can claim to have no knowledge of the event, perform an “investigation” into the matter, and punish a handful of disposable soldiers.

Fed Threaten to Arrest Lavabit Operator for Shuttering His Business

Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of Lavabit, recently shutdown his service instead of complying with the surveillance state. Although he was legally barred from discussing the specifics of his situation it’s pretty clear he received a national security letter, which requires him to comply with federal demands and prohibits him from discussing anything related to the letter including the fact he received a letter. In all likelihood he was commanded to install a backdoor into his service so government snoops could spy on his customers, which convinced him that it was time to shutdown entirely. This story reeks of police state tactics but now that Lavabit is shutdown the story should be concluded, right? Wrong. As it turns out, Mr. Levison is being threatened with arrest even though he is no longer operating his service and, therefore, is unable to comply with any demands from federal snoops:

The owner of an encrypted email service used by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden said he has been threatened with criminal charges for refusing to comply with a secret surveillance order to turn over information about his customers.

“I could be arrested for this action,” Ladar Levison told NBC News about his decision to shut down his company, Lavabit LLC, in protest over a secret court order he had received from a federal court that is overseeing the investigation into Snowden.

[…]

Levison said he has been “threatened with arrest multiple times over the past six weeks,” but that he was making a stand on principle: “I think it’s important to point out that what prompted me to shut down my service wasn’t access to one person’s data. It was about protecting the privacy of all my users.”

What is the term for somebody who is forced to work a job even if they have no desire to do so? A slave. If the federal government is threatening to arrest people who shutter their businesses, regardless of those people’s personal reasons for doing so, then it is declaring everybody slaves. Anybody who believes America is the land of the free is deluded.

The State Cannibalizes Its Servants

Bruce Schneier has a good blog post urging companies to fight the National Security Agency’s (NSA) rampant spying:

It turns out that the NSA’s domestic and world-wide surveillance apparatus is even more extensive than we thought. Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we’ve learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it’s easier that way.

I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.

Do you remember those old spy movies, when the higher ups in government decide that the mission is more important than the spy’s life? It’s going to be the same way with you. You might think that your friendly relationship with the government means that they’re going to protect you, but they won’t. The NSA doesn’t care about you or your customers, and will burn you the moment it’s convenient to do so.

This is a point I’ve brought up to many people many times: the government doesn’t love you. Many people cooperate with the state because they view themselves as patriots, believe cooperating will make their lives easier, or value monetary gain more than principles. In the short term this seems like an effective strategy but in the long term the state has a nasty habit of turning against those who serve it.

In the state’s eyes everybody is a pawn. Nowhere is this more noticeable than politics. If you’ve worked on campaigns then you know how disposable people are. One of my favorite examples, since I’m living in Minnesota, is a particularly sketchy politicians by the name of Kurt Bills. Mr. Bills ran for office under the guise of understanding economics and he did his damnedest to court Ron Paul supporters. After receiving an endorsement from Ron Paul his job of courting became very easy indeed. What happened after Ron Paul supporters sunk tons of time and money into Kurt Bill’s campaign? They were tossed to the side of the road as he pursued social issues, endorsed Mitt Romney, and lambasted Ron Paul supporters for not voting for neo-conservatives. Political campaigns aren’t the only example of this. Law enforcement agents and members of the military are quickly disposed of when they are no longer politically convenient. If you get into bed with the state you will find yourself infected with 15 different sexually transmitted diseases after the breakup.

As Bruce Schneier points out, the companies currently cooperating with the state will soon find themselves out in the cold:

It will be the same with you. There are lots more high-tech companies who have cooperated with the government. Most of those company names are somewhere in the thousands of documents that Edward Snowden took with him, and sooner or later they’ll be released to the public. The NSA probably told you that your cooperation would forever remain secret, but they’re sloppy. They’ll put your company name on presentations delivered to thousands of people: government employees, contractors, probably even foreign nationals. If Snowden doesn’t have a copy, the next whistleblower will.

As Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are finding out, once your cooperation with the NSA becomes public the NSA will do nothing to help you dig yourself out of the hole.

The Plot of Michael Hasting’s Death Thickens

Almost two months ago Michael Hastings, the reporter who effectively ended Stanley McChrystal’s career, died in a mysterious car crash. Previous evidence lead many, including myself, to ask whether or not Mr. Hastings was killed by the United States government. Hastings believed he was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and claimed to be on the verge of another breaking story. That story, as it turns out, may have involved the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Brennan:

This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter’s sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).

The plot thickens.