1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint – Page 41

Nothing Changes Through Politics

A lot of anger was created when Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was actively spying on every American. If one believed in the political system they would likely be lead to believe that a majority of senators would move to shutdown the NSA’s Stasi-esque activities. Once again those individuals have been proven wrong:

In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.

What should be taken away from this vote is that no meaningful change can be achieved through the political system. The United States like to sell itself as the land of the free and the home of the brave, but there is nothing less free than widespread surveillance and nothing more cowardly than hiding behind a bully, in this case the state, in the hopes he will beat up anybody who may pose a threat to you. This vote merely reinforced the fact that the United States is the land of the subservient and home of the fearful.

Fortunately, there are other options. Instead of relying on a bunch of politicians to grant you freedom from Big Brother you can make use of currently available technologies to make yourself free immediately.

The Tyrant of New York City Continues His Power Trip

Michael Bloomberg is famous in the gun rights community due to his zealous advocacy of gun control. As his reign in New York City continues Bloomberg’s insanity is becoming more obvious to people outside of the gun rights community. A bill was recently introduce in New York City that was supposed to curtail the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) practice of stopping people and frisking them (I’m sure it’s only coincidental that a vast majority of the individuals stopped by NYPD are people whose skin color is anything darker than off-white). Bloomberg didn’t like the idea because it got in the way of his power trip so he put the kibosh on it:

Two politically charged New York City bills to rein in the NYPD’s use of controversial stop-and-frisk tactics were vetoed Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

He slammed both bills — one to create an NYPD inspector general and another to allow people to sue over racial profiling by cops — as a boon to criminals and terrorists.

The “dangerous and irresponsible” measures “would make New Yorkers less safe,” he wrote in his veto message.

There is some good news though:

The bills appear to have enough support in the City Council to override the mayor’s vetoes, but Bloomberg has mounted a blitz to block the racial-profiling bill, which passed with 34 votes — exactly the number needed to override a veto.

Although I wouldn’t put it past Bloomberg to arrange for one of his opponents in the City Council to have an “accident.” The man is obviously insane and as his reign comes to an end (he can’t run for mayor of New York City again unless the city’s term limit laws are changed) he’s becoming more and more unstable.

Even Journalists Must Bow to the State

How many times have you been told that the United States offers the most press freedom and journalist protections in the world? It’s bullshit, of course. If the press was really free journalists would be able to maintain the anonymity of their sources because the right of free speech should also include the right to keep quiet. Here in Soviet America a journalist only has the right to remain silent when the state says so:

WASHINGTON — In a major ruling about press freedoms, a divided federal appeals court on Friday ruled that James Risen, an author and reporter for The New York Times, must testify in the criminal trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official charged with providing him with classified information.
National Twitter Logo.

In a 118-page set of opinions, two members of a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va. — the court whose decisions cover the Pentagon and the C.I.A. — ruled that the First Amendment provides no protection to reporters who receive unauthorized leaks from being forced to testify against the alleged sources who leaked to them.

If you’re a journalist who is pushing the state’s agenda you can be reasonably assured that your rights will be protected. If you’re a journalist who isn’t towing the company line you can be reasonably assured that your rights will be violated.

The Numbers Game

Libertarians often point out that the government in unable to do anything efficiently. In most cases that is true but there is one thing governments are very efficient at, killing people:

A secret document obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals for the first time the Pakistan government’s internal assessment of dozens of drone strikes, and shows scores of civilian casualties.

The United States has consistently claimed only a tiny number of non-combatants have been killed in drone attacks in Pakistan – despite research by the Bureau and others suggesting that over 400 civilians may have died in the nine-year campaign.

The internal document shows Pakistani officials too found that CIA drone strikes were killing a significant number of civilians – and have been aware of those deaths for many years.

Of 746 people listed as killed in the drone strikes outlined in the document, at least 147 of the dead are clearly stated to be civilian victims, 94 of those are said to be children.

I’m guessing these higher numbers are due to the fact that the creators of the document and the Pakistani government aren’t using the new definition of militant. They should get a newer edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.

The State is Cutting Out the Middle Man

For as long as I’ve been alive the mainstream media outlets have served as the propaganda arm for the state. I’ve always wondered why the state relied on third parties to spread its propaganda. As it turns out there were laws in place that prohibited the state from directly disseminating propaganda (it did it anyways, it was just more subtle). Those laws have sunset and the state is now looking to cut the mainstream media middlemen out of the equation:

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government’s mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.

Who says the state can’t become more efficient?

Fed’s Asked to Avoid Def Con

In a rather hilarious turn of events Dark Tangent, the organizer of the Def Con security conference, has kindly asked the Feds to avoid the event:

The request was posted to the main Def Con webpage by Jeff Moss, the founder of the hacking conference.

In the past, he said, the convention had been an “open nexus” where government security staffers and law enforcement agents could freely mix and share ideas with the other hackers, researchers and security professionals that attended.

“Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect,” he said, a state of affairs that had led to an exchange of information that had seemed mutually beneficial.

However, wrote Mr Moss, many people now questioned that free exchange of ideas in the wake of ongoing disclosures about the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme, which, since 2007, has been scooping up huge amounts of data about people’s online activity.

As a result, “it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a ‘timeout’ and not attend Def Con this year,” he wrote.

I guess this year’s Spot the Fed contest will be far more exciting than in years past. It also stands to reason that any employee of a federal agency will receive extra special attention from any black hat hackers at the event. Hackers, in general, don’t appreciate being spied on and have a tendency to return the favor. Since the federal government has been spying on everybody it wouldn’t surprise me if the attendees at Def Con decided to spy on federal employees or attempt to compromise any electronic devices they bring along (after all, this is the same conference where a team demonstrated how easy it is to intercept Global System for Mobile (GSM) phone calls).

The Danger of Databases

Gun control advocates often find gun owners’ opposition to databases irrational. In the minds of gun control advocates a database of gun owners, or at least people prohibited from owning firearms, is a good idea because it can decrease the proliferation of firearms in society. They are generally unconcerned with possibilities of abuse because in their eyes the state is a benevolent entity that obediently serves the people (unless it reduces the number of restrictions on gun ownership, then they believe it is an evil monster controlled by the National Rifle Association).

Gun owners realize those assumptions are incorrect. Databases do nothing to decrease the proliferation of firearms in society because individuals with enough interest in acquiring firearms will find a way to do so in a manner that bypasses any databases. Furthermore, gun owners realize that databases in the state’s hands will be abused:

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s billed by the FBI as “the lifeline of law enforcement” — a federal database used to catch criminals, recover stolen property and even identify terrorism suspects.

But authorities say Edwin Vargas logged onto the restricted system and ran names for reasons that had nothing to do with his duties as a New York Police Department detective. Instead, he was accused in May of looking up personal information on two fellow officers without their knowledge.

[…]

NYPD recruits are warned that “if you misuse or you access information in an inappropriate manner … you are in serious trouble — such as being prosecuted, being fired and also big fines,” a police academy instructor testified at the trial of Gilbert Valle, who was convicted in March in a bizarre plot to kidnap, cook and cannibalize women.

In addition, an FBI compliance unit conducts spot audits to examine users’ “policies, procedures, and security requirements,” the FBI said in a statement. The FBI also requires each state to have its own audit programs and claims that “malicious misuse is not commonly discovered.”

But both the instructor testifying at the Valle trial and an Internal Affairs Bureau investigator who took the witness stand in an earlier case have conceded that officers can easily circumvent safeguards.

Databases will always, I repeat always, be abused by the state.

Police Open Fire Because They Mistook a Cell Phone for a Gun

Advocates of gun control want to grant a monopoly on gun ownership to the state. If they managed to get their way people like this would be the only individuals who could either own guns or determine who can own guns:

Las Vegas police responded to a call of a suicidal man who pulled out a cell phone and pointed it at them, perhaps to record them, prompting an officer to shoot at him.

The officer missed but the man fell to the ground anyway where police arrested him.

“The individual reached into his pocket, he pulled out a dark object, pointed it at the sergeant in a manner like he would be firing a pistol,” explained Deputy Chief Al Salinas of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in the above video.

Thank Odin that police officers are notoriously bad shots. Unfortunately they’re also very bad at determining whether or not an object in somebody’s hand is a weapon or not. Personally, I’ve never mistook a cell phone for a firearm before and when somebody pulls out a cell phone and points it at me my first assumption is that they’re recording me.

We all know how this case will turn out, the officers who opened fire will be given a paid vacation until this fiasco blows over. After the media is done covering the incident the officers will be cleared of any wrongdoing and will return to the streets where they can open fire on another unarmed person. Meanwhile the person who was shot at will likely be charged:

The man, who has not been identified, will most likely be charged with assault with a deadly weapon as well as battery with a deadly weapon because prior to the shooting, he had been throwing landscaping rocks at the officers, according to Salinas.

Welcome to America.

State Spying Expands Beyond the Internet and Phone Network

When Edward Snowden provided proof that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on Americans some people began to blame technology. They said such rampant spying wasn’t possible before the advent of the Internet. What was even more foolish were the claims that old forms of communications, namely the postal service, were far safer than online communications. As it turns out the United States Postal Service (USPS) has been recording every letter sent through its system:

WASHINGTON — Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Internet services can be taken overseas to jurisdictions outside of the NSA’s direct control but letters can only be legally sent in the United States through the USPS. This monopoly on first class mail makes the postal system even more vulnerable than Internet services in my opinion.

In the end this story proves that there’s no safe avenue for communications in the United States. Every channel is being observed by the state and we must always assume anything we send is being intercepted and recorded. Encrypt your shit people.

More Information Released About the NSA’s PRISM Program

The Washington Post has released more slides about the National Security Agency’s PRISM program. When news of PRISM first broke many of the companies listed in the initially released slides, including Facebook and Apple, claimed they weren’t actively participating in any such program. The newly released slides refutes those refutations. According to those slides the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has hardware located on the premises of PRISM participants:

The FBI uses government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company, such as Microsoft or Yahoo and pass it without further review to the NSA.

PRISM simply accesses those FBI systems. In other words, PRISM participants can claim to not be participating in the program because the program is actually querying FBI systems. Likewise, the NSA can claim they have no direct access to PRISM participant servers. It’s a wonderful web of denial that the state has managed to setup.