1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint – Page 44

The War on Privacy Explodes

After Wednesday’s reveal that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been indiscriminately spying on all of Verizon’s customers things have exploded. Yesterday morning the White House came out and justifed the NSA’s actions:

A senior administration official said the court order pertains only to data such as a telephone number or the length of a call, and not the subscribers’ identities or the content of the telephone calls.

Such information is “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States,” the official said, speaking on the condition of not being named.

“It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” the official added.

The revelation raises fresh concerns about President Barack Obama’s handling of privacy and free speech issues. His administration is already under fire for searching Associated Press journalists’ calling records and the emails of a Fox television reporter as part of its inquiries into leaked government information.

That justification, to put it frankly, is weak. A subscriber’s phone number is their identity because each phone number is unique and is almost always associated with only one person. Saying that the NSA is only collecting phone numbers but not identifying information is no different than saying the NSA is collecting Social Security numbers but not identifying information. When you’re collecting data that is associated with a specific person you are collecting identifying information.

Even if we assume the statement is true and the NSA has no idea who possess what phone number we’re still left wondering how they can tell whether or not somebody is calling a known terrorist if they don’t know what the known terrorist’s phone number is. If they only know the terrorist’s number then they can easily obtain the identities of the terrorist’s contacts by asking Verizon for the identities of the persons who possess the called numbers. In other words the NSA is collecting identifying information no matter how you look at it.

Furthermore, any terrorist possessing even a minute amount of intelligence isn’t going to use a phone number tied to their person. Instead they will use another person’s phone (either by asking to borrow their phone or by using a cloned SIM card) or buy a disposable phone with cash. Either way the identity of the terrorist won’t be associated with the phone number so it will be almost impossible to identify who the terrorist is calling. At most the NSA will be able to identify extremely stupid terrorists, bust them, and give the remaining terrorists a reason to educate themselves and, in so doing, become far more difficult to capture or, in all likelihood, kill (that’s what the current administration enjoys doing most).

The White House is, as usual, feeding us bullshit. But that’s not the end of the bullshit train. In order to keep up the appearance that strong disagreement exists between the Republicans and Democrats you would think a powerful Republican would come forth and criticize the Obama administration for allowing indiscriminate spying on Americans. Instead one of the more influential Republicans came forward and defended the NSA’s actions:

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is “glad” that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.

Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job. The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.

I’m not surprised to hear a state agent saying he’s OK with the state collecting his information. He is on the safe side of the gun pointed at our heads after all. I’m even less surprised to see Dianne Feinstein is in favor of the NSA’s expansive spying operations:

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Feinstein asid. “This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress.

Feinstein said she could not answer whether other phone companies have had their records sifted through as Verizon has.

“I know that people are trying to get to us,” she said. “This is the reason why the FBI now has 10,000 people doing intelligence on counterterrorism. This is the reason for the national counterterrorism center that’s been set up in the time we’ve been active. its to ferret this out before it happens. “It’s called protecting America.”

What makes Feinstein’s comment interesting is her admittance that Congress was briefed on the operation. If any members of congress feign surprise we now know to call them on their bullshit.

Being a nation of laws somebody is obviously going to perform an investigation into this matter, right? Although it sounds like there will be an investigation it doesn’t sound like it will be an investigation into the NSA:

NEW YORK –- The U.S. Department of Justice may try seeking out the source of a bombshell article that revealed National Security Agency surveillance of millions of Americans, according to NBC News Justice correspondent Pete Williams.

[…]

Williams, a well-sourced reporter who just interviewed Attorney General Eric Holder last night about the leak investigations, jumped in with an answer.

“I was told last night: definitely there will be a leak investigation,” he said.

Before the state ascertained the identity of the person who leaked what is now referred to as the Collateral Murder video there was plenty of opportunity to investigate the pilots of the gunship that killed those Iraqi civilians and Reuters reporters. Instead the current administration moved to investigate the source of the leak. The person who leaked the video was Bradley Manning and, once identified, he was arrested, held in solitary confinement, and is now being put on trial for aiding the enemy. If the source that leaked the court order that revealed the NSA’s indiscriminate spying is discovered I’m sure he or she will be arrested, held in solitary confinement, and tried for aiding the enemy as well.

Bitching about this isn’t going to accomplish anything so we must ask what can be learned from this. I think there are several lessons. First, it’s obvious that the current administration is corrupt to the core. While Obama promised the most transparent government in history his administration has been shrouded in secrecy and embroiled in continuous scandals. His administration has also demonstrated that they prioritize hunting down people who leak classified information above hunting down criminals within the government’s employ. Second, we can no longer afford to communicate through unsecured channels. Every piece of data we send to each other must be encrypted and anonymized to prevent the government’s prying eyes from violating our privacy. Third, those crazy conspiracy theorists who have been telling us that the government is spying on our every communication aren’t so crazy. We must now assume that they are correct and that the government is spying on our every communication because, as this most recent leak shows, the government’s spying operations are vast and giving absolutely no regard to due process. Fourth, there is another war being waged by the federal government, a war against our privacy. The only way to defend ourselves in this war is to violate the government’s privacy in turn. Our violations of the government’s privacy will be met with arrests, imprisonments, and possibly executions but will also cause its legitimacy to erode.

The government will continue to use technology to suppress us but that very same technology can be used to suppress the government. We must wield technology more effectively than the government in order to keep our privacy.

Revealing the State’s War on Privacy

Bradley Manning collected a great deal of classified government information and released it to Wikileaks. In so doing he effectively stripped some of the state’s privacy and is now standing trial for his actions (although his trial is almost certainly for show not to determine guilt). As I said, I support Manning’s actions because the state is waging a war against our privacy. As time goes on we’re learning more and more about how extensive this war really is. Yesterday it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA), on of the most vicious combatants in this war, has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans :

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

Although we’ve known that the NSA has been spying on our phone calls for some time but the release of this court order gives us a better idea of how extensive its spying is. Once again I’ll iterate that a government that doesn’t trust the general population enough to respect their privacy should not be given the privilege of privacy itself. So long as the state continues to violate our privacy it is right to violate its privacy. I will also point out that extensive spying operations such as this are prime examples of why all communications should be encrypted, which is why I started the Encrypt Everything series. Increasing the number of people who use cryptographic tools to prevent prying eyes from seeing their communications will render large scale spying operations, such as those being performed by the state, far less effective.

The Distraction of the Week

Bitter over at Shall Not Be Questioned notes that the critters in Congress are talking about bringing up gun control measures again.

At this point I’m thoroughly convinced that gun control is serving as nothing more than a distraction. With the recent military sex abuse scandal, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal, trial of Bradley Manning, , talks of arming potential al-Qaeda operatives in Syria, reveal that four American citizens have been assassinated with drones, Supreme Court decision dictating that Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) samples can be taken from anybody being arrested, and various other scandals the federal government is currently involved in it seems as though Congress, the executive branch, and the judicial branch are desperate to get the spotlight off of their misdeeds. Gun rights are an emotional issue here in the United States and emotional issues serve as the best distractions.

My guess is Congress is hoping people will get riled up about gun control and ignore all the other shit that is currently going on in Washington DC. On the upside, if my theory is correct, they are unlikely to pass any gun control legislation because that would mean an end to the distraction. With the way things are going in the City of the Damned all three branches of the federal government needs to extend the distraction as long as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new call for gun control either results in no further action or results in debates that conclude when the various ongoing scandals finally drop out of the news.

Bradley Manning’s Trial, The State’s Retaliation in the War on Privacy

Yesterday was the opening day for, what is almost certainly, a show trial. This trial is a retaliatory strike in the state’s war on privacy. Most of you probably know that I’m referring to the trial of Bradley Manning, who stands accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks. There has been a great deal of debate amongst those paying attention to the trial regarding the validity of Manning’s actions. One side of the debate believes Manning’s actions qualify as treason while the other side believes Manning did the right thing. I’m in the latter camp. As an anarchist I don’t recognize borders, flags, or anything else related to a state as being valid and therefore I dismiss the charge of treason as a fictitious decree created by the state for the expressed purpose of punishing any dissenters. But even if that weren’t the case I would still support Manning. Why? Because the state initiated a war on privacy and, in so doing, lost its right to privacy.

The United States government has waged a war against our privacy since its inception. Every law it passes requires a violation of our privacy. Once something that was previously legal is declared illegal the power of warrants increase. Warrants are little more than a legal nicety that allows the state to violate the privacy of individuals. With a simple piece of paper in hand agents of the state can enter a home without legal contest and search for any material listed on said piece of paper.

After the prohibition on alcohol was passed warrants could be obtained simply because the state suspected an individual was in possession of or making alcohol. When cannabis was declared illegal the power of warrants increased again in order to empower law enforcement agents to search homes of people suspected of possessing or growing cannabis. Tax regulations grant the state the power to search through financial records looking for violations. Laws prohibiting people from sharing copyrighted works allow state agents to search people’s homes and electronic devices for infringing material. But things have gotten much worse since September 11, 2001.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were the justification used by the state to pass the PATRIOT Act. Amongst other things the PATRIOT Act authorized state agents to setup wiretaps without a warrant, spy on financial records under the claim of stopping the flow of funds to terrorist organizations, and issuing National Security Letters that require service providers to hand over customer data to the state while prohibiting those providers from informing their customers that their information has been demanded. By passing the PATRIOT Act the state effectively said that we the people no longer had the right to privacy. Since then the state has continued to renew expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act and pushing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) twice. When CISPA failed to pass the first time Mr. Obama issued a series of executive orders that emulated much of what CISPA purported to do.

Make no mistake, the state fired the first shot and, in so doing, forced the people to take defensive actions. I’m a firm believer in proportional responses to aggression. If somebody initiates force against you then you have the right to use proportional retaliatory force in response. When the state violates the people’s privacy I believe violating its privacy is a proportional response.

I don’t care what information is stolen from the state so long as the state wants to keep it secret. As long as it continues its war against our privacy we should respond by violating its privacy. Bradley Manning did the right thing in my opinion. He took the state’s right to privacy away after it took our right to privacy away. It’s unfortunate that he is now, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner of war but I hope his example sets a precedence that leads more state agents to leak classified information.

The Definition of Self-Defense According to Obama

Shoot or don’t shoot scenarios are always fun to ponder over. Here I will present two separate scenarios for you to consider. Your goal is to decide whether or not a scenario qualifies as a self-defense situation. After presenting the scenarios I will present Obama’s answers.

For the first scenario we will pretend you live in a small neighborhood where two of your neighbors are feuding. What started the feud happened so long ago nobody besides the two neighbors can remember the exact circumstance. Finally, after putting up with their shit for a long time, you decide to do something about it. You decide to form an alliance with the neighbor that lives closer to you. After your attempts to arm your closest neighbor fail to resolve the ongoing feud you decide to take matters into your own hands. One night you kick in the further neighbor’s door and shoot one of the family members in the face. At this point another family member returns fire. If you being shooting at that family member are you performing an act of self-defense?

For the second scenario we will continue to assume that you live in a small neighborhood but this time you don’t have to suffer feuding neighbors. After living in the neighborhood for a short while you get into an altercation with one of your neighbors. The cause of the altercation isn’t important but it was trivial. One night you catch the neighbor you’re fighting with setting your house on fire. Fortunately you caught the act in time to run inside, grab a fire extinguisher, and put the fire out before it spread too far. Would it be a valid case of self-defense if you then grabbed your gun, walked over to a different neighbor’s house, and shot members of his family?

According to Mr. Obama both of those scenarios are valid cases of self-defense:

Mr Obama also defended the use of drones to kill four US citizens.

“We are at war with an organisation that right now would kill as many Americans as they could if we did not stop them first,” he said in Thursday’s address at the National Defense University in Washington DC.

“So this is a just war – a war waged proportionally, in last resort, and in self-defence.”

After causing grief for many nations through proxy wars with Russia and clandestine operations to topple existing governments the United States is now claiming self-defense as the justification for bombing children in the Middle East. The United States has allied itself with one side of various conflicts, armed those sides, and outright killed members of the other side when their allies failed to take out their opposition. In response to 9/11 the United States decided to invade Iraq as a retaliatory strike against al-Qaeda, who were chiefly operating inside of Afghanistan.

War is peace and initiating aggression is self-defense.

Nobody Likes the Tax Man

As it turns out Apple isn’t the only organization that avoids paying taxes. Another well-known organization is actively trying to avoid the tax man but it’s not a greedy capitalist private enterprise, it’s a benevolent egalitarian public organization called the National Security Agency (NSA):

Under a bill the 2013 Utah Legislature passed, the National Security Agency’s new Bluffdale data center might be taxed on the millions of dollars of energy it is expected to consume, providing a potential windfall for an obscure state authority.

The NSA is protesting the possible tax, even though a Utah attorney said he informed the agency about HB325, and the top U.S. electronic spy agency voiced no opposition until an official emailed Gov. Gary Herbert’s staff weeks after Herbert signed the measure.

“We are quite concerned [about] this,” Harvey Davis, NSA director of installations and logistics, wrote in the April 26 email, obtained through a Utah open records law request.

In a follow-up email Davis sent 31 minutes later, he explained: “The long and short of it is: Long-term stability in the utility rates was a major factor in Utah being selected as our site for our $1.5 billion construction at Camp Williams. HB325 runs counter to what we expected.”

You see, when an evil private enterprise that provides goods and services people voluntarily buy tries to keep its wealth it is an evil plunderer that the state sees necessary to destroy. When an evil public enterprise that spies on the general populace and backs up its existence at the point of a gun attempts to keep its ill-gotten booty the rules change. Suddenly exceptions must be made so taxes can be avoided.

This story demonstrates succinctly that there are different sets of rules. One set of rules applies to non-state agencies and another applies to the state itself.^* When non-state agencies fail to pay taxes they are persecuted and told that they must pay their “fair share.” When a state agency is faced with a tax bill it protests, screams, and files official complaints to avoid paying them. Somehow they don’t have a “fair share” to pay. One thing is certain, nobody likes the tax man.

^*There is also a third set of rules that applies to us lowly serfs. Fortunately it is a simple document that only contains one rule. Unfortunately that sentences is, “You are the slaves, we are the masters, and you must obey every one of our decrees or suffer whatever punishment we see fit.”

Minnesota Loses 11,600 Jobs, Unemployment Goes Down, Math Stops Making Sense

According to the Star Tribune the State of Minnesota lost 11,600 jobs last month but, somehow, unemployment went down:

Minnesota’s job market posted its second straight negative month, shedding 11,400 jobs in April, the state said Thursday.

The biggest job losses were in trade, transportation and utilities, which shed 5,700 jobs, according to figures released by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 5.3 percent in April, its lowest point since May 2008 and well below the U.S. rate of 7.5 percent in April. The March figures were revised upward from 5,200 jobs lost to 3,300 jobs lost.

One may wonder how an economy could lose jobs and experience a drop in unemployment. Logic would dictate that unemployment would go up as the number of people without jobs also went up. What we’re seeing here is another example of the state cooking the books in order to make unemployment look better than it actually is. I’ve touched on how the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses what is called the U3 unemployment statistic in order to make unemployment look better than it actually is. Another trick often used by statist statisticians, such as the ones employed by the State of Minnesota, is seasonal adjustments.

Seasonal adjustments, as the name implies, involves removing drops in unemployment caused by seasonal changes from the official statistic. The theory goes something like this:

During certain seasons there is a spike in employment during the rush to hire needed seasonal help. Christmas, for example, generally involves a spike in employment as stores try to have enough staff to deal with the Christmas season rush.
After these seasons conclude stores, who no longer need the additional help, can the seasonal employees.
Since this is seasonal it can be safely ignored when creating unemployment statistics because those employees aren’t actually unemployed, they’re, err, um, look over there!
…
Prosperity!

In other words if your unemployment statistic is looking bad you merely have to write off a large section of unemployed people as a seasonal phenomenon and your unemployment statistic will suddenly look better! Further adding precedence to this scam is the fact that there are multiple seasonal adjustment calculations to choose from! If one of the calculations isn’t giving you the statistic you want you can simply use a different one. Eventually you’ll find a calculation that will give you the statistic you desire.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, and unemployment is employment.

Statism Lowers the Quality of Living

The more power the state obtains the lower the quality of life for the general populace is. Power production is one of the most heavily regulated markets. Although the state claims it must regulate power production in order to reduce pollution its interests in the market involves protecting its cronies from competition. Consider the Clean Air Act, which we’re told was passed to ensure better air quality. In actuality it was designed in such a way as to drum up business for expensive sulfur dioxide scrubbers and protect eastern coal producers. From Political Environmentalism by Terry L. Anderson:

Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA had established a policy whereby all coal plants were required to meet a set emission standard for sulfur dioxide. The original standard of 1.2 pounds of sulfur dioxide (SO,) per million British thermal units (BTUs) of coal could be met in a variety of ways.

Despite its apparent flexibility, this regulation had disparate regional effects. Most of the coal in the eastern United States is relatively “dirty” due to its high sulfur content. Western coal, on the other hand, is far cleaner. Using western coal enabled utilities and other coal-burning facilities to meet the federal standard without installing costly scrubbers to reduce the sulfur content of their emissions. At the time, scrubbers were so expensive that many midwestern firms found it less expensive to haul tons of low-sulfur coal from the West than to utilize closer, dirtier deposits.

When the Clean Air Act was revised in 1977, it was time for the eastern coal producers to get even. As Ackerman and Hassler (1981) noted, eastern producers of high-sulfur coal elected “to abandon their campaign to weaken pollution standards and take up the cudgels for the costliest possible clean air solution-universal scrubbing” (31). The result was a “bizarre coalition of environmentalists and dirty coal producers” that successfully advanced a new set of environmental standards that probably did more harm than good in much of the country (Ackerman and Hassler 1981, 27).

Under the 1977 law, coal plants had to meet both an emission standard and a technology standard. In particular, the law contained new-source-performance standards (NSPS) that forced facilities to attain a “percentage reduction in emissions.” In other words, no matter how clean coal was, a new facility would still be required to install scrubbers. This law destroyed low-sulfur coal’s comparative advantage, particularly in the Midwest and the East. If all new facilities had scrubbers, then there was no need to transport low-sulfur coal across the country. Less expensive, high-sulfur coal from the East would work just as well, even if it produced substantially greater emissions.

The result of such regulations is predictable, power production facilities pay more money to install sulfur dioxide scrubbers and we, the consumers, pay more money for electricity so the power production facility can pay off the scrubbers. We end up getting less electricity for more money and suffer a hit in our overall qualify of life because of it.

Now consider the United Kingdom (UK). That state’s rule over power production has led to a shortage of power. Being a state the only solution seen by the UK is rationing:

Fridges and freezers in millions of British homes will automatically be switched off without the owner’s consent under a ‘Big Brother’ regime to reduce the strain on power stations.

The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity.

Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies. They are pushing for the move as green energy sources such as wind farms are less predictable than traditional power stations, increasing the risk of blackouts.

The result of the UK’s unwillingness to expand their power production with reliable sources may lead to massive amounts of food spoilage as refrigerators across wide swaths of the country shut themselves down and people dying of heatstroke because their air conditioners automatically shut off when it was 115 degrees outside. Once again the state’s desire to control everything is leading to a drop in the overall qualify of life and, in a rather ironic twist, a potential waste of food, which isn’t a green policy at all. Oh, and to add insult to injury, people living in the UK will be footing the bill for the development and installation of the technology that will allow the power facilities to automatically disable your appliances.

Why wouldn’t the power production companies demand to be allowed to build more reliable production facilities? Because that would cost them money and so long as they enjoy the state-provided protection from competition they have no motivation to actually spend money to improve their product. Who would want to spend millions to build a new power plant when they can charge more money for the same amount of electricity thanks to state-mandated rationing? Nobody, that’s who.

How the Tables Have Turned

For the longest time news agencies have enjoyed privileges above and beyond what us mere serfs enjoy. When you look at the very biased news that pretends to be unbiased it’s not hard to see why these agencies have enjoyed special privileges, they were toting the statist line. Now things are beginning to change. The current administration, who many news agencies shilled for, is finally targeting journalists:

The Associated Press has described the US government’s secret seizure of its journalists’ telephone records as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion”.

Chief executive Gary Pruitt said AP was told on Friday the justice department had gathered records of outgoing calls from more than 20 phone lines.

The press are finally experiencing what the rest of us have been experiencing for decades, a complete loss of privacy and liberty. I hope the press responds but airing out the state’s dirty laundry but I doubt that will happen. In all likelihood the Associated Press will roll over after a little complaining because that’s what people in this world do today.

We’re Number One

Although this news is likely to excite my “tough on crime” friends I find it rather disgusting, especially for a nation that calls itself the freest on Earth:

“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today,” writes the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. “Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America – more than 6 million – than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”

Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That’s not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain – with a rate among the highest – has 153….

That’s right, the United States, the supposed bastion of freedom on this planet, has more people in its prison system than the Soviet Union did under Stalin. Anybody who has paid attention to the prison-industrial complex in the United States is unlikely to be surprised by this news. We’re talking about an industry where children have been sold to prisons so those prisons could enjoy the benefits of young slave labor. It is rather sickening that people still claim the United States is some kind of bastion of freedom considering we have more people in cages than any other nation, including some of the most tyrannical regimes.