Are we watching the Outing or the Rollout of the Panopticon... err I mean PRISM?

[Junkdrawer]

Last Saturday, before we met Ed Snowden, I asked this:

What good is building the perfect Big Brother if only the hipsters know it exists?

No matter how good the NSA is, no matter how many people they have using the new "Google for Tyrants&quot tm), you can't keep tabs on everyone and all their doings.

--- BUT ----

If everyone "knows" that Big Brother is watching....

Think about the normal trajectory for a story like this. DemocracyNow, Truthout, DU maybe Kos....

Now, what was this story's trajectory?

Something to ponder.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022973483

As usual, I found the same questions, sort of, were asked better and earlier. Think Progress this Friday:

Why The NSA’s Secret Online Surveillance Should Scare You



The reaction to the National Security Agency (NSA)’s secret online spying program, PRISM, has been polarized between seething outrage and some variant on “what did you expect?” Some have gone so far as to say this program helps open the door to fascism, while others have downplayed it as in line with the way that we already let corporations get ahold of our personal data.

That second reaction illustrates precisely why this program is so troubling. The more we accept perpetual government and corporate surveillance as the norm, the more we change our actions and behavior to fit that expectation — subtly but inexorably corrupting the liberal ideal that each person should be free to live life as they choose without fear of anyone else interfering with it.

Put differently, George Orwell isn’t who you should be reading to understand the dangers inherent to the NSA’s dragnet. You’d be better off turning to famous French social theorist Michel Foucault.

...

A citizenry that’s constantly on guard for secret, unaccountable surveillance is one that’s constantly being remade along the lines the state would prefer. Foucault illustrated this point by reference to a hypothetical prison called the Panopticon. Designed by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the Panopticon is a prison where all cells can be seen from a central tower shielded such that the guards can see out but the prisoners can’t see in. The prisoners in the Panopticon could thus never know whether they were being surveilled, meaning that they have to, if they want to avoid running the risk of severe punishment, assume that they were being watched at all times. Thus, the Panopticon functioned as an effective tool of social control even when it wasn’t being staffed by a single guard.

....

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/07/2120141/why-the-nsas-secret-online-surveillance-should-scare-you/

So, this morning, I was listening to DemocracyNow and heard this:

....

AMY GOODMAN: What’s wrong with that?

TIM SHORROCK: What’s wrong with that is that it’s a for-profit operation. Many times, you have—inside these agencies, you have contractors overseeing other contractors, contractors, you know, giving advice to the agency about how to set its policies, what kind of technology to buy. And, of course, they have relationships with all the companies that they work with or that they suggest to the leaders of U.S. intelligence.

And I think, you know, a terrible example of this is, you know, a few months ago, I wrote a cover story for The Nation magazine about the NSA whistleblowers that you’ve had on this show a few times—Tom Drake, Bill Binney and the other two—and, you know, they blew the whistle on a huge project called Trailblazer that was contracted out to SAIC that was a complete failure. And this project was designed, from the beginning, by Booz Allen, Northrop Grumman and a couple other corporations who advised the NSA about how to acquire this project, and then decided amongst themselves to give it to SAIC, and then SAIC promised the skies and never produced anything, and the project was finally canceled in 2005.
....

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/11/digital_blackwater_how_the_nsa_gives

So those NSA whistleblowers were prosecuted because they let out a terrible secret: Trailblazer (which sounds to me like PRISM's predecessor) DIDN'T WORK.

Just remember: before the dust settles, all is not always what it seems.

[Melinda]

1. If you don't read another thing on DU today, folks, you should read this.

K&R

Down the rabbit hole we go.

[Agony]

2. the commodification of the security state like everything else designed to strip cash from people

thx jd

[Generic Other]

3. I made a "Panopticon" video

[Junkdrawer]

4. I wished on a shooting star...it was a satellite....

Getting so you can't pretend technology isn't everywhere, huh?

[Generic Other]

6. Chilling

Some people just don't get it.

[Junkdrawer]

7. We're now in the Anthropocene Era...

http://climatecrocks.com/2013/06/09/the-challenge-of-water/

[noise]

5. Drake and Binney

refute the notion being pushed by politicians that NSA must vacuum all data in order to sift for "just the bad guys." They said Thin Thread was designed to protect privacy but was rejected by NSA bigshots in favor of Trailblazer.

[Junkdrawer]

8. Thank you for bring that to my attention...

refutes the "PRISM is necessary for the War on Terror" nonsense.

PRISM is all about chilling citizen protests. Expect a Keystone XL announcement soon, while the "message" is fresh in the public mind.

[frylock]

9. kickeroo

[stupidicus]

10. Does it matter

I'd ask.

I posted about this on Saturday, and largely got the usual suspects and their dodges.

For now it appears that support for this thing is following the usual tribal lines, but it is my hope that the more of a stink those/we on the left make, the more that will reconsider and recall their prior objections when the Shrub started it.

[Junkdrawer]

11. Point taken,

Post #5 by noise represents where we should be going: What is really necessary? Why all the excess? What are the real goals of all the abridgments of our rights?

What Ed Snowden's girlfriend thinks of him? We debate THAT?

[stupidicus]

12. I completely agree.

as I've noted here as well, all the Snowden stuff is irrelevant and just a distraction from the issues that matter and should be discussed.

Your first question I'd respond with the ability to investigate and track actual suspects. The last two I think are related. The reasons why are many and varied, but if they have a common denominator, at least in the short term, I'd say it's the fear on the part of the monied interests running this country in the looming social unrest coming from the right and left for different reasons -- a perfect storm of sorts. And in the longer term/decades to come, there is likely gonna be non-ideological causes due to global warming, once food and fresh water shortages create conflicts here and abroad.

The subject we've broached about control without the need for blatant punishment as the motivator, won't last when things like hardship and survival on the scale I think we'll inevitably be seeing are added to the mix. Call me silly, but I think compliance will melt away like the arctic sea ice will soon begin to, in its entirety. It can only forestall the chaos they are hoping this will help manage. They may be a little off timewise with their predictions http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver, but I think this is just part of the preparatory work/foundation for harsher means of control that will be required in the future.

I've long seen the "war on terror" as little more than pretext to hide a lotta things they'd like to keep secret and the populace ignorant about. It's unfathomable to me that it still gets more notice, time, and investments than something like AGW that dwarfs it threatwise, and partcularly given that the cost of ending most of the terrorism threat is simply to mind our own business, and to abandon the empire we can't afford.

[reusrename]

24. Your answer raises an important question: What is the behavior that makes one a suspect?

The surveillance state is more geared to identifying the "insurgents" within the population than it is to any kind of actual crime fighting. Sure, it can track and investigate suspects, but suspected of what, exactly?

If this relates at all to the global war on terror, it is connected at some very fundamental level. Perhaps the pogrom against Arab culture is rooted in nothing more than abolishing the Islamic teachings on usury. It makes more sense than anything else the media is talking about.

So how are the suspects being identified? Obviously they are being identified by their associations; targeted for the social networks they belong to. That part is clear enough. But how are these particular social networks chosen? That should be the question.


>edited for syntax

[stupidicus]

25. good point

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDUQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5hfEBupAeo4&ei=8VS-UbXUMca_ygHBxIHwCg&usg=AFQjCNF87U8zr2VtpXuHOCitGVCdiVlOcw&sig2=dKTBnOAgxl4JMU00lbHEmw&bvm=bv.47883778,d.aWc

I'm inclined to think that we're not talking about blindly looking for patterns with the metadata, etc, but rather something to be used after the fact once the subject is identified, like this http://www.propublica.org/article/defenders-of-nsa-surveillance-web-omit-most-of-mumbai-plotters-story

I think they'll be gone after over the same common denominator -- a threat to the status quo/monied interests

[suffragette]

13. There's such an ugliness at the core of this, the authoritarianism, the chilling of speech,

The denial of any right to privacy, the profiteering.

I doubt any of our tax dollars were returned after Trailblazer was shut down.

And now we are to trust that private contractors such as Booz Allen are suddenly conducting such a project competently and ethically? And divert ever more funding from social programs that actually enhance all of our safety to this?

Excellent post, Junkdrawer.

[woo me with science]

14. +1

[Junkdrawer]

15. The more the 1% screws the 99%, the more paranoid the 1% becomes...

The MORE the 1% screws the 99%, the MORE paranoid the 1% becomes...

The MORE the 1% SCREWS the 99%, the MORE PARANOID the 1% becomes...

This will not end well.

[suffragette]

16. Exactly. I keep thinking of HBGary, when they went after Wikileaks and liberal groups

For BofA and Chamber of Commerce.

They had received NSA contract money previously.

Were they using programs they had developed with federal funding to do this?

Are other contractors doing this?

[Savannahmann]

17. A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet.

An invasion of privacy, no matter what you call it, or how it is justified, has a stench that offends.

[UtahLib]

18. Excellent and thought provoking post. Thank you. nt

[backscatter712]

19. Google for Tyrants is right! This is an incredibly scary tool! n/t

[Junkdrawer]

20. "Just remember: before the dust settles, all is not always what it seems."

The dust is settling....

[Junkdrawer]

21. Sunday Morning Kick

[suffragette]

22. "Only last month, the Navy awarded Booz Allen,

among others, the first contracts in a billion-dollar project to help with “a new generation of intelligence, surveillance and combat operations.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/us/after-profits-defense-contractor-faces-the-pitfalls-of-cybersecurity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Hmm, as you note in the OP, "outing or rollout?"


Another aspect that caught my eye from this article was the push by someone who revolved from leadership at NSA to executive at a private contractor lobbying while in a government agency for changes to laws impacting privacy with resultant huge increases in profits for the company he returned to, from $25 million in 2010 to $219 million by this March.

So in 2007, as the intelligence chief, he lobbied Congress for revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eliminate some of the most burdensome rules on the N.S.A., including that it obtain a warrant when spying on two foreigners abroad simply because they were using a wired connection that flowed through a computer server or switch inside the United States.

It made no sense in the modern age, he argued. “Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant,” he told The El Paso Times in August of that year.

The resulting changes in both law and legal interpretations led to many of the steps — including the government’s collection of logs of telephone calls made in and out of the country — that have been debated since Mr. Snowden began revealing the extent of such programs. Then Mr. McConnell put them into effect.


In 2007, “Mike came back into government with a 100-day plan and a 500-day plan for the intelligence community,” said Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser. “He brought a real sense of the private sector to the intelligence world, and it needed it.”

[Junkdrawer]

23. Impossible now for all this to stay undercover. And I'm not convinced they want it secret.

Publicly traded corporations will be showing projects on their bottom lines.

The authoritarian personality is different than what most people think of as normal.

"My son fears me, and asks 'how high' when I say 'jump'." I would be deeply embarrassed to say that, but I assure you, on this Father's Day, I know people who have said it.

[Rex]

26. KICK!

Kick and Rec for the truth!