Total Surveillance: The Response to Snowden’s Leak Ignores the Reality of Political Repression

[Purveyor]

by KATE EPSTEIN
Although Edward Snowden’s recent revelations about the breadth and scope of the surveillance-industrial complex didn’t add many facts to the public record of the ongoing post-9/11 security state saga, it certainly brought the issue to the forefront, forcing everyone to confront the stark realities of disappearing privacy and diminishing liberties. Many who defend the government (and corporate) spying argue that the right to privacy and anonymous free speech must be balanced against safety and security.

Many of these defenders are comfortable with government surveillance as long as the government doesn’t abuse its ability to spy and collect citizens’ data. If it will help catch terrorists before they attack, the argument goes, then it’s worth it, even if the idea of total surveillance is kind of creepy and we all wish this wasn’t the trade off we have to make. I agree with this commenter, responding to David Simon’s June 7th blog post in which the former Baltimore Sun journalist and Wire creator defended the NSA near-total surveillance, primarily because, Simon claims, there has been no evidence that the government has abused its surveillance power:

I’m not sure that actually having lived in a totalitarian society, like I have in communist Bulgaria, is a prerequisite to grasping that total surveillance, or the fear of it, kills free expression, and at some point even thinking. Self-censorship becomes way of life. And the power of the secret police that hears and knows everything and can pressure anyone into submission is huge. The Stasi strongmen could have only dreamt of the richness of detail Google and Facebook are providing to the NSA. Not to mention the automated analytical tools that are already available it [sic] are currently being developed. The possibilities of power misuse are just too big to ignore.

True enough in theory, and even scarier when we consider the overwhelming evidence that at least one goal the corporate-state surveillance apparatus is fulfilling is the political repression of activists on both the left and the right who advocate fundamental, democratic change to a badly broken system.

MORE...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/28/total-surveillance/

[MotherPetrie]

1. K&R

[flamingdem]

2. Putin has me surveilled in this field here

It's a Libertarian Retraining Camp. Glenn get me outta here! Julian!?

[GeorgeGist]

5. nevermind

[bvar22]

6. Only one problem with your graphic:

Putin was referring to the Obama Administration when he said this while laughing as he derided the US demands to hand over Snowden,
and the Round-the-World laughing stock it has become after being rebuffed by both Russia and China.

I personally avoid links to a disreputable source like the NY Post,
but since you have opened this trash can,
and dug through the garbage,
it is only fair for the readers at DU to examine your source so they they can determine for themselves the quality, credibility, context, and origin of what you choose to post here:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/that_swine_putin_wants_to_squeal_7l1T5bVjEAJL5JIMKgz74N

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. K&R

Cue the NSA moles, FBI operatives, the stupid and the haters!

[marions ghost]

4. Anti-fracking groups followed and monitored:

From the article:

Fracking, Tracking, and Psyops

Several recent exposés have revealed the extent to which corporations and the government have also inappropriately used surveillance against peaceful environmental activists in an attempt to quell dissent and intimidate.

Private security firm The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), for example, was including the activities of a peaceful anti-fracking group in Pennsylvania in the company’s intelligence bulletins, which were then distributed by the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security to local police chiefs, to state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and to the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms.

News of this surveillance and intelligence sharing broke when James Powers, the director of the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, mistakenly sent an email to a retired Air Force officer and anti-fracking activist he believed was sympathetic to the industry. Powers wrote: “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.” The surveillance had a chilling effect on the group, causing membership to dwindle when participants worried their phones had been tapped, that their emails were monitored, and that they were being followed on their routes to work as teachers, nurses, and doctors.

The fracking industry has a history of tracking, intimidating, and tricking skeptical landowners who threaten its profitability. At the “Media & Stakeholder Relations: Hydraulic Fracturing Initiative 2011” conference in Houston, Fracking company Range Resources’ public relations chief confirmed that the company had hired Army and Marine veterans with combat experience in psychological warfare to influence communities in which Range drills for gas, saying “We have several former PSYOPs [Psychological Operations] folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments. Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of PSYOPs in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.”

Because corporations conduct much of the government’s surveillance for them (by 2007, seventy percent of the US intelligence budget—or about $38 billion annually—was spent on private contractors), the potential for peaceful anti-corporate activism to be labeled terrorism is huge. And because corporations have state of the art technology and techniques, surveillance has become a sprawling industry of its own outside of government contracts. Overall annual spending on corporate security and intelligence is roughly $100 billion, which is double what it was a decade ago.

Hundreds of private spying organizations (or “para-CIAs”) have popped up in recent years to meet corporate demand, many of them staffed by former spies for agencies like the CIA and MI6. Other corporations, like Wal-Mart, have their own, in-house surveillance and security departments, staffed by former CIA, FBI, and State Department experts.

[nineteen50]

12. I believe this program of meta-data mining

is being used to determine the intent and timing of dissent and protest in order to control and defuse it. It is the new favorite tool of the power-elite oligarchy, which owns both political parties and has wrapped itself in the authority and cloak of the American Government.

[marions ghost]

14. no doubt

The oligarchy didn't build it for no payoff.

[chervilant]

17. Furthermore,

they prolly use it to create propaganda to disparage or discredit activists, and to direct media 'non-responses.'

[nineteen50]

20. The possible uses of data and

personal info on Americans are infinite. You have made me think more about possible uses and it is frightening.

[chervilant]

21. If you think about it,

you'll realize that the Hoi Polloi (I've reclaimed that phrase from Marx as a positive descriptor...) will likely respond to blanket surveillance by being more furtive, less communicative, and increasingly fearful (as if we're NOT fearful enough already!). We are already less likely to trust our 'government.'

Think of how people survive in totalitarian regimes. We're heading in the same direction.

[woo me with science]

35. [phone]

The financial implications AND the implications for political oppression are infinite. This infrastructure virtually ensures corporate fascism.

[reusrename]

28. On the nose.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. TransCanada Caught Training Police to Treat Nonviolent Keystone XL Protesters as Terrorists

http://ecowatch.com/2013/transcanada-caught-training-police-nonviolent-keystone-xl-protesters-terrorists/

In the midst of recent national controversy surrounding government surveillance of the public, a recent Freedom of Information Act request to the Nebraska State Patrol has exposed evidence that TransCanada provided training to federal agents and local Nebraska police to suppress nonviolent activists protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by arresting them on “anti-terrorism statutes.” The presentation slides, obtained by grassroots landowner advocacy group Bold Nebraska, target Tar Sands Blockade activists by name.

“This is clear evidence of the collusion between TransCanada and the federal government assisting local police to unlawfully monitor and harass political protestors,” said Lauren Regan, legal coordinator for Tar Sands Blockade and executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. “These documents expose the truth that the government is giving the nod to unlawful corporate spying. By slinging false allegations against peaceful activists in this presentation, TransCanada puts them at risk of unwarranted prosecution.”

Although TransCanada’s presentation to authorities contains information about property destruction, sabotage and booby traps, police in Texas and Oklahoma have never alleged, accused or charged Tar Sands Blockade activists of any such behaviors. Since August 2012, Tar Sands Blockade has carried out dozens of successful nonviolent direct actions to physically halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas and Oklahoma. All of these acts, as well as every pipeline protest in Nebraska, have maintained strict commitments to nonviolence.

“Try as TransCanada might to slander Tar Sands Blockade and our growing grassroots movement, we know who the real criminals are,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade who was pictured in the slideshow. “The real criminals are those profiting from this deadly tar sands pipeline by endangering families living along the route and pumping illegal levels of air toxins into fence-line communities.”

(More at the link.)

[nineteen50]

13. I believe this program of meta-data mining

is being used to determine the intent and timing of dissent and protest in order to control and defuse it. It is the new favorite tool of the power-elite oligarchy, which owns both political parties and has wrapped itself in the authority and cloak of the American Government.

[Fire Walk With Me]

16. Exactly. To stop populist uprisings and dissent. n/t

[chervilant]

22. hmm...

I see now that we're prolly on the same page about this issue...

[cantbeserious]

8. Regrettably, Nothing Will Change Until The American People Have Had Enough

eom

[L0oniX]

9. How can we know or verify how they are using the data? Trust them? No F'ing way. They have lied

too much for me to ever trust them again.

[backscatter712]

10. So, how long until the Good Germans come to "reshape the narrative"? n/t

[nineteen50]

11. "Many of these defenders are comfortable with

government surveillance as long as the government" is being run by their party.

[treestar]

15. What diminishing liberties?

Do you really think you can't do all you were doing before?

[chervilant]

23. I know that now

~ protesters are constrained in "designated areas."

~ paramilitary police use physical force and pepper spray WITH IMPUNITY against non-violent protesters.

~ media deliberately misrepresent the numbers of protesters OR elect not to cover protests where it suits their corporate overlords.

~ the roar of the madding crowd is growing louder and louder and louder...

(and LOUDER!!!!)

[treestar]

25. Time place and manner restrictions are constitutional

cops do nothing with impunity these days, it is caught on photo or tape, and they will have consequences, on the job, criminal and civil.

The media is free to do what it wants, include misrepresentation, there is no way the government should control that - the only remedy is more speech.

[Demit]

26. I believe your question was "Do you really think you can't do all you were doing before?"

And chervilant gave you two things that have changed, in regard to lawful protests: 1) the herding of people into fenced-off "free speech zones," and 2) the wanton use of force & pepper spray (and tasers, I would add) against protesters who pose no threat.

That was your question, not that whether or not those new realities are constitutional, or whether or not police get away with stepping on your liberties, or whether or not you can take the police to court in hopes of winning a judgment against them.

Yes indeed, there once was a time when you could gather without being fenced in, and the police didn't shock you with thousands of volts because you didn't obey them fast enough.

[treestar]

29. Time place and manner restrictions are allowed even if you personally don't approve

Security is allowed for elected officials - there are crazies out there.

You speak as if tasering is done every single time - there are always problems but you make out as if now every protestor is tasered just for protesting. Exaggeration means you know you are out of your depth in the argument.

[chervilant]

27. I've been an activist

for decades now. Things have changed significantly with regards to "protests."

I find it disheartening (but not surprising) that you cite constitutionality as justification for "time place and manner restrictions." Free speech used to matter a lot more to Democrats, apparently.

Our paramilitary police *ARE* routinely brutal and are working on making filming or recording them 'illegal.'

I note you had nothing to say about how vocal--and angry--is the Hoi Polloi these days. Hopefully, a goodly number of us can effect change, before it's too late.

[treestar]

30. You have a problem with citing of the law?

And if you don't like the law, you can challenge it - there are probably such challenges in the courts as we speak.

You live in this country with three million other people - it's not all going to go your own way.

[chervilant]

33. Really, treestar

I think you have a problem with comprehension.

[treestar]

34. So how is this to be comprehended

I find it disheartening (but not surprising) that you cite constitutionality as justification for "time place and manner restrictions."

Doesn't that mean that you don't like it if I cite that the law has been decided to be constitutional. Time place and manner restrictions have been upheld. That is a fact. You find it disheartening that I refer to a fact.

[chervilant]

36. Go ahead and be "right," treestar

Revel in your rightness; it seems so very important to you.

[woo me with science]

32. I have lost the right to protest peacefully without anticipating

that I may be corralled onto a bridge by militarized police and subject to violence or arrest.

I have lost the right to protest peacefully without assuming that I may be placed on a "Watch List" and surveilled by my own government.

I have lost the right to fly without the risk of being singled out to spread and have my crotch groped by a government employee.

I have lost the right to assume that my internet and phone communications are private from my government and from corporations, and will remain so.

I have lost the right to certainty that I will not be strip searched for a minor offense, even perhaps a traffic offense, thanks to President Obama's Justice Department's work at the Supreme Court.

I have lost the security of knowing that my government may not subject me or any of my fellow Americans to imprisonment without end or targeted murder without a trial and evidence and all those things we used to call "due process."

[randome]

18. There is the usual bureaucratic maze of laws and regulations regarding the NSA.

If anyone can show they are abusing those laws and regulations, there will be no shortage of DUers calling for change.

More transparency and less secrecy is called for but just because someone makes outrageous claims and then runs to hide in Hong Kong and Moscow does not mean a 'total surveillance' operation is being run.

So far as I can see, there has been no 'chilling effect'.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[nashville_brook]

19. kickee reckee

[marmar]

24. k/r

[woo me with science]

31. +10000 This government is already thumbing its nose at the people,

over and over and over again.

Vast majorities of Americans want to protect SS and Medicare. Both parties want to cut them. Americans overwhelmingly oppose austerity. Both parties shove it down our throats. Americans want to scale back military involvement. Our government bangs the drums on Syria and Iran and starts proxy drone wars all over the Middle East. Virtually nothing coming out of this government bears any resemblance whatsoever to what the people have said we want and need, for a very long time.

Secret trade deals. "Supercommittees." Closed door deals. Attacks on the press. Attacks on peaceful protesters. Dismantling of the Constitution. All under a common theme of profit for corporations.

And now a surveillance infrastructure whose capabilities dwarf that of any totalitarian state in history.

This may be our last chance to save ourselves. Thank you, Edward Snowden. Keep in mind that states that build surveillance infrastructures also build propaganda infrastructures. We will hear incessant reassurance that everything is all right.

It isn't.

[chervilant]

37. Excellent post, woo!

Sad that so many on this forum think everything is alright...

[woo me with science]

38. kick