August 22, 2013

Cynicism is Corporate America’s Greatest Weapon: Disarm It

I think this is an incredibly good read, and I felt personally challenged by it, to remember
that it's not over until it's over, completely 100% over. And it won't be over until we break free of
these damnable top-down-fetters all over again, like has happened in the past, will happen again,
one way or the other. Doke! It's the arch of history thing.

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Cynicism is Corporate America’s Greatest Weapon: Disarm It
by Richard Eskow * Thursday, August 22, 2013 * Campaign for America's Future via Common Dreams

September’s coming up fast, and we know what that means. Soon Congress will be back in session and we’ll be inundated with fresh evidence that our democracy is broken. That makes this a good time to reflect on the powerful forces arrayed against the public interest – and to remind ourselves that they can still lose.

If you’re a citizen who’s willing to take action, you have more power than you realize. As the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington approaches, it’s a good time to remember that, too.

Granted, my perspective may be a little skewed. I spent several years of my professional life working primarily behind the Iron Curtain – before, during, and after the fall of European Communism. That experience, for someone interested in economics, was something like what an astronomer might feel at the birth of a star. And for anyone who believes in political activism, it was inspiring and enlightening. In a few short months the impossible became the imaginable, the imaginable became an opportunity, and an opportunity was turned into the event that transformed the world.

The cynical view says that there were hidden forces behind that transformation. And it’s true: when it comes to the course of world events, the unseen is often far more significant than the seen. But who knows what we’re not seeing right now? How will we know how broad our horizons of opportunity are today unless we test them?

It’s easy to retreat into the idleness of the cynic, to become the kind of person essayist Sydney J. Harris once described as “prematurely disappointed in the future.” It’s easy – and it’s a mistake.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/22-4

August 22, 2013

Lavabit founder: 'My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me'

Lavabit founder: 'My own tax dollars are being used to spy on me'
Since shuttering his email service, which was used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Ladar Levison has been stuck in a Kafkaesque legal battle – and that's about all he can say
Dominic Rushe * The Guardian * Thurs. Aug. 22, 2013

The Obama administration has created a surveillance state on a scale not seen since senator Joe McCarthy's infamous 1950s crackdown on suspected communists, according to the tech executive caught up in crossfire between the NSA and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

"We are entering a time of state-sponsored intrusion into our privacy that we haven't seen since the McCarthy era. And it's on a much broader scale," Ladar Levison, founder of Lavabit, told the Guardian. The email service was used by Snowden and is now at the center of a potentially historic legal battle over privacy rights in the digital age.

Levison closed down his service this month, posting a message about a government investigation that would force him to "become complicit in crimes against the American people" were he to stay in business. The 32-year-old is now stuck in a Kafkaesque universe where he is not allowed to talk about what is going on, nor is he allowed to talk about what he's not allowed to talk about without facing charges of contempt of court.

It appears that Levison – who would not confirm this – has received a national security letter (NSL), a legal attempt to force him to hand over any and all data his company has so that the US authorities can track Snowden and anyone he communicated with. The fact that he closed the service rather than comply may well have opened him up to other legal challenges – about which he also can not comment.

MORE HERE: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/lavabit-founder-us-surveillance-snowden

August 21, 2013

(RT) BREAKING: Manning is asking Obama for a Pardon

(RT) The lead attorney for Army Private first class Bradley Manning told the media on Wednesday that he’ll begin asking US President Barack Obama to pardon his client as early as next week.

Three hours after a military judge sentenced Pfc. Manning to 35 years in prison for disclosing sensitive government documents, attorney David Coombs said the appeals process will begin in a matter of days.

“I will file a request,” Coombs said in a Wednesday afternoon presser, “a request that the president pardon Pfc. Manning, or at the very least commute his sentence to time served.”

That request, Coombs said, includes in part a statement from Manning himself.

“I understand that my actions violated the law,” Coombs read the soldier’s statement. “I regret that my actions hurt or harmed the US. It was never my intent to hurt anyone. I only wanted to help people.”

Pfc. Manning and his counsel will ask the White House to remove the 35-year sentence handed down early Wednesday by Army Col. Denise Lind at a courthouse in Ft. Meade, Maryland. Should that request be refused, however, Manning wrote, “I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price for living in a free society.”

http://rt.com/usa/bradley-manning-obama-pardon-805/

August 21, 2013

NSA-Corporate Collusion Built Network to Reach 75% of Internet Traffic

Just in case you thought the extent of the NSA spying on American citizens has been "exaggerated" or "over-blown", here is yet more evidence that indeed, we are being spied upon more and more, and it's getting worse as time passes unless we get Congress to push back at some point before it's too late, if it isn't already.

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NSA-Corporate Collusion Built Network to Reach 75% of Internet Traffic
System is built on relationships between internet and phone providers working together and 'policing themselves'
Wednesday, August 21, 2013 * Common Dreams * Jon Queally, staff writer

In a fresh angle on the National Security Agency's sweeping surveillance grip on domestic internet communications, the Wall Street Journal—citing current and former officials with "direct knowledge of the work"—reports that the agency has built a much more robust spy network than the agency has previously admitted, powerful enough to reach into "roughly 75% of all U.S. internet traffic" in its hunt for pertinent information.

"In some cases," the WSJ reports, "[the NSA] retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology."

What the reporting also reveals are new details about the close relationship between the government's surveillance apparatus and private telecommunications companies that have given the NSA access to "major internet junctions" within the U.S. "The surveillance system is built on relationships with telecommunications carriers," writes the WSJ, describing how those companies "must hand over what the NSA asks for under orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

But, as one expert explained, the involved telecommunications companies and the government are really left "policing the system themselves." According to him and despite repeated assurances from officials that only "the bad guys" are targeted, "There's technically and physically nothing preventing a much broader surveillance."

Though the new reporting includes references to programs made known to the U.S. and global public via classified documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the WSJ interviewed unnamed government officials to confirm aspects of how specific programs fit into a broader framework.



As the WSJ reports:

The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.

The programs, code-named Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew, among others, filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies. Blarney, for instance, was established with AT&T Inc., former officials say. AT&T declined to comment.

This filtering takes place at more than a dozen locations at major Internet junctions in the U.S., officials say. Previously, any NSA filtering of this kind was largely believed to be happening near points where undersea or other foreign cables enter the country.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/21

August 21, 2013

Greenwald: 'Sending a Message': What the US and UK Are Attempting To Do

'Sending a Message': What the US and UK Are Attempting To Do
State-loyal journalists seem to believe in a duty to politely submit to bullying tactics from political officials
Wednesday, August 21, 2013 * The Guardian * by Glenn Greenwald

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on Monday night disclosed the remarkable news that UK authorities, several weeks ago, threatened the Guardian UK with prior restraint if they did not destroy all of their materials provided by Edward Snowden, and then sent agents to the basement of the paper's offices to oversee the physical destruction of hard drives. The Guardian has more details on that episode today, and MSNBC's Chris Hayes interviewed the Guardian's editor-in-chief about it last night. As Rusbriger explains, this behavior was as inane as it was thuggish: since this is 2013, not 1958, destroying one set of a newspaper's documents doesn't destroy them all, and since the Guardian has multiple people around the world with copies, they achieved nothing but making themselves look incompetently oppressive.

But conveying a thuggish message of intimidation is exactly what the UK and their superiors in the US national security state are attempting to accomplish with virtually everything they are now doing in this matter. On Monday night, Reuters' Mark Hosenball reported the following about the 9-hour detention of my partner under a terrorism law, all with the advanced knowledge of the White House:

One US security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda was to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks."

~snip~

... vowing to report on the nefarious secret spying activities of a large government - which is what I did - is called "journalism", not "revenge". As the Washington Post headline to Andrea Peterson's column on Monday explained: "No, Glenn Greenwald didn't 'vow vengeance.' He said he was going to do his job." She added:



But here's the most important point: the US and the UK governments go around the world threatening people all the time. It's their modus operandi. They imprison whistleblowers. They try to criminalize journalism. They threatened the Guardian with prior restraint and then forced the paper to physically smash their hard drives in a basement. They detained my partner under a terrorism law, repeatedly threatened to arrest him, and forced him to give them his passwords to all sorts of invasive personal information - behavior that even one of the authors of that terrorism law says is illegal, which the Committee for the Protection of Journalists said yesterday is just "the latest example in a disturbing record of official harassment of the Guardian over its coverage of the Snowden leaks", and which Human Rights Watch says was "intended to intimidate Greenwald and other journalists who report on surveillance abuses." And that's just their recent behavior with regard to press freedoms: it's to say nothing of all the invasions, bombings, renderings, torture and secrecy abuses for which that bullying, vengeful duo is responsible over the last decade.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/21-4

August 20, 2013

NSA Underbelly <= Corporate Overlords In The Saddle on Steroids

One of the most disturbing facts that has recently come to light, is how
much of the US Surveillance & Security State apparatus is PRIVATELY
OWNED, i.e. done by private corporations contracting with the NSA
and/or CIA/FBI/Etc. Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret"
access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors.

Back in June, Democracy Now has just done a great segment on this, here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/11/digital_blackwater_how_the_nsa_gives

If this were "just" the government (with no private corporations involved)
doing all this illegal spying, it would be bad enough. That's basically what
happened with the Church Committee hearings in Congress regarding operation
COINTELPRO; and it was out of those hearings that we got FISA in the first place.
But back then, it was only the government spying agencies involved, not
shadowy private corporations, like Booz Allan & Blackwater.

Well now, flash forward to the present situation with massive amounts of
this spying work being done BY PRIVATE CORPORATIONS ON THE GOVERNMENT's
DIME. That means that our government is now basically PAYING PRIVATE
CORPORATIONS PUBLIC MONEY (OUR TAX DOLLARS) TO ILLEGALLY SPY ON
US CITIZENS. <--(that's us).

This is a deplorable & unprecedented travesty against all that is good, and true,
and honorable about being a citizen of the US of A. We literally cannot say anymore
to one another "Hey, it's a free country!" to remind ourselves that dissent and
unpopular views are never-the-less tolerated out of respect for the US Constitution.
Not anymore.

This needs to change, and change big-time. The entire surveillance & security
state apparatus needs to be almost completely dismantled, and rebuilt to the
specifications of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

August 20, 2013

The GUARDIAN: We destroyed hard drives of leaked NSA files under threat of legal action & closure

NSA files: why the Guardian in London destroyed hard drives of leaked files
A threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the files leaked by Edward Snowden led to a symbolic act at the Guardian's offices in London
Julian Borger * The Guardian * Tuesday 20 August 2013

Guardian editors on Tuesday revealed why and how the newspaper destroyed computer hard drives containing copies of some of the NSA and GCHQ secret files leaked by Edward Snowden.

The decision was taken after a threat of legal action by the government that could have stopped reporting on the extent of American and British government surveillance revealed by the documents.



It resulted in one of the stranger episodes in the history of digital-age journalism. On Saturday 20 July, in a deserted basement of the Guardian's King's Cross offices, a senior editor and a Guardian computer expert used angle grinders and other household tools to pulverise the hard drives and memory chips on which the encrypted files had been stored.

As they worked, they were watched intently by technicians from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who took notes and photographs, but who left empty-handed.

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, had earlier informed government officials that other copies of the files existed outside the country and that the Guardian was neither the sole recipient nor steward of the files leaked by Snowden, a former NSA contractor. But the government insisted that the material be either destroyed or surrendered.

Twelve days after the destruction of the files, the Guardian reported on US funding of GCHQ eavesdropping operations and published a portrait of working life in the British agency's huge "doughnut" building in Cheltenham. Guardian US, based and edited in New York, has also continued to report on evidence of NSA co-operation with American telecommunications corporations to maximise the collection of data on internet and telephone users around the world.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/nsa-snowden-files-drives-destroyed-london

Also see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023495525

August 20, 2013

The Guardian is being threatened with censorship & closure over Edward Snowden revelations

With The Guardian itself now under direct attack like this, I think things just a lot stranger. I mean WTF?
One of the bastions of real journalism is being openly bullied by the surveillance & security state thugs.

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Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says paper was threatened with censorship over Edward Snowden revelations
ABC News - The World Today * By Will Ockenden * August 20, 2013

Guardian newspaper editor Alan Rusbridger has revealed that British authorities threatened to censor his team's reporting on surveillance by the state.

Rusbridger says British officials told him that documents from the whistleblower Edward Snowden should be destroyed or handed back and that they would use the courts to enforce their position.

The British government is already facing questions over why the partner of a Guardian journalist was held at Heathrow Airport for nine hours under anti-terrorism laws.

Rusbridger wrote on the Guardian website that UK officials have asked him to stop reporting news of government internet surveillance systems.

"During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working," he said in a statement.

He says two months ago he was contacted by a senior government official who said he represented the views of prime minister David Cameron.

Rusbridger says during a "steely" yet "cordial" meeting, the official demanded the return or destruction of documents obtained from Mr Snowden. "The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention," Rusbridger said.

"Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK."

LOTS MORE AT THE LINK, INCLUDING

Security experts 'oversaw destruction of hard drives'
Rusbridger says that about a month ago, a UK official, referring to the Snowden documents, told him: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." He says there were further meetings with "shadowy Whitehall figures" who again demanded the return of the Snowden material....

Guardian vows to keep pursuing story
Rusbridger confirmed that the Guardian will keep reporting the story, likely via backups of the documents, just not from London.
The Guardian's decision to publicise the threats is the latest step in an escalating battle between some media companies and western governments....

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-20/editor-says-guardian-was-threatened-over-snowden/4900202

August 18, 2013

BREAKING: Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours

Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours
David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act
Guardian staff * The Guardian * Sunday 18 August 2013

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.30am 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 under an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda was then released without charge, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow

August 18, 2013

5 Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Terrified of Terror Attacks

5 Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Terrified of Terror Attacks
A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism.
AlterNet * By Alex Kane * August 16, 2013

Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America’s television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden’s leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America.

But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans.

Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America's national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism.

What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack.

Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid.
1. The Chertoff Group
2. Booz Allen Hamilton
3. Science Applications International Corporation
4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies
5. Security Solutions International

Many interesting details about each company at:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/5-companies-make-money-keeping-americans-terrified-terror-attacks