Obama Admin. admits to surveillance methods: Beating a Dead Horse Pt. 74

i think he just became the president

Going back to the illegal data collection and spying, it didn't begin with Obama and it doesn't look like it will end when Obama's term in office finishes does it? That's not to say that his administration isn't complicit and he shouldn't be a major focus of outrage and questioning, but there are less well-known figures who are more involved with setting up this surveillance system that would welcome the spotlight going onto the current leader as it masks the systemic nature of the corruption.

I'm sure even die-hard Democrats would rather the focus is on Barak Obama himself given it is his last term, rather that on the major parties in general.

you raise a good point, there are several people who remain mostly obscure that have a much more direct hand in this than either Bush or Obama.

  On 7/11/2013 at 1:55 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

you raise a good point, there are several people who remain mostly obscure that have a much more direct hand in this than either Bush or Obama.

My mother was very upset about the quality of the journalism concerning the recent NSA blackmailing obama piece on BTS.

what's bts?

I don't blame Obama too much. He was in an extremely tough position that it would take a nimble and very charismatic pres to twist his way out of: to whit, that he's already seen as "un-American", and a "cloaked commie-traitor-Indonesian-Kenyan-outsider" by many. Given that, any move he makes against the US military industrial complex, no matter how justified, will be viewed with extreme prejudice.

However, I'm disappointed that he doesn't seem to have risen to a higher calling, but just took the path of least resistance and "went with the flow".

I like Obama the nobel peace prize winner

  On 7/11/2013 at 5:38 AM, lumpenprol said:

I don't blame Obama too much. He was in an extremely tough position that it would take a nimble and very charismatic pres to twist his way out of: to whit, that he's already seen as "un-American", and a "cloaked commie-traitor-Indonesian-Kenyan-outsider" by many. Given that, any move he makes against the US military industrial complex, no matter how justified, will be viewed with extreme prejudice.

 

However, I'm disappointed that he doesn't seem to have risen to a higher calling, but just took the path of least resistance and "went with the flow".

this is complete bs. this issue is something that left-leaning liberal types AND right leaning conservative types seem to actually agree on. you see the same outrage about this being unconstitutional in conservative forums or in comments on articles or at conservative news/blog/etc sites as you see at liberal hang out spots.

barring unseen dark forces of 'they live' proportions, obama could blow the lid off of this thing. and he could actually score points all around. not just with the liberal voters that voted on him based on promises he hasn't kept and some of which he has outright gone against, but even with people like me who never liked him to begin with, or expected good thing #1 out of his ass.

i would be like 'wow, didn't see that coming! a guy who has shown himself to be interested in granting himself more and more power, and just brazenly flaunting that he can do whatever he wants regardless of whether the people want it, actually working to dismantle a system that would grant him even more power? maybe he's actually not a communist/alien overlord/satan after all!?'

the guy said he was going to bring transparency like never before to not only his office but to government. he said he was going bring a fundamental transformation to the country. here was his chance to do it, and make a change for the better. instead it looks like he's on board with accelerating the transformation that leads to us all being locked in our houses after curfew.

I think you're misunderstanding me a bit. I agree, it would be great if he did that now that it's out in the open. My little crappy armchair analysis was an attempt to explain why up until this point, he basically just went along with Bush policies.

maybe, but i don't think it would be tough to predict that most people in the country would be unhappy to know their data was being collected by the gov, including people all across the ideological spectrum. some intelligence types are saying that snowden hurt our security, and i could see where if obama decided to speak out on this stuff himself if snowden hadn't, someone, somewhere would have said the same thing about him. but it wouldn't have stuck. as much as the press loves obama, and has covered his ass for 4+yrs, and as much as liberals who he has promised things to but didn't deliver on those things still like him, he would have easily got away with it. he easily would have been called a hero, as snowden has been, who obama seems to think of as a traitor.

but really, the guy basically pledged to put a stop to this exact kind of stuff when he was elected. there's no excuse for 'going with the flow' if you get yourself elected by claiming to be against that flow. the cult-like following obama enjoyed from large swaths of the public through his first term, and to some degree still does, would have easily allowed him to blow the lid off of this.

this just in: politician makes promises he can't keep in order to get votes. next up: corruption in washington??

lol, up to their old tricks again! Washington! Why I oughta!

*cue theme from Catch The Pidgeon*

i keep hearing the same arguments being rehashed in conversation with co-workers, relatives etc, and they all revolve around whether its a "necessary evil".

my concern is not necessarily what Obama admin. does with it, but rather the precedent these expansions have set. Historically speaking I would struggle to find an example of a stable and prosperous democratic/republic government with a massive semi-privatized monitoring wing. I know internet/digital age = different times, but it might be healthy to assume this type of strategy when employed usually errs towards the benefit of the ones doing the monitoring, not the ones being monitored. Though if anyone can provide an example of this network working successfully to the benefit of the citizenry as a whole I'd be glad to hear it. Unless you mean "x amount of terror attacks were prevented".

  On 7/11/2013 at 7:00 PM, SR4 said:

Unless you mean "x amount of terror attacks were prevented".

well isn't it what's it all about ? so why "unless"? not that i know if there's evidence for that..

  On 7/11/2013 at 7:14 PM, eugene said:

 

  On 7/11/2013 at 7:00 PM, SR4 said:

Unless you mean "x amount of terror attacks were prevented".

well isn't it what's it all about ? so why "unless"? not that i know if there's evidence for that..

 

the reason I am making that an exception is also historically based. The precedent for determining mechanisms to prevent "terror" have become more and more legally ambiguous over the past decade. This certainly parallels with other monitoring systems in authoritarian states in the past, simply substitute "terror" with "pro-West", "subversive", "anti-nationalist", etc.

An example for what I mean would be the actions of COINTELPRO over the course of its existence. There have been many, many allegations of these agents engaging in blatantly illegal acts, ranging from theft and assault and impersonating police officers (plenty of evidence for these instances) up to murder (not so much evidence). They were ordered to do these actions in the interest of preserving the internal stability of the United States against "subversive" social elements (Communists, Black Panthers, Civil Rights activists, anti-war protests, etc.) Many of these actions were excused, at least initially under this excuse, regardless of actual hard evidence that these groups being monitored and sabotaged had anything to do with criminal activity above misdemeanors.

Now we are in a new age whereas COINTELPRO was shutdown after leaked information outraged most if not all parties in the American public, an even larger, more powerful organization and its methods have been leaked to the public, and there seems to be some sort of subdued acceptance over it. I know you like to claim that "we don't know what we are talking about" because we don't have enough information. That might be true in regards to specific activities and investigations, but historically the general sentiment of such programs is to further expand from their seemingly innocent foundations, in order to crack down on all dissident activities regardless of whether there is evidence that they plan to enact "terror" attacks or anything resembling planned violence. The most disturbing prospect of these expansions is how decentralized, in fact, this widespread monitoring system is. The potential for abuse of information is absolutely massive, and I mean this in the most unparalleled terms. Whereas a COINTELPRO agent would have been able to blackmail MLK and other organizers with info they illegally gained from phone calls albeit after days and days of wiretapped conversations, the NSA now potentially has all possible recorded conversations at a few clicks of information.

I'm not saying this has happened, not at all, and I admit that I don't have any knowledge of it happening or not happening, but hypothetically, anything in these recordings or files can be used by someone abusing their power within the NSA or other halls of power and use this information to force "dissidents" out of federal positions, out of corporate ranks, out of shareholding, out of the military command, out of local grassroots groups, etc. etc. Maybe this network does prevent terror attacks, but that's not my issue of contention. Rather that these massive surveillance systems have historically proven to encourage further corruption and totalitarian abuse of powers by those that are entrusted with them. Austria-Hungary blackmailed/forced many of their senior generals out of the military prior to WWI due to their opposition to deployment against Serbia. Japanese communists were actively wiretapped, then arrested and occasionally executed without trial prior and after the Showa nationalist movement. Syngman Rhee , Chun Doo-Hwan and others used illegal surveillance to ouster their powerful political and military opponents. The Nazi and Soviet examples are pretty much common knowledge. As I assume is also the same with the Stasi and other East European agencies derived from the Cheka, NKVD, etc.

Again, my worry is not necessarily (though it does concern me to some extent) whether it is being abused now, but the massive potential for abuse such a system poses in the future. Past examples seem to suggest that abuse does happen, and the ultimate result is more authoritarian and less democratic governments.

edit: apologies if this seems scattered, im writing three different things at once.

COINTELPRO seems like a good example but still it would be nice to know the mechanism of why it got out of hand and went rogue and to see whether it's applicable to current situation, but your other examples are already totalitarian states doing totalitarian things so it's not much surprise really.

  On 7/11/2013 at 8:06 PM, eugene said:

COINTELPRO seems like a good example but still it would be nice to know the mechanism of why it got out of hand and went rogue and to see whether it's applicable to current situation, but your other examples are already totalitarian states doing totalitarian things so it's not much surprise really.

well the interesting thing about COINTELPRO is that more information keeps coming to light, a lot of it being released by the CIA itself as a means to "apologize" for its past actions. And its very hard to adequately discern whether these actions were done by members "going rogue". A lot of it is still hush hush, a lot of senior operators went to their graves without totally informing the public of their roles. Basically what we have to go on are all the declassified wiretapping and harassment documents, many of which indicate that the harassment, financial and other means of internal sabotage was a deliberate aim of COINTELPRO. Perhaps the assassination allegations are a matter of debate, but that's something else far more difficult to pin down. But the overall sentiment is that the majority of documented illegal acts were condoned by COINTELPRO and the CIA operators..not only that but COINTELPRO's sole purpose was specifically to ruin internal protest groups (ie. "subversives), so its not as if these more extreme allegations are outside their purview of operations.

As for the totalitarian states acting in totalitarian ways, ok sure, but Nazi Germany wasn't always Nazi Germany, Hitler's particularly extreme wing of the Nazi party strongarmed its way to the chancellorship and then proceeded to use the Reichstag Fire as the excuse to issue the Enabling Act (ie. to crack down on essentially domestic terrorists responsible for the fire), essentially cementing Hitler's dictatorship. And I would even argue that, though Austria-Hungry was certainly no democracy, it wasn't nearly as authoritarian prior to the 1870s and the rise of the mass censorship system under Metternich.His reasoning was that the Italians in West Tirol and the Balkanized populations would surely revolt and cause havoc whenever possible. Perhaps his system worked initially in quelling such rebellions, but ultimately it turned into an incredibly mismanaged and corrupt body that arguably helped push AH to its downfall in 1918.

Maybe I could get the argument that decentralized states can often lead to authoritarian structures, but I think it still stands that any country with this type of mass surveillance in place as a govt apparatus is obviously moving towards authoritarianism, regardless of its original ideological affiliation. Again, maybe Im wrong about this, and the US government will use this with utter efficiency only targeting terror plots known and documented. But historical precedent suggests that this is not what evolves from such a program.

So back on topic...I'm finding Reddit a great source for updates on the situation. Anyone read this? The guardian really got some juicy stuff from Snowden:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

  Quote

 

 

Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas.

guess that means I've been NSA fodder, hope they found something useful, lol.

  On 7/12/2013 at 2:51 AM, lumpenprol said:

So back on topic.

Apologies. This is why I don't really care to post here anymore.

New leak: Microsoft actively worked to allow access to encrypted data, says it was legally compelled to do so.

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

  On 7/12/2013 at 2:51 AM, lumpenprol said:

So back on topic...I'm finding Reddit a great source for updates on the situation. Anyone read this? The guardian really got some juicy stuff from Snowden:

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

reddit is a decent place for that type of stuff but it's also filled with people who despise any type of theory that can be remotely considered conspiratorial. Similar to wikipedia there is a 'debunker brigade' that i see sometimes being really nasty to people for just suggesting things. They have no tolerance for anything that defies the 9/11 official narrative, even provable facts ie: Tom Daschle being repeatedly asked by Bush and Cheney to block any 9/11 investigation.

anyone check that Obama video I put together above? Obama killing pakistanis set to 2562... what's not to like?

Edit: and yes the Guardian keeps pumping shit out, still very excited about all this. And very glad that the high ups at the Guardian have so much confidence in Greenwald (if that charlie rose interview was any indication)

  On 7/11/2013 at 7:00 PM, SR4 said:

i keep hearing the same arguments being rehashed in conversation with co-workers, relatives etc, and they all revolve around whether its a "necessary evil".

what's odd about that is it's based on several false premises. I will list them below

- that anything, extra security or surveillance will stop a determined enough 'terrorist' from causing mass causalities on a 'soft target'. No amount of surveillance or security in the world (That exists right now) will stop a person from blowing up simultaneous bombs at walmart on black friday killing potentially thousands of people. So if they think surveillance is a necessary evil to 'stop terrorism' they would be fundamentally wrong. If you were a smart solo terrorist, you wouldn't use a fucking phone or traceable internet connection to search for bomb making information or coordinating the attack.

- that terrorism has ever been even if you count 9/11, a continuing existent or significant threat to the way of life in the United States. 3,000 people weren't killed by terrorists on 9/11, most of them actually died in what is historically the biggest building disaster of all time. Since the 19 hijackers couldn't have possibly anticipated the way the buildings collapsed, they had no idea they'd be killing nearly that many people. Which is why Bin LAden referred to it as a 'miracle' in one of his videos. If you want to take the official story as reality, 9/11 was a tragic terrorist attack that lone would have killed maybe 500 tops, but with the additional tragic coincidence of a steel high rise building completely collapsing it became a magnitude of death that traumatized the united states much more than it would have if it was 1/6th the amount of people who died.

- they would be basically eliminating privacy for a very false sense of security. I think any rational person if they really sat and thought about how safe it makes them they'd realize how bullshit it was.

damn i must have missed that part of the new Guardian article about the NSA stealing e-mails BEFORE they were intentionally encrypted by the sender. So many kinds of fucked up I don't even know where to start.

so i guess if you truly want to send an encrypted message, you can't use any service provided by a big corporation, i think at this point it's safe to assume all of them are probably sharing this data BEFORE it's encrypted.

SO just out of curiosity, how can one send an encrypted e-mail at this point in time without the NSA reading it? I honestly wouldn't know how to do this, and im embarrassed because I probably should