Police State
Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP: G20 Report goes easy on the JIG
Last year I requested the documents from the CPC-RCMP regarding the G20 summit to try and figure out how they were processing the complaints against the RCMP and why the G20 cops got off scott free. What I got back was this huge file including presentations from the G20ISU-JIG, as well as interviews with the head of the G8-G20ISU-JIG Rod McCann and others involved with the G8G20ISU. I've skimmed the doucments, but the main takeaways that I get from these documents are the following:
I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty.
I kinda get why they refer to dangerous screeds as manifestos, but then they neglect to describe the daily capitalist news in the same way. One form of dangerous propaganda is mainstream news, while anything else of any length with an alternate opinion is a 'manifesto.' All the same, this guy is about as confused as Joe Stack was. These days it seems as if even a fairly limited grasp on reality as it exists is enough to convince people to respond by going straight over the edge. Unfortunately, the society is so corrupted by violence and bloodlust that these sorts of events are unavoidably the only thing that occurs to many as being the proper response.
'Christopher Dorner was summarily executed by fire' (and vid)
http://rt.com/programs/breaking-set-summary/state-union-cispa-manufactured/
Check out opening piece on Abby Martin's show on the future of policing in America as evidenced by the Christopher Dorner fugitive case...the real 'terrorists' are with the State.
I can't say whether it is the future, but it certainly isn't anything that hasn't happened before:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-05-11-philadelphia-bombi...
Dornier didn’t seem to understand how acts of violence committed by the police state against citizens of LA are replicated by the US government and deployed on a far larger scale against people around the world many times over. He was an Obama supporter in all things apparently. Commoditized, patriarchal societies do not seem capable of avoiding the production of figures like Dornier, Stack, Holmes, McVeigh, Lepine, et al, because such societies can only be maintained through the use of violence. By the time someone is confronted with an event or a series of events in their lives, which begins to re-mold their entire perspective on the society around them, it is likely already too late to prevent them from becoming the supremely violent individuals who they feel they need to be in response. Sometimes all it apparently takes is the slightest grasp on reality and their position within it to bring about the inevitable results from people at the end of their rope. The society around them has never offered an alternate means of escape from misery, largely because it is impossible for society to conceive of a means of escape from itself. It actively seeks out and conspires to shut down all possible escape in fact. Individuals are left to their own devices, and they take as their cue the only examples they've ever been provided with for getting results. Anyway, I still hold that several concepts found within Bloom Theory contain some of the most plausible explanations available, certainly in comparison with the non-explanations we usually encounter in the media. Dornier's case is tragic because he had everything else right concerning the LAPD.
So this is what Bloom means: that we don’t belong to ourselves, that this world isn’t our world. That it’s not just that it confronts us in its totality, but that even in the most proximate details it is foreign to us. This foreignness would be quite enjoyable if it could imply an exteriority of principles between it and us. Far from it. Our foreignness to the world consists in the fact that the stranger, the foreigner, is in us, in the fact that in the world of the authoritarian commodity, we regularly become strangers to ourselves. The circle of situations where we’re forced to watch ourselves act, to contemplate the action of a “me” in which we don’t recognize ourselves, now closes up on and besieges us, even in what bourgeois society still calls our “intimacy.” The Other possesses us; it is this dissociated body, a simple peripheral artifact in the hands of Biopower; it is our raw desire to survive in the intolerable network of miniscule subjugations, granulated pressures that fetter us to the quick; it is the ensemble of self-interested contrivances, humiliations, pettiness; the ensemble of tactics that we must deploy. It is the whole objective machine that we sacrifice to inside ourselves. THE OTHER IS THE ECONOMY IN US.
Burning Down the House - by Dave Lindorff (and vid)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/14/burning-down-the-house-2/
'Burn that fuckin' house down. Fucking burn this motherfucker!!'
"Voices overheard on police radion at the scene of the cabin where Chris Donner was trapped and burned to death by the cops."
Christopher Dorner - The Truth (and vid)
Is This Fucking Afghanistan?!?! - by Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.ca/2013/02/is-this-fucking-afghanistan....
"...Just as the fish rots from the head, the horrors start with the president. Why should Obama be the only one to have a Murder Program...? In addition to pursuing its goal of global hegemony, the United States government uses foreign countries as a lethal laboratory in which to practice the techniques it intends to use domestically, at home within US borders."
Dissidents in any represive regime face unlawful imprisonment and torture. Manning's case shows the true face of the "beacon of freedom."
This Saturday, February 23rd, will mark the 1,000th day in prison without trial for PFC Bradley Manning, accused of releasing classified military documents to Wikileaks. Among the documents was the Collateral Murder video, which shows the 2007 murder of over a dozen people in Baghdad by a U.S. Apache helicopter. The murdered included civilians and two Reuter’s employees, photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh.
Manning was also alleged to have released the Iraq War Logs, comprised of nearly 400,000 military logs recorded from 2004 to 2009. The files revealed thousands of reports of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq, including reports of people being hung from the ceiling on hooks, whipped with cables, sexually assaulted, urinated on, and having holes bored into their legs with electric drills. The logs also added an additional 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 deaths, of which roughly 80% were civilian.
Furthermore, the leaks detailed allegations of child abuse and child trafficking by the U.S. defense contracting company in Afghanistan, DynCorp, a company which is estimated to make about $2 billion per year in revenue from the U.S.
For shedding light on these atrocities carried out in the name of the United States of America, Bradley Manning has been rewarded by spending three birthdays in prison without trial. Since May 29, 2010, Manning has been held in pretrial detention, the first ten months of which he was kept locked in solitary confinement, denied exercise, sunlight, social interaction, and a number of times was forced to stay completely naked, all in violation of U.S. military law.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/19/bradley-manning-faces-1000th-day-...
I am constantly surprised Manning is given the opportunity to commit suicide (or helped along) so he doesnt get a soap box and a object lesson taught to any potential 'traitors' in the future
Canadian Security Services Broadening Definition of Terrorism to Encompass Activists (and vid)
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/02/21/290063/canadian-security-servic...
"Critics say that North American elites require a widespread perception of a terrorist threat so as to justify their otherwise unpalatable, economic and political agendas."
There remain very few public spaces these days, if any, where we are not subjected to the gaze of interconnected levels of security and surveillance. The other day I observed one of those ubiquitous ceiling bubbles that had been installed in the dining room of a family restaurant, presumably staring down at patrons while they eat, for it was located nowhere near the one positioned over cashier's station where employees are being constantly monitored. With local grocer chains, there are four observable levels of surveillance (cameras, doorway merchandise alarms, cashiers, patrolling security guards) that begin the moment one enters the parking lot, and continues throughout, until municipal street cameras take over at the point where corporate retail cameras leave off. Trails and roads in the forest are increasingly being monitored as well. I think people pretty much have to assume that retail dressing rooms have very discreet pinhole cameras installed, because despite all the effort being put into observing everything else, the dressing room still represents a gap in the panoptic coverage, at least until body scanners at the retail exits become the latest reality. Eventually, policing services will become increasingly privatized and globalized. If the City of Calgary for example can recruit eastern Canadian police school graduates, and lower paid workers from overseas can work the mines in BC, there's nothing to prevent work visas from being issued to keep up with the increasing demand in security services. Thus far the general public has shown itself to be in full agreement with any and all measures, including body scanners at airports, torturing people in dungeons for information, ill-treating people detained by the police as their just reward for even being noticed by police, wars everywhere, all with no conceivable limit in sight as to what people are prepared to acquiesce to. Immediate neighbors, or the multitude of blank stares that one encounters on a daily basis as the normal face of the general public, readily serve in an auxiliary role as witnesses, snitches, security guards in their own right, who are as part and parcel to the all encompassing police state as the water-boarding official, or the guy who follows people around at the produce section. And if all this weren’t' bad enough, the watchers watch one another.
How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into Violent Terrorists
In ten months, an 82-year-old nun and two pacifists had been successfully transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism.
How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into Violent Terrorists
She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist. For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”
Then the government began increasing the charges against the anti-nuclear peace protestors.
American imperialists are paranoid and fearful of anti-war peace activists. The holy bomb is all they have propping them up today. Without it they are nothing andwould have zero power to blackmail other nations.
The other side of the coin to the mounting evidence that criminals have far fewer places to conduct their business outside of the watchful gaze of the surveillance state is the fact that this state of watchfulness applies to everyone. I think people who suggest that only crooks have reason to fear are completely unaware of the point entirely. Everyone's mundane existence is constantly being scanned for criminal intent. We exist in a large open air prison yard filled with inmates being constantly examined and assessed for good and bad behaviour. Even the simple act of sitting down with one's family in a restaurant needs to be digitally recorded and filed away somewhere. From childhood, to the school system, the workforce, to the everyday routine of life, the regime of the commodity infantilizes everyone by its compulsive need to observe the spaces it allocates to us.
yes and this regime manifests even in spaces assumed 'free' or 'progressive'. And increasingly close to home too. Alas this goes mostly unchallenged even by so-called 'progressives'. Deviants are penalized and most just avert the eyes and keep their heads down. Courage is rare. Compliance and complicity the norm.
AP: Justice Department’s seizure of phone records an unprecedented intrusion Obama administration took records in apparent effort to track down source who disclosed alleged Yemen terrorist plot story
The Obama administration has opened up a new front in its battle against media freedom by seizing phone records from the offices of the Associated Press news agency in what appeared to be an effort to track down the source who disclosed an alleged Yemen terrorist plot story.
The US attorney's office for the District of Columbia confirmed on Monday that subpoenas had been issued for phone records. It said it valued press freedom but it had to balance this against the public interest.
AP revealed on Monday that the justice department, without informing the organisation in advance, had obtained two months' worth of phone records of calls made by reporters and editors.
The former STASI weren't this intrusive. And as for their real intentions, as Slumberjack questions above, see:
Fake “War on Terrorism”: In Yemen the US is Fighting against Democracy, not against Al Qaeda (2010)
NSA: It Would Violate Your Privacy to Say if We Spied on You
Longtime intelligence watchers found the stonewalling of an “entirely legitimate oversight question” to be “disappointing and unsatisfactory,” as Steve Aftergood, a secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists told Danger Room.
“If the FISA Amendments Act is not susceptible to oversight in this way,” Aftergood said, “it should be repealed, not renewed.”
The NSA, along with the CIA and "Joint Chiefs of Staff", was created in 1947 with the signing of the National Security Act. The NSA's roll is allegedly to spy on the militaries of foreign governments, but what they actually do is spy on the lives of millions of Americans.
The U.S. republic was overthrown in 1947, and the USA has been a military dictatorship ever since. Tens of millions of Americans are living George Orwell's nightmare.
[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-bigger-story-behind-the-ap-spying-scand... Bigger Story Behind the AP Spying Scandal[/size][/url] More CRACKDOWNS on Whistleblowers in the USSA
Uncle Sam's witchunt for whistleblowers is constant and pervasive. It's so bad now that EVERYONE expects the American inquisition.
NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily - by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-co...
"Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama..."
Assange on PRISM: US Justice System in 'Calamitous' Collapse
http://rt.com/news/assange-nsa-surveillance-program-401/
"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has slammed a recently exposed NSA mass-surveillance scheme as a 'calamitous collapse in the rule of law.'
'The US administration has the phone records of everyone in the United States and is receiving them daily from carriers to the National Security Agency under secret agreements. That's what has come out,' he said."
Canada Follows US in Spying on Citizens (and vid)
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/06/08/307850/canada-follows-us-in-spy...
What Was the Israeli Involvement in Collecting US Communications Intel for NSA?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35215.htm
"Were Israeli companies Verint and Narus the ones that collected information from the US communications network for the National Security Agency?"
US Close to Becoming Fascist State: Ralph Schoenman (and vid)
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/06/08/307878/us-close-to-becoming-fas...
"Press TV has conducted and interview with Ralph Schoenman, political commentator, Berkeley California about the issue of a secret Obama directive to identify targets for offensive cyber-attacks."
NSA Spying on Canadians, CSEC Capable of Similar Surveillance: Experts
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/08/nsa-spying-canada_n_3408662.html
"Canada's private digital information is inevitably being caught up in the US's massive surveillance dragnet, and Canada's government has both the capability and the legal loopholes needed to spy on its own citizens as well, experts say..."
Prison America - by Roy Tov
http://www.roitov.com/articles/politicalpolice.htm
"The numbers are amazing. The USA leads the World Prison Population List with over two million prisoners. It has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 686 per 100,000 of the national population (according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics).
In comparison, China, - a country often targeted upon human rights issues by the American media - has just 111 prisoners for every hundred thousand people, just 16% of the American ratio.
The Police State of Israel has just 153 prisoners for every hundred thousand people, worse than China but vastly better than the USA.
It is so amazing that I want to repeat the data: the USA approaches 700 people imprisoned for every 100,000 inhabitants.
The scariest state described in 'It is not Terror if we do It', led me to conclude that many actions of the American government are illegitimate and violate the People. If we add to the blanket communications surveillance the blanket street surveillance, there is no choice but the obscenely outrageous conclusion that the USA is not a police state, but the world's largest prison, Prison America."
West Spying on Population Has Not Stopped Terrorist Attacks: Rodney Shakespeare (and vid)
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/06/08/307881/west-privacy-invasion-no...
"Press TV has conducted an interview with Rodney Shakespeare, political analyst London, about the issue of NSA data gathering that invades the privacy of citizens of Western countries."
Trained For Totalitarianism - by Arthur Silber
http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.ca/2013/06/trained-for-totalitarianism....
"...The surveillance story could certainly grow in importance; add it to the fuel for creating civil disobedience on the required scale. Massive abuses by the State certainly justify massive reaction...
I therefore repeat my call for widespread resistance."
Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind Revelations of NSA Surveillance (and vid) - by Glenn Greenwald
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/17852-breaker-edward...
"The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. 'I have no intention of hiding who I am because I have done nothing wrong,' he said."
Watch the interview with Edward Snowden here.
Manning 2.0? Former NSA Consultant Behind Massive US Surveillance Leak
http://rt.com/news/nsa-leak-contractor-edward-snowden-443/
"A 29-year-old former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has fled to Hong Kong to avoid the fate of Bradley Manning..."
The media are acting surprised by the scope of this general criminalizition of society, but its only a skit put on for our benefit, just like the re-cycled top of the hour news re-cap. Murdoch's empire has been wiretapping for years, right along with the professionals of Empire.
NSA Spying on Canadians, CSEC Capable of Similar Surveillance: Experts"Canada's private digital information is inevitably being caught up in the US's massive surveillance dragnet, and Canada's government has both the capability and the legal loopholes needed to spy on its own citizens as well, experts say..."
I would describe it as being 'handed over to' instead of 'caught up in.' Likely way down in the fine print...or perhaps not...of all of those bi-lateral security arrangements our so called political representatives have been signing off on, left, right and center over the past few decades.
Yes, and 'handed over' to Israel as well as USA. Both are notorious spies, snoops and intelligence abusers.
Data-Collection Program Got Green Light from MacKay in 2011
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/data-collection-program-got...
"Defence Minister Peter MacKay approved a secret electronic eavesdropping program that scours global telephone records and Internet data trails, including those of Canadians - for patterns of suspicious activity.
The Canadian surveillance program is operated by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), an arm of the Department of National Defence."
US Security Officials said NSA Leaker, Journalist Should be 'Disappeared' - Report
http://rt.com/news/intelligence-officials-nsa-leaker-452/
"...When asked for his reaction to the alleged comments that reporter Glenn Greenwald and the 29-year-old leaker himself should be 'disappeared', Snowden told the newspaper, 'Someone responding to the story said 'real spies do not speak like that.' Well I am a spy and that is how they talk.
Whenever we had a debate in the office on how to handle crimes, they do not defend due process - they defend decisive action. They say it is better to kick someone out of a plane then let these people have a day in court. It is an authoritarian mindset in general."
Neil Macdonald: Big Brother is Listening In and No One Seems to Care
"Repeat after me: You have nothing to worry about if you don't talk to terrorists..."
or maybe not...
Roy Tov: Waze of Israel: Google Beats Facebook
http://www.roitov.com/articles/waze.htm
"...Few people realize that Israel has conquered several internet and information technology niche markets. This is true to the extent that most American [and Canadian] citizens are unwillingly sharing their secrets with the State of Israel.
Looking from outside, most Israeli companies mentioned in this article seem to be unrelated. Yet, it is not a secret that most key people in them are former Unit 8200 soldiers. Most of them openly boast about this. This SIGINT unit is the largest in the IDF, and specializes in surveillance. It has formal relations with CAZAB. This is not random."
Russia Ready to Consider Asylum for NSA Whistleblower Snowden
http://rt.com/news/russia-consider-asylum-snowden-517/
"Russia is willing to consider granting political asylum for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who blew the lid on the US PRISM program, Russian media reported. Snowden dropped out of sight Monday after he was last seen checking out of a Hong Kong hotel.
On Monday, Regina Ip, formerly Hong Kong's top official overseeing security, told reporters it would be in Snowden's 'best interest to leave Hong Kong citing an extradition treaty with the United States.
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed classified US surveillance programs leaked by Snowden, told AP that there will be more 'significant information' exposed in the near future..."
EP 456 Keiser Report (and vid)
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-456-max-keiser-475/
"In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert ask, 'What is Boundless Informant, PRISM, Trans-Pacific Partnership, SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA...?"
As embarrassing as these incidents are, the fact of the matter is that when it comes down to it, Empire doesn’t care one iota for how the public feels about such programs, because there's dick all the public can do about it. Many citizens continue to operate under the assumption that publically funded security institutions work on behalf of the public, simply because they're paid from public coffers, which aren't really public at all since they're placed at the disposal of corporations and their henchmen in power in large part. In large part as well, people are grateful for such diligence, which they acquiesce to as necessary measures dedicated toward their safety and well being. To make a martyr of oneself for the great mass of loyal citizens of the present order no longer makes any sense to me, except as an attempt to fulfill certain narcissistic tendencies informing the odd individual that citizens actually want to be rescued by a hero figure who will take on their tormentors. In actual fact, people mostly prefer the general situation as it is. We have to ask; precisely what fantastic revelations have come about as a result of this gesture of self-immolation, that wasn't already known about or suspected by people who would be concerned about such things. What purpose does it serve to make the latest news cycle for a week or so until the next televised crisis, during and after which, more public money will be spent securing everything down even tighter for the corporations and their political managers. What changed from all the released wikileaks cables? Nothing.
NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily - by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-co...
"Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama..."
This is getting "interesting" - it seems that Verizon is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, suppliers of Blackberry's to Congress and Congressional Staffers.
No Canadian NSA Connection, But Very Own Data Snooping Program
http://rt.com/news/canada-data-collection-program-527/
"Canada does not use NSA's top secret surveillance PRISM program, officials revealed. Instead, it has a spying platform of its own that it claims manages to distinguish between domestic and international telephone and internet data collected..."
Is that a load off my mind...(don't believe anything they say)
Assange to NSA Whistleblower Snowden: 'We are Winning, But Hope You Have a Plan' (and vid)
http://rt.com/news/assange-rt-snowden-nsa-prism-545/
"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has voiced strong support for fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, but urged him to escape Hong Kong immediately to avoid being 'prosecuted for years.'
Assange said that he was aware that the US government was extensively collecting private citizens' data, but admitted that he was 'shocked' by how means of surveillance are 'intermeshed into one single system'.
'We have been in contact with Snowden's people in terms of the possible advice and support we can give him,' said Assange."
Did You Know? Two Secretive Israeli Companies Reportedly Bugged the US Telecommunications Grid for the NSA
http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6
"According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Converse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon. Both Verint and Narus were founded in Israel in the 1990s. Both provide monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations. One of the founders of Verint, Jacob 'Kobi' Alexander, is a former Israeli intelligence officer.."
One American Who Isn't For Sale
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35240.htm
"So it's true, as filmmaker Michael Moore once warned us, the Carlyle Group is Big Brother. It is also the firm that owns Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., which, thanks to the revelations of one of its employees, whistle-blower Edward Snowden, we now know collects and stores much of the government's immense PRISM database spying on the lives of the nation's citizenry..."
The Carlyle Group
http://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/66/Carlyle.htm
"Carlyle advisors and executives have included President George Bush Sr., members of Osama bin Laden's family, James Baker III, Frank Carlucci III, John Major, Fidel Ramos and Frank McKenna.
Carlyle's VPII fund is also a major shareholder in Acteles Networks, an Israeli firm providing computer networking solutions for American, NATO and other military forces.."
US To Pursue Snowden 'With a Sledgehammer' For NSA Leak (and vid)
http://rt.com/op-edge/ratner-snowden-nsa-whistleblowers-554/
"It will be up to brave young peole like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning to stop invasive surveillance and government abuse, Michael Ratner, an attorney for Julian Assange and the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told RT..."
From 9/11 to PRISMgate - How the Carlyle Group LBO'd the World's Secrets
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-10/911-prismgate-how-carlyle-group...
"...As one can imagine, the rabbit hole just gets deeper and deeper the more one digs..."
NSA Leak Fallout: Live Updates
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-leak-snowden-live-updates-482
"About one in three Americans believe that Snowden is a 'patriot' and should not be prosecuted, according to results compiled by a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday...
RT: Breaking The Set - NSA Whistleblower Witch Hunt...(and vid)
http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/
"Abby Martin talks to Brad Friedman, writer and editor of 'The Brad Blog' about the largest leak in NSA history and what lies ahead for Whistle-blower Edward Snowden.."
Peter King Calls For Arrest of Glenn Greenwald (and vid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSrurT8FZuw
"Appearing on Fox News American Live this afternoon, Rep Peter King (R-NY) called for the prosecution of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald..."
You're Not Paranoid, The Government May Be Watching You
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/06/12/youre_not_paranoid_the_gov...
"Defence Minister Peter MacKay says Ottawa's electronic snooping agency doesn't monitor Canadians. He's wrong."
As embarrassing as these incidents are, the fact of the matter is that when it comes down to it, Empire doesn’t care one iota for how the public feels about such programs, because there's dick all the public can do about it.
While it's true that spies will be spies, I don't think it's true that nothing can be done about it. For one thing we can support projects that help to build spy resistant technology...and once they are built, we should use them and teach everyone how to use them.
Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre outlined what can be done in this address to the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum.
"The alternet we need, and how we can build it ourselves".
James Vasile explains the Freedom Box Project in this video here
We need to package existing privacy enhancing software in a way that makes it easy for people to use. Small cheap energy efficient computer hardware that will run this stuff is already with us. Well over a million Raspberry Pi computers have been sold around the world in the last year.
Asking governments and corporations not to spy is largely a waste of time IMHO. Building a net that makes it harder for spies to do their jobs is well worthwhile.
Head of Senate Anti-Terror Committee Unaware of Metadata Spying Programs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/head-of-canadas-anti-terror...
"The chair of a parliamentary anti-terrorism committee says he was unaware of a federal spying prgram that allows the collection of Canadians data trails.
Conservative Senator Hugh Segal, who vets security laws as chair of the special Senate committee on anti-terrorism, said in an interview that he and other parliamentarians learned of the prgram's existence only when they read about it in the Globe and Mail this week..."
watchdogs...or just dogs
Terror Report Says al-Qaida, Homegrown Extremism are Key Threats to Canada
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/terror-report-says-al-qaida-home...
"Public Safety Minister Vic Toews says al Qaida has weakened but remains the leading terrorist threat and Canada is a 'priority target'. In releasing the 2013 report on threats to Canada, Toews said conflicts such as that in Syria could create fertile terrorist training grounds..."
Yes, indeed, especially with all the training, funding and weapons they've provided their proxies there...
I'm back!
So, this PRISM/Verizon thing, no one really buys this is about "terrorism" do they? Silly sods. I say the NSA program is closely related to this storied example of misinformation: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/technology/chinas-army-is-seen-as-tie...
Join with me for a moment and wonder, what does our side do? Our side, The West, beacon of all that is good in the world and motivated only by justice and purity, does the following: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/how-the-tor-project-defeated-i...
What we do is we arm "hactvists" in nations which we are unfriendly with, those national dungeons of despair and oppression, with cybertools to avoid detection by the authorities. Those tools include Tor, Psiphon and others. But we are to believe that "terrorists" those vile beings who hate us because of our freedoms, do not use these tools? They don't use encryption? They don't use proxies? They don't use zombie computers? Of course they do. Who doesn't? You and me.
Which brings me back to the first story. It tells us that "The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower."
Think about that for a moment. This sophisticated collection of Chinese cyberwarriors with the capability to break into the most secure computer systems in the world and steal military and commercial secrets don't have the sophistication to cover their tracks and all congregate, despite the distributive, mobile features of computers, in the same easily targeted and bombed building (or environs) with an address in Shanghai? Really? Who believes that shit?
So what's it really all about? Well ... the Chinese cyber hyperventilating is likely because, so far, nothing has managed to scare us into giving up our Internet freedom. So what if they just take it away in the name of "national security" citing cyberwarfare and terrorism? What's the point? Here it is: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386316,00.asp
The entire effort of regulating the Internet has always been about money, or more specifically, making sure you pay. Forever. Non-stop. Through the nose. The various bills, trade agreements, etc ..., have always been motivated by corporate interests seeking to regulate and control the market. That's what's it's really about.
Don't believe me? Download away ... http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/12/anti-piracy-firm-wants-to-bring-...
MacKay Issued Seven Secret Directives to Evesdropping Agency: Documents - by Jim Bronskill CP
http://www.brandonsun.com/national/breaking-news/mackay-issued-seven-sec...
"Defence Minister Peter MacKay quietly issued new instructions to Canada's electronic eavesdropping agency that detail how and when it can help CSIS and the RCMP investigate Canadians, declassified records show.
For instance, the CSE says it may assist with the decryption of emails or other files..."
US Establishment Considers American Public and Enemy: Prysner (and vid)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/06/13/308776/us-considers-americans-as...
"Press TV has conducted an interview with Michael Prysner, with the ANSWER Coalition from Los Angeles to further discuss the Canadian government's decision to follow in the US administration's footsteps in spying on its citizens' cyberactivists and phone calls.
'This is not about what is in the interest of the United States. This is agbout what is in the interest of a tiny group of very powerful and very rich people and how they are going to protect their power against the future where they see a growing social unrest because of the continued crimes they are going to commit."
What a Drone Can See From 17,500 Feet (and vid)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35274.htm
The entire effort of regulating the Internet has always been about money, or more specifically, making sure you pay. Forever. Non-stop. Through the nose. The various bills, trade agreements, etc ..., have always been motivated by corporate interests seeking to regulate and control the market. That's what's it's really about.
I certainly agree. However corporate interests i.e. data miners, so-called content providers, network operators and the spies all have a kind of confluence of interest. The software that's used to mine your personal data to figure out what to try to sell you, can also be used by the spies to figure out your political views and actions if any.
Secret police used to have to jail and torture people to get their personal information. Now they can just use Facebook...where half a billion folks have voluntarily shared their personal info.
When Amazon can delete copies of George Orwell's "1984" from your Kindle by remote control, we have a problem.
There are solutions or at least partial solutions in most cases, but the ruling elites have encouraged people to value convenience over privacy and freedom. The task is to make privacy and freedom more convenient and to encourage people to value it.
One American's response...
'A Call To the Invisible Army For the Restoration of Liberty' (and vid)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35252.htm
"Now is the time for every good man and woman to come to the aid of this republic..."
Col Roy Potter
Cartoon by DonkeyHotey.