If you click the image, it will take you to the actual interactive chart.
Showing posts with label domestic surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label domestic surveillance. Show all posts
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Freedom in Decline: Internet Access Is Increasingly Monitored, Limited
Turns out your Facebook friends aren’t the only ones catching up on your status updates.
Global Internet freedom has been on the decline with the increase of social-media surveillance by governments around the world, according to a recent study published by Freedom House.
Authoritarian states like Vietnam and Ethiopia experienced the worst new restrictions: The two countries saw increasing free speech limits, arrests, and punishments for anti-authority bloggers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Syria was deemed the “most dangerous place for online reporters,” as approximately 20 were killed there in the past year alone.
The study measured each country’s level of online freedom, creating a ranking based on findings from field visits and consultations from over 70 local experts and representatives.
It wasn’t only the undemocratic nations where online speech protection went down the drain. Following India’s recent civil unrest and riots, the nation suffered from severe governmental blocking and filtering of social content.
And though it may seem like Internet use has become a complete free-for-all in the United States—with provocative viral videos and tweets overrunning the web—the country faced a significant decline, too. This is in large part due to NSA’s tightened surveillance on the public for intelligence and counterterrorism efforts. The study draws a grim portrait about the state of global web rights. But there’s a silver lining: The threat of restriction is resulting in growing civil activism.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Meet the New CISPA. Same as the Old CISPA.
Monday, February 18, 2013 by Save the Internet
by Josh Levy
Last year, thanks to a public outcry, the effort to pass overreaching cybersecurity legislation stalled in the Senate. Now supporters have reintroduced the House version of that legislation — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).
The “new” version is in fact identical to the original CISPA — and poses the same threat to our digital civil liberties and our freedom to connect online.
Here’s what we had to say about CISPA last April:
The new CISPA — just like the old CISPA — would protect companies like Facebook and Microsoft from legal liability when they hand over your sensitive online data to the federal government, without any regard for your privacy. The bill would permit the government — including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security — to use that information for matters that have nothing to do with cybersecurity. The whole process would, of course, take place behind closed doors, with no accountability to the public.
Last year’s activism succeeded in improving a similar bill in the Senate, before that bill ultimately failed to move forward. At the time, President Obama vowed to veto any destructive CISPA-like bill that reached his desk.
This time around, for a number of reasons — including changes in Obama’s staff and shifting political dynamics — it’s unclear if the president would once again commit to vetoing CISPA. So if this “new” bill goes farther than it did last time around, we simply don’t know what will happen.
If CISPA becomes law, it will be a major blow to our online privacy. But more than that, CISPA’s passage would have a chilling effect on our freedom to connect online. We won’t feel as free to state unpopular opinions, or to speak truth to power, if we know that Big Brother is getting a feed of everything we say and do.
This is not what the free and open Internet is about. We need to bury this bill for good.
by Josh Levy
Last year, thanks to a public outcry, the effort to pass overreaching cybersecurity legislation stalled in the Senate. Now supporters have reintroduced the House version of that legislation — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).
The “new” version is in fact identical to the original CISPA — and poses the same threat to our digital civil liberties and our freedom to connect online.
Here’s what we had to say about CISPA last April:
CISPA would allow companies and the government to bypass privacy protections and share all sorts of information about what Americans do online. The legislation makes it far easier for authorities and private companies to spy on your email traffic, comb through your mobile texts, filter your online content and even block access to popular websites.
The new CISPA — just like the old CISPA — would protect companies like Facebook and Microsoft from legal liability when they hand over your sensitive online data to the federal government, without any regard for your privacy. The bill would permit the government — including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security — to use that information for matters that have nothing to do with cybersecurity. The whole process would, of course, take place behind closed doors, with no accountability to the public.
Last year’s activism succeeded in improving a similar bill in the Senate, before that bill ultimately failed to move forward. At the time, President Obama vowed to veto any destructive CISPA-like bill that reached his desk.
This time around, for a number of reasons — including changes in Obama’s staff and shifting political dynamics — it’s unclear if the president would once again commit to vetoing CISPA. So if this “new” bill goes farther than it did last time around, we simply don’t know what will happen.
If CISPA becomes law, it will be a major blow to our online privacy. But more than that, CISPA’s passage would have a chilling effect on our freedom to connect online. We won’t feel as free to state unpopular opinions, or to speak truth to power, if we know that Big Brother is getting a feed of everything we say and do.
This is not what the free and open Internet is about. We need to bury this bill for good.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
The Return of COINTELPRO?
Time to Target the Real Terrorists
by TOM MCNAMARA
For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.
The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.
The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.
Or did it?
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”
The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).
The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”
Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.
On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”
In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.
And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.
But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.
Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”
As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.
The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”
The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.
You know. The real terrorists.
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm
“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December 31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-police-say.html?_r=2&%29&
“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010. Accessed at:
http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying
“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-substance-find/
“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed at:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission
“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGvfDkPwDM
by TOM MCNAMARA
“Democracies die behind closed doors” – Judge Damon J. Keith
For 15 years (1956-1971) the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ran a broad and highly coordinated domestic intelligence / counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO (COunter INTELligence PROgrams). What was originally deemed as a justifiable effort to protect the US during the Cold War from Soviet and Communist threats and infiltration, soon devolved into a program for suppressing domestic dissent and spying on American citizens. Approximately 20,000 people were investigated by the FBI based only on their political views and beliefs. Most were never suspected of having committed any crime.
The reasoning behind the program, as detailed in a 1976 Senate report, was that the FBI had “the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.” The fact that the “perceived threats” were usually American citizens engaging in constitutionally protected behaviour was apparently overlooked. The stated goal of COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” any individual or group deemed to be subversive or a threat to the established power structure.
The FBI’s techniques were often extreme, with the agency being complicit in the murder and assassination of political dissidents, or having people sent away to prison for life. Some of the more “moderate” actions that were used were blackmail, spreading false rumors, intimidation and harassment. It has been argued that the US is unique in that it is the only Western industrialized democracy to have engaged in such a wide spread and well organized domestic surveillance program. It finally came to an end in 1971 when it was threatened with public exposure.
Or did it?
In a stunning revelation from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), it appears that COINTELPRO is alive and well. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, PCJF was able to obtain documents showing how the FBI was treating the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, from its inception, as a potential criminal and domestic terrorist threat. This despite the FBI’s own acknowledgement that the OWS organizers themselves planned on engaging in peaceful and popular protest and did not “condone the use of violence.”
The documents, while heavily redacted, give a clear picture of how the FBI was using its offices and agents across the country as early as August 2011 to engage in a massive surveillance scheme against OWS. This was almost a month before any actual protests took place or encampments were set up (the most famous being the one in New York City’s Zuccotti Park).
The FBI’s documents show a government agency at its most paranoid. It considered all planned protests, and the individuals involved, as potential threats. Most disturbing of all, there is talk (p. 61) of the government being ready to “engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary” and perhaps needing to formulate a plan “to kill the leadership [of the protest groups] via suppressed sniper rifles.”
Furthermore, the documents reveal a close and intricate partnership between the federal government on one side and banks and private businesses on the other.
On August 19, 2011, the FBI met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange in order to discuss OWS protests that wouldn’t happen for another four weeks. In September of that year, even before OWS got into full swing, the FBI was notifying local businesses that they might be affected by protests. It is not clear if, while on Wall Street, the FBI investigated the criminal and irresponsible behavior engaged in by some of the largest banks on the planet, behavior which led directly to the financial crisis of 2008.
We are also introduced to a creature named the “Domestic Security Alliance Council” which, according to the federal government, is “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector.” A DSAC report tells us that any information shared between US intelligence agencies and their corporate partners should not be released to “the media, the general public or other personnel.”
In a curious coincidence, nine days after the PCJF’s embarrassing release of FBI documents, the New York Post ran a story about how a 27 year old woman and her “Harvard grad and Occupy Wall Street” boyfriend, Aaron Greene, were arrested by officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) after an alleged cache of weapons and bomb making explosives were found in their Greenwich Village apartment.
And what exactly led the police to this apartment? Was it credible actionable intelligence gathered from the FBI’s massive domestic surveillance program? Did some agent acquire this information by bravely infiltrating the potential domestic terrorist group known as OWS? Hardly. The NYPD was simply executing a routine search warrant related to a credit card-theft case.
But in a story about the exact same event that appeared in the New York Times, it was reported that “police said they did not believe that Mr. Greene was active in any political movements” and that no “evidence of a planned terrorist attack” had been found . Furthermore, police hadn’t “made a connection to any known plot or any connection to any known terrorists.” No mention was made of the suspect’s alleged ties to the OWS movement, an item that had been prominently reported in the New York Post’s version of events.
Oddly, a more recent New York Post story stated that Mr. Greene was now a “Nazi-loving Harvard grad” and a reported “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.” No mention was made of his suspected ties to OWS. This author made several attempts to contact the New York Post, and the writers of the 2 articles, in an effort to find out how they knew that Mr. Greene was an OWS member and activist. Attempts were also made to try to find out if the New York Post still believed that Mr. Greene was an active OWS member, or if they now simply thought that he was just an “Adolf Hitler-wannabe.”
As of the writing of this article, no response has been received from the New York Post.
The FBI’s stated mission regarding America’s security is to “develop a comprehensive understanding of the threats and penetrate national and transnational networks that have a desire and capability to harm us.”
The American people would be far better served by their government if, instead of wasting millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours harassing peaceful protesters, it spent a fraction of that time and money investigating, and bringing to justice, the people responsible for the engineered destruction of the American economy, and by extension, American society.
You know. The real terrorists.
Sources
“COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Covert Action Programs Against American
Citizens” Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence
Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final report of the
Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to
Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, April 23, 1976. Accessed
at:http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
“COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story”, by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn. Presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus attending the conference: Donna Christianson, John Conyers, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and Diane Watson, September 1, 2001. Accessed at:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/coinwcar3.htm
“FBI Documents Reveal Secret Nationwide Occupy Monitoring” The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF), December 22, 2012. Accessed at: http://www.justiceonline.org/commentary/fbi-files-ows.html
“Greenwich Village couple busted with cache of weapons, bombmaking explosives: sources” by Jamie Schram, Antonio Antenucci and Matt McNulty, December 31, 2012, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/bombmaking_in_the_village_LoRDqNzP02SDZyfC1pLVXN
“Manhattan Couple Stored Bomb-Making Items, Police Say” by Wendy Ruderman, December 31, 2012, The New York Times. Accessed at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/nyregion/manhattan-couple-stored-bomb-making-items-police-say.html?_r=2&%29&
“More About FBI Spying” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), June 25, 2010. Accessed at:
http://www.aclu.org/spy-files/more-about-fbi-spying
“NYC couple arrested after explosive substance find” December 31, 2012, CBS/AP. Accessed at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57561371/nyc-couple-arrested-after-explosive-substance-find/
“Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy” by Naomi Wolf, December 29, 2012, The Guardian. Accessed at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
“The Federal Bureau of Investigation – Mission” The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed at:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/intelligence/mission
“Village ‘bomber’ planned to blow up Washington Sq. Arch with high-grade explosives: cops” by Jamie Schram and Jessica Simeone, January 10, 2013, The New York Post. Accessed at:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/village_bomber_planned_grade_blow_seiuSwWLlcAPyGvfDkPwDM
Thursday, September 13, 2012
911, Terrorism and the TSA
Stop-and-Frisk at the Airport Checkpoint
by ALAN FARAGO
I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports lately as a retail traveler. A lot of time waiting in lines to pass through TSA security checkpoints. Time watching a heavy-handed, cumbersome, Department of Motor Vehicles mentality that is the insistent marker of TSA checkpoints.
It is time to change how Americans are being herded into a national security landscape on the retail level, that seems hopelessly driven by a down-market bureaucracy.
True, there have been no airline hijackings in the US since 9/11/2001. But there would have been no 9/11 if our elected officials had been vigilant.
It was all there: the information, the data, the intel that al Qaeda was coordinating a major attack on US soil, as a New York Times editorial on the 9/11 anniversary, reminds us.
The other day my wife was singled out for a random security check at LAX. My wife is in her sixth decade. The check involved a TSA screener not only feeling her body, but also putting fingers along inside the waist hem of her blue jeans. Excuse me?
The 9/11 OPED in the New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald reminds that it was political incompetence in the months leading up to 9/11 that changed America. Today, what worries is that there is no road map for dialing back the unprecedented assault against American freedoms. Also, on the retail level, every time I travel through an airport I am reminded by the TSA how America became captives of its own political incompetence.
I am saying a couple of things. The explosion of domestic surveillance by the US national security apparatus has a very high likelihood of identifying terrorist plots within the United States before they are executed. Hopefully, top elected officials are more clued in than the Bush White House in the early months of 2001 when the signals were clear and ignored.
Meanwhile, the chance of the TSA stopping a determined and sophisticated terrorist attack is, in my opinion, very small. So why are we all being herded in long lines like cattle in chutes?
The probability of identifying every plot against citizens may never be better than predicting the weather. So why do we behave as though we can, under the bureaucratic gaze of the TSA?
The problem that overshadows even those threats that are real and present is that a ponderous, wealthy and cosseted security infrastructure is now self-sustaining. How do Americans back it down? I am waiting for Congress and the White House to say, “We’ve proved our point with the TSA: now it is time to be vigilant and focused on airline security, but no more waiting in lines at airports.”
Is it even possible to ratchet back, when every vested interest in national security spending and infrastructure has set its alarm bell to ring, at the first hint, scent or indication of a calamity averted or caused?
I don’t mean to minimize the facts of 9/11, the desperate costs, and tragedy imprinted on families and nation. But every time I travel, part of me surveys the TSA security checkpoints and thinks, the bad guys won.
The bad guys not only put us on the defensive, they have apparently done so permanently. Al Qaeda used box cutters to rearrange the playing field so our democratic freedoms now conform with the same instinct that organizes their hatreds. We are victims, too, taking off our shoes, belts, and removing all coins from our pockets.
On the one hand, I understand that the TSA security checkpoints are a price we pay for a world made small by technology and freedom of access and movement to anyone with an airline ticket and identification. How would I like being on a passenger flight commandeered by terrorists because we “let down our guard”? Not at all. On the other hand, we are fully invested in the dark arts of identifying and killing terrorists around the world.
Tear down those TSA checkpoints, Congress.
Keeping America safe from terrorism depends, in the end, on a few elected officials paying attention and not falling asleep or declaring the wrong missions, accomplished, when they weren’t even identified to being with. Stopping the next 9/11 is consuming billions if not hundreds of billions of tax dollars. TSA security checkpoints are as effective as putting your seat in the upright position on take-off and landing. They make us do it so we will be conditioned to accept the next words of authority. It is the same, with the TSA whether we know it or not.
by ALAN FARAGO
I’ve been spending a lot of time in airports lately as a retail traveler. A lot of time waiting in lines to pass through TSA security checkpoints. Time watching a heavy-handed, cumbersome, Department of Motor Vehicles mentality that is the insistent marker of TSA checkpoints.
It is time to change how Americans are being herded into a national security landscape on the retail level, that seems hopelessly driven by a down-market bureaucracy.
True, there have been no airline hijackings in the US since 9/11/2001. But there would have been no 9/11 if our elected officials had been vigilant.
It was all there: the information, the data, the intel that al Qaeda was coordinating a major attack on US soil, as a New York Times editorial on the 9/11 anniversary, reminds us.
The other day my wife was singled out for a random security check at LAX. My wife is in her sixth decade. The check involved a TSA screener not only feeling her body, but also putting fingers along inside the waist hem of her blue jeans. Excuse me?
The 9/11 OPED in the New York Times by Kurt Eichenwald reminds that it was political incompetence in the months leading up to 9/11 that changed America. Today, what worries is that there is no road map for dialing back the unprecedented assault against American freedoms. Also, on the retail level, every time I travel through an airport I am reminded by the TSA how America became captives of its own political incompetence.
I am saying a couple of things. The explosion of domestic surveillance by the US national security apparatus has a very high likelihood of identifying terrorist plots within the United States before they are executed. Hopefully, top elected officials are more clued in than the Bush White House in the early months of 2001 when the signals were clear and ignored.
Meanwhile, the chance of the TSA stopping a determined and sophisticated terrorist attack is, in my opinion, very small. So why are we all being herded in long lines like cattle in chutes?
The probability of identifying every plot against citizens may never be better than predicting the weather. So why do we behave as though we can, under the bureaucratic gaze of the TSA?
The problem that overshadows even those threats that are real and present is that a ponderous, wealthy and cosseted security infrastructure is now self-sustaining. How do Americans back it down? I am waiting for Congress and the White House to say, “We’ve proved our point with the TSA: now it is time to be vigilant and focused on airline security, but no more waiting in lines at airports.”
Is it even possible to ratchet back, when every vested interest in national security spending and infrastructure has set its alarm bell to ring, at the first hint, scent or indication of a calamity averted or caused?
I don’t mean to minimize the facts of 9/11, the desperate costs, and tragedy imprinted on families and nation. But every time I travel, part of me surveys the TSA security checkpoints and thinks, the bad guys won.
The bad guys not only put us on the defensive, they have apparently done so permanently. Al Qaeda used box cutters to rearrange the playing field so our democratic freedoms now conform with the same instinct that organizes their hatreds. We are victims, too, taking off our shoes, belts, and removing all coins from our pockets.
On the one hand, I understand that the TSA security checkpoints are a price we pay for a world made small by technology and freedom of access and movement to anyone with an airline ticket and identification. How would I like being on a passenger flight commandeered by terrorists because we “let down our guard”? Not at all. On the other hand, we are fully invested in the dark arts of identifying and killing terrorists around the world.
Tear down those TSA checkpoints, Congress.
Keeping America safe from terrorism depends, in the end, on a few elected officials paying attention and not falling asleep or declaring the wrong missions, accomplished, when they weren’t even identified to being with. Stopping the next 9/11 is consuming billions if not hundreds of billions of tax dollars. TSA security checkpoints are as effective as putting your seat in the upright position on take-off and landing. They make us do it so we will be conditioned to accept the next words of authority. It is the same, with the TSA whether we know it or not.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
NSA whistleblower: They’re assembling information on every U.S. citizen
By Muriel Kane - RAW Story
Friday, July 13, 2012
Binney, who resigned from the NSA in 2001 over its domestic surveillance program, had just delivered a keynote speech in which he revealed what Shively called “evidence which we have not seen until this point.”
“They’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country … and assembling that information,” Binney explained. “So government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that something like 1.6 billion logs have been processed since 2001.
Shively and livestreamer Tim Pool, who was filming the interview, concluded by noting that videos of Binney’s keynote address will be available shortly.
This video was uploaded to Youtube by Timcasts on July 13, 2012.
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