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Spying Update
Update 1: Prominent Liberals AND Conservatives Sue Over NSA Spying
Update 2: Spying Whistleblower’s Girlfriend Is Hot
Government Spying on Americans … and then Giving Info to Giant Corporations
You’ve heard that the government spies on all Americans.
But you might not know that the government shares some of that information with big corporations.
In addition, Reuters reported in 2011 that the NSA shares intelligence with Wall Street banks in the name of “battling hackers.”
The National Security Agency, a secretive arm of the U.S. military, has begun providing Wall Street banks with intelligence on foreign hackers, a sign of growing U.S. fears of financial sabotage.The assistance from the agency that conducts electronic spying overseas is part of an effort by American banks and other financial firms to get help from the U.S. military and private defense contractors to fend off cyber attacks, according to interviews with U.S. officials, security experts and defense industry executives.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also warned banks of particular threats amid concerns that hackers could potentially exploit security vulnerabilities to wreak havoc across global markets and cause economic mayhem.
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NSA Director Keith Alexander, who runs the U.S. military’s cyber operations, told Reuters the agency is currently talking to financial firms about sharing electronic information on malicious software, possibly by expanding a pilot program through which it offers similar data to the defense industry.
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NSA, which has long been charged with protecting classified government networks from attack, is already working with Nasdaq to beef up its defenses after hackers infiltrated its computer systems last year and installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on the directors of publicly held companies.
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The NSA’s work with Wall Street marks a milestone in the agency’s efforts to make its cyber intelligence available more broadly to the private sector.
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Greater cooperation with industry became possible after a deal reached a year ago between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, allowing NSA to provide cyber expertise to other government agencies and certain private companies.
In March, PC Magazine noted:
“Right now, the ability to share real-time information is complicated and there are legal barriers. We have to overcome that,” Gen Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said during a Thursday appearance at Georgia Tech’s Cyber Security Symposium.
[Alexander has been pushing for the anti-privacy Internet bill known as "CISPA" to be passed.] “It allows the government to start working with industry and … discuss with each of these sector about the best approach,” he said.
CISPA would allow the NSA to more openly share data with corporations in the name of protecting against “cyber threats.” But that phrase is too squisy. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes:
A “cybersecurity purpose” only means that a company has to think that a user is trying to harm its network. What does that mean, exactly? The definition is broad and vague. The definition allows purposes such as guarding against “improper” information modification, ensuring “timely” access to information or “preserving authorized restrictions on access…protecting…proprietary information” (i.e. DRM).
Moreover, as the ACLU notes, “Fusion Centers” – a hybrid of military, intelligence agency, police and private corporations set up in centers throughout the country, and run by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security – allow big businesses like Boeing to get access to classified information which gives them an unfair advantage over smaller competitors:
Participation in fusion centers might give Boeing access to the trade secrets or security vulnerabilities of competing companies, or might give it an advantage in competing for government contracts. Expecting a Boeing analyst to distinguish between information that represents a security risk to Boeing and information that represents a business risk may be too much to ask.
A 2008 Department of Homeland Security Privacy Office review of fusion centers concluded that they presented risks to privacy because of ambiguous lines of authority, rules and oversight, the participation of the military and private sector, data mining, excessive secrecy, inaccurate or incomplete information and the dangers of mission creep.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found in 2012 that fusion centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work unrelated to terrorism or real threats:
“The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”
Under the FBI’s Infraguard program, businesses sometimes receive intel even before elected officials.
Law enforcement agencies spy on protesters and then share the info – at taxpayer expense – with the giant Wall Street banks
And a security expert says that all Occupy Wall Street protesters had their cellphone information logged by the government.
Alternet notes:
Ironically, records indicate that corporate entities engaged in such public-private intelligence sharing partnerships were often the very same corporate entities criticized, and protested against, by the Occupy Wall Street movement as having undue influence in the functions of public government.
In essence, big banks and giant corporations are seen as being part of “critical infrastructure” and “key resources” … so the government protects them. That creates a dynamic where the government will do quite a bit to protect the big boys against any real or imagined threats … whether from activists or even smaller competitors. (Remember that the government has completely propped up the big banks, even though they went bankrupt due to stupid gambles.)
And given that some 70% of the national intelligence budget is spent on private sector contractors. that millions of private contractors have clearance to view information gathered by spy agencies – including kids like 29 year old spying whistleblower Edward Snowden, who explained that he had the power to spy on anyone in the country – and that information gained by the NSA by spying on Americans is being shared with agencies in other countries, at least some of the confidential information is undoubtedly leaking into private hands for profit, without the government’s knowledge or consent.
As the ACLU noted in 2004:
There is a long and unfortunate history of cooperation between government security agencies and powerful corporations to deprive individuals of their privacy and other civil liberties, and any program that institutionalizes close, secretive ties between such organizations raises serious questions about the scope of its activities, now and in the future.
Indeed, the government has been affirmatively helping the big banks, giant oil companies and other large corporations cover up fraud and to go after critics. For example, Business Week reported on May 23, 2006:
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.
Reuters noted in 2010:
U.S. securities regulators originally treated the New York Federal Reserve’s bid to keep secret many of the details of the American International Group bailout like a request to protect matters of national security, according to emails obtained by Reuters.
Wired reported the same year:
The DHS issued a directive to employees in July 2009 requiring a wide range of public records requests to pass through political appointees for vetting. These included any requests dealing with a “controversial or sensitive subject” or pertaining to meetings involving prominent business leaders and elected officials. Requests from lawmakers, journalists, and activist and watchdog groups were also placed under this scrutiny.
In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing – the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)
The government and big banks actually coordinated on the violent crackdown of the anti-big bank Occupy protest.
The government is also using anti-terrorism laws to keep people from learning what pollutants are in their own community, in order to protect the fracking, coal and other polluting industries. See this, this, this, this and this.
Investigating factory farming can get one labeled a terrorist.
Infringing the copyright of a big corporation may also get labeled as a terrorist … and a swat team may be deployed to your house. See this, this, this and this. As the executive director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School notes:
This administration … publishes a newsletter about its efforts with language that compares copyright infringement to terrorism.
In short, the “national security” apparatus has been hijacked to serve the needs of big business
NSA Official: “The Government Is Not Trying To Protect [Secrets About NSA Surveillance] from the Terrorists. It’s Trying to Protect Knowledge of that Program from the Citizens of the United States”
The former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program – William Binney – confirms what Glenn Greenwald and other civil libertarians say: the disclosure of widespread spying on Americans doesn’t help terrorists or otherwise hurt national security, but is simply an embarrassment to people in government who have been caught breaking the law:
The terrorists have already known that we’ve been doing this for years, so there’s no surprise there. They’re not going to change the way they operate just because it comes out in the U.S. press. I mean, the point is, they already knew it, and they were operating the way they would operate anyway. So, the point is that they’re—we’re not—the government here is not trying to protect it from the terrorists; it’s trying to protect it, that knowledge of that program, from the citizens of the United States.
Remember, Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined … even though many of those whistleblowers have helped national security by revealing wrongdoing by our government.
Top Spying Experts Explain Why You Should Oppose Spying … Even Though You’ve Done Nothing Wrong
Surveillance Can be Used to Frame You If Someone In Government Happens to Take a Dislike to You … Last Chance to Stop “Turnkey Tyranny”
Top NSA whistleblower William Binney – the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program – has repeatedly explained that just because you “haven’t done anything wrong” doesn’t mean you can’t be severely harmed by spying:
The problem is, if they think they’re not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does.
Binney explains that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn’t like).
And he notes that the government will go after anyone who is on its enemies list:
If you ever get on their enemies list, like Petraeus did, then you can be drawn into that surveillance.
Binney recently held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:
We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state
Similarly, in response to the question, “why should people care about surveillance?”, the whistleblower source of the Guardian’s disclosures on phone and Internet spying – Edward Snowden – said:
Because even if you’re not doing anything wrong you’re being watched and recorded. And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude … to where it’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody – even by a wrong call. And then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis to sort to derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.
[If people don't oppose the surveillance state now] it will be turnkey tyranny.
In 1975, Senator Frank Church said about the NSA:
I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
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Must read. Both satirical and informative: how 'impersonal' contact information leads one straight to 'certain people'...written from the point of view of English intelligence during the American Revolution
http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-p...
+1 Good link.
Unconstructive outburst of Anglo Saxon. Deleted.
we should treat snowden as a hero and remain guarded in terms of the conclusive postscript
Then let's wait till Snowdem tells us something we don't know.
A lot of us knew it, but not enough to matter to TPTB
This guy changed the game.
A lot more people are pissed off now.
Critical mass maybe just got a bit closer.
that's just it isn't it?
We've gone from conspiracy theory to conspiracy fact. That's important and useful.
William Binney came out an told us all this already. Genuine thanks to Mr. Binney.
Edward Snowden lifted material and made it public, a much more dangerous activity.
Yes the MSM has their reasons for spinning this one way or the other - nonsequitor.
Another thing - Edward Snowden set a big, wonderful example for additional whistle-blowers to follow, maybe in the same way that William Binney may have influenced ES.
On the face of it, he knows too much to be "off the ranch." No doubt he knows they'll kill him if they can. If he's got more to say he should hurry up. Think maybe $10M could get the job done in HK?
Someone was talking about the triads vs. the .gov.
Check this out http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Brothers-Criminal-Underworld-Asia/dp/1403961...
Yes the Triads may out live any government, but they do that by adopting, like the Yakuza in Yippon, a nationalist posture. They'd be outgunned and massacred as they sometimes were if they chose otherwise.
Because of the Triads, the streets can be watched. What goes on can be watched.
Smart move imo.
Sometimes you just have to KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. (not calling you stupid bank guy, just using the phrase generally). Or the notion of Occam's Razor if you prefer.
Occam's Razor is a license for intellectual laziness dressed up as profound slave morality imo
https://soundcloud.com/phoneboyspeaks/shut-up-already-its-science and etc.
im a contrarian and have heard this same vector elsewhere with additional points made - it bears considering. im not saying that i am confirming this line of reasoning, but failure to consider it Both ways i think is a mistake.
Occam's Razor is just another name for Common Sense.
Which, by the way, still works great.
Unfortunately, Common Sense is not that common.
shhhhhhh! "Occam's Razor" sounds much more impressive than "common sense".
Re: your avatar, Tinky:
"Horse sense is what horses have that keep them from betting on people." ~WCF
Well if I go all "it's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma" too many scenarios to count for my human mind. I think the government counts on us over thinking and adding layers and complexities in order to confuse the situation and allow everything to be "half truths" giving them "plausible deniability"
The American spooks are notorious for adding layers and complexities beyond what any reasonable intelligence agency would. Their staffs are too large.
Project 'Snowden - Snow Job' - why Snowden may be a fake or double agent
Edward Snowden NSA 'whistleblower' is being promoted by America's top CIA family, at the centre of America's oligarchs who own and control US politicians and media
Millionaire journalist Mika Brzezinski pumping Snowden, is the daughter of master warmonger Zbigniew 'Great Game - Grand Chessboard' Brzezinski, Obama friend and advisor, Trilateral Commission grandfather, central US Shadow Government figure with Rockefellers, Henry Kissinger, Bilderbergs etc
Mika's brother Ian Brzezinski has been working with Snowden at the CIA-NSA company Booz Allen ...
UK Guardian is CIA-tied corrupt like the New York Times, same plan ... fake lefty-'progressive' on surface, but the Guardian and NYT both take bribes to publish fake 'news' for the CIA and friends
Other holes in Snowden's story - improbable CV, quick rise from security guard to IT expert for CIA-NSA in Switzerland, shows a diplomatic passport tho usually confiscated after diplomat job ends etc ... Even if Snowden personally is half-sincere, media hype with Brzezinskis means the hype about him is CIA Operation Mockingbird (media control), done for a reason
As David Harrison of Trade With Dave says: « What are the odds that the lady doing the interviewing about the guy who spilled his guts on the NSA are brother, sister and employee, not to mention children (a super-majority at least) of the one man who may have the President of the United State’s ear more than any other single person? Purely a coincidence… nothing to see here folks… move along. You can forget the Trilateral Commission ... »
http://tradewithdave.com/?p=16948
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Question now is, why are they running Project Snowden - Snow Job ?
Is Snowden a fake 'dissident' in order to get asylum and then penetrate intelligence operations inside Russia or China, and later jump back ?
Is the US regime trying to get us to be more trusting of some of these corrupt mainstream media stooges again ?
Are they running a test to see how much REAL outrage there is, versus submission ?
Are they just trying to get people more used to fascism, and the seeming fact there is little that can be done about it ?
Another fake coup, to fool US people with 'faith in the system', like with the military CIA 'Watergate' coup to take down Nixon, that was run by the CIA with the military joint chiefs - reporter Bob Woodward was a Naval Intelligence agent working for the top Admiral running the US military who took Nixon down (book 'Silent Coup' by Colodny and Gettlin) ? ... Now we will have an even more fake 'victory', taking down Obama and maybe Biden ?
bank guy, I've read the same post from you on 2 different threads now. Unfortunately your talking points appear to be complete bullshit. But as long as we're looking at everything from a dark conspiratorial perspective, tell me, what are you trying to achieve with your posting on this matter? From the dark conspiratorial perspective it appears as though you are trying to undermine the credibility of the whistleblower. What's your angle here? Are you half drunk and bored or is this your job?
@bankguyinbrussels
+1 Kudos. Don't let the short term trolls deter you from your search. I've also thought about the 2x/3x possibility and much more, so keep up the good work.
I'm going to stick with the Petreaus rabbit hole for now and will share if new content becomes available.
Bank Guy and whatever else you go by: Shill...I say with complete confidence as you have 'managed' to be the first post of almost all the articles written about Snowden.
...............and then you never hear from him (bank guy) again.
the fact that bank guy in brussels post has nore downvotes than up is testament to the fact that ZH has been fully coopted. beware, there is no haven from the brain police. if u cant figure it out you are fucked. meaning, you think u know what's going on, but really you are just another dumbfukistanian...
Following your own logic: u obviously think u know what's going on, therefore you are just another dumbfukistanian...
Hey, I can roll with your take on it, BGIB. I have long suspected Obama was set up to be taken down. How else to get the lapdog presstitutes to turn on him than to have Obama's NSA slaughter their sacred cow of "privacy"? This all started with the AP "scandal". Now all the MSM is rabidly looking for the eavesdropping story. If this snowballs, soon the MSM will be talking about the Cold Case Posse and Mike Zullo, and the fake birth certificate, and once that happens, Obama will go DOWN, as in, to prison.
If this peters out, Obama is the pupppet for life, and we'll never get rid of him. But if the fire does take, and Obama goes down, it doesn't mean we'll get someone better, it means we'lll get someone worse.
Cheer up! The mag. north pole is moving twd. Siberia at the rate of one mile per day!
Check out Suspicious0bservers YT channel. Latest news is, you can relax a bit, it's slowing down a bit from 40mi./year.
Whatever they are trying to do, be assured it is all about the money.
Big Money and the NSA Scandal … How Dangerous is the "Security/Digital Complex"?Tuesday, 11 June 2013 13:17By Richard Eskow, Campaign for America's Future | Op-Ed
It should be self-evident that recent NSA revelations bring up some grave concerns about civil liberties. But they also raise other profound and troubling questions – about the privatization of our military, our culture’s inflated expectations for digital technology, and the increasingly cozy relationship between Big Corporations (including Wall Street) and Big Defense.
Are these corporations perverting our political process? The campaign war chest for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who today said NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden committed “treason,” is heavily subsidized by defense and intelligence contractors that include General Dynamics, General Atomic, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Bechtel.
One might argue that a politician with that kind of backing is in no moral position to lecture others about “treason.”
But Feinstein’s funders are decidedly old-school Military/Industrial Complex types. What about the new crowd? This confluence of forces hasn’t been named yet, so for the time being we’ll use a cumbersome label: the “Security/Digital Complex.”
With computers and communications encompassing an ever-larger portion of human activity, we may someday learn that this new force dwarfs even its predecessors in the Feinstein camp when it comes to its impact on our democracy, our economy and our values.
There’s much we don’t know yet, so it’s wise to be cautious in describing this new force. But Edward Snowden’s revelations, and the reactions to them, are offering us a glimpse into rarely-seen intersections of Wall Street wealth, information technology, and the national security state.
Revolving doors.
Reports say that Snowden left government and joined the private sector as part of the massive privatization of government functions, including national security. His recent employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, earns more than 98 percent of its revenue from the government.
Privatization is an ideological pathway. It’s also, as with bank regulation, a path to riches for pliant officials. And, as with Wall Street, the officials feeding at the trough are entirely “bipartisan.” From a New York Times article:
That’s the revolving door in its purest form, spinning like an electron in your digital profile.
And there’s a lot of money to be made. Last February Booz Allen Hamilton announced two new contracts with Homeland Security, worth a total of $11 billion, for “program management, engineering, technology, business and financial management, and audit support services.”
Wonder who signed off on that deal – and where they’ll be working next year?
It’s who you know.
Booz Allen Hamilton is now a part of the Carlyle Group, the leverage-buyout firm which has contributed to the personal enrichment of a number of very well-known public figures from Administrations of both parties. They include:
Former President George H. W. Bush; Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, and Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci; Arthur Levitt, Bill Clinton’s Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); and Mack McLarty, Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff.
The Bin Laden family was a major shareholder, too, until both parties concluded that the relationship with the Al Qaeda leader’s family (and the source of his wealth) was “receiving more attention than it deserved.”
Carlyle invests in both old-school and digital defense contractors. Members of the Carlyle Group’s Board also have board seats or other affiliations with corporations that include ExxonMobil, MCI Communications, Sprint Nextel, Duke Energy, Reuters, and Ford Motors. Bank affiliations among Carlyle’s leaders include Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America.
As a “leveraged buyout” firm, the Carlyle Group purchases companies with borrowed money, and then lays the debt onto its acquisitions. That means it relies heavily on Wall Street connections, Wall Street wealth … and Wall Street’s solvency, which was protected by the 2008 bailouts.
It also means that those companies, including government contractors have to be very profitable. They need to pay off those debts and enrich their new owners, while seeing to it that the financial institutions which underwrite these loans are kept whole.
(Note to Carlyle Board: Sen. Feinstein will be available in 2018 when her current term ends.)
Birth of the Booz
Booz Hamilton Allen is a $5.9 billion company. Most of the work it does would have been performed in by military or civilian government employees – at no markup whatsoever. Thanks to privatization, Booz Allen earned nearly a cool billion in taxpayer-funded profit for those two years alone.
Booz Allen has profited greatly from the explosive growth in national security privatization since 9/11. (It created a chart to illustrate its growth between 2001 and 2010, which we’ve reproduced below. It’s impressive.)
The Times informs us that roughly 23 percent of the company’s revenue over the last decade has come directly from intelligence contracts. Booz says it has a backlog of $10.8 billion in additional “sold” work, which means it’s on track to receive nearly another billion in taxpayer money as profits (if current margins hold).
Booz says it has approximately 25,000 employees. More than three quarters of them hold government security clearances. Roughly half hold clearances of “Top Secret” or higher.
Private Eyes
And yet, for all that, it’s only eighth on the list of the top 100 government contractors.
Dana Priest and William Arkin conducted an intensive two-year investigation of national security for the Washington Post. They identified 1,931 private companies working in “about 10,000 locations” around the country, with 854,000 of their employees holding top-secret clearances.
They also found enormous redundancy and waste, along with an inability for human beings to effectively absorb and use all the information produced. Analysts were then publishing some 50,000 intelligence reports each year. And since this report was completed nearly three years ago, things can only have grown worse.
The huge drain on public coffers is only one of the downsides of this behemoth. Another is the lack of accountability when private employees do government work. That danger was eloquently described to the Times by Stewart A. Baker, former General Counsel to NSA and ex-Homeland Security official.
Cold Fusion
A lot of people are getting rich from national security data contracts. And, coincidentally or not, this corporate-driven national security apparatus seems especially interested in protecting Wall Street banks and bankers.
We’ve seen collusion between corporations and law enforcement on the local level, especially after then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani started renting out the New York City police force to big banks as rent-a-cops under a program called “Paid Detail.” That cozy relationship made it unsurprising, if no less deplorable, when city police officers teamed up with private security guards to evict Occupy demonstrators from Zuccotti Park.
A report on regional “fusion centers, which the Department of Homeland Security created to support inter-agency cooperation and data sharing,suggests that this relationship has been replicated on the national level through the Federal security apparatus. The study by DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy is an exhaustively researched glimpse into the cozy relationship between corporations and the National Security State.
The report’s author, Beau Hodai, documents the exhaustive use of government anti-terrorism resources against Occupy, a legal and nonviolent protest movement. Hodai also includes an interesting case study: the Arizona Fusion Center’s close collaboration with bank security personnel at JPMorgan Chase to protect CEO Jamie Dimon during a 2011 visit to Phoenix.
Booz Allen appears to be heavily involved in fusion centers. Its white paper on the topic reads like a sales pitch, and as of this writing more than 500 Booz employees on LinkedIn include the phrase “Fusion Center” in their job titles or descriptions.
JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO received such personal service from the Arizona Fusion Center, has close ties to Booz and the Carlyle Group, with projects that include backing Carlyle’s 2012 acquisition of a Philadelphia refinery; help in finding a buyer for aerospace company Arinc (which was part of Booz); reviewing Virgin Media for a possible takeover bid; and handling the initial share offering for Carlyle itself.
Complex Temptations
Our government’s accelerated dependence on Big Data technologies – one might even say its “fetishization” of them – has troubling implications for the workings of democracy and the apparatus of state.
In naming the “military/industrial complex,” General-turned-President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us that, in meeting crises, “there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.”
“Spectacular.” “Costly.” “Miraculous.” “Temptation.”
And they say the General was a taciturn man.
The would-be miracle du jour at the core of today’s scandal is “metadata”: data about data. The corporate and intelligence worlds are infatuated with it. You might even call this wave of fascination a “bubble.”
The Data Bubble
Like any bubble, the “metadata” craze takes something of genuine value and inflates it far beyond its worth. This corporo-bureaucratic fashion trend is contributing to the new Complex’s explosive growth. But, as Priest and Arkin observe, the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough data or “metadata.” It’s that the data isn’t sifted, refined, and evaluated by human beings with human judgment.
“Metadata” is all the rage on Wall Street too. When “market makers” like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase capture a large chunk of the trades in a given area (the top five US banks control well over 90 percent of all derivatives trades, for example) that data gives them extraordinary economic power.
In a very real way, financial institutions are now data institutions – and the “too-big-to-fail” ones are grabbing all the power that comes with the hoarding of information.
Still, it’s a sign of Big Data’s limitations that these banks would have failed anyway if taxpayers hadn’t rescued them. We’ve forgotten that metadata, whether it’s used for credit scores, algorithmic trading, or national security, is inherently subject to flaws – flaws which can’t be fixed when it’s operated in secret or purely out of self-interest.
Metadata as Ideology
Eisenhower warned that the Military/Industrial Complex’s “total influence – economic, political, even spiritual (emphasis ours) – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government …”
We face, in Eisenhower’s words, a spiritual threat, that of Metadata as Ideology. We idealize this algorithmic methodology, even surrender our liberties to it, while overlooking the flawed human origin of the process itself. Speaking as a former designer of large information systems, I recognize that it’s a very useful analytical technique. But as an ideology it’s antithetical to a democratic society:
Where democracy serves the human, metadata serves the mechanical and quantifiable.
Where democracy serves a society, metadata serves its masters.
Where democracy values the individual, metadata values the “set.”
Where democracy is self-correcting (at least in design), metadata is self-replicating and self-reinforcing.
The Long Struggle
The technology is new, but the struggle is old: Corporations like the Dutch East Indies Company and the British East India Company used traded goods to drive a wave of global colonization. Corporations in the Military/Industrial Complex made money from mass-produced weapons of iron and steel.
The weapons of the 21st Century are made of electrons, not metal. But human nature doesn’t change. The Military/Industrial Complex robs our nation of its wealth and many people of their lives. the Security/Digital Complex takes our wealth and has the potential to invade and monitor virtually every aspect of our lives. In the end, that could make it even more powerful than its predecessor.
Booz Allen Hamilton’s corporate slogan is “Delivering results that endure.” Results that endure? That’s exactly what should worry us.
(UPDATE: I chose the word “whistleblower” with care. The AP Standards Editor says that term means “a person who exposes wrongdoing.” I believe there is clear evidence that “exposing wrongdoing” is precisely what Snowden has done.)
(Graph: Booz Allen Hamilton’s Post-9/11 Growth)
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Amnesty is being voted on this week.
Internal battles breaking out into the open, eg., Boston Marathon, Santa Monica shooting (with Obama just happening to be in the neighborhood), Sandy Hook, Aurora, etc.
Oh, at any rate, saw good ole Mika on the Morning Joe show interviewing Greenwald.
She does not appear to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.
One of the biggest mistakes made is assuming that there is a monolithic NWO afoot.
You leave out the possibility of factions within the sigint / gov / political community who may have different agendas. Mr. S. may represent one of those factions.
Monoliths of this size generally have many different fissures and fractures, and allegiances shift with the balance of power.
wish i could give you +2
1 for having the balls to say this
and 1 for having the balls to say it as the first response to the article knowing majority of ppl will shit all over it without actually going and doing the digging to vet your analysis in any serious fashion
The idea that he becomes a double agent is absurd on the face of it: neither Putin nor the Chinese are stupid. If he defects, the information flow will be one way, period.
Defections were political in the past when ideology mattered politically. Now it doesn't, so whatever side he spills his load to what difference does it make, they are all basically the same people on different geographical teams now.
The only thing he's worried about, after exposing this NSA and Administration info, that is, is to stay alive. So he is then going to take the best deal he gets offered. But it should be obvious in that, that his real over-riding hope and concern (at least purportedly) is for the people of his actual homeland to wake up, and make some BIG changes quickly. And to no longer wait to merely vote for another rancid fucking little crooked Chicago cunt, like obama, to ponce on to the faux US political stage to provide town-hall meeting promises of "change we need", but never get.
Quite the reverse in fact.
By now, we know that they are crawling in ditches, hiding in shadows, sneaking up behind us. There needs to be an organized attempt at protecting the people who have found the courage or are desperate enough to come forward. There should be a plan implemented to protect these people. We are all safe and comfortable in our homes but...not for long... if this plan is able to be brought to fruitiion. Getting mental minds together should not be hard. You are all here right now. An underground railroad is needed.
If the bankers et al were as accomplished as they think they are, they'd have come up with a plan that would be able to bring them their result (monoplization) without sending hundreds of millions of people into austerity since they can print money like it grows on trees. They are unwrothy of the wealth and respect they are given. They have it because they are assassins. Fear is what they use. Play their game if you must but do something.
Looks to me like the plan is get your ass to HK and out yourself so it's hard to go quietly.
Looks like the enemies of the enemies of liberty might want to provide cover.
Like that movie ... CasaBlanca ... Humphry Bogart ... Resistance people escaping the Nazi oppression, stuck in the last port out. Ready to trade what's left to get a ticket.
Sad we got here really.
Nice.
and what if China is a government as synthetic and hijacked as our own - being managed by the same people with the singular goal of putting us all into a borg beehive.
(cmon josh, its a NWO laboratory managed by 2k hand-picked elites, stop pussy fotting around and call it like it is)
hey, fuck you my conscience, i prefer a good reputation to honesty
I don't see how that affects my argument. The idea that China or Russia a) needs Mr Snowdens computer skills, or b) would give him anything about their own systems is absurd. What they would want from him his is everything he knows about our systems and operations. One way street.
If he knows as much as he intimates, the US will do everything they can to prevent that from happening. I'm not 100% certain of Mr. Snowden but I am inclined to think he's legit.
- I'm not 100% certain of Mr. Snowden but I am inclined to think he's legit.
That's where I'm at on this too.
me too. Have learned the hard way not to ignore my instincts. This kind of thing is also innevitable isn't it? They are indeed getting more ugly, selfish, reckless and (there goes that word again) illegal. That is bound to trigger some folks. That is yet another fallout they have overlooked. Not everyone can be bought. And the number of folks who can be intimidated diminishes as well as day to day things get worse and worse.
It does seem inevitable. Like trying to keep a beachball underwater.
First, I agree, largely, w/the last four or so posts I see here now.
But I would add caution b/c folks in powerful positions, folks who align w/the neocons and satanists, want WWIII, apparently, or at least a stronger push into Iran and Syria. I am no fan of I'llbombya, but he is refusing this. Apparently, folks in the Pentagon are, too.
If we can't be blind to facts, then we can't be blind to the fact that there is a serious power struggle amongst TPTB in DC and worldwide.
It is very possible that the entire US media has been suddenly turned against I'llbombya in his second term b/c he won't go into Iran and Syria as they have wanted since this century began.
+1 upvote for the power struggle angle.
Working on that myself.
let me preface this by saying that we need to champion whistleblowers when they have clear standing and that while these suspicions have ample traction, we must be on our guard about accidently burning our own heroes (of course the caveat is that if we fail to bury our heroes when they desert or deceive us, we are like lambs to the slaughter).
thank you for putting some traction to these concerns which i share - been a lot of flap about this amid a flurry of outcry
which is understandable of course - despite the fact that we all knew this was already being done...
specifically the clash of civs dynamic vis-a-vis china and internet 2.0 rollout
anytime you see zbigs cunt of a daughter running her mouth on her husbands show its time to go deeper and there are many things about snowden's track record that look problematic - the analogy to burning spent assets (i.e. Nixon) is sound.
luckily the grist mill wont work anymore in the long-term even if that final point you made about roping muppets back into the MSM ideological bloc structure pans out
some nice contrarian analysis echoing my own worst suspicions man. cheers.
also we need to look more closely at greenwald as your points about the guardian are not only well served but scratch the surface i think (i would offer huffpo as a secondary structural target here). i would like to hazard an extreme guess about the enemy codifying their take down methodology for whistleblowers as well in the entire affair - the idea of brow beating the public to acclimate them to fascism is also good.
in the last analysis the answer is always both. or to treat each salient data point as a Component in the overall vector. it is all these things, from internet 2.0 grist and clash of civs, to brow beating the slaves and more.
perhaps whose snowden's allegiances are to is irrelevant to the larger issue.
the genie is out of the bottle regardless of the answer.
WE ARE ALL ED SNOWDEN
(that is, it is now impossible to be ignorant that all of our lives are open books)
the question is: how does each one of us react to such knowledge?
perhaps that is the debate "they" wished for us to have at this moment. the debate within...do i post that article on Monsanto on F/B knowing that Monsanto is in bed with the Guvvies and that someone in the Guvvie is watching?
or do i keep my mouth shut?
taking this back to ZBig: “The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”
then again, here's another quote of his : "the Internet is the wild card."
catch-22 indeed...for both sides of the fence.
Glenn Greenwald has a consistent track record. He's not a shill.
I don't know anything about Mikka Brzezinski. But it was Laura Poitras - not Mikka Brzezinski - who shot the interview, and Greenwald asked the questions.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/edward-snowden-nytimes-warrantl...
The guy at the NSA who actually created much of their digital snooping also confirmed Snowden's allegations to me (and many others):
We Call a Top NSA Whistleblower … And Get the REAL SCOOP on Spying
Finally, why would the Europeans be so pissed if this was fake:
EU, Germany's Merkel to raise NSA surveillance?
This is against Obama. He is not progressive enough in "spreading democracy" in Syria and Iran. Remeber this?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR201010...
"Finally, why would the Europeans be so pissed if this was fake:
EU, Germany's Merkel to raise NSA surveillance?"Moerkel is pissed because her reelection in september is in danger if her German Counselers Office becomes a collateral damage in this campain. In Germany the counselers office and the BND are knee deep in the NSA data snorkeling biz.
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=...