In a discussion with Edward Snowden on his weekly “Liberty Report," Ron Paul and the former NSA contractor trace the genesis of the so-called Deep State, and discuss how the US intelligence community uses covert programs like those exposed by Snowden in 2013 to trample individual freedoms.
The most sinister quality of the Deep State, Snowden says, is its ability to mask its very existence from the public, allowing it to undermine President Donald Trump while remaining largely hidden from scrutiny.
“Generally, when we’re talking about the Deep State, what we’re talking about is a mass of government that survives beyond administrations, but that is not responding to the politics of the people. This belongs not to a particular political party, but it serves across parties. Across administrations.”
The Deep State’s culture of secrecy convinces employees that they won’t ever be held accountable for their actions, Snowden said, since even routine communications between employees at the CIA and NSA are classified.
“Everything we do at the NSA and CIA is typically classified by default, unless you actually work to make it not classified."
“When I sent an email about lunch plans to one of my office buddies, that was going to be classified. Even the most banal email that you’re sending...is classified."
Though he says he favors small government and opposes widespread surveillance, Snowden balked at being branded a libertarian by Paul, arguing that labels like “libertarian” or “liberal” are often reductive and don’t allow for enough nuance to accurately represent his views.
“We’re more than tribes or labels. It is true that I think we have challenges that are derived from governments reaching a new scale that they haven’t previously occupied historically, allowing for the rise of these sort of ‘Super States.’”
“Small government tends to be more respecting of individuals’ rights than large governments. And the question we need to ask, is why?”
With the passage of time, the scrutiny on Snowden and the programs that he leaked has subsided, allowing him to focus on other tasks like advocacy.
“Things were really crazy that close to the event in 2013. You never knew what was happening and what they were saying from the government side.
There was this cycle of deception that was occurring where the journalists would publish some report and say this is what’s happening and this is how they’re violating your rights... Then the government would immediately come out and say ‘oh no we don’t do that that’s a misunderstanding it’s not quite right’ and they’d issue various denials to these reports.
“Then immediately the journalists would have to find some particular point that disproved [the government’s counter-report] then the government would sort of walk back their denial, and this went on and on and on.”
"This was really consuming my life, [the journalists] lives, and the lives of everybody involved for the longest time. But as we’ve gotten farther and farther from the event, I’ve gotten free to pursue my own interest once again."
Rejecting the idea that he’s a leader in the fight against deep-state overreach, Snowden assured his viewers that he’s “not a politician” and that he isn’t comfortable in the role of spokesman. Rather, he prefers to focus on engineering methods of protecting individuals’ privacy.
“[Some people] want me to sort of be a frontman for these issues like civil liberty and peoples’ rights but I’m not a politician, I’m an engineer. Last year I gave a presentation…at MIT on how we can make phones safer by understanding what’s happening inside of them.
When we start looking at all of the problems we’re facing today, there’s sort of two tracks. There’s the political track where the government is passing laws that don’t protect citizens’ rights…the other problem is how is it that so many governments are spying on so many people?”
Because of its global nature, the expansion of government surveillance has become an intractable problem, Snowden explained.
“Even if we passed the best legal reforms in the world in the US, that doesn’t do anything against China or Russia or Germany or Brazil or any other country in the world. If we want to solve these problems, we need to find new means and mechanisms for enforcing those rights and I think that’s going to primarily be through science and technology.”
At one point in the discussion, Paul asserted that the Deep State has usurped some of the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government.
“It’s becoming more commonplace now for people to realize that the average congressman doesn’t call the shots, but there’s a force out there called the deep state and they’re the ones calling the shots.”
The discussion then turned to the balance between security and freedom, which Snowden claimed is a false dichotomy. In reality, it’s a question of liberty vs. surveillance.
"The idea here is apologists for the national security state like to trot out the old argument where they go ‘look we need to find a balance between your liberty and security.’ And it sounds persuasive, it sounds fair, until you actually start to analyze it….and you go ‘well, this isn’t really about liberty vs. security at all, it’s about liberty vs. surveillance. Because surveillance exists in a vacuum of security. Surveillance is enabled by a lack of security, it’s where you’re exposed, it’s where you’re available to be observed and can be tracked.”
“Life becomes more private, life becomes more free when you’re not observed, when you’re not watched…”
Another problem that the public struggles with is that Americans don’t have a clear definition for what liberty is, which makes it more difficult to understand when their freedoms are being trampled.
“People have said recently that privacy is what we used to call liberty, and then in the same breath they say that privacy is dead. What liberty is…is the right to self-determination. It’s the ability to have something that’s yours, rather than society’s.”
“This is codefied into our language, when we talk about private property, we’re talking about your right, your ability to have something that belongs to you. You decide how it’s going to be handled, you decide what color you want to paint your house, you decide what color shirt you’re going to wear - you don’t have to ask anyone."
“Liberty is freedom from permission. It is the fountainhead from which all other rights spring.”
“Saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is the same as saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Interest in the Snowden leaks was revived earlier this year following Wikileaks’ “Vault 7” disclosures, which exposed the extent to which the CIA uses backdoors to hack smartphones, computer operating systems, messenger applications and internet-connected televisions. They also suggested that there is another leaker in the intelligence community.
An intelligence source cited by the Wall Street Journal said the “Vault 7” leaks are far more significant than the Snowden leaks. Even Snowden himself praised the Wikileaks disclosures, saying that "what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal", while making the following observations: "If you're writing about the CIA/@Wikileaks story, here's the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe.”
Among the most high-profile programs exposed by Snowden were his revelations that the NSA could use secret court orders to force US telecoms companies like Verizon to hand over citizens’ phone records. Snowden also revealed the existence of “PRISM” – a program allowing the government to access servers of major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple upon request. The Snowden revelations stretched beyond activities of the US government when he disclosed how the British intelligence service GCHQ had the capability to tap into fiber-optic cables to eavesdrop on foreign leaders.
Fundamentally, the growing power of the deep state cuts against the US democratic system.
“It raises the question: Who really has the most power in our society? Is it the voter, or at least in theory the politicians who are supposed to be carrying out their will, or is it this larger group, this constellation of influential actors who are able to subvert and shape the decisions of these Congressmen or even Presidents.”
So a Freemason and Republican answer to Bernie Sanders (ie; a sheep dog) is interviewing a CIA/Booz Allen Hamilton disinfo operative. I am sure we will get some real insights here....NOT.
Wake me when its over.
This ^
Who knows what's a psyop these days. I'm confused. We all should be ;)
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Deep State j00s were ALWAYS there.
Now they fret because they see their existence threatened by Trump and alt-right.
Just as j00s in education
“Meritocracy” is a Microaggression According to Rowan University BrainWashers
The PC pussies in DC are afraid to call the enemies of America by their name: jews
They call them neocons or Deep State.
Until you can't acknowledge your enemy you won't find a way to fight him efficiently.
Two heros.
Daily Festerer and Shitticism Institute--the daily pollutants
Repeated labels here of 'the joos' as generally *bad people reflect a myopic perspective; global banksters aspect I understand, but the label denigrates others in the assembly, such as Mossad types who fight for and with the *good guys' mutual interests (which point may also be debatable).
Up-/ Down-vote or roll yer eyes, I simply point out the perhaps not-so-obvious, since is similarly annoying as is someone who would claim 'we' did such and such, when actual reference is to an administration *official or government rather ideologically in Assumed group-membership with same, which does Not necessarily apply to the bulk of, most, some, or a few in said assembly of citizens who actually participated in such responsibility for an act or action. Sometimes, too much is taken for granted.
There, done.
Sometimes i wish to God i didn't know now the
things i didn't know then....give me something to belive in.... I have known my share of vietnam vets and I can say that was completely F*Ced up....
What we have in America is a society dominated by a crony capitalistic system of law and taxation that rewards rent-seeking wealth extractors over those who produce goods and provide services. Deep State's job is to protect those wealth extractors.
Anyone who uses the term "deep state" is part of the problem. If we can't name the ZOG then nothing will change.
I like your defintioin - the potection of "rent seekers." Crucial to this effort is the protection of the all-important printing press that allows these "rent seekers" to skim their cut. Absent the printing press - that churns out fiat currency as needed - the system collapses. This is why the attacks on "real money" (gold and silver) are so vital. If "positive sentiment" attached to precious metals the system you describe would not be possible. Thus, we cannot have "positive sentiment."
Anyway, if you want to end this system, simply identify the people who are suppressing precious metal prices.
Why then did humanity experience a lengthy feudal era, long before the creation of the Fed Fiat Farm?
Completely disagree, there is no reason to be confused. Simply focus on what is an illusion created for you to control you and what is real ! Works like magic ! And then let go of those illusions.
We needn't bother, you'll be just as dozey.
A lot of downvotes. I am surprised. I thought Z'hers were smarter and realized that Ron Paul is just another fake libertarian and Snowden (like Assange) is just another fake freedom warrior. Sigh
Snowdon was a lmited hangout from the start. Revealed nothing that was not already common knowledge. Noting to compromise any politicians. Nothing on JFK, 9/11, Benghazi.
Exactly. Thank you. Same for Assange.
Perhaps, but for many americans, Snowden's affirmation of the the deepstate fuckery coming from inside its sensitive parts was and remains beneficial as a beacon of light fixed on this perverse threat to our fragile constitutional republic.
This is what I think as well. Snowden was the public face and the town crier, making the public aware of the Deep State via a large, personal sacrifice. He could not go into all of the technical details of this complex subject while reacing a critical mass of citizens and alerting them to the danger. Whether or not experts were aware of these breaches of privacy is another matter, but no political action is possible unless The People are aware.
Sure, and has ANYTHING changed due his revelations? NO
Did he disclose ANYTHING new? NO
You Americans didn't even know that full phone/fax/telex surveillance of all US communications, with keyword search, was operational all the way back in the mid 1970's.
And you get all excited by the nothing disclosures of Snowden...? Pffft.
You're badly informed if you think nothing has changed. One tiny example is that comprised networking companies haven't been able to sell into foreign markets as easily as before. Jobs have been lost. And the small network security firm I work for has an easier time selling its products.
I'm not "excited" by Snowden's sacrifice, I'm grateful. His opinions are thoughtful and useful (unlike yours). This was a nice article to read (other than the comment section).
He did bring it all to the surface so the walking dead would see it ?
The two people who fight back (in real and important ways) against ever-growing state control and the destruction of liberty, and you attack them. Sigh.
No. I am just pointing out that, in my opinion, these two are not what they appear to be on first glance. Look deeper and there are lots of cockroaches.
Paul wanted to audit the Fed. Screw that. The Fed needs to be abolished. His campaign for President went nowhere, just like Bernie Sanders he was running interference.
As for Snowden, even the truly stupid can see he is not the real deal.
Well, you at least offered one specific point. Ron Paul wants to "audit the Fed." Question: What other politician made auditing the Fed the central goal of his public service? No one. Paul alone pushed/pushes this. And he pushes it because he knows if there is a real and legit audit, the results will almost certainly lead to a crescendo of calls to Abolish the Fed. Indeed, it is no secret that this is exactly what Paul wants to happen. Hell, he wrote a book called "End the Fed." Anyone who makes looking behind the curtain of the Fed a lifetime priority is almost by definition no friend of the "Deep State." The Deep State lives behind that curtain and its key members are almost certainly high-ranking members of said Fed.
As for your defense of your position on Snowden, you offer no evidence/example that he is not the "real deal" (or, as you opine, a false/fake deal.). You do know the U.S. government wants to arrest him and throw him into prision for the rest of his life don't you? They want to do this because he did something that was "real." He exposed what they are doing. They do not seem to like this and seem intent on setting an example to keep other potential whisleblowers mute.
I like the way Paul stands up for individual liberty and privacy, but the Fed lends money to smaller banks.
Many millions of people are not born into wealth, meaning they cannot access a lot of the informal methods for lending and/or gifting the back-up funds for wealth creation.
Nor can many of them have the privacy, as defined by Paul, other than the privacy from government intrusion. They cannot afford it.
The people at the bottom who have more privacy and more relative liberty get it via government or through a combination of taxpayer money and part-time work, with the hard workers having less privacy and less things that government cannot take away. Earned-only income affords little of either.
Without the Fed lending money to banks, many of the hard workers cannot get in a position to ever have anything that cannot be taken from them, as Paul defines liberty.
They cannot start a business from thin air without a business loan. They cannot pursue the few degrees that result in jobs that actually pay wages high enough to cover a full range of bills, including unaffordable rent, much less paying off a house that government cannot take.
When you live in someone else's home, you have no liberty and no privacy, regardless of the US Constitution.
In the fake-feminist era of the womb-based welfare/workfare system, the government, not hard work and not free enterprise, is often what provides the basis for an "independent" household. It is womb-based serfdom, but the womb-productivity serfs are better off than most.
Marriage used to be the way moms got their independent households. Now, out-of-wedlock reproduction, welfare and part-time work is the triadic path to independent households for the low-income moms among the 62% of single moms in the USA.
These welfare-buttressed workers dominate many low-wage job categories in the office job world. Their ability to accept low pay due to unearned income trumps degrees, legally required licenses and even daily, all-day attendance and number of sales. These are often the vast majority of jobs offered by huge companies: jobs that require employees to have unearned income streams to cover household bills.
Ask a single mom whose womb productivity--in conjunction with the 20 hours of work per week required by Clinton's welfare reform--guarantees her the privacy of a "independent" apartment compliments of taxpayers, along with free groceries, monthly cash assistance, nearly free daycare that costs taxpayers more than she makes, subsidized energy bills and a Child Tax Credit up to $6,269 that she can (and does) frequently and Freely spend on things like out-of-town trips, tattoos, etc.
Her single, childless counterparts, working twice or more hours get no monthly welfare and a tax return check of $300 or less. They have less liberty and less privacy, living in mom's basement or with huge groups of post-college roommates (when young).
They have less freedom, because their degree of liberty is gained via the free market alone, whereas the single momma has more liberty in terms of luxury items purchased with welfare since her major household bills are covered by welfare and taxfare. She also has more privacy due to her welfare-financed apartment, with both liberty and privacy gained via the government, not through free enterprise. The hard worker has less liberty and less privacy; his or her market-based income will not cover either.
A few people crawl out, and while I have a high opinion of the Paul's, a lot of that mobility is attributable to the Dreaded Banks.
There is a lot of futile servitude due to banks, too, with small businesspeople sometimes paying off loans with little to show for it. I did that, paying a business loan on a small shop in 5 years. A lot of that is due to the SS taxation that is twice as high on every penny earned for self-employed people.
Even though the fiscal rewards beyond staying afloat were not high, it was still better than working hard in the multitude of Fake Jobs, with their welfare or spousal income-boosted, frequently absentee mom gangs. I do not really regret it in the way I regret working my can off in such jobs to generate and retain way more accounts than many of the employees who were taking off a ton of time in parenting-absenteeism cliques. Most employers value them -- their fellow babyvacationers -- a lot more to say the least.
That really is wasted time, where you are jerked around and/or are treated nicely for a while to pump you up so that you will continue selling a lot before the baby-vacationing, crony-clique manager churns you, getting a bonus pumped up, in part, by your sales and letting the frequently absentee mommies manage the accounts that you generated and maintained at higher retention rates than them.
This happens all the time in crony-parenting clique jobs. There is little control over the irrational forces that reign in workplaces, like cronyism based on the private lives of the employees. Mommy manager takes this week off for travel soccer. Mommy employee takes next week off for baby pageant, with every afternoon off as well, backscratching away and bullying out the high-energy employees, with the phones ringing off the hook with paying customers.
I like the theory of libertarianism and agree with them in a lot of ways. But libertarians want to act like all individuals have measurable freedom, that freedom always derives from markets and that all debt slaves are always slaves.
There are rarefied debt slaves who occasionally become rich, like Bill Gates, whose frustrated letter to hobbyist software buyers who refused to pay for the products he created so that he could pay back his $40,000 loan from his dad is really funny.
Reading that, I had to feel sorry for him at that point in his life, anyways. I once had a $40,0000 business loan that, for my ex and I, was steep because we, too, were catering to a small and, in some cases, stingy niche market, with 5 friggin' other shops in a tiny country town. All but 1 of our competitors were just doing it to supplement other income.
Thankfully, we had enough generous customers who were willing to pay a lot to make up for the tight wads. We paid the loan back on time and lived on our net profit.
I can see Gates' point about customers who do not want to pay, even though the open-source world made computing much more accessible to most of us who are not techies and not affluent.
Point being: even Bill Gates started out as a debt slave. Far more of the debt slaves who shake the shackles just go on to some kind of modest prosperity, but a system of bank lending is necessary even for that.
And the debt-slave thing would be there even without banks and a Fed, with people borrowing from other people, like Gates did with his dad, and still having to pay it back.
Most people do not have immediate connections who will or can let them borrow enough money for a business, a house, schooling or whatever. It is just a practical issue to have banks and a funding mechanism for smaller banks, especially in a huge country and states with varying degrees of wealth.
The bad thing is how it has been extended over the whole world with this interconnected, worldwide banking. That means that no country is ever really autonomous, with all of these Deep Global States, both rich and poor, acting in collusion in the interest of their Crony Global Establishment, like the momma-absenteeism cronies, both management and underlings, in workplaces, leaving most of the individuals in countries unrepresented by their elected leaders.
https://www.google.com/amp/losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/11/19/cbs2-inves...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/money/2015/04/16/news/kansas-we...
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/3771550/kansas-legislati...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.bangordailynews.com/2016/03/10/politics...
https://www.google.com/amp/www.wcsh6.com/amp//news/politics/maine-dems-w...
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/3827136/kansas-welfare-l...
Looks like you gave some TRUTH to Akhenaten II. Some get rich, some bitch, and most lead their lives in quite desperation. Those that stand and fight, are the true patriots, cockroaches notwithstanding.
Baaaa.
Did the Fed get audited? NO. Ron Paul is a Von Mises freak. Von Mises, a Chicago Uni/London School of Economics lackey who was the tutor to David Rockefeller. Sure, Ron Paul is the real deal..sure...
As for Snowden.... You people can no longer distinguish real deep state MO's from theatre. Totally brainwashed. Your precious bodily fluids have been tainted.
You're either a jealous a$$hole, or a disinfo agent (ironic given your similar comment about Snowden). Please get a life.
BTW, I talked to an NSA equipment contractor who wishes Snowden dead -- the guy was kind of worked up about it (he's a distant relative of sorts). Great guy -- says it's ethical to bomb other countries as long as we have no boots on the ground (apparently only American lives matter).
Also Asshat II, have you noticed YOU'RE the "theatre" on this thread? Congrats!
Your premise lacks common sense, Senator Paul is one of the few who have dared to lift the FED's dress up. Saying the FED needs to be abolished without a well informed compelling popular movement to give our "spineless" CONgress the temerity to suggest let alone abolish the FEDERAL RESERVE/CENTRAL BANK CABAL is one of the most naive comments I have heard on ZH for years. Auditing the FED would be akin to Snowden revealing in the "first person" the Tyrranny and Corruption of the crown Jewel of the Deep State. THE BIGGEST DEFICIT IN USA! USA! USA! IS ITS ABILITY TO SPEAK THE TRUTH. Exposing it...auditing it is essential. Twenty week ZHer, you might extend your gestation period before spewing nonsense. BTW, calling Sen Ron Paul a cockroach is so much like deepshit behavior...watch out for the glue boards! Can't wait to hear your solution for replacing the diseased FED.
Despite the tears in my eyes, I will remain unbowed.
Permission for lip to quiver
I'm leaning towards a$$hole now. Thanks for resolving that question (even though I didn't care).
Really? you're pretty niave about politics. What would you expect to see from these guys?
Did you listen to the segment?
“[Some people] want me to sort of be a frontman for these issues like civil liberty and peoples’ rights but I’m not a politician, I’m an engineer. Last year I gave a presentation…at MIT on how we can make phones safer by understanding what’s happening inside of them."
So then....if Ron Paul and Ed Snowden are masonic sheep-dogging disinfo operatives......WHO in your estimation are REAL worthy promoters of individual liberty?
totaly crickets man
I am still looking but I can see that those dogs don't hunt.
Donald Trump? Ah, maybe not.
Hillary Clinton? Ha!
Mitt Romney? Right.
John Kerry?
John McCain?
George W. Bush?
Bob Dole?
Bill Clinton?
... I re-read your question and took a shot at answering with all the recent presidential candidates. I hope people get my point in providing these names/possibilities.
"Liberty" is just a word in the patriotic songs we all learn as kids. It sounds good, but no one is supposed to actually think about what the word means and actually try to defend this foundational concept of our nation.
And if you do (see Edward Snowden) you will be forced to hide from your liberty-defending/loving governent in ... Russia.
I hear rumors that the deep state is headquartered in the middle-east (close to Jordan).
I heard it is just off an ante-room in the deepest level of hell, next to Satan's toilet.
Wait, a minute.. I think we are talking about the same place. Hot. Angry. Full of shit. Yup. Same place.
So, you mean Phoenix then?
Theater.
hmmm
FISA court reprimands Obama administration for violations of 4th amendment going back to 2011, NSA whistleblower Montgomery suing FBI/Comey over inaction on NSA spying on US citizens, unmasking of Trump campaign team for political purposes, DOJ/Lynch obstructing Clinton investigation....
Looks like our IC's gone rogue
You tell one lie, it takes 50 others to cover it up.
You tell 1,486,377,999,999.... lies,shit gets ugly.
Swaaaammp!
Abraham, the first documented financial sociopath, lied, stole and murdered.
Look how ugly everything got.
And he was already rich and powerful before claiming god's benefits.
No shit shirlock.