NSA's phone spying began under Bush

Whether you agree or not with the NSA's massive, indiscriminate collection of telephone "metadata" on terrorist suspects and innocent Americans alike, this op-ed by the Bush Administration lawyer who got initial court approval to collect such data highlights that the NSA's domestic spying program was started under Dubya.

As a good Democratic soldier, I just wanted to point that out to all my outraged, I say outraged, Republican friends who suddenly rediscovered the 4th Amendment once a Democrat with a Muslim name became POTUS.

Enjoy.

Don’t limit the NSA’s effectiveness

By Steven G. Bradbury

January 3, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1av09yd

The whistleblowers are winning

I'll say it again: I have yet to hear any American say, "I wish I didn't know about the NSA's spying on us."  And if more and more Americans are turning against the NSA's domestic spying, then that means the whistleblowers are winning:

Meanwhile, Snowden and Glenn Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning. At the outset Snowden said his biggest fear was that people would see "the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society and that 'nothing will change'". But his disclosures have already created a new debate, and political change will follow. 

Two weeks ago there was a surprisingly close call in the US House of Representatives, with the majority of House Democrats and 94 of 234 Republicans defying their House (and Senate) leadership, the White House, and the national security establishment in a vote to end the NSA's mass collection of phone records. The amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 205 to 217, but it was clear that "this is only the beginning," as John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee announced. 

A week later Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Democratic Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called a hearing where he challenged the Obama administration's claims that the NSA dragnet had been effective in disrupting terrorist plots. According to Leahy, the classified list that he had been shown of "terrorist events" did not show that "dozens or even several terrorist plots" had been thwarted by the NSA's surveillance of domestic phone calls.

It is beginning to sink in that the main target of the NSA's massive spying programmes is not terrorism but the American people themselves (as well as other non-terrorist populations throughout the world). 

Weisbrot sums it up with a few provocative questions:

And as Washington threatens to worsen relations with Russia - which together with the United States has most of the nuclear weapons in the world - over Snowden's asylum there, it's hard not to wonder about this fanatical pursuit of someone Obama dismissed as a "29-year-old hacker". Is it because he out-smarted a multi-billion dollar "intelligence community" of people who think they are really very smart but are now looking rather incompetent? 

If Snowden really leaked information that harmed US national security, why haven't any of these "really very smart" people been fired? Are we to believe that punishing this whistleblower is important enough to damage relations with other countries and put at risk all kinds of foreign policy goals, but the breach of security isn't enough for anyone important to be fired? Or is this another indication, like thegenerals telling Obama what his options were in Afghanistan, of the increasing power of the military/national security apparatus over our elected officials?

It's another matter that whistleblowers and journalists themselves may suffer personally for their revelations.  For their suffering for the sake of our liberty we can only thank them.

UPDATE (08.11.2013): Julian Assange called Obama's decision to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act a victory for Edward Snowden, despite Obama's denials that it has anything to do with Snowden. Yeah, right.

Snowden, Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning

By Mark Weisbrot

August 7, 2013 | Al Jazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/08/201387957162873.html

NSA has trouble recruiting cyber militia

Back in January 2011, I suggested that the U.S. could follow tiny Estonia's lead and create a "cyber militia," instead of relying exclusively on expensive defense contractors to fight cyber warfare.

I guess I was kind of prescient, considering that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came from one of those contractors.  

Anyhow, now NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander is having a hard time convincing America's distrustful, trenchant hackers to help out Uncle Sam.  It didn't help his credibility this year that hackers now know, thanks to Snowden's leaks, that Gen. Alexander lied to them at the same Black Hat conference a year ago about the NSA's domestic spying.

NSA chief asks a skeptical crowd of hackers to help agency do its job

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

August 1, 2013 | Washington Post

URL:  http://wapo.st/18NwZvc

Robinson: Love or hate him, we should thank Snowden

Great point by Robinson:

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program.  We wouldn’t know it exists.

Aren't we all glad we know about this program, even if some of us happen to support it?  Personally, I don't understand how Snowden's revealing the program compromised U.S. intelligence.  No names were leaked, no agents put in danger.  

Moreover, the DOD-NSA's domestic spying program continues unchanged and unabated... which kind of undermines the argument that Snowden's whistle-blowing damaged the program. Usually, unsavory clandestine operations are cancelled or revamped once they are exposed, since they rely on secrecy.  These domestic spying programs don't rely on secrecy, just brute force collection of all our electronic communications.

In NSA leaks, Edward Snowden performed a service

By Eugene Robinson

July 30, 2013 | Washington Post

Edward Snowden’s renegade decision to reveal the jaw-dropping scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance is being vindicated — even as Snowden himself is being vilified.

Intelligence officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill paint the fugitive analyst as nothing but a traitor who wants to harm the United States. Many of those same officials grudgingly acknowledge, however, that public debate about the NSA’s domestic snooping is now unavoidable.

This would be impossible if Snowden — or someone like him — hadn’t spilled the beans. We wouldn’t know that the NSA is keeping a database of all our phone calls. We wouldn’t know that the government gets the authority to keep track of our private communications — even if we are not suspected of terrorist activity or associations — from secret judicial orders issued by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law.

Snowden, of course, is hardly receiving the thanks of a grateful nation. He has spent the last five weeks trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow. Russian officials, who won’t send him home for prosecution, wish he would move along. But Snowden fears that if he takes off for one of the South American countries that have offered asylum, he risks being intercepted en route and extradited. It’s a tough situation, and time is not on his side.

You can cheer Snowden’s predicament or you can bemoan it. But even some of the NSA’s fiercest defenders have admitted, if not in so many words, that Snowden performed a valuable public service.

This month, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement announcing that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect “metadata” about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the . . . collection program.”

Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program. We wouldn’t know it exists.

The new position espoused by President Obama and those who kept the NSA’s domestic surveillance a deep, dark secret is that of course we should have a wide-ranging national debate about balancing the imperatives of privacy and security. But they don’t mean it.

I know this because when an actual debate erupted in Congress last week, the intelligence cognoscenti freaked out.

An attempt to cut off funding for the NSA’s collection of phone data, sponsored by an unlikely pair of allies in the House — Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, and John Conyers, a liberal Democrat, both from Michigan — suffered a surprisingly narrow defeat, 217 to 205. The measure was denounced by the White House and the congressional leadership of both parties, yet it received bipartisan support, from 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats.

The Amash-Conyers amendment was in no danger of becoming law — the Senate would have killed it and, if all else failed, President Obama would have vetoed it. But it put the intelligence establishment on notice: The spooks don’t decide how far is too far. We do.

A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that three out of four Americans believe the vacuum-cleaner collection of phone call data by the NSA intrudes on our privacy rights.  At the same time, nearly three-fifths of those surveyed said it was “more important right now” to investigate possible terrorist threats than to respect privacy. A contradiction, perhaps? Not necessarily.

It is possible to endorse sweeping and intrusive measures in the course of a specific investigation but to reject those same measures as part of a fishing expedition. At the heart of the Fourth Amendment is the concept that a search must be justified by suspicion. Yet how many of those whose phone call information is being logged are suspected of being terrorists? One in a million?

Equally antithetical to the idea of a free society, in my view, is the government’s position that we are not permitted to know even how the secret intelligence court interprets our laws and the Constitution. The order that Snowden leaked — compelling a Verizon unit to cough up data on the phone calls it handled — was one of only a few to come to light in the court’s three decades of existence. Now there are voices calling for all the court’s rulings to be released.

We’re talking about these issues. You can wish Edward Snowden well or wish him a lifetime in prison. Either way, you should thank him.

Was American Revolution worth it? Revisiting the 'American Dream'

This July 4th we can stop and ponder: was the American Revolution worth it? Here's what NPR had to say about the "American Dream," i.e. social and economic upward mobility:

So, in the 19th century in the U.S., there's unbelievable economic mobility. If your father, for example, was an unskilled laborer, sort of the lowest end of the working hierarchy, then you had an 80 percent chance of doing some more skilled, more highly paid job than your father. At the same time, in the U.K., you had about a 50 percent chance. Half the children of unskilled laborers were unskilled laborers themselves. But by just after World War II, the U.S. and U.K. are converging and the differences start to disappear. And by 1970, the U.K. has pulled ahead. So, by the 1970s, the children of unskilled laborers are more likely to do be doing something higher paying in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Why is that so?  Why is the "American Dream" more alive in Britain today than in America?  There are two basic theories, according to NPR:

• By the 20th century, the U.S. was a mature economy like Britain, without all the exceptional opportunities for growth that exist in a young, expanding nation.

• In early-mid 20th century, the welfare state and education in Britain grew at a faster pace.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive.  I would also point out the respective rates of unionization in the U.S. and UK: 11.1 percent vs. 25.8 percent.  The average in OECD countries for trade union density is 17 percent.  Nordic socialist paradises Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, which top almost every global indicator of economic and social well-being, have well over 50 percent of their workers in trade unions.  In the U.S. we blame falling wages all on globalization, but then we should ask why wages aren't falling elsewhere in G-8 countries?  Unions have a lot to do with it.

And then there is the U.S. tax system, which for the past 30 years has discriminated against wages in favor of income earned through interest and financial securities, thereby inflating inequality and crushing the "American Dream."  Remember this chart?:

Paul Pirie for WaPo  gives us more socio-economic data to ponder:

Most Americans work longer hours and have fewer paid vacations and benefits — including health care — than their counterparts in most advanced countries. Consider also that in the CIA World Factbook, the United States ranks 51st in life expectancy at birth. Working oneself into an early grave does not do much for one’s happiness quotient. This year the United States tied for 14th in “life satisfaction” on an annual quality-of-life study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That puts the United States behind Canada (eighth) and Australia (12th). A report co-authored last year by the economist Jeffrey Sachs ranked the United States 10th in the world for happiness — again behind Canada and Australia. The Sachs study found that the United States has made “striking economic and technological progress over the past half century without gains in the self-reported happiness of the citizenry. Instead, uncertainties and anxieties are high, social and economic inequalities have widened considerably, social trust is in decline, and confidence in government is at an all-time low.”

But the difference is not just in economics or happiness, but also liberty.  Pirie points out that the British Empire (including Canada) abolished slavery in 1833, a full 32 years befoe the U.S. ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Today's slavery is the U.S. prison-industrial complex that incarcerates more adults, in both absolute and relative terms, than any other country by a wide margin, including Red China and Russia.  

And speaking of Americans' liberty, I have three words for you: N-S-A.  Do I really need to say more?  It doesn't matter, the spooks are archiving this post anyway.

Today, having mentioned some of these factoids to a Brit, I joked about our reneging the Declaration of Independence.  He said Britons are glad America is no longer their problem; they can't imagine trying to govern the U.S.  I joked back, "Yeah, we have enough trouble dealing with places like Texas!"  Can you imagine British PM David Cameron trying to talk sense to the folks in U.S. flyover country? You start to wonder who got the better end of the deal when the U.S. declared its independence....   

Happy 4th of July, everybody!  Have a hotdog and light off a roman candle for me.

UPDATE: If you think I'm unpatriotic, here's a guy who really can't stand the 4th of July: "Hatetriot's Day: July 4th Is America's Crappiest Holiday."

How FISA law became unconstitutional

One terrorist act and one amendment at a time, that's how.  Argues law professor Laura Donahue:

To the extent that the FISC sanctioned PRISM, it may be consistent with the law. But it is disingenuous to suggest that millions of Americans’ e-mails, photographs and documents are “incidental” to an investigation targeting foreigners overseas.

The telephony metadata program raises similar concerns. FISA did not originally envision the government accessing records. Following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress allowed applications for obtaining records from certain kinds of businesses. In 2001, lawmakers further expanded FISA to give the government access to any business or personal records. Under section 215 of the Patriot Act, the government no longer has to prove that the target is a foreign power. It need only state that the records are sought as part of an investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence.

This means that FISA can now be used to gather records concerning individuals who are neither the target of any investigation nor an agent of a foreign power. Entire databases — such as telephony metadata — can be obtained, as long as an authorized investigation exists.

President Obama is taking a lot of heat right now for the NSA's spying on us and rightly so.  But let's not let Congress off the hook.  They passed these laws.  They could pass a law to outlaw PRISM tomorrow, if they wanted to.  

NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional

By Laura K. Donohue

June 21, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/14n90zT

Grayson: 'We don't defend our freedom by giving it away'

"We Don't Defend Our Freedom By Giving It Away"

posted by Alan Grayson

June 21, 2013 | Democratic Underground

This past week, controversy raged over the revelation that under the guise of "foreign surveillance," the Defense Department is obtaining information about every telephone call in America.  As if that weren't enough, DoD also is collecting information on e-mails, videos, stored data, log-ins, etc., from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype.  Congressman Alan Grayson took to the airwaves to condemn that invasion of our privacy, and that trampling on the Fourth Amendment, in this interview on national TV:

Thom Hartmann: In the best of the rest of the news, yesterday the House Committee on Rules blocked an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have drastically cut back the NSA's ability to collect data on American citizens. An amendment was proposed by Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. It would have prohibited the Defense Department from collecting information on U.S. citizens without probable cause of a terrorism or criminal offense. Congressman Grayson's amendment, of course, comes on the heels of reports that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the telephone records and internet information of U.S. citizens. So while the House Rules Committee may have rejected the Congressman's amendment, what else can be done now to stop the national security state from invading the privacy of U.S. citizens? Joining me now for more on that is Congressman Alan Grayson, representing Florida's 9th district. Congressman, welcome. 

Congressman Alan Grayson: Thank you. 

Thom: Or welcome back. First of all, I'm rather astounded by the Rules Committee knocking down your amendment, which seems like it echoes the Fourth Amendment. 

Alan: Well the Rules Committee consists of nine Republicans and four Democrats. But I think that there are Members of Congress even now who aren't aware of the severity of this problem. It's been a week since we learned that every single call that Verizon carries – Verizon being the largest cell phone carrier in the United States -- every single call has call details – who is calling whom, when they're talking, how long they're talking – and that's all given to the Department of Defense. Every single call. Not only that, but there's no reason to think that if Verizon's doing this, that AT&T is not doing it. So we have to assume that every call that we make in America – even local calls, even calls to your grandmother – all those calls are being handed over to the government, in terms of the call details. In addition to that, the PowerPoint presentation internal to the NSA that was also leaked, at the same time, indicates that the NSA, according to that information, can pull from AOL servers, from Microsoft servers, from Google servers, from virtually every single Internet provider in the country, information that hosts e-mails, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, which is basically the contents of telephone calls), and a whole host of other information that people regard as personal. Now, that's where we are right now. I think many Members of Congress are not aware of that. I think many members of your audience were not aware of the fact that the government's getting information on every single call they make. Now the question is, "What do we do about it?" The Rules Committee decided to do nothing. The Republicans outnumber the Democrats nine to four on the Rules Committee, so that doesn't surprise me. 

Thom: But the Fourth Amendment is pretty unambiguous. I mean basically we're supposed to be secure in our persons, papers, home, property, unless somebody goes before a judge and swears under oath that they have reason to believe – you know, probable cause to believe – that a crime is being committed.  Then the judge issues a very specific warrant defining the place and things to be seized, or persons to be – you know I'm badly paraphrasing the Fourth Amendment, but you know it. How is it that this is partisan? 

Alan: Well, what relying on is a decision from something like thirty or forty years ago that indicated that "pen register" information, the calling record of one person, could be released without any Fourth Amendment violation by the government, because said that pen register information was not something that the Fourth Amendment constrained. Now, what they've decided is that because they could do it to one person, they can do it to every person. The document that was leaked, the court order that was leaked, is in fact a court order to Verizon that claims to be based upon applicable law. It happens to be signed by a right-wing judge who also declared that Obamacare was unconstitutional. But leaving that aside, what the agency is doing is it's purporting to rely upon this ancient string of irrelevant legal applications, in order to spy on every one of us. 

Thom:  I just said, "How could this be partisan?" You were talking about the Republicans on the committee blocking this.  You're basically bringing the Fourth Amendment into this. And yet it's a democratic administration that's doing it. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense, which is part of the Obama Administration. Are you hearing anything from the Obama Administration that they might be having second thoughts about what they're doing? 

Alan:  Well, the NSA, DoD, and other figures are part of the Administration .  Not the President himself, though, yet. Other figures have launched a vigorous defense of this practice, saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Department of Defense getting telephone records about every single human being in America. Bear in mind that we've had a law going back to the 1870s, called the Posse Comitatus Act, that prevents DoD from having any operations in the United States. Now it turns out that DoD is getting all records of all of our telephone calls, and yet somehow that's defensible. You're right -- this shouldn't be a partisan issue at all, because we have Republicans who are getting their telephone records turned over, Democrats, everyone. And therefore everyone should be up in arms. We had over 10,000 people go to our website our bill . The website is MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Ten thousand people came to the website, and became citizen co-sponsors of my bill, in the first 24 hours. Eventually, sooner or later, we're going to see that bill heard. 

Thom: That's marvelous. MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com is the website. Congressman, we have just about a minute left. I'm curious, your thoughts on where we're going to go from here? What's next? 

Alan:  What's next is for people who respect privacy, people who respect liberty, people who respect freedom, to state, clearly, that we don't protect our freedom by giving it away. There has to be a constant, consistent effort. There certainly will be on my part.  I hope there'll be the same on the part of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others, to make sure that we put an end to this pernicious practice, and protect our cherished freedom. 

Thom: But how do you respond to people who say, "But oh, I'm so afraid of terrorists"? 

Alan: Oh look, you know. If somebody can explain to me how tapping your phone will prevent terrorism, Thom, then at that point I'll start to be convinced. 

Thom:  Ok, I got it, and totally agree with you. Once again, the website was – 

Alan: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. 

Thom: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Congressman Alan Grayson, great work. 

Alan: Thank you. 

Thom: Thank you so much for being with us today. 

'Falcon' spy: NSA whistleblower 'doomed'

Very interesting interview!  

Convicted U.S. spy Christopher Boyce: 'Snowden is doomed'

By Peter Shadbolt

June 14, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/14/world/asia/hong-kong-boyce-snowden/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Greenwald: Dems are hypocrites on NSA spying

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the Snowden-NSA story, is right: many Democrats and liberals are being hypocritical in defending Obama's vast program of spying on innocent Americans without probable cause, totally trashing the 4th Amendment and any semblance of privacy we had left.

For stark evidence of how a majority of Democrats have flip-flopped on whether they like the NSA spying on them, Greenwald offers us two Pew polls, one during Dubya's reign and one this month:

P.S. -- Respect to Yahoo, who, according to the New York Times, went to court to fight the PRISM program directive to turn over its users' info to the NSA.  Yahoo lost.

On PRISM, partisanship and propaganda

By Glenn Greenwald

June 14, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3gt5x

NSA's domestic spying is legal, that's what's scary

It's funny how America's Left and Right are shaking out over the whole NSA-FBI-Google-Verizon spying thing, and how some politicians and talking heads are completely changing their tune now that a black Democrat is overseeing the spying on us.

Yet many folks on the right like David Brooks or Lindsey Graham who distrust Big Government still trust our military and spy agencies to spy responsibly, because such people feel a "spirit of solidarity with the state," as Woodhouse puts it.  Granted, they feel solidarity with only parts of the state.

I would have lot more faith in the good intentions of those who feel solidarity with America's state security apparatus if they were able to demonstrate a more realistic perspective about the threats to American citizens. 

I mean, we have 11,000 gun deaths a year in America and yet our government, from the local to the national level, is OK with that.  Certainly conservatives are OK with that.  It's "the price of liberty," they say.

But when it comes to Islamic terrorism, all bets are off, no price in tax dollars or privacy is too high to prevent every single attack.  It's nuts.  Even if we flung open America's doors to terrorists, 99% of us would never be touched. 

I'll say it again: we need to suck it up and stop being so scared.  Yeah, sure, some attacks will get through.  So what?  That's the price of us flexing our military muscles all over the world.  That's the "price of liberty," or something.  

Personally, I'd rather take that 1 in 20,000,000 chance of being killed by a terrorist than accept a 100% chance that my own government is spying on me constantly for no good reason!

NSA Surveillance Is Legal, and That's the Worst Thing About It

By Leighton Woodhouse

June 12, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1bxIfeo

Assange: 'Don't be evil' is banal cover for Google's sucking up to Power

You might recall that I was also critical and skeptical of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's vision for a brave, new world of digital technology all up in our junk. Unlike myself, Julian Assange bothered to read Schmidt's entire book.  Assange argues that Google has actively volunteered to become an important part of the U.S. Government's power apparatus.

I have to say I like this Assange guy, despite his somewhat sneering, sissy looks and such conflicting accounts about him.  He certainly has a singular and iconoclastic view on the world that is lacking.  Nowadays those who distrust government become conspiracy nuts.  And they get lumped in with real thinkers and critics like Assange.  But there is a difference between Government and Power.  Power certainly has a home in government but it also has residences in business, academia, the media and NGOs.  It's too easy to blame Big Government for the overreaching influence of Power.  

Also, anti-government conspiracy nuts don't bother to do their homework and make the real connections that are there to be seen in the public domain because these relationships are so well-respected and indeed banal (to borrow a word from Assange). That is what WikiLeaks did, essentially: it confirmed what we had already suspected, what we already knew but chose to ignore. Instead nuts invent unreal connections and draw false conclusions from them.  

What is known and real is bad enough, there are no fake conspiracies required!  

I also questioned Google's practice of cooperating so easily with the FBI's so-called National Security Letters that request, without a warrant, the electronic information of Google's users.  Google wasn't allowed to say how many NSLs there have been, but they said they've tripled in the past four years.  Why?  And since when do we let the government use private business to spy on us, legally?  Thank the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Patriot Act; but thank our apathy and ignorance most of all.  

Finally, a word about terrorism. Unlike most problems, I think the solution here is to ignore it.  Just pretend it doesn't exist. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit: our law enforcement bodies should try catch and foil terrorists; but it's not something our politicians or citizens should give much thought to, much less debate.  It's such a statistically insignificant problem, it merits as much attention in our public discourse and private worries as, say, West Nile virus, which, incidentally, killed 286 Americans in 2012, as opposed to Islamist terrorism which killed... zero.  That's right, none on American soil.  And yet the fight against Islamist terror costs $ trillions a year and terrible intrusions into our privacy!  Consider the absurdity of it!

The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’

By Julian Assange

June 1, 2013 | New York Times

“The New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

The authors met in occupied Baghdad in 2009, when the book was conceived. Strolling among the ruins, the two became excited that consumer technology was transforming a society flattened by United States military occupation. They decided the tech industry could be a powerful agent of American foreign policy.

The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not. The prose is terse, the argument confident and the wisdom — banal. But this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances.

“The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book.

In the book the authors happily take up the white geek’s burden. A liberal sprinkling of convenient, hypothetical dark-skinned worthies appear: Congolese fisherwomen, graphic designers in Botswana, anticorruption activists in San Salvador and illiterate Masai cattle herders in the Serengeti are all obediently summoned to demonstrate the progressive properties of Google phones jacked into the informational supply chain of the Western empire.

The authors offer an expertly banalized version of tomorrow’s world: the gadgetry of decades hence is predicted to be much like what we have right now — only cooler. “Progress” is driven by the inexorable spread of American consumer technology over the surface of the earth.  Already, every day, another million or so Google-run mobile devices are activated. Google will interpose itself, and hence the United States government, between the communications of every human being not in China (naughty China). Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed.

The authors are sour about the Egyptian triumph of 2011. They dismiss the Egyptian youth witheringly, claiming that “the mix of activism and arrogance in young people is universal.” Digitally inspired mobs mean revolutions will be “easier to start” but “harder to finish.” Because of the absence of strong leaders, the result, or so Mr. Kissinger tells the authors, will be coalition governments that descend into autocracies. They say there will be “no more springs” (but China is on the ropes).

The authors fantasize about the future of “well resourced” revolutionary groups. A new “crop of consultants” will “use data to build and fine-tune a political figure.”

“His” speeches (the future isn’t all that different) and writing will be fed “through complex feature-extraction and trend-analysis software suites” while “mapping his brain function,” and other “sophisticated diagnostics” will be used to “assess the weak parts of his political repertoire.”

The book mirrors State Department institutional taboos and obsessions. It avoids meaningful criticism of Israel and Saudi Arabia. It pretends, quite extraordinarily, that the Latin American sovereignty movement, which has liberated so many from United States-backed plutocracies and dictatorships over the last 30 years, never happened. Referring instead to the region’s “aging leaders,” the book can’t see Latin America for Cuba. And, of course, the book frets theatrically over Washington’s favorite boogeymen: North Korea and Iran.

Google, which started out as an expression of independent Californian graduate student culture — a decent, humane and playful culture — has, as it encountered the big, bad world, thrown its lot in with traditional Washington power elements, from the State Department to the National Security Agency.

Despite accounting for an infinitesimal fraction of violent deaths globally, terrorism is a favorite brand in United States policy circles. This is a fetish that must also be catered to, and so “The Future of Terrorism” gets a whole chapter. The future of terrorism, we learn, is cyberterrorism. A session of indulgent scaremongering follows, including a breathless disaster-movie scenario, wherein cyberterrorists take control of American air-traffic control systems and send planes crashing into buildings, shutting down power grids and launching nuclear weapons. The authors then tar activists who engage in digital sit-ins with the same brush.

I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones.

The section on “repressive autocracies” describes, disapprovingly, various repressive surveillance measures: legislation to insert back doors into software to enable spying on citizens, monitoring of social networks and the collection of intelligence on entire populations. All of these are already in widespread use in the United States. In fact, some of those measures — like the push to require every social-network profile to be linked to a real name — were spearheaded by Google itself.

The writing is on the wall, but the authors cannot see it. They borrow from William Dobson the idea that the media, in an autocracy, “allows for an opposition press as long as regime opponents understand where the unspoken limits are.” But these trends are beginning to emerge in the United States. No one doubts the chilling effects of the investigations into The Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. But there has been little analysis of Google’s role in complying with the Rosen subpoena. I have personal experience of these trends.

The Department of Justice admitted in March that it was in its third year of a continuing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. Court testimony states that its targets include “the founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks.” One alleged source, Bradley Manning, faces a 12-week trial beginning tomorrow, with 24 prosecution witnesses expected to testify in secret.

This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. “What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy.

Bergen: Missed warning signs of terror attacks?

CNN's Peter Bergen analyzed why the Boston bombings -- and 9/11, for that matter -- weren't prevented, but it's the very end of his story that caught my eye:

The problem is that, as Roberta Wohlstetter pointed out half a century ago in her study of Pearl Harbor, separating out the really important signals from all the "noise" in the system is only easy to do after the fact, particularly when the U.S. government has now assembled a database of an astonishing number of 700,000 individuals it suspects of ties to terrorism.

Bergen is trying to compare the Pearl Harbor surprise attack to terrorist attacks. But there's a big difference: there weren't 700,000 Japans to keep track of in 1941. Presumably, any one of these suspects could carry out an terror attack today... or somebody who is not on the list at all.

Still, it's hard to believe there are 700,000 people in the world with ties to terrorism. Shouldn't there be way more terrorist attacks if there are so many of them?

More likely, this data base of suspects is another out-of-control government program.  Maybe we missed the Boston bombers because we were too busy following around 700,000 other people, many of whom didn't deserve to be on that list?

UPDATE (05.06.2013): Here's another article about America's bloated terrorist data bases: "Terror database too unwieldy to flag Boston suspect, critics say." The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) list, with 875,000 records, is the big daddy from which all other government data bases draw, such as the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, which in turn feeds the State Department's watch list, which is supposed to prevent terrorist suspects from getting U.S. visas.

Agencies often miss warning signs of attacks

By Peter Bergen

April 27, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/27/opinion/bergen-warning-signs-terrorism/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Google reveals 'legal spying' by FBI

We all know that the U.S. Government is spying on our electronic communications, somehow, to some extent, whether it's legal or not.

Here's the legal part: National Security Letters (NSL) that the FBI sends to telecommunications and Internet companies requesting users' electronic info.

I guess what disturbs me the most is that, for Google at least, the number of these NSLs has tripled in four years. Why? Are we experiencing more threats? Does this mean we're getting safer, or less safe?  These programs tend to grow and take on a life of their own. They shouldn't. This is not normal. This is no different than the FBI opening and reading our snail mail.  

N.B. -- Your stockpiles of guns, ammo and canned goods ain't gonna help turn this negative trend around.

FBI 'secretly spying' on Google users, company reveals

March 6, 2013 | FOX News

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/06/fbi-ecretly-spying-on-google-users-company-reveals/?intcmp=HPBucket#ixzz2MquAbwBx

Nokia Siemens helps Arab regimes catch dissidents

As one expert remarked, "There's very little chance a government is smart enough [to identify dissidents] without this [interception] technology."

That means firms like Nokia Siemens, which has actively sold mobile and Internet spying technology to despotic Arab regimes, are ethically complicit in their arrest and torture of peaceful dissidents.

Think about that the next time you're looking to buy one of their products!

Nokia: Connecting dictators and their victims

Torture in Bahrain Becomes Routine With Help From Nokia Siemens

By Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin

August 22, 2011 | Bloomberg

URL: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/torture-in-bahrain-becomes-routine-with-help-from-nokia-siemens-networking.html

Obama no better than Dubya when it comes to domestic spying

What a hypocrite Obama is. He's just continuing the deplorable Bush-Cheney legacy. The federal government is still "vacuuming up" absolutely everything we say on e-mail, faxes, mobile phones, or with our credit cards. There are no 4th-Amendment-specific warrants. The NSA is spying on us "24/7."

And you sorry saps are worried about socialist health care. May Allah have mercy on your sorry, deluded souls.

SLIGHT CORRECTION (11.11.2009): A Hillary-for-Prez supporter told me that Obama pledged during the Democratic primary to continue Dubya's illegal domestic spying program. This is not exactly true as far as I can tell, but he did support Bush's spying with his vote in the Senate. So, he is still a hypocrite, but his hypocrisy started back in 2008.

Spying on Americans: Obama Endorses Bush Era Warrantless Wiretapping

By Tom Burghardt

November 7, 2009 | Global Research

URL: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BUR20091106&articleId=15941

FOX: DHS report on radical right 'offensive'

In any other country on Earth, people who stockpile guns and explosives, talk seriously about violent revolution, and profess a hatred of their government would be considered suspicious characters.  It would be stupid not to pay attention to them.  But in America, such kooks are called patriots. 

Mark my words, these kooks are going to do something violent and bad while Obama is our president.  (It's happened once already).  Their hatred and suspicion of him started before he was even elected, with right-wing nuts calling him an "America hater," an "Arab," a "communist," a "terrorist," or a "terrorist-sympathizer."  Meanwhile, FOX and talk radio continue to egg these nuts on....




Chorus of Protest Grows Over Report Warning of Right Wing Radicalization
April 15, 2009  | FOXNews

The government considers you a terrorist threat if you oppose abortion, own a gun or are a returning war veteran. 

[Nice fair & balanced lead sentence there, FOX.  I mean, why wait till the body of the article to scare and anger your readers?  Immediately go for the jugular.  We expect nothing less. - J]


That's what House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said Wednesday in response to a Department of Homeland Security report warning of the rise of right-wing extremist groups. 

[Who said what?...  Sorry, I'm still angry and scared after reading that lead sentence.  I'm worrying about how Obama is going to take my guns away, or start spying on our veterans.... - J]


Smith, who said the report on "right-wing extremism" amounts to "political profiling," said that DHS is "using people's political views to assess an individual's susceptibility to terror recruitment." He joins a growing chorus of protest from irate conservative groups that are protesting the report's findings.

The report, titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment," released last week by DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said while there is no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are planning acts of violence, it suggests acts of violence could come from unnamed "rightwing extremists" concerned about illegal immigration, abortion, increasing federal power and restrictions on firearms -- and it singles out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment.

A senior Republican Judiciary Committee aide tells FOX News that the Obama administration "should immediately retract the report and apologize," saying that according to the report, pro-lifers, anyone who lost their jobs or are one of the thousands of military veterans who have fought to prevent another 9/11 could be suspect.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the report Wednesday, saying it is part of an ongoing series of assessments to provide information to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies on "violent radicalization" in the United States.

"Let me be clear: we monitor the risks of violent extremism taking root here in the United States," Napolitano said in a statement. "We don't have the luxury of focusing our efforts on one group; we must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence."

The report follows a similar report released in January by DHS that detailed left-wing threats, focusing on cyberattacks and radical "eco-terrorist" groups like Earth Liberation Front, accused of firebombing construction sites, logging companies, car dealerships and food science labs. The report notes that left-wing extremists prefer economic damage on businesses to get the message across.

"Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups, federalists and supporters of gun rights," said Smith. "That's like saying if you love puppies you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front. It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans."

U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-FL, told FOX News he was "offended" by the report's suggestion that returning troops could be potential targets for extremist groups.

"I am very offended and really disturbed that they would even say our military veterans, our returning war heroes would be capable of committing any terrorist acts," he said. "Where do they get off doing that? I demand an apology from [Napolitano] and even the President of the United States." 

[Gee, what a surprise, another American getting offended over nothing.  Obama should send him a box of pink Kleenex. - J]



Veterans' groups are also taking issue with the report, which says disgruntled vets are considered coveted recruits for groups looking for "combat skills and experience."

"Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists," the report reads. "[DHS] is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities."

Pete Hegseth, chairman of Vets for Freedom, said the report represents a "gross misunderstanding and oversimplification" of the country's service members.

"It's amazing they would single out veterans as a threat to this country," said Hegseth, an Army veteran who served in Iraq. "It underscores a pervasive belief that some are trying to spread that veterans are victims and we're coming home as damaged goods that need to be coddled instead of celebrated."

The report prompted a harsh and swift reaction for the American Legion on Tuesday. In a letter to Napolitano, American Legion National Commander David Rehbein blasted the report as incomplete and politically-biased.

"The American Legion is well aware and horrified at the pain inflicted during the Oklahoma City bombing, but Timothy McVeigh was only one of more than 42 million veterans who have worn this nation's uniform during wartime," Rehbein wrote. "To continue to use McVeigh as an example of the stereotypical 'disgruntled military veteran' is as unfair as using Osama bin Laden as the sole example of Islam."

Napolitano said in her statement on Wednesday that she was aware of the letter, and plans to meet with Rehbein sometime next week.

"I will tell him face-to-face that we honor veterans at DHS and employ thousands across the department, up to and including the Deputy Secretary."

"We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not nor will we ever monitor ideology or political beliefs," read Napolitano's statement. "We take seriously our responsibility to protect civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources." 

[Unlike Bush, who did spy on groups through the FBI and even the Pentagon (!) based on their ideology and political beliefs, through so-called "threat assessments." - J]

Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said DHS' latest report "clearly appears to censor right-wing opinion," while its earlier assessment of left-wing extremists does not.

"I must say it's chilling, it worries me a great deal," London said. "I never have encountered a time in American life when condemnation of a president is not permitted. This really did strike me as odd, indeed."

London called on President Obama to repudiate the right-wing report.

"What is the message here? That conservative organizations are not permitted to engage in any language that might be described as unfavorable to the president," London said. "Keep in mind this is entirely subjective to begin with."

[The DHS report never mentions censoring anybody.  Just like Bush never tried to censor anti-war groups like Raging Grannies, and Gold Star Families for Peace, even as he spied on them and collected dossiers on their members. - J]


FOXNews.com's Joshua Rhett Miller and FOX News Radio's Mike Majchrowitz contributed to this report.