And just like Santa, he’ll know if you’ve been naughty or nice.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
A former NSA official, William Binney
held his thumb and forefinger close together: “We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”
Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email. At the outset the program recorded 320 million calls a day, he says, which represented about 73 to 80 percent of the total volume of the agency’s worldwide intercepts.
In 1970, one of America’s premier political thinkers predicted this scenario. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era, wrote,
The technetronic 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.
Prescience is rarely this apparent. This is where we are now. It took a few more years than Brzezinski predicted, but he was ahead of his time.
We have become a distracted, complacent and easily controlled society. Our political culture is hopelessly corrupt. We are more interested in Dancing with the Stars than informed political debate. We’ve allowed ourselves to honor frauds like Ayn Rand while disparaging true American thinkers like Thomas Paine. We have become the sheeple our parents warned us about.
they could save a ton of time and money if they just hired Google…just sayin’
LOL… Well Ed, “they” kinda have a reputation for having zero interest in saving money. 🙂 … 🙁
IIRC they actually did license Google’s search algorithms.
BTW, Google is saving a ton by running its operation on Amazon.com’s massive computing infrastructure.
Well this is what the toxic mix of sociopaths, no-bid contracts and secret budgets get’s us. Just wait until they start using the militarized nano-attack vehicles and robotic surveillance-insects.
I’m starting to understand why repressive legislation receives such overwhelming support in Congress. It’s easy to line up the votes when you can blackmail the hell out of anyone.
We’re lucky that President Obama has fought so staunchly against this…oh wait.
There is no sunlight between the the two parties on this kind of program. Both are committed to the surveillance state of the future.
Obama & Bush are just the same on this issue.
Question: do you have any empirical evidence to back that up?
It’s a fact that the program being discussed was deployed in 2008–that’s under the Bush administration.
It’s a fact that the NSA keeps secrets, even from sitting Presidents. It’s also a fact that the NSA is heavily insulated from Presidential intervention by many layers of bureaucratic Red Tape, again thanks to the Bush administration.
It’s a fact that Congress, not the President holds the purse strings that allow programs like this to live or die.
It’s a fact that the electorate, the citizens with a vote, have had over a decade to vote down the Bush administration’s plans for a police state of America.
It’s a very obvious fact that the overwhelming majority, through action or inaction (both carry equal weight) decided to make the coward’s choice. Not just once but many times. That can’t be blamed on any Executive administration. A whole lot of Americans are guilty of having a yellow stain a mile wide and a decade long.
Was that quote on your lips on 26 October, 2001?
I can predict that everyone will swear up and down that they fought against the tide of tyranny from way back when it was just a ripple. But the truth is that version of history never happened. Who here can HONESTLY say they earned the right to criticize President Obama today, because they openly and vociferously opposed that tide all along?
(BTW, that’s a rhetorical question. I can’t hear the rooster’s crow from here.)
It was interesting reading all your comments here, thanks. I would question your,”fact,” that citizens voting are the end all and do all of the process of voting down the intelligence process over the last decade. Intelligence and control that you state and I agree with you, has been active for so very long, had no problem hacking voting machines for how long? Just a minor detail that your premise based on your arguments might not completely jive with.
I started protesting the war on the, “others,” for the world’s material resources in ’68. My late teen awareness of the tyranny had seriously begun being formulated years earlier with the killings of JFK and MLK and instinctively knowing then that tyranny was not just a ripple. I disagree however that anybody, now or ever, needs to EARN the, “right,” to criticize any political figure. I may be incorrectly reading into your comment, but is coming off to me as a bunch of pompous and self-righteous pontification defending the present administration, and blaming the victims of MSM propaganda and their forever collusion with congressional action for the benefits of the 1%.
One’s political awakening happens when it happens. If someone finally sees today that the Trojan horse, extreme right-wing ohmamaObama is seriously out-Bushing Bush, then they have a right to speak their mind or begin taking action according to their own understanding, whenever they freaking feel like it. No prior creds necessary.
Thanks, I’m glad you find my writing interesting!
While it’s true that you could attack a straw man surrogate for what I actually posted, but that never works, does it? 😉 The fact still remains that after all the really dastardly things that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration did as non-Constitutional rulers from 2001 through 2004, instead of hanging them by their necks until death, the American people actually rewarded their tyranny by electing them to legitimate positions! There’s NO excuse for that!
IMHO the political coup of 2001 should have triggered massive social unrest and activated the first use of the 2nd Amendment to take back power by armed combat. I was ready to spill blood to restore the US Constitution, but there was nobody to join up with. As I said before, Americans voted through action or inaction, at the polling booth and everywhere else to support this coup.
As for hacking voting machines, I give you credit for learning so much about me. Yes, I was an active member of the Online Policy Group when it sued Diebold, but I was not a part of that action. Nor do I speak jive.
I was just a child during the Summer of Love, but I was old enough to recall the number of protesters vs. the number of clean-cut conformists. Suffice it to say that that number doesn’t jibe with the number of aging Baby Boomers claiming to have lived the hippie lifestyle back then. Just like the number of aging Baby Boomers who claim to have been at Woodstock far exceeds the total number of attendees. So I only have your word for credentials.
When your word is making up lies about things I never said and calling me rude names, I can conclude that you’re a liar and move on.
I appreciate your opinion, and your right to voice it. But I’m the last person on earth that you want to shoot logical fallacies at. Better luck next time. 😀
A little touchy today? First paragraph, am I to understand you are not an American? You actually did something that mattered in effecting a change, that the “American,” people didn’t do.
Paragraph two, you were ready to spill blood, but no Americans to join you, are we supposed to be impressed by how you felt at the time? I appreciate your opinion of what you think should have happened.
Next line, I have no information about you, but voting machines can be hacked. My point being that people voting doesn’t always guarantee a truthful outcome and that conceivably does not jive with your assertion that outcomes are primarily the, “fault,” of citizen complacency. That is merely challenging your prior assertion, NO name calling or lying needed nor engaged in. Pointing out another possible contributing factor in the election process to expand the discussion.
I posited that I MIGHT be incorrectly readiing your comment and proceeding to explain what I was thinking and reading from your statement. My brief history of my political awakening was NOT to get you to BELIEVE my creds, I really don’t give a flying flick about what you believe.
Sorry your apparent rage, despite your emoticons, seems to have blinded you to my point that NOBODY needs prior creds to begin their individual political involvement, when they are ready to do so.
You obviously don’t appreciate my opinion because you claimed I was lying about you and calling you rude names. Both statements untrue.
I speak for nobody but myself, but I have been opposed to the imposition of the surveillance state since the Bush administration eviscerated the FISA courts back in 2005.
And yes, I hold Obama to the same level of accountability. Has he closed GITMO? Has he rescinded the warrantless wiretapping? No and no. When it comes to questions of national security and liberty, Obama is a tanner version of George W. Bush.
You can hold the President accountable for the refusal of Republicans in Congress to do their job. But who exactly do you think will be fooled by that falsehood? Not me!
There’s a GIGANTIC difference between a President who tried hard but failed to keep a couple of his campaign promises against stiff opposition and a despotic ruler who turned the US into a rogue nation, committed war crimes and mass murder using a complete and total lie as justification.
Perhaps your hatred of President Obama is rooted in the obvious racism that you display: “Obama is a tanner version of George W. Bush.”
Just the other day I read an excellent piece explaining why the perceived “failures” of the Obama administration regarding righting past wrongs. In a nutshell the job was mostly already done by the time Obama became President. Therefore, no failure after all. If I can find the story in the deep and wide sea of Tweets, I’ll be sure to post it.
Tell the truth MM, is that article you want to find over at DKos, Obamabot heaven?
Republicans in Congress could have been tamed to a large extent by the Democratic party and Obama “influence,” through a little process called Reconciliation, had they attempted it where applicable. The Democrats were more than happy to whine about a 60 vote majority needed on too many occasions and Ohhhh, those nasty obstructionist Republicans.
Some of the past wrongs that Obama ignored are the one’s you have been so vehemently articulating against in a few of your comments. Obama REFUSED to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of that lot. He has thus far refused to prosecute bank foreclosure fraud. Look up others on your own.
Just a hint, most of us can distinguish between bad policy for the citizens of our country and hatred of an individual. Your presumptions about Mr Scarr’s, “obvious racism,” are entirely unjustified and totally inappropriate.
An apology to a least two people from you would be appropriate or please go comment somewhere else. You’d fit well at DKos.
This is hardly news. The English-speaking nations of the Free World have been spying on its citizens ever since the start of the Cold War. I’ve known about it for as long as I can remember. The odd thing was that back then nobody questioned it. If anything, Americans were proud of it. That was, of course, when all of the jobs, from engineer to assembly line worker to listener were held by Americans.
It was also before Watergate, Iran-Contra, revelations about J. Edgar Hoover, Cheney’s duplicate government and other events that gave us good cause to revoke our trust in the people and organizations that we had trusted to “keep us safe”.
Now that the djinni is out of the bottle, no amount of moral outrage is gong to make a single bit of difference. We have created a monster, and we created it all too well. If we decide to kill the monster, it sees us as the enemy and tries to kill us. We wanted it to be secret, so what we see is the tip of the iceberg–we have no idea how deep it really runs. We have no viable option now but to live with it. “I’m stuck with a valuable friend” –David Bowie
There is one ray of hope in all of this. The monster consumes far more than it can digest. That means that it’s collecting information at a greater rate than it can be analyzed, and a much greater rate than it can act upon. And if it’s anything like its creators, the differential between its eyes and its stomach will continue to grow.
What this means for us is that the odds are good that your skeletons will remain in the closet as long as nobody singles you out. Hoping that you are obscured by a virtual mountain of data is far from optimal, but it’s better than nothing. Right now, it’s all that we have.
I believe the technology is qualitatively and quantitatively changing the relationship between surveillance and analysis. The NSA will soon be capable of tracking and storing every e-mail and telephone call placed in the United States. They will then have the ability to analyze and report on the activity of any citizen without a warrant. This is very different from the wiretap process in effect pre-9/11/01.
And who exactly will they report all this to?
The collective judicial systems of the entire U S of A are clogged near solid with backlogs of everything from traffic tax cases to the never-ending task of filling our prisons to the brim with pot smokers that they rarely have time to bother with stuff like major crimes. If the NSA increases their workload a few quintillion-fold, the entire population of planet earth would not be enough to service that flood of indictments.
Simply put, it’s a ridiculous notion to believe that the bogeyman of your choosing would go to all that trouble when simply lying works so well.
Who exactly will they report this out to?
The NSA certainly does NOT have to report any information out to anyone, especially and particularly to the courts. Obama has made the courts largely irrelevant with the NDAA and the NSA certainly has the resources to operate any kind of rendition or retaliative range of action against anyone with impunity should it choose to do so. They can report whatever is relevant to a desired outcome to whoever is deemed most expedient to accomplish a desired end.
The only thing ridiculous is minimizing the lengths to which these, “bogeymen,” will go to. Who or whomever these bogeymen actually are or are representing is the bigger question in my mind.
Allright this is creepy. After finishing my comment above I did a google search using the term “robotic surveillance insects” and my post showed up on the second page of results.
Not bad, only fifteen minutes and they had me. I surrender.
You mean you didn’t know?
The last I read, robotic flying insects aren’t faring so well because a slight breeze is enough to crash them. So they’re (literally) gluing their gear onto real insects.
Flying ‘bots the size of a small bird are not only successful, but being used (a LOT) by the military down to local police forces.
As usual, tech that can be used to do great good can just as easily be used to do great evil.
@Memory Man: Anyone who quotes David Bowie is alright in my book.
Thanks for your contribution.
And you’re scared? The US can’t even keep hackers out of government data bases. How are they going to get anybody to monitor and categorize all that information?
It must be based on the “self-deportation” model of enforcement. 😀
I prefer to take the Julius Levinson view of government incompetence…
I think there are parts of our government that work quite well and are quite good at what they do. One of those is the NSA. Once they get their hands on Big Data, nobody will be safe from government surveillance.
😛
They could hire True the Vote. *snark*