Leaker Crackdown: Govt Employees Told to Tattle on Coworkers

From DemocracyNow! Filed under: “War on Truth” “War on Freedom” and “War on Citizens”

As the media focuses almost exclusively on Edward Snowden’s possible whereabouts, more details on the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers have come to light. A new investigative report has revealed the administration’s crackdown on leaks extends far beyond high-profile cases like Snowden or the Associated Press, to the vast majority of government agencies and departments — even those with no connection to intelligence or national security. For nearly two years, the White House has waged a program called “Insider Threat” that forces government employees to remain on the constant lookout for their colleagues’ behavior and to report their suspicions. It targets government officials who leak any information, not just classified material. All of this leads McClatchy to warn: “The [Insider Threat] program could make it easier for the government to stifle the flow of unclassified and potentially vital information to the public, while creating toxic work environments poisoned by unfounded suspicions and spurious investigations.” We’re joined by the reporter who helped break the story, Jonathan Landay, senior national security and intelligence reporter for McClatchy Newspapers. Landay also discusses his reporting that revealed how drone strikes carried out in Pakistan over a four-year period ran contrary to standards set forth publicly by President Obama.

A Look Back at FBI Carnivore & NYT: NSA is Criminal

Here’s a DayPage looking back at FBI’s Carnivore as the beginning of the government tapping everything American citizens do on the Internet (despite they who protesteth too much). Meanwhile, in the present, a New York Times OpEd plainly states this all violates the Fourth Amendment, and the NSA is Criminal.

Visit DayPage.net to listen to any of the DayPages of the past, hosted by yours truly.

We Have Met the Enemy, And He Is U.S.

In purely tabloid terms. Doesn’t anyone get the connection between the IRS scandal and SnooperGate?

Democracy can’t function in a surveillance society. As long as we are flawed human beings, someone, or many people, or a whole organization, will abuse the information collected for its benefit. The War on Citizens is just getting started.

This is the lesson we can learn from Edward Snowden.



From WikiPedia…

Probably the most famous Pogo quotation is “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Perhaps more than any other words written by Kelly, it perfectly sums up his attitude towards the foibles of mankind and the nature of the human condition.

The quote was a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” It first appeared in a lengthier form in “A Word to the Fore”, the foreword of the book The Pogo Papers, first published in 1953. Since the strips reprinted in Papers included the first appearances of Mole and Simple J. Malarkey, beginning Kelly’s attacks on McCarthyism, Kelly used the foreword to defend his actions:

“ Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward! ”

—Walt Kelly, June 1953

At Last, Illegal Government Surveillance Story Gets Legs

[Text of VO for audio below] “It’s out”, as the BBC has put it. That’s an odd thing for me as I’ve been reporting on this for several years now. So,it feels just a little bit CREEPY that suddenly this story is “out” at this late, late date. It smells of disinformation or psyops. Not to mention politics. So, I’ll step away and let the BBC tell us what they say know at this time… (Monday morning, June 10th).


Play Audio
Play http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-06-10~Snowden_Outs_Self_-Long-.mp3

[BBC story treatment…]
An interesting angle on this story was reported by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! this past Friday… details of a project named “Prism”, here’s a clip from her news program; edited for brevity… despite that, it does go on for about 12 minutes…

[Amy Goodman clip with Glenn Greenwald]

Well, as I’ve said, I’ve been reporting for some time about how the NSA is collecting EVERYTHING: EVERYTHING, as an outgrowth and expansion of it’s Office of Total Information Awareness. The information is being stored at a growing number of sites. Like the nations’ garbage dumps, the NSA’s collection of “everything” is growing as fast as they can build giant sites — like the one that just opened in Utah — to hold it.

[Credits]

Clips from the BBC and Democracy Now! were edited for time, and for today, that’s DayPage, a morning segment from Radio InfoWeb’s main stream. Listen to the awesomeness of Radio InfoWeb at http://radio.infoweb.net. Email us [listen to audio for email address], call us and tell us in your own voice how you feel about this. Text us. That number is: [listen to audio for phone number]. Facebook us: facebook.com/radioinfoweb – tumblr us at radioinfoweb.tumblr.com – we tweet @radioinfoweb – once again that number is [listen to audio for phone number – it’s not on the web so put that in your contact book. I’ll be back tomorrow with ANOTHER DayPage.

NSA Snoops Verizon? That’s All? Not.

Huh? The “news” that the NSA is collecting domestic call data from Verizon is disturbing? How retarded has the press become?


Play Audio
Play http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-06-07~24hrs_into_Snowden_Revelations.mp3

So, what kind of psyop is this? This feigned outrage about this one small incident among the literally tens and hundreds of thousands of other incidents of the government overreaching in its illegal surveillance of innocent citizens. It would appear that it’s an effort to downplay the extent of illegal surveillance to the remaining few ( less than 5% according to recent polls) who have blind faith in government.

Will the whole thing implode? It just might. There does seem to be a bi-partisan stirring over overall discontent with the ever growing degree of illicit domestic surveillance. But that’s not surprising. What’s surprising is just how far this whole thing has gotten.

Don’t forget, dear reader, these are YOUR dollars that are being spent to spy on you. As long as you’re OK with spending that money on having the government spy on you, they’ll continue to spend it.

Perhaps I’m missing something. Are you so taken with your reflection in the mirror, the primping and posturing and posting on Facebook, that you are flattered by being spied on? If so… how sad.

 

A Few Privacy Resources

Interested in privacy? Remember when we had it? Or would you just like to have some, some day in the distant future? Here are just a few resources…

And so much more. I’ll start adding to this page and make it sticky. In the meantime, enjoy what little privacy you have left, if any.

Americans: Monkeys in Cages

Today is the day America ended. We didn’t quite get to finish our 237th year.

If there was any doubt that freedom in America had already ended, and been converted into a totalitarian surveillance state, those doubts must have been erased in any rational mind with the announcement on April 19th, 2013  that “Boston is in lockdown today”. Citizens were warned to “stay inside, avoid movement, and keep doors locked” while a door-to-door search was to be conducted for suspects associated with the Boston Marathon bombing.

I grew up at the end of the Cold War. Americans were proud to distill the difference between America and those Rat B*st*rd Communists as: “We would rather let one hundred guilty men go free than imprison an innocent man; Communists would rather imprison hundreds of innocent men to get one guilty man”. By that measure, welcome to the United Communist States of America.

A lot has happened since the 50’s: loss of innocence. But more importantly, loss of freedom. The world has been turned on its head, and we have become the very sort of state we fought World War II to save the world from.

Just whose fault is it? The system is easy to blame, but it’s a system we allowed to evolve as it has. It doesn’t take much soul-searching to understand how it happened. The People are to blame. And, if this grave injustice we have done to ourselves is ever to be righted, it is We The People who must do it; once again overturning tyranny and the forces opposing Freedom. We must end The War on Citizens currently waged by the Federal Government.

Cell Phone Google Maps + Drone = You’re Owned

Welcome to Remedial Math 101

I’m looking at Google Maps. There’s a red pin on it. It shows where a Radio InfoWeb Listener is located. It shows a white pickup truck where a man is relaxing and listening on his Blackberry. This kind of tracking is now simple, automatic, and happens, perhaps, millions of times per second. It requires no more than an Internet connection and a web browser. The question is, is this acceptable?

Satellite View of Man In Truck Identified By Internet Protocols and Common Web Tools

A man listening to an Internet Radio Station with a Blackberry is identified and located instantly via commonly available tools.

How was this done? Instantly and automatically. When the man’s phone contacted the audio server, it’s IP address became known, because it’s necessary to direct the audio stream to the stream player. When the IP Address is provided to Google, the telcom provider can be determined because IP addresses are issued in blocks (“NETBLKS”) to specific provider. The provider is then queried, and it instantly provides coordinates for the IP from its moble network. The cell tower providing the connection to the user’s phone has a multi-antenna array that allows it to geo-locate the source of the signal by comparing the phase relationships of the signal as it is received at each of the antennas.

The fact that it’s a Blackberry phone is known because the phone identifies itself when establishes the audio stream. The man may not be aware of many of these factors:

  • That his telcom providers rats out his coordinates; perhaps even if he has expressly requested it not to
  • That his phone rats itself out to the stream provider
  • That cell towers triangulate his exact location
  • That cookies are not involved
  • That once you’re identified by an IP address, you’re associated with tons of tracking data that has been accumulated over time

The bottom line is, when you carry a cellular device that’s turned on, you may as well have a big target painted on your back, and another on the top of your head. You’ve been made. In real time. And as the title implies, you could be targeted by a drone, whether operated by the government, business, or criminal. In this surveillance society, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate from the three when it comes to your personal security and safety.

 

The Assault on You

The assault on YOU is something you really ought to take seriously. The surge seems to be on, but then again, it could be the calm before the storm! Every morning when I awaken, I survey the battlefield of the War on Citizens. There are so many battles raging and so many new assaults beginning on all fronts, it’s hard to know where to start. No wonder so many people prefer to hide their heads in the sand and either try to pretend there’s nothing happening, or shrug it off by asking “what can you do”.

The disinformation and psyops are non-stop. I find much of it an insult to my intelligence: “you mean those %$^#&#! really expect me to believe this %$#$@!”? If you take a few steps back, you can’t help but conclude that we are being subjected to an intense attempt to disorient us and in the process, seize control of our sense of reality. Don’t let that happen!

Your privacy and your identity are all you’ve got that makes you YOU. If you allow the non-stop assault on your identity (by invading your privacy) to succeed, you will be lost, and become just another marching moron. If reading Kornbluth’s short story “The Marching Morons” is more than you can manage, then try the comic book form in the movie “Idiocracy”. That’s where we’re headed if we allow the totalitarian forces in our society to take further control. We’re already being treated like cattle, as in the recent disclosure that American children are going to be “tested with Anthrax vaccine” — as if that’s legitimate research that is necessary even if it were just on defenseless animals.

Even if you hide your head in the sand, the insane people running our government and society aren’t going to leave you alone. They’ll test their drugs and vaccines on you and your family, while they catalog every shred of anything you may have that’s yours (and not theirs). And there you have it. Things have degenerated to the point where we’re in the thrall of a group of people so dysfunctional and infantile that they have become completely impotent in all respects other than trying to harass and control you, while they covet what you have that they don’t: some decency and dignity, and whatever self-respect they haven’t already robbed you of. Plus anything you might have that they perceive as a threat to their money and power. It’s really that pathetic.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy the song written by John Lennon (killed in NYC by a nut with a gun) and performed by the Beatles entitled “I Me Mine”. That’s what we’re dealing with in the dangerous mentally wounded beast that is conducting the War on Citizens.