Government Legitimizes Bitcoin

A quick note here. You’ve probably see the recent stories about how the US Government has seized millions of Bitcoins, the virtual electronic currency, in its initial stages of prosecuting the Silk Road enterprise.

Just want to point out here that by seizing the Bitcoins, and attempting to access them, the Government is tacitly legitimizing them.

Given the Government’s orientation on Bitcoins, and its’ long tradition of quashing alternative currencies, it may live to rue this day.

How NSA Has Harmed the US Economy

Reports from various sources on the Internet indicate that Snowden documents show the U.S. was spying on China using a server located in China, and possibly via “back doors” in U.S. manufactured telcom equipment purchased by the Chinese for their own use.

China’s response is to rid itself of U.S. telcom providers and U.S. manufactured telecom equipment as quickly as possible, replacing it with either Chinese-built equipment, or, if that’s not possible, equipment built in Europe. The big loser? U.S. telcom equipment providers and the U.S. economy.

Estimates are circulating that the cost of NSA snooping to U.S.-based cloud computing companies could be $21.5 to $35 billion in worldwide contracts over the next three years. Non-U.S. companies are executing a cut-and-run strategy, scared away by the knowledge that the NSA has in place total surveillance of U.S. based servers and telecom infrastructure.

An ITIF (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation) report says 36 percent of U.S. residents surveyed said the NSA leaks have made it more difficult for them to “do business outside the United States”. The report found that Europeans are trying to edge out their American competitors, and are enlisting their governments in this effort. Even before the recent spying revelations, governments in France and Germany were advocating national cloud efforts to counteract concerns that the U.S. Patriot Act could compromise the security of data stored by U.S. companies. France’s second largest carrier, NFR, rounded up $300 million to invest in a French competitor to Amazon. A German minister’s call for a boycott of U.S. cloud companies has been reported.

The only hope for U.S. based companies may be the information coming out about other countries spying habits. If total surveillance is seen as a problem afflicting most governments, competition might be less affected.

Here are some related reports from across the web:

Lamestream Drops NSA Snoopergate Story

Not surprisingly, the lamestream media have begun the burial process for the NSA Snooper-gate Story. One likely reason is that the administration has dug its heels in and steadfastly refused the possibility that bulk domestic spying might ever end. Ultimately, the lamestream media are brown-nosers, and without a path for the story that resolves in favor of the Government’s omnipotence, they see no other alternative than burial.

Europe, on the other hand, is not so keen to just roll over and accept that they’re being relentlessly spied on by the U.S. government. Here’s today’s DayPage, which I host over on Radio InfoWeb every morning. It features a look at today’s German paper, Der Spiegel


http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-08-27~NSA_Story_Lives_On_In_Europe.mp3

 

Now, to be fair, the Washington Post had an article on today’s edition, page A3, regarding Edward Snowden visiting the Russian Embassy in Hong Kong prior to his departure for Russia to evade the full anger and rage of the U.S. A search of the online edition of today’s New York Times, however, received no hits.

Outside the lamestream media, today’s Democracy Now! was chock-full of snooper-gate related news:

  • NSA Spied on UN

The United Nations has confirmed plans to ask the Obama administration about reports of U.S. spying on top U.N. officials. Citing leaks from Edward Snowden, the German magazine Der Spiegel has revealed the National Security Agency decoded the United Nations’ internal video conferencing system to eavesdrop last year. The spying on U.N. communications would violate the United Nations’ 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

  • NSA/Intelligence Disinformation to Discredit Critics

Snowden denies a leak credited to him by Britain’s Independent. The Independent of London reported on Friday that the British government is running “a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence.” The article cites documents leaked by Snowden. But in a statement, Snowden denied leaking that information or working with The Independent. In a statement, Snowden said the British government may have deliberately leaked that information itself in a bid to convince the public that the National Security Agency leaks have been harmful. The article appears just as the British government faces widespread criticism for its detention of David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, under an anti-terrorism law last week. Snowden said: “It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that The Guardian and Washington Post’s disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others.”

  • NSA: Willful Violations and Illegal Distribution of Snoop Data

The National Security Agency has acknowledged new abuses of its surveillance powers. In a statement, the NSA said it had uncovered “very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities” by agency operatives. Some NSA officials were found to have spied on love interests, with one monitoring a former spouse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the practice is “common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.”

The National Security Agency has also been found to be providing illegally collected information about U.S. citizens to the Drug Enforcement Agency and Internal Revenue Service in order to assist in prosecutions. Such information would be inadmissible in court. Because it is illegal and violates due process, the results would be devastating to those accused.

On a related note: when the going get’s rough, the U.S. historically starts a war. Syria, perhaps? The lamestream media have been keeping up the drumbeat of war for several days now. But it’s a new day, and there is some question as to whether a war can completely bury the snooper-gate story.


 

US In Plea Deal with The People

The U.S. Government has taken to competing with Snowden documents to try to stop the hemorrhaging of truth about the extent of NSA data collecting. In recent days we have seen a declassified court document declaring that the NSA committed a relatively minor “oops” of collecting some “tens of thousands” of domestic emails.

The National Security Agency illegally collected tens of thousands of domestic emails before being stopped in 2011. The disclosure was made Wednesday in a newly declassified order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees NSA spying. The FISC ordered the NSA to change its procedures after the agency admitted to wrongly collecting up to 56,000 emails a year over a three-year period. The NSA says the illegal email collection resulted from technical error, not deliberate snooping. — Democracy Now! [8/22/2013]

Make no mistake, this is a psyops/disinformation campaign. It’s as if they’re going into the Court of Public Opinion to cut a plea deal:

Instead of going to trial for total bulk collection of data, the Government would plead guilty for the inappropriate collection of a few thousand emails in return for getting a lighter sentence, and the possibility that they might continue their criminal enterprise of total data collection.

  • The People would agree to forget about the illegal massive bulk collection, the corrupt cloak of secrecy, and go back to business as usual, even going so far as to feel comfortable with it, as President Obama has insisted.
  • The Government would feel free to do whatever it wants, including limitless expansion of data collection, and trampling of basic freedoms.
  • We would no longer have a democracy. Democracy would no longer be possible anywhere on the planet, but we could pretend, moving forward.
  • The Government is banking on the hope that The People will share and keep up the pretense that “These aren’t the ‘droids we’re looking for, move along” and that things will just go back to the way they were (which they never do).

It’s a bold move, but I really do question if the American public is that stupid. The public is a big ship to turn around, but it’s already well into the maneuver, and stopping it will not be easy for the Government. It will take more than a little grease and bullsh*t. One of the things that has slowed the public awakening to the violations that have been committed against it has been grasping the practical implication of bulk data collection on day-to-day life. The same has been true for the lamestream media. However, journalists and talking heads at the edge of the lamestream media, such as Tor creator Jacob Applebaum on August 20th’s Democracy Now!, have pointed out in unambiguous language that democracies and free markets cannot exist in a global surveillance state and provided clear examples of why they can’t.

“I think, at its core, what is at stake is the ability for a human being to have dignity and for journalists to have integrity with their sources. And from that, I believe that it threatens the whole concept of a free democracy. This is, I think, in a sense, being shown in the last 48 hours to the extreme. And I don’t mean that as hyperbole. But if everything is under surveillance, how is it that you can have a democracy? How is it that you can organize a political function or have confidentiality with a constituent or with a source, or with a friend or with a lover? That’s fundamentally an erasure of fundamental things that we have had for quite some time.

And planetary surveillance has very serious concerns, not the least of which is economic espionage, and not the least of which, I think, for me, personally, is about journalistic source protection. I mean, how is it that we will be able to protect our sources if there’s no way to securely meet, no way to communicate about having a meeting, no way to actually communicate about basic facts? There’s no such thing as on or off the record, when in fact you don’t control the record. And it’s not merely a matter of whether or not we have something to hide, because it is not us that will decide whether we have something to hide. It is an analyst somewhere. It is a machine learning algorithm somewhere.

And this is the thing that is perhaps the most terrifying: Because people are flagged, then other people are dispatched. Each person plays their role, and more and more a machine plays that role, a machine that does not understand constitutional protections, does not understand the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, does not understand humanity. It’s a machine. And the humans, they behave like machines, too, which is a great fear, that humans will start to behave like machines. And so, what is at stake is in fact democracy, where we still have it, and the free press. ” — Jacob Applebaum 8/20/2013

And so, for those who feel powerless to act in their democratic society (and yet, isn’t that the purpose of a democratic society?), one often hears the lament alluded to by Jacob Appelbaum, above:

“well, shucks, I have nothing to hide. I’m not important. I try to straitjacket myself with the Orwellian rules imposed on me at all times, and comply with commands given by designated authorities immediately and without question.”

The hurdle until recently has been to get the masses beyond that point. Luckily, Edward Snowden came along with a sufficient amount of information in addition to Bradley Manning’s (and many others) to reach the tipping point. The heavy hand of the government since has shattered the illusion of The Emperor’s New Clothes, and just as in the parable, small children are speaking up and shredding the pretense of the Government shared with older people who don’t wish to bothered or inconvenienced by reality. As with Humpty Dumpty, all the King’s horses, and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. Once an illusion is shattered, one can’t go back into the illusion. Not fully.

 

Tired Terrorism Trotted Out Again as Reason for Fear

The by-now tired out ploy of using the threat of terrorism as a means to stir up fear in the populace was trotted out once again over the weekend. The move was a yawn-worthy: a transparent and desperate attempt by the U.S. government to take control of the Edward Snowden / NSA Snooper-Gate narrative. Despite the surreal propaganda, the lamestream media fell into lock-step with the Government pronouncements, thus becoming the sole topic for todays’ radio DayPage. Click on the .mp3 direct link, or try the embedded player to listen. The text of the program is included below.

http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-08-05~Fear_Mongering_the_Surveillance_Society.mp3

If the player doesn’t work, upgrade your browser or use the link above.

Good Morning, boys and girls… time for another DayPage, and here to sing about it is Johnette Downing…

[Audio clip: the “Today is Monday” children’s song]

[Rex Latchford voices the commentary]
Well, let’s get into the dirty business of this Monday. Today is another day of Fear Mongering. The drumbeat of fear began over the weekend.

 All attempts at containing the NSA surveillance scandal have failed. Edward Snowden is still free. The more progressive representatives in Congress aren’t buying the line that everyone needs to be snooped on in order to be safe [from alleged threats of terrorism]. Claims that terrorist attacks have been thwarted got whittled down from 57 instances to less-than-one in cross examination of NSA promoters testifying in Congress. Worst of all, the people, and their representatives, aren’t doing what they’re told [by the Federal government]. They’re not accepting the bull poop they’re being given, and more truth about the surveillance society keeps slipping out.

So, what’s a totalitarian state to do? Declare war? That one has been overplayed and worn out for the time being. What’s left is to go back to “the threat of terrorism”: stories, warnings, of vague, “secret” threats designed to make one feel unsettled, worried, and maybe even fearful are seeded throughout the lamestream media. Wasn’t it George Bush who said:

[Audio clip of famous Bush mis-quote “There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.'” that suggests somehow his mind mashed up a bit of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”]

This is getting very tired and pathetic. For hundreds… thousands of years… power-mad regimes have used fear and intimidation as the instrument of their repression. Isn’t it time for it to end?

[Audio clip of James Brown singing “papa’s got a brand new bag”]

[Rex Latchford attempting a Smokey-the-Bear voice, and largely failing]

This is Beary Smoker (pfft) saying: Kids, only YOU can prevent totalitarian regimes.

[Audio clip of James Brown singing “ain’t that a groove”]

And that’s Day Page for Monday… I’m Rex Latchford, and I’ll be baaaack when the page in the Big Book turns to a new… DayPage… You can hear past DayPages at DayPage.net. It’s a production of Radio InfoWeb.

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.

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.

 

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.

Rand Paul’s Filibuster Shows Weakness Against Drones

The 13 hour Rand Paul filibuster was… well… tepid. Although he was standing up to the threat of the Federal Government’s refusal to rule out the use of drones against American citizens on American soil, he sounded more like a lawyer than the courageous politician he wanted to portray. The question isn’t “should they be used against citizens in extraordinary circumstances”… the question is “should they be used against citizens at all”.

The most depressing thing about the Obama administration is that it’s all about politics, even in the second term. Politics are clearly not working for the American people, and are all about dodging the hard questions. With the hard questions not being given the light of day, we can be sure that 99.9% of the time, the outcome will not serve the people.