Category Archives: Keeping Them Honest

Just because it’s been said doesn’t mean it’s so. We don’t care how many times it’s been repeated. If it isn’t true, we’ll point it out, or at least question it, here.

NSA Snooping Forces Business Closures

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(updated 8/9 7pm EDT)

The Fable of The NSA and the Internet

Long ago and far away on the planet Earth, the people of the planet enjoyed the fruits of a global telecommunications network. But the Governments, which did not trust the people, secretly decided to collect all its information and use it to rule the people. When the people found out, they stopped using the Internet because they didn’t want the Governments intrusions and manipulations in every aspect of their lives. The planet fell silent, technological advancement was halted, and economic hardship gripped it’s people.
The End

The Fable of the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs

Just as the lame-stream media has become dimly aware that all the snooping has real consequences in the real word… news is breaking of how some businesses are being forced to close as a result of the extent of NSA information gathering. There is likely to be a wave of such consequences, as the Federal Government may eventually discover they have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs: the Internet.

Real World Impacts:
Two Business Shutting Down Due to NSA Domestic Surveillance

Lavabit Out Of Business – Gagged and Bound by U.S. Govt

Texas-based Lavabit service has shut down but said that legal reasons are preventing it from explaining why. Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop U.S. agencies from obtaining customer details.

Silent Circle, a secure communications firm, has shut its email service because messages cannot be kept wholly secret, which was the basis of its appeal to customers.

Edward Snowden is rumored to have been using Lavabit while holed up in the Moscow airport.

Ladar Levison, Owner and Operator of Lavabit LLC wrote in an open letter that has replaced the company’s website at lavabit.com:

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Following that is a link requesting donations to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund via PayPal [PayPal was stopped by the U.S. Government from transferring donation funds to WikiLeaks in the U.S.’s quest to destroy WikiLeaks].

Silent Circle Shuts Down Secure Mail Service:
NSA Surveillance Makes Email Security Impossible

Silent Circle, a firm offering a variety of telecommunications products, states on its’ website: “Silent Circle has preemptively discontinued Silent Mail service to prevent spying.”

The announcement continues:

“We designed our phone, video, and text services (Silent Phone, Text and Eyes) to be completely end-to-end secure with all cryptography done on the clients and our exposure to your data to be nil. The reasons are obvious — the less of your information we have, the better it is for you and for us.

Silent Mail has thus always been something of a quandary for us. Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has. There are far too many leaks of information and metadata intrinsically in the email protocols themselves. Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure.

And yet, many people wanted it. Silent Mail has similar security guarantees to other secure email systems, and with full disclosure, we thought it would be valuable.

However, we have reconsidered this position. We’ve been thinking about this for some time, whether it was a good idea at all. Yesterday, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system less they “be complicit in crimes against the American people.” We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now.”

The company plans to continue on with its’ non-email products.

“By injecting the N.S.A. into virtually every cross-border interaction, the U.S. government will forever alter what has always been an open exchange of ideas,” said Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

By injecting itself into every electronic communication, the U.S. Government has forever altered the way we think about and use the forms of communication we have used and become dependent on for over a generation. With the Internet the main driver of economic growth, the U.S., in its greed to collect every shred of information on the ‘net, may have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

See also: The Dog and the Bone – a fable wherein by greeding for all, one risks losing all.

 

 

Tired Terrorism Trotted Out Again as Reason for Fear

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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.

Zimmerman Verdict

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With all the concern about reactions, protests, or even violence in the wake of the Zimmerman trial, my own worry is that the average American no longer comprehends the justice system, or how it works (on those occasions when it works like it’s supposed to). Had Zimmerman been found guilty, he would most certainly have appealed after a cooling-off process. In today’s politically driven prosecution system, he may well be tried again. Until our often unfair and corrupt government and judicial system are overturned, possibly with bloodshed in the process, there is one other alternative: register, and vote. Get the laws and the process changed, if that’s the desire. There seems to be no taste for the larger scale corrective action, so protesters would be well advised to channel their energy into registering and voting. If they can get that together. Sometimes I really wonder.

Here’s a DayPage segment I hosted today for Radio InfoWeb that presents, unedited, the two 911 calls that led up to this:


Play Audio 		Play http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-07-14~Zimmerman_Verdict.mp3

Leaker Crackdown: Govt Employees Told to Tattle on Coworkers

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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.

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

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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

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[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.

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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

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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

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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.

 

Six Strikes – The Details

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This blog entry is being actively updated. Check back if this is of interest to you!

This week and last week, “Six Strikes” (the “Copyright Alert System”) went into effect with the “big five ISP’s”: AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, Cablevision and Comcast. It’s the latest plan-of-action for the folks in Hollywood and elsewhere who have been trying to curb piracy without much success. Until recently, the Big Club was used: Lawyers and lawsuits. Now, instead of the “big stick”, a “small twig” is being used. But it’s very insidious. The plan follows the playbook of the U.S. Government: Pay the telecom companies to turn over their customer usage information, and have them act as cops on your behalf (also for a fee).

Here is the promotional video describing the program. If you like having your intelligence insulted, you’ll LOVE this! The video glosses over many of the disturbing aspects of the program.

The Warning Letters

So far, few details have emerged about how Six Strikes will be implemented. However, ARS Technica has obtained copies of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th letters Comcast says they will send out. Read more in their excellent article on the subject. The Comcast letter are extremely vague, and do not provide any identifying information about what the recipient is accused of sharing.

For users of peer-to-peer networks, the impact seems to be as follows. Seeders will be targeted and leechers, for now, apparently, will be left alone. This strategy seems to be oriented toward demoralizing (pun intended) the bit torrent folks without getting punitive toward leechers (which would cause an uproar).

In fact, the whole Six Strikes effort seems focused entirely at bit torrent users, and seeders as a subset. The detection mechanism appears to be infiltration of bit-torrents, enabling the “police” to join torrents and then extract IPs of seeders. The “police” would then notify the ISP, and leave it up to the ISP.