Infinite Unknown

- How the FBI Wants to Penalize Internet Companies for Providing “Too Much” Security (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 13, 2013):

Remember my recent post titled: Former FBI Agent: All Phone Conversations are Recorded and Stored? Well now they now want to ensure doing the same on the internet is as easy as possible.  The latest proposal by the FBI, which would require companies to provide a backdoor for the feds to spy on American citizens on the internet, has been covered extensively in the mainstream media over the past couple of weeks, first in the Washington Post and then later in the New York Times.  It centers around this push to make communications on the internet “wiretap capable” and would impose fines of $25,000 per day for companies that do not comply with Big Brother.  Julian Sanchez of Wired has written and excellent article explaining how this proposal would not only crush privacy rights of law abiding citizens, but would also help cyber criminals, enable totalitarian governments, make the internet less secure and stifle the remnants of innovation that remain in the economy.  Oh, and unsurprisingly, Obama backs the proposal.  My favorite excerpts:

The FBI has some strange ideas about how to “update” federal surveillance laws: They’re calling for legislation to penalize online services that provide users with too much security.

I’m not kidding. The proposal was revealed in The Washington Post last week — and a couple days ago, a front-page story in The New York Times reported the Obama administration is preparing to back it.

While it’s not yet clear how dire the going-dark scenario really is, the statutory “cure” proposed by the FBI — with fines starting at $25,000 a day for companies that aren’t wiretap capable — would surely be worse than the disease.

The FBI’s misguided proposal would impose costly burdens on thousands of companies (and threaten to entirely kill those whose business model centers on providing highly secure encrypted communications), while making cloud solutions less attractive to businesses and users. It would aid totalitarian governments eager to spy on their citizens while distorting business decisions about software design. Perhaps worst of all, it would treat millions of law-abiding users with legitimate security needs as presumed criminals — while doing little to hamper actual criminals.

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Fascism, FBI, George Orwell, Global News, Government, Internet, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

And nobody gives a f*** anymore!

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
- Aldous Huxley, 1961

“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.”
– Adolf Hitler

- Watergate Was For Amateurs: Justice Department Spied For Months On Associated Press Reporters (ZeroHedge, May 13, 2013):

And so the final curtain falls on the myth of what was supposed to be, in its own words, the “most transparent administration“ in history.

As it turns out, the big Friday story of Bloomberg journalists snooping on its clients was just amateur hour compared to what the AP was about to serve. In fact, the Watergate affair may soon appear like a walk in the park compared to the First Amendment shitstorm that is about to be unleashed following the just reported news that the US Department of Justice had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.”

First amendment? Freedom of speech and press? Surely not when it comes to the Nobel-peace prize winning President and those who dare to expose his secret ways.

And what’s worst, is that the AP breach has all the makings of a spiteful hack driven by personal vengeance against one of America’s premier news outlets.

We can’t wait to see the rest of the not so conservative media stands up in arms and defend one of their peers against an administration whose utter disdain for all checks and balances puts Stalinist Russia to shame. Or perhaps it will be merely a case of “first they came for AP’s reporters, and we said nothing…”

And while it has long been known that the NSA actively intercepts and records every single form of electronic communication, the unspoken truth is that the government can do anything it wants as long as it doesn’t get caught. It just did, and not only in Benghazi, or the IRS fiasco, but in making a complete mockery of the First Amendment.

As the NSA whistleblower told Wired Magazine over a year ago, “we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state“, all we can add is “we are now in a full-blown totalitarian state.”

And nobody cares.

The AP story which must be read to be believed:

The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, George Orwell, Global News, Government, Journalism, Justice Department, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Surveillance, U.S.

- Government can now snoop on your SMSs, online chats (The Times Of India, May 7, 2013):

BANGALORE/DELHI: The government last month quietly began rolling out a project that gives it access to everything that happens over India’s telecommunications network—online activities, phone calls, text messages and even social media conversations. Called the Central Monitoring System, it will be the single window from where government arms such as the National Investigation Agency or the tax authorities will be able to monitor every byte of communication.

But privacy and internet freedom advocates are worried that in the name of security, the government could end up snooping on people, possibly abusing a system that does not have enough safeguards to protect ordinary citizens.

“In the absence of a strong privacy law that promotes transparency about surveillance and thus allows us to judge the utility of the surveillance, this kind of development is very worrisome,” warned Pranesh Prakash, director of policy at the Centre for Internet and Society. “Further, this has been done with neither public nor parliamentary dialogue, making the government unaccountable to its citizens.”

Continue reading »

Tags: Big Brother, Global News, Government, Internet, Politics, Surveillance

- Guess What’s Hidden in the Immigration Bill? A National Biometric Database for Citizens (Liberty  Blitzkrieg, May 10, 2013):

Oh just another eight hundred page “bipartisan” bill that nobody will read,  mainstream media will refuse to cover, and that will merely further destroy any remnants of freedom left in these United States.  Never forget the George Carlin quote on bipartisanship:

“Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.”

From Wired:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, ACLU, Barack Obama, Big Brother, Biometrics, DHS, Dictatorship, Fascism, George Carlin, George Orwell, Global News, Government, Homeland Security, Immigration, Law, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Surveillance, U.S.

- No Joke…This is What the ACLU Received from the Government on Text Surveillance Policy (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 9, 2013):

Fifteen pages of black squares.  How’s that freedom tasting?  Take that terrorists!

Most. Transparent. Ever.

ACLU

Tags: ACLU, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Fascism, Global News, Government, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

- Former FBI Agent: All Phone Conversations are Recorded and Stored (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May 5, 2013):

So it seems the surveillance state just had its coming out party on CNN.  In this interview with Erin Burnett, former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente admits that the feds have access to pretty much everyone’s telephone conversations.  Also pay attention to the smirk on his face as he admits this disturbing reality.

Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian wrote an excellent piece yesterday o this exact topic.  Some of my favorite excerpts: Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Big Brother, Dictatorship, Fascism, FBI, George Orwell, Global News, Government, New World Order, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

- FBI Pursuing Real-Time Gmail Spying Powers as “Top Priority” for 2013 (Slate, March 26, 2013):

Despite the pervasiveness of law enforcement surveillance of digital communication, the FBI still has a difficult time monitoring Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox in real time. But that may change soon, because the bureau says it has made gaining more powers to wiretap all forms of Internet conversation and cloud storage a “top priority” this year.

Continue reading »

Tags: Big Brother, FBI, Global News, Gmail, Government, Politics, Surveillance, U.S.

- US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email (Reuters, March 22, 2103):

The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.

As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.

Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.

The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program.

DHS as the middleman

By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping.

Continue reading »

Tags: Barack Obama, Big Brother, DHS, Dictatorship, eMails, Fascism, Global News, Government, Homeland Security, Internet, New World Order, NSA, Obama administration, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.

Watch the video here:

- CIA’s Gus Hunt On Big Data: We ‘Try To Collect Everything And Hang On To It Forever’ (Huffington Post, March 20, 2013):

NEW YORK — The CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s endless appetite for data in a far-ranging speech on Wednesday.

Speaking before a crowd of tech geeks at GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in New York City, CTO Ira “Gus” Hunt said that the world is increasingly awash in information from text messages, tweets, and videos — and that the agency wants all of it.

Continue reading »

Tags: Big Brother, CIA, Global News, Government, New World Order, Politics, Surveillance, U.S.

- Mayor Bloomberg On Drones: “Oh It’s Big Brother, Get Used To It” (Liberty Blitzkrieg, March23, 2013):

While hosting his weekly radio show this past Friday, Your Royal Highness Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained to the serfs of NYC that privacy is dead and that you just “can’t keep the tide” of the surveillance state from coming in.  His quotes perfectly demonstrate the attitude he takes toward his subjects and are quite revealing.  For instance:

“Everybody wants their privacy, but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it.  It’s just we’re going into a different world, uncharted, and, like it or not, what people can do, what governments can do, is different. And you can to some extent control, but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”

“The argument against using automation, it’s this craziness– oh, it’s Big Brother. Get used to it.”

As if that isn’t bad enough, it also become 100% crystal clear that this guy wants to fill the skies of NYC with “freedom birds.”  He sees absolutely no problem with it at all.  In his own words:

“But what’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? I mean intellectually I have trouble making a distinction. And you know you’re gonna have face recognition software.  People are working on that.”

“We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don’t see how you stop that. And it’s not a question of whether I think it’s good or bad. I just don’t see how you could stop that because we’re going to have them.”

Here’s how you stop it.  It’s called The Constitution of the United States of America, a document I’m not convinced you have ever bothered to read.

This whole thing comes across as a gigantic Jedi mind trick to me.  ”It’s inevitable you will lose your freedoms.  Resistance is futile.  Just accept it.”  Sadly, unlike the proud citizens of Seattle, New Yorkers are still too traumatized from 9/11 to get off their knees.

Finally, we discover who and what Bloomberg is really trying to protect with all the cameras: Continue reading »

Tags: 1984, Banking, Big Brother, Constitution, Dictatorship, Drones, Economy, Fascism, Global News, Government, Law, Michael Bloomberg, Mike Krieger, New World Order, New York City, NYPD, Politics, Society, Surveillance, U.S.