November 18, 2013
By: Kelly Diamond, Publisher
The justifications for all the spying as well as all the secrecy concerning their tactics and even their budgets have become tired and feeble.
Twelve years after 9/11, and we’re still playing the “National Security” and “Terrorist” cards for all the needless intrusions into our privacy and egregious violations of civil liberties.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.”
That is a summation of your “Miranda Rights”. They are a joke because for some reason, information collected concerning things you’ve communicated via telephone, email, or Skype can and will be used against you. Interesting to note that this information is collected prior to any government agent advising you of your rights. A little confusing to those who are really picky about things like… oh, I don’t know, consistency?
My dad shared a lot of information with me from when he was a cop. One of the more interesting tidbits was this: “eyes cannot trespass”. So, let’s say, you’re walking by a house and see something fly out of a window shattering it. Seeing that happen on private property, allows the cop to investigate if there is a problem. That sounds reasonable to most, right? I mean, chair flies out a window, and you hear screams, even a private citizen would check to see if everything is alright.
But check this out (and while I heard the story second hand, I’m told it really happened in Los Angeles County): cop is pulled over and hears screams from a house. He THINKS it’s a person in distress. Breaks into the house to see what was wrong. Turns out, he mistook screams of ecstasy for screams of distress. Whoops! HOWEVER, while he was in the house checking on the cries, he finds a small roll of marijuana smoldering in an ashtray. The couple are both dragged off and booked for possession. I doubt anyone other than a cop would find that reasonable. “Eyes cannot trespass” is one of those open-ended ideas that, when nestled in a perfect hypothetical scenario, makes sense. Outside of that, it’s a steaming pile of crap.
That took place in the 60’s and 70’s. Fast forward to today and you find that principle strung out on steroids complete with Roid Rage! Cynicism meets hyperbole, you might claim. Only to those who find their privacy to be negotiable. A couple of things surfaced over the past week or so that at the very least has to have people scratching their heads.
First: $56.2 BILLION for “Black Budget” of Fiscal Year 2013 to be allocated to SIXTEEN Spy Agencies.
I didn’t even know we had SIXTEEN spy agencies! And where the hell did our broke-ass country scrape together $56.2 BILLION? And I think this officially puts the kibosh on any claims of “transparency” for the Obama administration, right?
This is the latest bombshell dropped by Edward Snowden. (I love that he’s trickling out the information in a method similar to Chinese water torture!) The CIA got the lion’s share of the budget, which means if this $56.2 BILLION is a line of credit from another company, they essentially just financed the USA spying on their own country. Oh wait… $3.8 BILLION is reserved to prevent foreign entities from spying on the US. Anyone stupid enough to lend the US money at this point deserves a camera in their toilets courtesy of the CIA anyway.
The link above is to the Washington Post, who clearly does NOT have the journalistic GUTS of Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian: “The Post is withholding some information after consultation with U.S. officials who expressed concerns about the risk to intelligence sources and methods. Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online.”
How pathetic! Hey we have all this info, but you get summary charts! Thanks? I think Ellen DeGeneres did a similar skit saying something to the effect of, “It’s deadly, and you could be eating it for dinner! News at 11.” That’s our MSM in all its glory. And this article is basically regurgitating all the talking points they received from the spy agencies to fill the void of the report they won’t share. Essentially, we need spies… at any cost. Because terrorists. I’d feel better if they just said they were chasing fire-breathing dragons in the Earth’s core! It has the same amount of truth to it, but it’s cooler.
Second: “NSA Asked Linus Torvalds to Install Backdoors Into GNU/Linux”.
“The story does not tell us how Linus Torvalds responded to the NSA, but I’m guessing he told them he wouldn’t be able to inject back-doors even if he wanted to, since the source code is open, and all changes to it are reviewed by many independent people. After all, that’s the whole point of open source code, and the reason that open source is the only kind you can trust when it comes to security.”
Of course the NSA approached him! In their vast ignorance, they assumed that if compelled by the likes of the NSA, he could just snap his fingers and make the monkey dance. I’m no tech guru. Not even in an alter universe. Not even after three wishes from a Genie all asking that I become one. I’m just THAT bad when it comes to technology. But, something about the liberty movement and the torrents and the Silk Road and all the stuff I just see on my Facebook thread about encryption has me at least AWARE of the immenseness of technology, and just how convoluted that matrix CAN be if it’s set up right. If you ask me how, I will answer with: “Magic!” But if you ask our affiliates at Cryptohippie, you will get a FAR better answer that doesn’t involve the supernatural.
When you take THESE events, and then add them to the Lavabit and Silent Circle incidents, what you get is not just governments trolling the streets listening for something remotely sounding like a cry of distress. What you get is spy agencies asking for a skeleton key to every house on the block who so much as uses a word from their lexicon of no-no words. It’s no longer a mistaken cry of ecstasy, but a deliberate excuse to intrude.
