Death by MetaData, Cell Phone, Sim Cards and Joy Stick Operators!

[KoKo]

Death By Metadata: Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Reveal NSA Role in Assassinations Overseas (1/2)

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/10/death_by_metadata_jeremy_scahill_glenn

Defying Threats to Journalism, Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Launch New Venture, The Intercept

<iframe width="400" height="225" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2


Investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald join us for their first interview upon launching The Intercept, their new digital magazine published by First Look Media, the newly formed media venture started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Greenwald is the journalist who first broke the story about Edward Snowden’s disclosures on the National Security Agency. He was previously a columnist at The Guardian newspaper. Scahill is producer and writer of the documentary film "Dirty Wars," which is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. "We are really about a journalistic ethos — which is not doing things like helping the U.S. continue its targeting of U.S. citizens for death, but by being adversarial to the government," Greenwald says. "Telling the public what it ought to know, and targeting the most powerful corporate factions with accountability journalism." Greenwald and Scahill founded TheIntercept.org with filmmaker Laura Poitras.

&feature=share&list=PL50BDB9BCCFAF09CA&index=1

AND:

Defying Threats to Journalism, Jeremy Scahill & Glenn Greenwald Launch New Venture, The Intercept


http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/10/defying_threats_to_journalism_jeremy_scahill


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about The Intercept. Glenn, talk about the launching of this new website today, together with Jeremy and Laura, what you’re doing with The Intercept, what your plans are.

GLENN GREENWALD: Sure. So, you know, it was only, I think, four months ago or so that we first had conversations with Pierrre Omidyar, who is the publisher of the site through First Look Media, about working together. Jeremy, Laura and I were off in one corner planning our own media site, and he was off in another planning his, and we realized that we could work together effectively. And we ended up getting launched in a very short period of time, relatively speaking, when you’re talking about launching a new media outlet, in part because we feel a serious obligation to get up and running so that we can report on the stories like the one that we reported on today and all of the rest of the stories that come out of the archive of documents that our source Edward Snowden provided to us, as well as other sources that we’re now developing.

And so, we intended to start with a fairly limited function, although one that’s profoundly important, which is to give us a place where we can aggressively report on these NSA documents. There are many, many, many more big stories left to report. And we’re thrilled that we get to work with each other and an amazing team of journalists that we recruited. And then we’re going to start slowly and inexorably expanding the range of topics that we cover. We’re really about a journalistic ethos, which is not doing things like helping the United states government continue its targeting of U.S. citizens for death, like AP just did by withholding information allowing it to continue, but by being adversarial to the government and telling the public what it ought to know, and targeting the most powerful corporate and political factions with accountability journalism. And we’re thrilled that we get to work together, that we have a new media outlet that is devoted to these principles, that we have the resources to protect our sources and enable the journalists that work with us to do the kind of journalism that we think is so sorely lacking.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Amy, can I add to that?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. You know, what we’ve seen also in—over the past month is a very serious escalation in the threats coming from the Obama administration and coming from Capitol Hill against journalists. There is this attempt on the part of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to imply that the journalists who are reporting on the Snowden documents are accomplices to a crime. My understanding, from a confidential source in the intelligence community, is that Clapper, two weeks before he publicly used that term of accomplice, that he also said that in a top-secret classified briefing within the intelligence community, sort of floating it. You know, Mike Rogers also has just been on a rampage against journalists, also against Snowden, making totally unfounded allegations about Snowden being somehow a Russian agent or cooperating with Russian agents. And so, the timing of this site and why we felt it was so urgent to start reporting on these stories right now is to push back against this climate of fear and to say that we, as independent journalists, are not going to back down in the face of government threats, that in fact this is when it is most important to stand up for a truly free and independent press, is when those in power start to try to, you know, push their fists down upon you.

[spin]

1. A truly free press is essential in a representative democracy such as ours. ...

That's why the first amendment in the Bill of Rights includes freedom of the press.

If "Tricky Dick" Nixon had the metadata gathering capability of our current NSA at his fingertips, he would have been quickly able to find the identity of "Deep Throat" and silence him. In fact "Deep Throat" might have feared even contacting Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Another fair question is if Woodward and Bernstein would have and their editors would have the guts to publish a series of articles that dared to take on Nixon administration as well as the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA in today's environment.

Watergate scandal

***snip***

Role of the media

The connection between the break-in and the re-election committee was highlighted by media coverage — in particular, investigative coverage by The Washington Post, Time, and The New York Times. The coverage dramatically increased publicity and consequent political repercussions. Relying heavily upon anonymous sources, Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered information suggesting that knowledge of the break-in, and attempts to cover it up, led deeply into the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House.

Chief among the Post's anonymous sources was an individual whom Woodward and Bernstein had nicknamed Deep Throat; 33 years later, in 2005, he was confirmed to be William Mark Felt, Sr., the former deputy director of the FBI. Felt met secretly with Woodward, telling him of Howard Hunt’s involvement with the Watergate break-in, and that the White House staff regarded the stakes in Watergate extremely high. Felt warned Woodward that the FBI wanted to know where he and other reporters were getting their information, as they were uncovering a wider web of crimes than first disclosed. In one of their last meetings, all of which took place at an underground parking garage somewhere in Rosslyn, Virginia at 2:00 am, Felt cautioned Woodward that he might be followed and not to trust their phone conversations to be secure. Felt also planted leaks about Watergate to Time magazine, the Washington Daily News and other publications.[14]

***snip***

Nixon and top administration officials discussed using government agencies to "get" what they perceived as hostile media organizations.[15] The discussions had precedent. At the request of Nixon's White House in 1969, the FBI tapped the phones of five reporters. In 1971, the White House requested an audit of the tax return of the editor of Newsday, after he wrote a series of articles about the financial dealings of a friend of the President's.[16]...emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal

The Watergate scandal is just one of many scandals about which our free press has informed the public throughout our nation's history. It's the watchdog that will loudly bark when our freedoms are threatened.

But a good watchdog can be muzzled and his barking can be silenced by a shock collar.

Our democracy is fragile and although I don't wear a tinfoil hat there are and have been people who have hoped to obtain control of our nation for their own profit or the misconception that they were far smarter than the citizens of our nation. During his reign, J. Edgar Hoover was known as the most powerful man in Washington for good reason.

J. Edgar Hoover

John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972 at age 77. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Late in life and after his death Hoover became a controversial figure, as evidence of his secretive actions became known. His critics have accused him of exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI.[1] He used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders,[2] and to collect evidence using illegal methods.[3] Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten sitting Presidents.[4]

According to President Harry S. Truman, Hoover transformed the FBI into his private secret police force; Truman stated that "we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him".[5]

***snip***

COINTELPRO

In 1956 Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI."[34] At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO.[35]

This program remained in place until it was revealed to the public in 1971, after the theft of many internal documents stolen from an office in Media, Pennsylvania, and was the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI. COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party, where Hoover went after targets that ranged from suspected everyday spies to larger celebrity figures such as Charlie Chaplin who were seen as spreading Communist Party propaganda,[36] and later organizations such as the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and others. Its methods included infiltration, burglaries, illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations.

[37] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.[38] In 1975 the activities of COINTELPRO were investigated by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, called the Church Committee after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and these activities were declared illegal and contrary to the Constitution.[39] Hoover amassed significant power by collecting files containing large amounts of compromising and potentially embarrassing information on many powerful people, especially politicians. According to Laurence Silberman, appointed Deputy Attorney General in early 1974, FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley thought such files either did not exist or had been destroyed. After The Washington Post broke a story in January 1975, Kelley searched and found them in his outer office. The House Judiciary Committee then demanded that Silberman testify about them....emphasis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.[2] National Security Agency operation Project MINARET targeted the personal communications of leading Americans, including Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War.[3][4]

The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971.[5] COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[6][7][8] The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.[sic.]"[9]

FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[10] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the Civil Rights Movement, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans —even Albert Einstein, who was a socialist and a member of several civil rights groups, came under FBI surveillance during the years just before COINTELPRO's official inauguration.[11] The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert white hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.[12]...emphasis added

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.[13][14] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[15] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of these programs.[16] Kennedy learned that he was also a target of FBI surveillance.[citation needed]

***snip***

Program exposed

The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[28][29]...empahsis added
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Now I understand that some may feel that I am criticizing the Obama administration but the reality is that I strongly opposed the Patriot Act when it first was implemented after 911 by the Bush administration. One of the many reasons that I voted for Obama in the 2008 election was that he actually opposed the Patriot Act.

Published: June 7, 2013

Obama on Surveillance, Then and Now

Throughout his Senate career, Barack Obama was a fierce critic of surveillance efforts in the Patriot Act, and he vowed during the 2008 presidential campaign to end “illegal wiretapping,” casting the question of liberty versus security as a “false choice.” But over his years in the White House, Mr. Obama has increasingly spoken of needing to “make some choices as a society,” as he did on Friday when he addressed revelations about data collection of phone and Internet records by the National Security Agency.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/08/us/politics/08obama-surveillance-history-video.html

Through the years, I have noticed that people learn little from the lessons that history offers us. Do you ever wonder why we can elect politicians who promise to make the changes that our nation desperately needs but once in office they never deliver? I do. I sometimes wonder who actually runs this nation. Do we actually live in a real representative democracy with freedom of the press or are we just fooling ourselves?

[reusrename]

2. This spying on the public, it's apples and oranges.

There are two separate concerns, for sure. One is the privacy issue associated with listening to phone conversations/reading emails, along with all the questions of whether or not the laws are constitutional, or whether or not they are even being followed. This has always been the case with the 4th Amendment, ever since the country was founded.

The second concern is completely new, and it has to do with the use of metadata. Metadata is used to create the targets for a counterinsurgency operation. Sometimes (or according to research, in most cases) the most influential person in a social network (or insurgency) is not the most high profile or the most vocal individual in the group. With very large groups (OWS for example), this new technology identifies those individuals who's participation in the group is the most critical.

That, in a nutshell, is why the metadata is being collected and for what it is being used. It should be obvious how this information can be used/misused to affect our first amendment freedoms, specifically our right to peaceably assemble. There are a couple of stories floating around today about how the MIC is targeting opponents of the keystone pipeline. This counterinsurgeny technology and training is being used against law-abiding citizens right here in America.

Because the algorithms being used are easily handled by computers, and because no errors are introduced by trying to decode or translate any communication content, the system can create a very precise mapping of our social networks. Only actual metadata associated with each communication is logged into the software, and from that information the algorithms sort out the social connections.

Almost everything about this particular type of surveillance is new. The science behind the algorithms that are used and the computers that store and sift the data are new. The idea behind controlling the pubic is not new, however. It has been done before, and very effectively, even without this new weapon.

This all fits into the bigger picture of the War on Terror. Remember that our country was founded by insurgents. Many, if not all of our heroes, would have been easily thwarted under this type of surveillance regime and folks have written about how Paul Revere could have been easily stopped using this technology.


For some basic info about how the science is implemented, google the keywords:

thesis+insurgent+social+network


This use of the metadata seems to be the more dangerous issue. The eavesdropping can be used to disrupt/detain/dissuade/discredit/assassinate a specific target once it has been identified. But the meticulous scientific selection of targets is what thwarts our (the ones who are trying to change things) ability to properly organize any resistance. This is serious. Without organization we have no idea who to aim our pitchforks at.

Basically, we are racing toward future where you either support the 1% or else you are a terrorist. This path has historically lead to slavery. There is no doubt that we seem headed in that direction now.

Without our ability to organize, we will never have any political voice.

>>>


Snowden’s leak of classified US government information acquired during his work for the National Security Agency (NSA) confirms that the US government is gathering and archiving online data and metadata on a massive scale. The data is stored at NSA data centers, where zettabytes of cloud storage are available to authorities. Snowden’s revelations have again framed the debate over the balance between our privacy rights and our need for security.

>>>


The point we should derive from Snowden’s revelations – a point originally expressed in March 2013 by William Binney, a former senior NSA crypto-mathematician – is that the NSA’s Utah Data Center will amount to a “turnkey” system that, in the wrong hands, could transform the country into a totalitarian state virtually overnight.

>>>


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/prism-utah-data-center-surveillance?CMP=twt_gu

The common wisdom in the US is that we are too well armed for this kind of thing. We have too many guns, it could never happen here. Our would-be oppressors will always be outgunned.

This line of thinking illustrates a complete and total misunderstanding of what we would actually be up against.

The only way to mount any effective armed resistance would be to organize. We would have to know who to point our pitchforks at, and we would have to know why they were the enemy.

This new technology is specifically targeted at disrupting our ability to organize. This is what folks need to come to terms with. Only a very small number of individuals need to be removed from the public to accomplish this end.

We've been sold a fantasy story that the American public is apathetic and that is the reason we cannot organize any resistance. That's complete and total propaganda. Tens of thousands are in the streets on almost any weekend but this is not nearly as game-changing as 20 tea-baggers showing up at a town hall meeting. We are being actively disrupted in achieving any political progress. We are not even allowed to initiate a well-publicized, high-profile discussion of any sort of real solution. This topic just won't come up in any midterm debates unless we can find a way to make that happen.



Recent Historic Example: According to contemporaneous reports during the Iranian uprising several years ago, only 800 people were arrested, IIRC, and only three or four were killed in order to put down a revolution that was very broad and very deep. Remember that this was a population in which many had lived through the overthrow of the Shah. (Since the revolution was put down, most, if not all, of the 800 who were detained have been executed.) IIRC, the US had no official position on any of this. Total population of Iran is about 75 million and they only arrested (and have since executed) about 800, which is about 0.0001% or way less than what one might normally think is necessary. This technology for targeting political opponents works.

[rhett o rick]

3. k&r thanks for posting. nm

[jsr]

4. Recommend