NSA Timeline and Background

[midcan5]

Excellent outline of changing laws and key players.

'Mass Surveillance in America: A Timeline of Loosening Laws and Practices'

by Cora Currier, Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer

ProPublica, June 7, 2013

Mass Surveillance in America: A Timeline of Loosening Laws and Practices


"Liberty is the right to do what the law permits." Charles de Montesquieu

 

[midcan5]

Another interesting slant on topic. The email story - oh, the stories I could tell you about email.

"The NSA lives to snoop; their metaphysics isn’t physics, but their metadata is data.. They have reasons but reasons aren’t beyond question. Their actions are thesis. Snowden and Greenwald don’t have to be beyond question either; they are inevitable antithesis. I have no idea what the synthesis will or should be. From Wikipedia: All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world. Enjoy the show."

'Data Minding' https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46489619/Data Minding.pdf

 

[midcan5]

Another piece on the role of cyberspace and other monitoring in modern society. It reminds me so much of the unreality of MSM in America, while MSM watches Tiger and Kim, and Rush labels women sluts, the fox, properly attired in corporate suit, is stealing the chickens away to the Caymans. And all the while Americans are worried about guns, soda sizes, and whether their recorder captured the latest (un)reality show. And so it goes....

"To get some perspective on the manipulative role that private intelligence agencies play in our society, it is worth examining information that has been revealed by some significant hacks in the past few years of previously secret data.

Important insight into the world these companies came from a 2010 hack by a group best known as LulzSec (at the time the group was called Internet Feds), which targeted the private intelligence firm HBGary Federal. That hack yielded 75,000 e-mails. It revealed, for example, that Bank of America approached the Department of Justice over concerns about information that WikiLeaks had about it. The Department of Justice in turn referred Bank of America to the lobbying firm Hunton and Willliams, which in turn connected the bank with a group of information security firms collectively known as Team Themis."

The Real War on Reality - NYTimes.com

"Given the scope and content of what Hammond’s hacks exposed, his supporters agree that what he did was right. In their view, the private intelligence industry is effectively engaged in Psyops against American public., engaging in “planned operations to convey selected information to [us] to influence [our] emotions, motives, objective reasoning and, ultimately, [our] behavior”? Or as the philosopher might put it, they are engaged in epistemic warfare." from article above

The above should be shown every time Fox Media comes on the air.

There is just a bit of irony in the fact a person from a freedom loving country is seeking refuge in a not so free country. Maybe he will go to work in an Apple slave factory for 12 hours days. Freedom is such an odd concept if examined too closely.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/us/for-snowden-a-life-of-ambition-despite-the-drifting.html

 

[midcan5]

An interesting commentary on the NSA debacle.

'Top Ten Ways US TV News are Screwing us Again on NSA Surveillance Story (Iraq Redux)'

"6. Accuse journalists of treason for reporting Snowden’s revelations. This was the absolutely shameful tack taken by David Gregory on Meet The Press, when he asked Greenwald, “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” The “to the extent” and “aided and abetted” language isn’t journalism it is shilling for the most despicable elements in Congress (and that is way over on the despicable scale).

7. Ignore past government misuse of classified information. Television news has studiedly avoided referring to Dick Cheney’s outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA field officer (and therefore outing of all the CIA field officers who used the same dummy corporation as she did as a cover,as well as all local informants known to be connected to that dummy corporation). Television anchors seem to think that the government is always trying to ‘protect’ us and is on the side of the angels, and sidestep the question of whether secret information can be used for private or shady policy purposes. Plame, by the way, is warning about the intelligence-industrial complex."

http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/screwing-surveillance-redux.html

 

[midcan5]

'Everything you wanted to Know About NSA Surveillance but were afraid to ask (Stray)'

Everything you wanted to Know About NSA Surveillance *but were afraid to ask (Stray) | Informed Comment

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