Zero Hedge.....
Facebook Launches NSA-Style Auto-Eavesdropping Feature
"I hope there are people who love the feature and post more," says Facebook's product manager excitedly about the new feature they just added. We suspect people will not... As The WSJ reports, starting Wednesday, the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users. Read that again... 'in the vicinity of users'. In other words, Facebook is unveiling its own NSA-style eavesdropping feature (on you and all your friends). Don't worry though...even if users decide not to share what they’re hearing or watching, Facebook will hold onto the data in anonymous form, keeping tabs on how many users watched particular shows. Sound familiar?
We're listening...
As WSJ reports,
Facebook’s mobile app just grew a keen sense of hearing. Starting Wednesday, the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users.The feature is designed to make it easier for users to share. When users begin to write a post, the Facebook app will offer to include information about music or shows playing in the background....The audio-recognition feature works similar to the app Shazam, which also can identify music and television programming using the built-in microphones in mobile phones....Facebook says the app can recognize a live show within 15 seconds....If enough users opt in, the new Feature could give Facebook enough data to start compiling television ratings.Even if users decide not to share what they’re hearing or watching, Facebook will hold onto the data in anonymous form, keeping tabs on how many users watched particular shows....By tapping on the show or song, users can post it to their news feeds and let other users know what Facebook has already figured out – what they’re seeing and hearing.
We are sure this will not be abused or hacked by the NSA... and we are sure there will be plenty of small digital print that users will understand... One wonders though, is there any way for non-Facebook users to know that they are being eavesdropped upon?
Info Wars....
COPS NOW USING TWITTER TO DETECT PRE-CRIME
Police referring to Twitter as the "new police scanner"
Police are increasingly turning to social media to help solve crimes and nab bad guys, but some officers are urging departments to utilize services like Twitter as tools for pre-crime prevention.
In a presentation titled, “Leveraging Social Media to Provide Actionable Intelligence,” given at a GovSec conference in Washington DC last week, two officers described how they are taking the guesswork out of policing by relying on social media, namely Twitter,to investigate and “prevent” crimes.
“One quote out there is that Twitter is seen as the new police scanner,” said Jamie Roush, Crime Analysis Unit Manager for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
The lecture’s presentation materials contain statistics noting that “3 out of every 4 law enforcement professionals are relying on social media for crime investigation and prevention,” but retired police chief Rick Graham says still not enough effort is being undertaken in the area of “pre-emptive strikes.”
“We do a pretty good job in law enforcement solving crimes after the fact,” Graham said, according toGovernment Security News. “But what about the proactive — the preemptive strike. Do you have 150 officers to infiltrate different locations and have the intel analyzed after the fact. I don’t think so.”
Former Sheriff Graham also asserted that officers who snoop through Twitter feeds should have no reservations about violating people’s privacy, as all information is uploaded voluntarily by users. We’re “not sabotaging people’s privacy,” he said, adding, “They’re throwing it out there.”
Statistics also showed that courts favor social media evidence when provided as justification for probable cause, with up to 87% of search warrants holding up in court.
Roush also recommended police leverage social media not only to field intelligence from citizens, but to also develop “marketing” strategies to put forth a more likable public persona, similar to how companies wage online media campaigns, stating that “in law enforcement we must do brand marketing as well.”
“Unless law enforcement gets on board…with social media then we are truly missing the boat,” Roush concluded.
Of course, the flip side of the coin is the potential for police to abuse the tools at their disposal, one such example being last year’s discovery that NSA workers were “using secret government surveillance toolsto spy on the emails or phone calls of their current or former spouses and lovers,” according to Reuters.
Embarking on the prevention of future crimes also carries the inherent risk for police to misinterpret messages, extrapolate erroneous leads or target enemies of the state, leading to the arrest ofpeople who have committed no crimes, as depicted in Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report.
As evidenced by last year’s arrest of Afghanistan and Iraq war veteran Brandon Raub, there is a slippery slope that follows once authorities begin policing social media. In Raub’s case, he was only making anti-establishment comments on Facebook using colorful metaphors, yet somehow this was enough to earn him forcible incarceration and a trip to the psych ward.
In March, a Twitter user in Saudi Arabia was arrested for expressing opinions critical of the state on charges that he incited protests, mocked the Saudi king and dared voice criticism of police.
But earlier this year, police in the UK demonstrated how “proactive police work” also translates to overzealous policing when they arrested a man for merely making distasteful remarks, claiming he was engaged in “malicious communications,” when all he did was insult someone on Twitter.
U.S. SPECIAL FORCES, FOREIGN TROOPS PRACTICE INVADING TAMPA
News groups promise invasion is not "Russians" or "New World Order."
U.S. Special Forces and commandos from as many as 19 foreign nations practiced “invading” Tampa, Fl. this week during an unprecedented international training exercise.
Conducted outside the Tampa Convention Center Wednesday, residents looked on as service members from every branch of the U.S. military ran drills alongside commandos from Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Jordan, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Sweden and Thailand.
Local newspapers worked to relieve worried residents prior to the exercise, assuring them that the sound of gunshots and low-flying military helicopters was only part of a drill.
“If you see military helicopters flying over downtown Tampa next Tuesday, it’s not a sign that we are under attack by the Russians, the North Koreans or the New World Order,” said The Tampa Tribune.
According to the training scenario, commandos were tasked with rescuing Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn from an “insurgent village” held by “violent extremists.” Helicopters, boats, ground mobility vehicles, and commandos unloaded blank rounds as a 14-man team worked to locate the mayor.
“This was different,” one participant said. “This was a first for me. Usually no one sees what we do.”
Loud pyrotechnics were used as four snipers on the roof of Tampa General Hospital surveyed the mayor’s rescue.
“It was fun,” Buckhorn told reporters. “I love doing this. I love supporting Socom and the men and women that serve there.”
The demonstration was held in conjunction with the fourth International Special Operations Forces conference, where delegates from 84 nations met to strengthen “the Global SOF Network.”
High-ranking members including Army Lt. Gen. Joe Votel discussed several topics including the “nightmare scenario” of “Sunni extremists or extremist organizations” obtaining biological, chemical, radiologic or nuclear weapons.
“I think we have to be concerned about them falling into the hands of people who would have less difficulty employing those and for me that’s why I think this is hugely important,” Votel said while also mentioning the situation in Syria. “I do think we have to be very, very concerned.”
A noticeable increase in domestic urban warfare exercises, like the unannounced 2012 military helicopter drill over Miami that used simulated gunfire, has made many uncomfortable given recent revelations about military training aimed at mainline Americans.
Army troops at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby blew the whistle last October after being told that the American Family Association, a mainline Christian ministry, was a domestic hate group similar to the Ku Klux Klan.
Soldiers at Fort Hood were recently warned that anyone supporting anti-abortion, Christians or Tea Party groups could face disciplinary action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Soldiers were told that such groups presented a major domestic terror threat to the country.
In August 2013, a Department of Defense training manual uncovered by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch labeled supporters of “individual liberties” and “states’ rights” as “extremist.” The manual also warned military personnel against “active participation” with such organizations.
The U.S. Army’s new 300-acre “fake city” in Virginia, where troops allegedly train for foreign combat scenarios, more closely resembles an American city than a foreign one. Complete with a replica Washington D.C. subway and a Baptist church, the training center seems to mirror the shift in training material.
Leaked Marine Corps’ documents provided to Infowars this month showed how a seperate military urban training center in North Carolina was updated to include a Baptist church and farmhouses, transforming it from its original foreign appearance.
Given the fact that a large portion of U.S. troops align themselves with conservative values, the federal government’s actions towards the military is unsurprising. In 2009, former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano stood by a report that labeled returning military veterans as the main terror threat.
VA Scandals........
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2014/05/20/miami-va-whistleblower-exposes-drug-dealing-theft-abuse/
Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, Theft, Abuse
and.....
VA SUPERVISOR: OLDER VETERANS SHOULD BE “SHOT IN THE HEAD” TO SAVE MONEY
Exclusive: Whistleblower reveals new Veterans Affairs scandal
A Veterans Affairs whistleblower has exclusively revealed to Infowars that the facility at which he works has engaged in a of cover-up in response to the VA hospital scandal, while also relating the story of how one supervisor expressed his desire to see older veterans “taken outside and shot in the head.”
The whistleblower, who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, works at a large 250 acre VA hospital in North Carolina. He presented his credentials to us which checked out. The VA employee lifted the lid on a number of shocking details during an interview with Sgt. Joe Biggs.
“Recently there’s been a very rapid race to move records, boxes, change labels, whatever it may be, they’re putting them in rooms that nobody would look in….and there’s multiple times that I have seen in the past week or so them moving boxes….so apparently they’re hiding their tracks somewhere,” stated the VA employee, adding that the activity preceded an inspection of the facility, suggesting it was part of an effort to conceal evidence in the aftermath of the secret waiting list scandal.
Even more chilling was a warning sent out to VA employees at the facility which, according to the whistleblower, was meant to get across the message, “Do you see what happens to the people that try to get things straight around here, they’re not here anymore,” a tone the whistleblower described as “pretty telling.”
The employee also revealed the shocking attitude of one supervisor at the hospital towards older veterans, who asserted that older vets “should be taken outside and shot in the head because they’re worthless.” The individual still works at the hospital and was not disciplined for his comments.
“How can you stop the corruption and the insanity if you have a supervisor who is a non-veteran saying these things to veterans, scaring them about their jobs and telling them because they’re an older veteran ‘you ought to be taken outside and shot in the head’,” asked the employee.
The whistleblower also related how he knew veterans that had been denied health care at the hospital. However, since the VA scandal broke in the news, the whistleblower states there has been a huge influx of patients into his facility, a move he describes as “a dog and pony show.”
Explaining that the scandal went way beyond patient care, the whistleblower said that corruption within the VA was “overwhelming,” and that working doctors were being replaced by students and residential doctors on weekends to save money.
“That creates a cost cut on the clinical side which lines the pockets of the upper administration and puts our veterans’ health at risk,” asserted the whistleblower, adding that his facility routinely loses patients and that “there’s lack of care everywhere.”
The employee also revealed that cronyism was rampant within the hospital, with family members of existing staff being hired in preference of veterans in desperate need of employment.
“It’s a huge bureaucracy and it’s a huge game and somebody has to break the corruption,” stated the whistleblower, adding that people were scared to speak out because they might lose their jobs and their pensions.
“There’s more than just what you’re seeing on TV and they’re hiding a lot of things and you’re never going to see it on the mass media,” concluded the whistleblower.
The new revelations come in the aftermath of a scandal that has claimed the lives of at least 40 veterans as a result of them being kept on secret waiting lists. The backlogs which caused the deaths are now known to have occurred in at least 19 states. New questions have also emerged about VA workersgaming the system at the expense of veterans. A whistleblower also revealed how she was ordered to falsify records of appointments at Fort Collins, Colorado to make it appear as if veterans were receiving speedy treatment.
Concerns that the VA scandal represents an example of death panels waiting to happen under Obamacare have been expressed in recent days as Obama himself faces mounting criticism over his failure to address the issue publicly.
“It’s simply unconscionable,” said radio host Rush Limbaugh on his national broadcast Monday. “So you have to ask, the natural assumption is that nobody wants these people to die, even if you add the death panel component, nobody wants these people to die, yet they are. At the very least what we’re dealing with here is a total inability to deal with this. And at worst it’s the death panel being done on purpose.”
The issue of death panels and the eugenicist mindset of people having to die in order to allow others to have jobs or health care has stoked controversy for years, most notably in 2010 when Bill Gates suggested that elderly patients should be denied medical treatment in order to spend the money on hiring more teachers. Newsweek also promoted a similar idea in a 2009 front page story entitled ‘The Case For Killing Granny’.
Black listed News....
WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT HAVE A HANDS-
OFF LIST FOR CERTAIN TERRORIST
SUPPORTERS ?
BY JAMES HENRY, WHO WHAT WHY
It’s the mission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to let good people into the country and keep the bad ones out.So why does CBP have a “hands-off” list that exempts certain people with apparent connections to terrorism from secondary screening at airports?Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley didn’t know either, until his staff obtained an exchange of internal CBP e-mails that reveal the existence of such a list, and the CBP’s concern about one man in particular whose name was redacted.
They have good reason to be concerned. The mystery traveler is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood with indirect ties to Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He has also sued DHS twice.
In the e-mail exchange, one CBP official writes—with an evident degree of shock—that the border agency will be unable to stop the man from entering the country:
I’m puzzled how someone could be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, be an associate of [redacted], say that the US is staging car bombings in Iraq and that [it] is ok for men to beat their wives, question who was behind the 9/11 attacks, and be afforded the luxury of a visitor visa and de-watchlisted.”
Grassley—a longtime critic of government abuses and overreaching—was also baffled. So, in his capacity as the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to explain:
DHS Responds. No, Wait. CBP Does. Sort of.
Johnson didn’t explain. Instead he delegated the task to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske. In his letter to Grassley, Kerlikowske denies the existence of the “hands off” list and, avoiding the main thrust of the inquiry, provides a general description of CBP’s protocols and the limits of its authority.He explains that the separate Terrorist Watchlist—not the “hands off” list—is run by the FBI under the authority of the Attorney General. In other words, it’s not CBP’s problem.
CBP Response to Sen. Chuck Grassley on Hands-off List
CIA WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA REVERSED
POSITIONS BECAUSE OF ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO
MLK JR.’
SOURCE: POLICE STATE USA
President Barack Obama- promised to “strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and … to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy.” (source)
- promised “no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.” (source)
- was adamantly against unchecked executive power to declare war. “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” Obama said. (source)
- denounced the use of extraordinary rendition, writing, “To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.” (source)
(Source: Google Images)How did that happen? Some suggest that Obama never had any intention of following his campaign promises. Others suggest that his idealistic platitudes couldn’t withstand the realities of running the country, so he changed his mind.
Another possibility is that the president was coerced to change his positions.
That’s what Ray McGovern posits. He says that President Obama has been intimidated by forces within the government; specifically the CIA, the agency for which McGovern worked for nearly 30 years. McGovern became a whistleblower and political activist following 9/11, as the age of the War on Terror paved the way for all sorts of unchecked abuses and foreign policy disasters.
On WBAI’s “Law & Disorder” radio show, Mr. McGovern — who appears to be a credible witness following his body of activist work — provided an anecdote from a ‘good friend’ who heard Obama say something revealing at a dinner party. The radio transcript is as follows:
MCGOVERN: Which leads to the question, why would [Obama] do all these things? Why would he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.This allegation, if true, would come as a remarkable admission of the powers that influence the president. This is not to make a case for Obama’s virtues or pureness of political intentions, nor is it a comparison of Barack Obama to Dr. King. However, if the president were intimidated by his own agencies, it would certainly be something the American people ought to know about, in the best interests of preserving the republic.
And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for? Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.
Ray McGovern
The other thing is, I’ve always been kind of shocked that when he came into office, not only did he not prosecute the torturers, the kidnapers, the people with the black [unintelligible], even the people who violated our Fourth Amendment rights, but he left them all in place. I suspected at the time, now I’m pretty convinced the president of the United States is afraid of the CIA. That’s why he got John Brennan in place. He thinks John Brennan owes more personal loyalty to him than all those other thugs out there who did the torture and so forth. That’s a questionable thing. But Obama thinks that. And that’s why he fought so hard so that Brennan would be in place.
Now does he have any reason to fear the CIA? Well he sure as heck does. For those of your listeners who have not read James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable, you need to read that, because it’s coming up on 50 years. The mystery has not been solved in the mainstream press. After reading James Douglass, who took advantage of all the previous studies, plus all the more recent information released by Congress, I’m convinced that John Kennedy was assassinated largely by Allan Dulles whom he cashiered as the head of the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, and a coterie of joint chiefs of staff, FBI, even some Secret Service folks who thought that JFK was being soft on Communism by back channel communications with Krushchev, that he was playing games with Fidel Castro…to repair the relationship, and worst of all he was giving Southeast Asia to the Communists.
Now is there evidence for this? There sure as heck is. John Kennedy signed two executive orders just a month or so before he was killed. One of them said we’re pulling out 1000 troops out of South Vietnam by the end of the year, the year being 1963. The other said we’re going to pull out the bulk of the troops by 1965, we’re finished in Vietnam. That’s a matter of record. Was that a unanimous decision? Well if you say the president makes a one person decision, you know it’s unanimous. Everybody else thought he was crazy, especially the joint chiefs of staff.
So you need to read this book, and then you need to reflect on Obama. If he is sort of a wuss or a wimp or a person who just has no real principles but is rather a politician through and through– and he’s got two small kids and he doesn’t want to get killed. I have to say I never thought I would hear myself saying this, but it is the only logical explanation for why he is so afraid, unless you say the man is a through and through charlatan, that he actually is acting on behalf of these forces of darkness. I don’t believe the latter. I think he’s just afraid and he shouldn’t have run for president if he was going to be this much of a wuss.
– Ray McGovern, June 3, 2013
* * * * *
By the way, just what did happen to Martin Luther King, Jr.?
In a practically unknown civil trial that took place in 1999, after hearing 4 weeks of testimony from 70 witnesses, 12 jurors decided unanimously that Dr. King fell victim to a high-level conspiracy backed by the U.S. Government. The jury determined that state, local, and federal agencies were involved, and that James Earl Ray was a patsy. (source)
FEDERAL ‘BIOSURVEILLANCE’ PLAN SEEKING
DIRECT ACCESS TO AMERICANS’ PRIVATE
MEDICAL RECORDS
SOURCE: CNS NEWS
The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom.The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS).
The deadline for comment is 5 pm EST on May 21st. (See Draft National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018.pdf)
“Health situational awareness includes biosurveillance and other health and non-health inputs (e.g., lab/diagnostics, health service utilization, active intelligence, and supply chain information), as well as systems and processes for effective communication among responders and critical health resource monitoring and allocation,” the draft states.
READ MORE...
NEW BOSS AT THE FBI STILL FOCUSED ON
MAKING UP PRETEND TERRORIST THREATS; MAY
ALSO MAKE UP FAKE CRIMINAL PLOTS TOO
Earlier this year, we noted that the FBI had quietly changed its own description about how it was primarily focused on "law enforcement" to claiming that it was now primarily focused on "national security." That is, over the past decade, the FBI has shifted from being a law enforcement agency, looking to stop crimes, to an intelligence agency, spying on Americans and searching for "terrorists." Of course, this focus has meant that it has basically ignored tons of criminal activity including things like mortgage fraud, which helped create the economic crisis a few years ago. Instead, the FBI has expended so much effort on creating and busting its own fake terrorist plots.
As we've seen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over again, the FBI seems to spend an awful lot of time creating totally fake terrorist plots, luring some gullible individual into the plot (where every other participant is FBI, and where all the "weapons" are fake) and then arresting the individual and scoring big headlines about stopping another "plot" -- despite the fact no plot would have existed without the FBI.
When new FBI boss James Comey took the job, he had suggested that he might move the FBI back towards a law enforcement agency, but according to the NY Times, he's beenconvinced to stick with focusing on terrorism plots. He insists that the risk is much bigger than he thought before he was in the job, though all of the examples he gives are of terrorism happening overseas, not in the US. Given that it must be a lot easier to concoct bogus terrorist plots and ensnare gullible individuals, than it is to track down actual criminals, it's not hard to see why many in the Bureau might have pushed Comey to continue these current efforts.
By Mr. Comey's own account, he also brought to the job a belief, based on news media reports, that the threat from Al Qaeda was diminished. But nine months into his tenure as director, Mr. Comey acknowledges that he underestimated the threat the United States still faces from terrorism.
"I didn't have anywhere near the appreciation I got after I came into this job just how virulent those affiliates had become," Mr. Comey said, referring to offshoots of Al Qaeda in Africa and in the Middle East during an interview in his sprawling office on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. "There are both many more than I appreciated, and they are stronger than I appreciated."
The article uses the example of the Boston Marathon bombings as an example of domestic terrorism, but as multiple people, including former FBI agent Mike German noted to the NY Times reporter, the problem there was that the FBI ignored all of the key info about the Tsarnaevs, in part because they are flooded in irrelevant info.
"You had all this information coming in, and nearly all of it wasn't helpful," said Mr. German, a former F.B.I. agent, "so agents became accustomed to leads going nowhere and everything they opened became an exercise in how quickly you can close it."
[....] "The year the F.B.I. investigated the older brother, it said it did 1,000 assessments," Mr. German said. "There weren't 1,000 terrorists in Boston that year, and a vast majority of resources were obviously going to things that didn't matter."
Perhaps even more troubling is that Comey thinks that the FBI's "experience" with terrorism may now be useful in tackling other types of crimes.
And Mr. Comey said he also wanted to apply the lessons learned in fighting terrorism to fighting other crimes. If Congress approves, he plans to move the bureau's head of intelligence out of the national security division and create a new intelligence branch that will amass information on crimes like fraud in an effort to more quickly identify trends and perpetrators.
To me, that sounds like the FBI is now going to start creating bogus criminal plots as well for other types of crimes, looking to ensnare gullible people. After all, it's worked so well in going after fake terrorists.
Of course, the FBI could focus on actually going after criminals, but as German points out, the FBI agents focused on fake terrorist plots haven't actually been trained in how to find real crimes.
But the bureau's focus on counterterrorism has led to criticism that a generation of agents have spent their entire careers doing nothing else. Mr. German and other critics say they never learned the basic policing skills needed for a criminal investigation. Mr. Comey has acknowledged the problem, ordering that the F.B.I.'s newest class of recruits, scheduled to start training in June, spend significant time on criminal investigation squads.From that, it appears that over a decade's worth of FBI agents have never learned basic law enforcement skills to track down criminals. This seems like a recipe for a continuing disaster.
KEITH ALEXANDER: WE NEED MORE SPYING IN
THE FUTURE BECAUSE ALL OF OUR PREVIOUS
SPYING HAS ONLY INCREASED THE NUMBER OF
TERRORIST ATTACKS
The New Yorker has published excerpts of a lengthy interview with retired NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander. Along with the usual defenses of the surveillance apparatus he ran for eight years (with his fiery "collect it all" attitude), Alexander makes the case for continued pervasive surveillance while admitting the last decade-plus of spying hasn't made the US -- or the world -- any safer.
[T]hink about how secure our nation has been since 9/11. We take great pride in it. It’s not because of me. It’s because of those people who are working, not just at N.S.A. but in the rest of the intelligence community, the military, and law enforcement, all to keep this country safe. But they have to have tools. With the number of attacks that are coming, the probability, it’s growing—
- I’m sorry, could you say that once more?The probability of an attack getting through to the United States, just based on the sheer numbers, from 2012 to 2013, that I gave you—look at the statistics. If you go from just eleven thousand to twenty thousand, what does that tell you? That’s more. That’s fair, right?- I don’t know. I think it depends what the twenty thousand——deaths. People killed. From terrorist attacks. These aren’t my stats. The University of Maryland does it for the State Department.- I’ll look at them. I will. So you’re saying that the probability of an attack is growing.The probability is growing. What I saw at N.S.A. is that there is a lot more coming our way. Just as someone is revealing all the tools and the capabilities we have. What that tells me is we’re at greater risk. I can’t measure it. You can’t say, Well, is that enough to get through? I don’t know.
Alexander says the world is less safe despite the NSA's nearly completely unchecked programs, but he still insists more spying will make us more safe. This follows shortly after Alexander rehashed the same, provably-wrong story that the nation's surveillance and investigative agencies simply didn't have enough "tools" to prevent the 9/11 attacks.
And as for those ultra-scary terrorist attack numbers, a little context goes a long way. Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel notes that these rising numbers are concentrated in the areas of the world where terrorist attacks are simply part of everyday life.
Although terrorist attacks occurred in 93 different countries, they were heavily concentrated geographically. More than half of all attacks (57%), fatalities (66%), and injuries (73%) occurred in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. By wide margin, the highest number of fatalities (6,378), attacks (2,495) and injuries (14,956) took place in Iraq.
This isn't the US becoming less safe thanks to increasing terrorism. This is about areas of the world where the US has inserted itself -- via concentrated surveillance efforts, military intervention, drone strikes, etc. -- and managed to make the situation worse for the residents of those countries.
What Alexander points to as evidence that spying should continue unabated is actually an implicit admission that the War on Terror has been lost. This has been the nation's primary focus since 2001 and the number of violent acts only continues to increase. But Alexander feels these numbers point to a "failure" on the NSA's part -- but that "failure" is chalked up to a lack of "tools," rather than an admission that mass, untargeted spying is rarely useful.
Alexander bemoans the "harm" done by the Snowden leaks while simultaneously laying bare the failure of the US government to do anything more than exacerbate existing problems. He seems to think we're due for another attack. If the past is any indication, all the spying in the world won't prevent it. It didn't prevent the 2001 attack. And having every program in place, combined with a decade of technological advancements, didn't preventthe Boston Bombing.
If this seems worrying coming from someone who just exited the Head Spy job, just think about what this mindset means for Alexander's future endeavors. Here's Wheeler:
We shouldn’t be surprised that we’re losing a war fighting which Alexander was one of the longest tenured generals (though I don’t think he bears primary responsibility for the policy decisions that have led to this state). After all, last year, Alexander said that also under his watch, we had been plundered like a colony via cyberattacks. He seems to think he lost both the war on terror and on cyberattacks.
Which, if you’re invested in Wall Street, ought to alarm you. Because that’swhere Keith Alexander is headed to wage war next.
TOP OBAMA AIDE: ‘MANY MORE EXECUTIVE
ACTIONS TO COME’
SOURCE: THE HILL
The White House will be “picking up the pace on executive actions,” as Congress focuses its efforts on the newly formed select committee investigating Benghazi, senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer declared Tuesday.In an op-ed for The Huffington Post, Pfeiffer argued that congressional Republicans are not interested in engaging on the economy, instead spending time “obsessively trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act” and “ginning up politically motivated investigations.”
“Given this dynamic, President Obama has only one option — use every ounce of his authority to unilaterally improve economic security,” Pfeiffer said.
READ MORE
FEDS’ LATEST LAND GRAB: DESIGNATE
CONTESTED N.M. AREA A NATIONAL MONUMENT
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Obama on Wednesday will declare a national monument in southern New Mexico, delivering a win for environmentalists but angering ranchers and local law enforcement, who say the land restrictions will end up creating a safe haven for drug cartels to operate within the U.S.Mr. Obama will declare about 500,000 acres as the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument. About half of that land is expected to be set aside as wilderness, meaning it will be closed to vehicles and construction.
Local ranchers say it’s a land grab that will interfere with their grazing rights, and border security advocates said the move will make it tougher for federal agents and local police to patrol the land, leaving a security gap that Mexican smuggling cartels will exploit.
“This is about opposing so many thousands of acres that is going to create nothing more than a pathway for criminals to get into this country to do their criminal acts,” Dona Ana County Sheriff Todd Garrison told The Washington Times in a telephone interview Monday.
FULL ARTICLE HERE
DHS absurd plans to move to abandoned St Elizabeth Insane Asylum proving .....oh so appropriate.....
Multi-billion dollar DHS project may never be finished
The future of a multi-billion dollar United States Department of Homeland Security project a decade in the making is up in the air, according to new reports.
A massive DHS compound under construction on the southeast side of Washington, DC was initially expected to be completed by 2015 at a cost of under $3 billion. But according to a reportin the Washington Post this week, the endeavor is grossly over budget and at this rate may never be built as expected.
Announced in 2004 after the creation of DHS, the project was billed as the capital region’s largest planned construction project since the Department of Defense headquarters were established at the Pentagon decades earlier. Ten years later, however, and the Post reports that the facility is now expected to be completed no sooner than 2026, and at a cost of $4.5 billion—or 50 percent more than originally planned.
“The cost of the project has increased due to the extended timeline,” Mafara Hobson, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration in charge of developing the project for the DHS, told the Post’s Jerry Markon for an article published on Tuesday this week.
“GSA and DHS haven’t received the appropriations that this project needs to keep it on its original schedule. Construction is a commodity market, and costs increase with delays,” Hobson said.
According to Markon, the project has seen anything but progress during the last decade.
“[W]ith the exception of a Coast Guard building that opened last year, the grounds remain entirely undeveloped, with the occasional deer grazing amid the vacant Gothic Revival-style structures,”he wrote.
“Even now, as Obama administration officials make the best of their limited funding, they have started design work for a second building that congressional aides and others familiar with the project say may never open.”
The failure, the journalist claimed, instead now resembles a “monumental example of Washington inefficiency and drift.”
Earlier this year, some members of Congress remarked similarly.When the US House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security weighed in on the project in January, the panel titled their report “Reality Check Needed: Rising Costs and Delays in Construction of New DHS Headquarters at St. Elizabeth’s,” a former psychiatric hospital built in 1852.
“The Committee is alarmed that DHS has not followed best practices and adequately prioritized headquarters consolidation,” they charged. “Although construction began at St. Elizabeth’s in 2009, former Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen noted in his testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security on February 13, 2013, ‘In the Washington Area the Department remains a disjointed collection of facilities and the future of the relocation to the St. Elizabeth’s campus remains in serious doubt.’”
“Frankly, I just fail to see how this is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars — to spend this kind of money for a headquarters — and I’m just really disappointed in the way it’s played out,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-North Carolina) said during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing in February, the Washington Times reported afterward.
“We ought to stop and try to re-evaluate this before we spend another dime,” weighed in Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-South Carolina. “As government, we can’t just keep spending money we don’t have and borrowing money we don’t have, and can’t ever repay, to continue projects like this.”
Speaking to the Post months later, Duncan does not appear to have been persuaded just yet into believe the project will pull through.
“Sometimes you just have to drop back and punt,” he said. “At what point in time does the government just cut its losses and look for a better way of doing things?”
Good morning, No shortage of police state updates, very sad.
ReplyDeleteMy kitten is locked up this morning, figured he could wait 30 minutes to come play on the keyboard.
Have a great day.
Lol ! Raining cats and dogs up here today ( couldn't resist that one ! )
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your day .....