"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American."
— Edward Snowden (via MSNBC)
Watch Top U.S. Intelligence Officials Repeatedly Deny NSA Spying On Americans Over The Last Year
Courtesy of Forbes.com. I’d highly recommend a visit to their thoroughly linked article for the rest of the video hilarity, but note there IS an article correction that needs to be made in the opening paragraph attributing a quote to Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22. The attribution belongs to Thomas Pynchon, in Gravity’s Rainbow, “Proverbs for Paranoids” interludes:
“Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean someone ISN’T following you.”
Other than that, quite a comedy of terrors.
Here’s another of Pynchon’s ‘Proverbs”:
The other side of the COIN: counterinsurgency and community policing
Kristian Williams
Abstract
This essay outlines the current counterinsurgency model, with an emphasis on its domestic application in the United States. It shows that many contemporary counterinsurgency practices were developed by police agencies inside the U.S., and illustrates the transfer of theory, strategy, and technique from domestic police to the military - and back. The essay also examines the state’s use of nongovernmental or nonprofit agencies, as one element of counterinsurgency strategy, to channel and control political opposition. The conclusion briefly considers the strategic implications for social movements, especially as we learn to recognize and respond to political repression.
Introduction: expect repression
Oppositional political movements inevitably face - and therefore ought to expect -repression at the hands of the state. But, while quick to condemn the most obvious and violent manifestations of this repression, especially when directed against peaceful groups, the institutionalized left has been slow to grasp the strategy underlying the state’s approach.
We tend to characterize repression as the state’s response to crisis, rather than seeing it also as a means to preserving normalcy. Hence, it has been very difficult to recognize it in quiet times, and when it does appear it seems like an exception, an excess, a panicked over-reaction.
But repression does not always come dressed up in riot gear, or breaking into offices in the middle of the night….
Just add drone surveillance:
The new technology is the latest weapon in the NYPD’s crime-solving arsenal that already includes DNA databases, radiological detectors and sophisticated license plate readers. The new investigative entity was formally launched late last year, with eight cops working in teams of four manning the operations.
Facial recognition — which zeroes in on features and extracts size and shape of eyes, noses, cheekbones and jaws to find a match — is now revolutionizing investigations in ways not seen since fingerprint analysis was implemented generations ago.
Analysts who follow the NYPD closely fear the new investigation tactics could lead to racial profiling. [In Full]
On a similar theme, unwarranted(sic) surveillance, from August 2008:
The Art Of Institutional Slander - Are You A ‘Person Of Interest’?
..the ‘person of interest’ is someone against whom there is no real evidence but someone who can be, at least for a time, used, vilified, scapegoated. It’s time our law enforcement politicians learn to say ‘No comment’ and for them to educate the public that very often, especially at the beginning of a case, police have no idea who the perpetrator was, or at least no real evidence.” [In Full]
Free Barrett Brown @ Twitter“Don’t just complain when the defendant (Swartz) happens to be a brilliant guy who went to Stanford and hangs out with Larry Lessig. Instead, complain that this is business as usual in federal criminal cases around the country — mostly with defendants who no one has ever heard of and who get locked up for years without anyone else much caring…” ~~Orin Kerr, former federal prosecutor, DOJ computer crimes unit
“…the pending federal prosecution of 31-year-old Barrett Brown poses all new troubling risks. That’s because Brown - who has been imprisoned since September on a 17-count indictment that could result in many years in prison — is a serious journalist who has spent the last several years doggedly investigating the shadowy and highly secretive underworld of private intelligence and defense contractors, who work hand-in-hand with the agencies of the Surveillance and National Security State in all sorts of ways that remain completely unknown to the public (I’d say see the Project PM Wiki for extensive research about domestic spying contractors but as of this posting the site is down -RR). It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism.” [In Full]
Free Barret Brown @ Facebook
"Dateline Barnegat New Jersey:
…at about 2 a.m. on March 6th, (56 year old Wendy) Tucker got out of her car, lifted her shirt and bra and exposed her breasts to the cameras. Police say she looked at the cameras while giving the finger. She then pulled up her shirt and bra."
…at about 2 a.m. on March 6th, (56 year old Wendy) Tucker got out of her car, lifted her shirt and bra and exposed her breasts to the cameras. Police say she looked at the cameras while giving the finger. She then pulled up her shirt and bra."
— Jersey Girl Arrested For Exposing Breasts To Surveillance Cameras
..and the perv cop liked what he saw: “Police officer Michael Diblasi was able to locate Tucker’s car a short time later…”
National “Intelligence” Chief: Budget cuts put US Security State Apparatus at “Risk”
Most of the funding cuts have come in the Defense Department, but Clapper said thousands of FBI agents possibly could be furloughed from their jobs…. (source)
That means less government spying on YOU (See: “Spy chief: Americans ‘not wittingly’ monitored” for a glimpse of how international ‘intelligence’ gathering affects YOUR civil rights). Less double dealings with so-called al-Qaeda in the Middle East… The possibility of benefits to you and I as civilians in an INTERNATIONAL PARIAH POLICE STATE are potentially endless, and globally helpful to LEGITIMATE US foreign policy.
"Apple Computer:
OK, we tracked your every move… but let’s call it a caching bug, m’kay?"
OK, we tracked your every move… but let’s call it a caching bug, m’kay?"
—
Nevertheless, and to allay the irrationality of conspiracy theorists about intent, the power elite’s goal is to SELL STUFF to you… Stuff you do not usually need, to keep themselves rich (and in power). It’s only when the citizens are no longer able to afford ‘stuff’ being marketed down their throats and begin to rebel will this sort of tracking be economically worthwhile for “Social Stability” uses by the police state apparatus.
But they WILL BE ready to go.
Source article @ The Register
"Security signs that begin with: “For your protection…”, essentially end with: “…we will restrict freedoms and invade privacy.”"
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (via climateadaptation)
(via randomactsofchaos)
