While the Obama administration and the establishment scramble to protect their evil surveillance state and build a firewall around the NSA Stasi the resistance continues. Today the European Union called for safeguards against NSA surveillance to be implemented, the ACLU has been taking the matter to the corrupt courts in The Homeland and American business interests finally realizing that they are going to be huge financial losers are implementing their own controls to protect user data. While there has been a bipartisan circling of the wagons by our now fully run amok government, led by the virulently fascist House Intelligence Committee Chairman and former FBI goon Mike Rogers and his porcine partner in crime in the Senate Dianne Feinstein (DiFi) the peasants are revolting. The beltway elite and their now thoroughly rotten institutions of power continue to man the walls to fight off the rabble but the very ongoing nature of the pushback has them somewhat aback and in a rare defensive crouch. With much of the energy of the defenders of the dark kingdom of Mordor (to borrow a Lord of the Rings analogy) now mustering for an take no prisoners attack on this weekend’s breakthrough deal with Iran on nuclear proliferation, the flanks of the surveillance state are left somewhat exposed. Despite the unexpected breach in the defenses the propaganda mills continue to churn.
The story that I find particularly of interest is this Reuters piece by longtime establishment writer Mark Hosenball entitled “Spies worry over “doomsday” cache stashed by ex-NSA contractor Snowden”. The piece features a plethora of the usual anonymous sourcing quotes that have come to be more common in protecting the rogue state rather than actual whistle blowers and real sources. It is an excellent trick in the way that it allows government and affiliated mouthpieces to funnel information through a state media cutout (in this case Mr. Hosenball) to sow seeds of deception, propagate disinformation or engage in the standard smear tactics. Notable is that just last week the washed up Washington insider, a man that used to be a serious journalist who goes by the name of Bob Woodward gave an interview to the nations grand inquisitioner of celebrity Larry King Show to bemoan the fact that Snowden did not go to him first and to engage in some not too subtle character assassination of former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald and the others who he did. Mr. Greenwald righteously slammed the haughty old dog down in this tweet and the Washington Post came out in defense of Barton Gellman who has worked the Snowden leaks for the paper. Folks over at the Stasi command center at Fort Meade must be getting restive. I have no doubt though that had he gone to Woodward that he would currently be getting waterboarded at some secret CIA black site.
Anyway, the Hosenball piece goes on to describe how the professional spooks are worried that Snowden has created what is referred to as a “doomsday cache” in the event that he is murdered or apprehended by the same criminal government goons that he has blown the whistle on. This is commonly known as a “dead man’s switch” which is a contingent device/plan etc. that is intended to be activated on the death or incapacitation of the human operator, say as an override device in a locomotive or in this context a mass of information that will be released. It is a very smart thing to do for one who has challenged the rogue usurpers of the legitimate power structure and through their carelessness, greed and hubris have allowed for a reportedly yet unknown amount of incriminating information to be purloined. The piece seems to be both an attempt to tie Snowden to Chinese and Russian operatives as well as a limited hang out that the man has some really serious stuff on the bastards.
I excerpt from the Reuters piece:
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British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a "doomsday" cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud.
The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.
The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown.
Spokespeople for both NSA and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
One source described the cache of still unpublished material as Snowden's "insurance policy" against arrest or physical harm.
U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories.
"The worst is yet to come," said one former U.S. official who follows the investigation closely.
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I would hope that the anonymous “one former U.S. official who follows the investigation closely” is correct and that a day is coming when the light will be shined on that nest of cockroaches who have placed themselves above the law. I rather doubt that the stated fear of outing of intelligence operatives (which could be cribbed directly from the plot of the latest James Bond flick Skyfall) is true. After all, the NSA (as well as CIA etc.) are rogue agencies that have for too long operated outside of the realm of any sort of accountability as they conducted their siege against the U.S. Constitution and the American people in general. The agencies are run by sociopaths, pathological liars and outright lunatics who have zero respect for either the truth or the law of the land.
What I do believe is that what they are really terrified by is the prospect of exactly what else that the information taken by Snowden would reveal were it to be made public and God willing that day is coming. What remains in play is the question of what else that this information obtained by the mass surveillance/data mining is being used for and by whom. The proverbial million dollar question is where does this information go or who is it given or sold to for purposes other than the bullshit rationale of preventing terrorism. Some possibilities come to mind in: drug trafficking, blackmail, assassinations, money laundering, industrial espionage, sale to the highest bidder of secrets gleaned to provide an illicitly gained competitive business advantage, political fixing, intercepts of conversations that would destroy attorney/client privilege, monitoring of journalists, monitoring of activists, general snooping for personal purposes and Christ only knows what else. The depth of this cesspool of corruption, abuse of power and the accompanying rape of the Constitution is limitless.
Dead man’s switch or not, it is imperative that Snowden and those in possession of the documents that he took uncork the bottle and let the genie out on what is really being done by the NSA Stasi and the sooner the better. It is time for the surveillance monster to be permanently and irreversibly exposed as the menace to freedom that it has become and to as the assassinated John F. Kennedy once reportedly said of the equally rogue CIA - splintered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds.
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