Dianne Feinstein Lashes Out While Corrupt Congress Guts NSA Reforms

Apparently having now put her little snit with the CIA behind her, Senate Intelligence Committee boss Dianne Feinstein, the woman who has long served as an impenetrable firewall of cellulite between accountability and the run amok NSA Stasi is back with a vengeance. DiFi, while appearing on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit with CNN's Candy Crowley snapped while discussing the new Glenn Greenwald book "No Place to Hide" that - “It’s not a surveillance program, it’s a data-collection program”. The testy California Senator may have inadvertently let the the cat out of the bag on that one because it IS a data-collection program, specifically a data-mining program conducted on damned near the entire US population and once it has been collected it is being stored for some yet to be defined future use. That future use is to be social control and the best protection that money can buy for a system so vile and corrupt that there really is no adequate terminology to truly describe it.

The data that has been collected will be used to identify political dissidents or troublemakers challenging the imposition of fascism in America. But that is the purpose (outside of the surveillance end which likely includes sexual blackmail of political figures, industrial espionage on a grand scale, money laundering, the manipulation of financial markets and probably even state sanctioned drug trafficking) of what the NSA and the millions of private contractors - to lock down the illicit activities of those in high places when the shit finally does hit the fan and as in all tyrannies the roundup of problem people is a top priority. Criminals like Feinstein fully understand what the programs are for because she is the one charged with oversight which is pretty much like the financial oversight that has been provided by those like Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson - the best and probably oldest scam in the book is to enable corruption by putting a crook or in Feinstein's case, a sociopath with zero morality in charge of minding the store.

Feinstein like the other treasonous swine who have hijacked the country using the September 11, 2001 attacks as an excuse continues to engage in the same fear-mongering to avoid oversight that has been used since Dick Cheney took over the show on that day while Bush was flying around the country like a scared rabbit. DiFi played the "terror" card by saying “I know they will come after us if they can, I see the intelligence” [not bothering to say exactly who "they" are nor that the "intelligence" is cooked to exaggerate such threats and keep the money rolling in] and “Terror is not down in the world, it is up" [failing to mention that the Empire's wars of aggression aren't exactly winning hearts and minds]. Call it what it is but now would be a perfect time for some sort of false flag attack that would forever end scrutiny of the rising menace of the star-spangled totalitarian state before it has finished baking, as the late Hunter S. Thompson put it "paranoia is just another word for ignorance" and nothing should ever be put beyond the capability of the lunatics who are running the system these days.

To the Obama administration and this most detestable of legislatures there has been no bigger thorn in the side than former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Just when the NSA Stasi stories had died down allowing the war machine to turn attention towards backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine and goading Russian leader Vladimir Putin into a response that would trigger a new Cold War - sending arms sales skyrocketing - there is renewed interest. This comes due to the Greenwald book and the surprisingly wide media attention that the author has been getting in The Homeland. There are also, as Greenwald promises more stories to come and soon including that really serious stuff that he has been teasing us with. In his GQ interview "The Man Who Knows Too Much" he made the statement that:

There's a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I'm saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it.

I suspect that Feinstein and her ilk have an inkling about exactly what that "big missing piece" is and while it may not be the smoking gun that nails them all to the wall it may provide a sufficient piece of the puzzle that will provide other journalists, activists and bloggers with the material to begin to tie together a lot of disparate coincidences and strangeness into the damning indictment of criminals in high places that is desperately needed. The scum are likely praying for a terrorist attack - the bigger, the better - right about now.

On the "reform" front things aren't working out so well in terms of transparency and control over the surveillance AND data collection colossus. Predictably the so-called USA FREEDOM Act is being disemboweled by right-wing talk radio bound Michigan Congressmen Mike Rogers and his on the take authoritarian allies.  According to a story in The Hill entitled "Advocates fear NSA bill is being gutted":

Privacy advocates are worried that a bill intended to reform the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) is being watered down before it heads to the House floor.

“Last stage negotiations” between members of the House and the Obama administration could significantly weaken provisions in the NSA bill, people familiar with the discussions say.

“Behind the scenes, there’s some nervousness,” one House aide said.

Earlier this month, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees came together to approve a compromise version of the USA Freedom Act. That bill, authored by Patriot Act author Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would scale back many of the sweeping surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden.

To win the support of NSA defenders, lawmakers abandoned some reform provisions in Sensenbrenner’s original bill. One of the major changes was dropping the appointment of a constitutional advocate to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the NSA’s spying requests, and substituting it for a panel of experts.

The bill was also stripped of language that would have allowed tech companies to publish more specific information about the number and types of government requests for user data they receive.

During Judiciary consideration, an amendment to allow less specific reporting was added back into the bill, but some worry that provision is in danger now because the administration thinks it’s already reached a deal that allows tech companies to publish more information about the NSA requests.

While pro-reform advocacy groups and members hailed the House bill as a positive first step, many lamented the revisions and said the legislation will be in trouble on the floor if it undergoes further changes.

There is a “growing chorus of concern” that the bill that makes it to the floor for a vote could be a less meaningful version of what passed the Judiciary and Intelligence committees with overwhelming bipartisan support, the aide said.

Reform advocates warn they will withdraw their support for the bill if the final version doesn’t pass muster.

The only "muster" that will be passed is that of the status quo as those who have assumed positions of power do not surrender it willingly. The best hope would be for the forthcoming stories from Greenwald and his associates will be sufficiently shocking so as to make the case for not only reform but a movement to dismantle the NSA entirely as the enemy to a free society and affront to the US Constitution that it has become. Trials, convictions and prison sentences for the enablers of this monstrous pox on the planet would be an added bonus.  

More NSA Mischief: Purchased Products Intercepted and Tampered With

In another revelation  on still more NSA malfeasance that was published in the just released Glenn Greenwald book "No Place to Hide" the American Stasi has been intercepting computer hardware purchases and implanting spying tools before repackaging the product in the original wrapping. Not this should be a surprise to anyone who has been following the wanton criminality of Obama's out of control surveillance state and an earlier piece that was published in Germany's Der Spiegel back in December already had revealed the hijacking of laptop deliveries but the book adds it to the pile of damning evidence courtesy of heroic whistleblower Edward Snowden that is also available online here in a large file but one that is well worth the space. This story of what is basically theft of a customer's paid for item by government goons and which should be a felony along the lines of mail fraud is not going to go over well with American tech companies, one of which, Cisco Systems just published a stinging letter on exactly what is thought of such sleazy chicanery.

Other than the inclusion in "No Place to Hide" the story is getting increasing circulation as a caveat emptor to all who which to purchase US manufactured network hardware with the expectation that the product will arrive as promised and without surveillance mechanisms illegally implanted. The Guardian in a piece from Greenwald's book has the following in a story entitled "Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers" from which I excerpt the following:

For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other internet devices pose a "threat" because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA's documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the US accused the Chinese of doing.

The drumbeat of American accusations against Chinese internet device manufacturers was unrelenting. In 2012, for example, a report from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Mike Rogers, claimed that Huawei and ZTE, the top two Chinese telecommunications equipment companies, "may be violating United States laws" and have "not followed United States legal obligations or international standards of business behaviour". The committee recommended that "the United States should view with suspicion the continued penetration of the US telecommunications market by Chinese telecommunications companies".

AND

But while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organisations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA's Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives – or intercepts – routers, servers and other computer network devices being exported from the US before they are delivered to the international customers.

The agency then implants backdoor surveillance tools, repackages the devices with a factory seal and sends them on. The NSA thus gains access to entire networks and all their users. The document gleefully observes that some "SIGINT tradecraft … is very hands-on (literally!)".

Eventually, the implanted device connects back to the NSA. The report continues: "In one recent case, after several months a beacon implanted through supply-chain interdiction called back to the NSA covert infrastructure. This call back provided us access to further exploit the device and survey the network."

It is quite possible that Chinese firms are implanting surveillance mechanisms in their network devices. But the US is certainly doing the same.

This by the way has not jack shit to do with "terrorism", the justification of this monstrous and ongoing invasion of privacy by a long out of control NSA and the trillion dollars of taxpayer subsidized bottom feeders that contribute to our Surveillance State Gomorrah. This is just plain and simple using a technological advantage as well as laws that have been hollowed out by the phony war on terror - which Obama and others paid homage to today at the grand opening of the obscenity that is the 9/11 Museum - to commit industrial espionage and gain unfair competitive advantage but hey that is the American way now in the land of fuck you, I got mine. The 9/11 Museum is just grotesque and sickening and only perpetuates the myth of the day that everything changed but that is a story for another time - be sure and get your T-shirts, coffee mugs, beer coolers and key chains at the gift shop. 

Greenwald is everywhere right now promoting the book and is getting the well deserved attention that he deserves as an investigative journalist, the careerist, power-sucking scum here in The Homeland would do well to take some lessons from the man who harkens back to the good old days of muckraking and non-celebrity journalists who shined a light on corrupted power like a blowtorch. Two great extended interviews of Greenwald were done by Amy Goodman at the liberal Democracy Now - here are the links (transcripts also available): May 13, 2014 and May 14, 2014 - check them out and pass them around to others. Now may be the last time that we have to really hit these bastards hard and put a choke chain on them while there is still a slim chance to do so.

I have always maintained that the only way that any serious restraint of the cancerous surveillance industrial complex can only be made possible by an alliance of American tech businesses (fuck the corrupt telecoms who are in on the con) to engage in awareness campaigns, implementing stronger encryption and pooling their vast resources to sue the hell out of the US government and fund the campaigns of political opponents of those that protect the NSA - like California's own Dianne Feinstein. If this is the case there is hope in the aforementioned Cisco Systems communique by Mark Chandler which I excerpt from at length:

Today’s security challenges are real and significant.  We want governments to detect and disrupt terrorist networks before they inflict harm on our society, our citizens, and our systems of government.   We also want to live in countries that respect their citizens’ basic human rights.  The tension between security and freedom has become one the most pressing issues of our day.  Societies wracked by terror cannot be truly free, but an overreaching government can also undermine freedom.

It is in this context that I want to offer some thoughts on actions by the US Government that in Cisco’s eyes have overreached, undermining the goals of free communication, and steps that can be taken to right that balance, and I do so on behalf of all of Cisco’s leadership team.

Confidence in the open, global Internet has brought enormous economic benefits to the United States and to billions around the world.  This confidence has been eroded by revelations of government surveillance, by efforts of the US government to force US companies to provide access to communications of non-US citizens even when that violates the privacy laws of countries where US companies do business, and allegations that governments exploit rather than report security vulnerabilities in products.

As a matter of policy and practice, Cisco does not work with any government, including the United States Government, to weaken our products. When we learn of a security vulnerability, we respond by validating it, informing our customers, and fixing it.  We react the same when we find that a customer’s security has been impacted by external forces, regardless of what country or form of government or how that security breach occurred.  We offer customers robust tools to defend their environments against attack, and detect attacks when they are happening. By doing these things, we have built and maintained our customers’ trust.  We expect our government to value and respect this trust.

This past December, eight technology companies expressed concern to the President of the United States and Members of Congress that the US government’s surveillance efforts are in fact harmful. They stated, in part, “We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independent oversight.”  We agree and support these positions – without customer confidence in the privacy and security of communications, the extraordinary steps toward freedom, productivity and prosperity that is the promise of the Internet can be lost.

This week a number of media outlets reported another serious allegation: that the National Security Agency took steps to compromise IT products enroute to customers, including Cisco products. We comply with US laws, like those of many other countries, which limit exports to certain customers and destinations; we ought to be able to count on the government to then not interfere with the lawful delivery of our products in the form in which we have manufactured them.   To do otherwise, and to violate legitimate privacy rights of individuals and institutions around the world, undermines confidence in our industry.

As our malignantly rotten Supreme Court has made evident: money is speech and there shall be no constraints on those who have a shitload of it. Silicon Valley has an abundance of it and in the best interests of not only keeping the internet free but for just the sake of ensuring that American business won't take another big hit due to crony capitalism and outright fascism should invest as much of it as possible to carpet bomb the corrupt Democrat and Republican criminals back to the stone age in 2014, 2016 and forever after in favor of pro-American, pro-civil liberties and pro-business libertarians and independents.