NSA District Democrat Representative Brings Fascist Back Surveillance Bill

The mysterious story swirling around alleged North Korean involvement in the Sony Hack and later the movie “The Interview” has become a bit clearer now. While there has never been any solid proof that linked the regime of Kim Jong Un to the hacking and alleged (but never substantiated) “terrorist” threats against movie theaters the Obama administration continued to push the blame North Korea narrative. Some more astute observers of the ongoing track towards full-blown fascism in The Homeland smelled a rat and speculated that the whole thing was just a pretense to impose even more Draconian domestic spying upon millions of law-abiding citizens. Well, now it is no longer just speculation as Congress has delivered their usual running drop kick to the crotch of powerless Americans.

As soon as the new Congress had returned from their latest taxpayer funded extended vacation it became obvious what the priorities truly are. The reintroduction of CISPA aka the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act was a top item on the agenda and will garner the typical bipartisan support that such criminal actions against the American people always get. Look for a barrage of laws that further erode the Constitution and restrict civil liberties and privacy rights in the coming year, especially since the media has been hysterically pushing fear in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack.

According to The Hill in a story entitled “House Dem revives major cyber bill”:

A senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee on Friday will reintroduce a controversial bill that would help the public and private sectors share information about cybersecurity threats.

“The reason I’m putting bill in now is I want to keep the momentum going on what’s happening out there in the world,” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), told The Hill in an interview, referring to the recent Sony hack, which the FBI blamed on North Korea.

The measure — known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) — has been a top legislative priority for industry groups and intelligence officials, who argue the country cannot properly defend critical infrastructure without it.

The House passed Ruppersberger’s bill last year, but it stalled in the Senate amid concerns from privacy advocates that it would enable more collection of Americans’ private information.

Ruppersberger lost his 2014 co-sponsor of the bill, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who retired from Congress.

“I’m putting the bill in by myself,” Ruppersberger said, acknowledging it would require work to find new bipartisan support. But by reintroducing the bill, “hopefully that will create momentum,” he added.

Ruppersberger wants to ride the wave of attention on Capitol Hill driven by the cyberattack on Sony, which caused the studio to almost cancel the release of a multimillion-dollar comedy, “The Interview,” which depicts an American plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Sony ultimately released the film to a limited number of theaters and streamed it online.

What is always left out whenever Dutch Ruppersberger is cited is that his home district happens to be the location of the headquarters of the NSA Stasi in Fort Meade, Maryland – a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The domestic spying and data-mining apparatus as well as the local economy in and around the Second Congressional District in Maryland depends on Dutch going to Washington and delivering the bacon for the expansion of the ever growing surveillance state.

The Hill piece also states that “Ruppersberger lost his 2014 co-sponsor of the bill, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who retired from Congress” but doesn’t mention that Rogers has taken his act to CNN. It is an example of the perverse and corrupt system that Americans now must live under that such a high-ranking figure as Rogers is able to cash in on his government experience and will now have a cable television network offering him a national forum as a pimp for the surveillance state. In regards to Rogers it is never mentioned that his wife was a lobbyist whose clients stood to profit from the very programs that he was supposed to be exercising oversight upon.

No surprise that the NSA Stasi is absolutely delighted that Ruppersberger has reincarnated CISPA with The Hill also reporting that “NSA chief wants cyber bill to fight hackers”:

The head of the National Security Agency wants lawmakers to pass a contentious cybersecurity bill to help federal officials go after hackers.

“I think it's a very important first step,” spy agency director Adm. Michael Rogers said on Fox Business Network on Friday.

“In the end, the key to our ability to be effective, I believe, as a nation in cyber, will be our ability to span the divide between the private sector and the public sector or the government.”

The controversial bill introduced by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) on Thursday would make it easier for private companies to share information about possible hackers and lines of attack with each other and the government. Backers say it's a critical step to ensure there are no blind spots on the country's networks.

Anyone who didn’t see where this was going with all of the sound and fury over “The Interview” and the media acting as the propagandists selling slavery repackaged as  “patriotism” while demonizing North Korea was not paying very close attention. The legislation is a wet dream for the apple pie authoritarians and their corporate allies that will profit from it. And as with everything else that this loathsome rogue government touches - a nightmare for us all.

Report: Foiled Domestic Terror Plots are Fed Setups

According to a new report by Human Rights Watch, the majority of the high-profile domestic "terrorism" plots that are foiled by the feds and then trumpeted by the corrupt state-corporate are in fact set-ups. It is the ultimate in self-justification for a bloated federal law enforcement system that continues to suck up taxpayer money while growing like a cancer. The war on terror has always been a massive fraud, conveniently providing cover for a massive expansion of the police state, the creation of the monstrosity that is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the lynchpin upon which the justification for the myriad of ongoing wars of imperial plunder are hung and a political scam that rewards those leeches and other bloodsuckers in Congress who are able to ride the big security state gravy train.

The report, according to a story in The Guardian entitled "Government agents 'directly involved' in most high-profile US terror plots": from which I excerpt:

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says.Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots.

"In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges.

Citing 27 prominent "terrorism" cases the report finds only four that did not have some level of federal agents using bribes, false information and entrapment to make the big, media friendly bust - including the Boston Marathon bombers which our massive national system of surveillance and billions of dollars in taxpayer money to pay the salaries of our protectors couldn't stop. The setups all involve Muslims who as has been reported by the recent work of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald are specifically targeted for their political and religious beliefs.

The Greenwald piece, published by "The Intercept" is entitled "Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On" and in addition to the obvious profiling issues also touches on a culture of anti-Muslim bigotry that exists within federal law enforcement agencies:

The FBI—which is listed as the “responsible agency” for surveillance on the five men—has a controversial record when it comes to the ethnic profiling of Muslim-Americans. According to FBI training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat “mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for combat,” and to view Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained.

John Guandolo, a former FBI counterterrorism official who takes credit for developing a training program for agents on the “Muslim Brotherhood and their subversive movement in the United States,” told The Intercept that he participated in investigations of some of the individuals whose email accounts were monitored. Echoing the “red under every bed” hysteria of the McCarthy era, Guandolo believes that “hundreds” of covert members of the Muslim Brotherhood are active in the United States, that some of them have succeeded in infiltrating the Pentagon, and that CIA director John Brennan is a secret Muslim.

Other former and current federal officials say such beliefs are not representative of the FBI or Justice Department. But blatant prejudice against Muslim-Americans is also documented in the Snowden archive.

In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: “Mohammed Raghead.”

Not that the FBI is the sole domain of anti-Muslim bigots, there is a huge national network of those who maintain think tanks, media chop shops and an army of activists to ensure that the demonization of Muslims is ongoing. Such fear-mongering and disinformation not only serves to continue to feed and expand the surveillance and police state but also provides the narrative for the "clash of civilizations" crusade that has been ongoing since then president George W. Bush stood atop that pile of rubble with a megaphone and fed a nation's prejudices and bloodlust right before his neocon packed administration lied the US into war with Iraq based on false pretenses of weapons of mass destruction and a bogus link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The pushing of the Muslim war on America meme was getting much traction with ISIS and the new caliphate but has at least for the moment been overtaken by the even more institutionalized hatred for Russia and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine provides a gift from the heavens to the narcissistic Obama in detouring from Iraq and Syria to avenge his wounded pride upon Putin.

But the setups (just say you love Osama) will continue as law enforcement in the USA!, USA!, USA! increasingly mimics the tactics of historic models of totalitarian states. It doesn't take much scrutiny to already see elements of the Gestapo, SAVAK, NKVD and Stasi at both the federal and local level and it is not going to ever get better - the proverbial ship has already sailed when it comes to being able to stop it and to this day far too many Americans are still living in fear to even realize that which has been wrought upon them in the name of national security.

Download the entire  Human Rights Watch report here:

“Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions”

Shameless: NSA Data Mining Includes Angry Birds

Nothing is sacred to the NSA Stasi and their Norsefire partners across the pond at GCHQ. In yet another of those very embarrassing revelations that have generated  perverse fantasies among the guilty of the murder of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden the ravenous security state monster is also conducting data-mining operations on cell phone apps including the  extremely popular Angry Birds game series. In a collaborative effort by The Guardian, The New York Times and Pro Publica it was revealed that the Anglo-American surveillance machine has been able to easily and successfully exploit in app advertisements to collect personal private data. Angry Birds, an app that reportedly has been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times globally has been hailed as a “golden nuggets” for the illegal data-mining activities as they seek to “collect it all”. What isn't stated openly in these stories at least as far as I have seen is that the games are very popular among children who are being exploited by these dirty villainous agencies as surely as some garden variety pederast trolling through chat rooms.

Not that the foray into the world of video games is an earth-shattering piece of news, the agency that engages in illegal spying already was outed for infiltrating online games such as World of Warcraft several months ago. Hell, given the level of sophistication and the urge for penetration of every aspect of the personal privacy of millions would it truly be any surprise were the news to break that they even had the capability to use the digital television of millions of law abiding citizens to actually watch them? Where exactly will James Clapper, Michael Hayden, General Keith Alexander and their minions be during this Sunday's Super Bowl broadcast?

The Angry Birds intrusion is yet the latest piece of blatant disregard for the Constitution that Obama’s Stasi ( he defends it, he owns it)  has been caught perpetrating with and as such there is the duty to chronicle it as another one of those road signs along the highway to Hell that keep whipping by at lightning speed. The story of course is given the best coverage in The Guardian (sorry NYT but you helped lie us into the Iraq war)  given the increasingly deplorable descent of the domestic corporate-state media into into the netherworld it is the ultimate irony that freedom loving Americans must now get their news from abroad.  It was just the other day that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell  who as former Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan’s wife is an illustration of how the elite intermingle and breed so to produce a more entitled form of life form than possible to be produced from the rabble. During an interview with former Congresswoman Jane Harman over the NSA abuses Mitchell broke away for a NEWSFLASH of great national import that was the breaking story of manufactured celebrity Justin Bieber’s legal plight. You just cannot make stuff like this up as our once educated society continues the long slow crawl into the fever swamps of Idiocracy, a movie that is among the most potent social critiques of the modern era.

The Guardian story, by James Ball entitled “Angry Birds and ‘leaky’ phone apps targeted by NSA and GCHQ for user data” will likely have little to no affect on the complacent, sheeplike citizens of the star-spangled, god-kissed Homeland. Perhaps the would be some degree of restiveness amongst the bewildered herd but with Andrea Mitchell’s cutaway from matters of serious news to the Bieber Alert serving as ‘Exhibit A’ it does not exactly bode well for that informed public that is critical for a functional democracy and free country. So I excerpt the following from the foreign news source that continues to provide excellent coverage of our ongoing national existential crisis:

GCHQ documents use Angry Birds – reportedly downloaded more than 1.7bn times – as a case study for app data collection.

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger.

Many smartphone owners will be unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realise that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect.

Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.

This has zilch to do with preventing terrorism and it is unimaginable to one with any degree of functional gray matter that serious jihadists with a huge ax to grind against western decadence would spend much time playing freaking Angry Birds. This goes more to the NSA’s aforementioned fervor to ‘collect it all’  for storage as a part of some vague future need which would be - and this is not exactly venturing out on a limb here - retroacatively building a case for persecution against dissidents, political opposition and civil liberties advocates who challenge the system in the fairly near future.

The collection of the personal data through these apps will of course be thrown under the umbrella of “metadata” when it comes to defending the legality of the collections yet that is fairly dishonest. The great hidden secret of all of this (or Easter Egg in video game parlance) is that the “metadata” only serves as an indexing system and what is also being collected here is the actual content of phone calls, emails etc. despite the ongoing denials of the national security state mouthpieces including Barack Obama himself. That is the key - that all of this data is going into a massive database (perhaps something along the lines of MAIN CORE) for when the day comes to conduct the Last Roundup. Perhaps some of the real stuff that is out there on these programs, the as yet undisclosed serious stuff may contain details on a program exactly like that. It not as if it hasn’t already been thought of (REX 84) and as we continue to careen towards the inevitable collapse of an unsustainable the lists grow daily. Why do you think that the immense NSA complex in Utah was built?  

It IS happening here. 

(Image: The Guardian) 

Blowhard Mike Rogers Can’t Back Up Russian Spy Charges

With the Sunday morning appearance of the two members of Congress that are the most derelict of their official duties to uphold and protect the Constitution Mike Rogers and Dianne Feinstein both accusing Edward Snowden of essentially being a Russian spy the system continues to fail. Despite these serious allegations, more likely than anything the part of a rapidly growing narrative to paint the former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower as an enemy of the state there has been absolutely no effort from the state-corporate media to confront either of the two NSA toadies for actual proof of the charges. Sunday morning TV is among the worst forums for state propaganda ever invented and each week continues to plumb the depths to protect the corrupt system and provide high visibility for those who are responsible for destroying America to spew their lies.

The most reliable weapon in the NSA Stasi’s arsenal has always been Über fascist Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers, the mac daddy of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers, a former FBI thug who managed to slither his way into office has set his sights on supplanting Senators McCain and Graham as the most strident voice on the Sunday morning bloviation circuit. The lunatic Rpgers blasted Snowden as he appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory as a “thief” who had foreign assistance while DiFi tut-tutted to the delight of the always oily beltway ass-kisser David Gregory. Rogers then popped up on CBS’s Face the Nation to spout that “This wasn’t a random smash and grab, run down the road, end up in China, the bastion of internet freedom, and then Russia, of course the bastion of internet freedom”. He conveniently omits the same sarcastic reference to our very own land of desecrated privacy rights which he of course has been instrumental in stealing away.

While Rogers was spewing his crap, Texas Republican Michael McCaul Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee appeared on ABC's This Week where he accused Snowden of being “cultivated by a foreign power” and “helped by others”. This is all just more of the same distractions meant to wave the blessed flag which is now serves primarily as a symbol designed to be desecrated by the scum like Rogers and McCaul who wrap themselves in it while then destroying the very principles that this country is supposed to stand for. By attempting to smear Snowden as a Russian spy they deftly turn the conversation from the true outrage which is the very existence of these unrestrained and unconstitutional surveillance programs.

Obviously seeing the writing on the wall that a manipulation of public opinion would green light his state sanctioned murder which many are braying for Snowden himself surfaced to defend himself. In an interview with Jane Mayer published by The New Yorker online the prey of the fascists who run The Homeland not only rebutted the accusations but pointed out the obvious which I excerpt from Mayer’s piece:

“It’s not the smears that mystify me,” Snowden told me. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.” Snowden went on to poke fun at the range of allegations that have been made against him in the media without intelligence officials providing some kind of factual basis: “ ‘We don’t know if he had help from aliens.’ ‘You know, I have serious questions about whether he really exists.’ ”

Snowden went on, “It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this. I mean these are pretty serious allegations, you know?” He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.”

It should be noted that this corrupt media has allowed the country to be lied into two illegal and immoral wars of choice since September 11, 2001 and continues to agitate for more attacks on countries such as Syria and Iran on hearsay, innuendo, propaganda and trumped up ‘evidence. This media has also completely abrogated its collective responsibility (as put forth in the First Amendement) to hold power accountable. Consequently our economy has been gutted by high rolling, politically connected gamblers playing with house money that is pumped into Wall Street casinos to the tune of $85 billion a month, there is NO recovery only lies and propaganda and the living standard of the average American continues to get worse while the corrupt media is out shilling for wars and engaging in tabloid panty-sniffing. The media has stood by while our civil liberties have been stripped away, torture that would have had one hung at Nuremberg codified and covered up and Habeas Corpus eliminated and most of it done in secret, approved by secret courtes and all on the basis of lies and hide behind the biggest lie of all which is providing equal time to both sides of any given story even if one side’s arguments are nothing but lies. So yeah, basically fuck the media.

I do give some credit for Mayer whose piece specifically cites followup done on those who make and allow such claims that Snowden is a Russian spy with zero evidence. Excerpting again from the New Yorker piece:

Asked about this, George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” defended the coverage. Stephanopoulos pointed out that when the congressman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, alleged that Snowden was “cultivated by a foreign power” and “helped by others,” Stephanopoulos pressed him for details, twice. “I did two follow-ups,” Stephanopoulos said, “and got as much as the congressman was going to give up.”

AND

Asked today to elaborate on his reasons for alleging that Snowden “had help,” Congressman Rogers, through a press aide, declined to comment.

An aide to Senator Feinstein, meanwhile, stressed that she did no more than ask questions. “Senator Feinstein said, ‘We don’t know at this stage.’ In light of the comments from Chairman Rogers, it is reasonable for Senator Feinstein to say that we should find out.”

As the saying goes - we get the government that we deserve - but the vast majority of Americans did not vote for either Feinstein or Rogers to be put into critical oversight positions and then to act as elements of a relentless fifth-column bent on eradicating every principle that is embodied within the Constitution.

It would be nice to see the voters in the State of California and the Eighth Congressional District in Michigan to be good Americans and vote those two enemies of the republic out of office as it is the only way that we can be saved from this madness.

Michigan voters, you are now on the clock. 

The Al Qaeda Switchboard: Did CIA Obstruction of Justice Enable 9/11 Attacks?

The arguments being presented by the defenders of the NSA Stasi’s metadata harvesting efforts, in particular federal judge William Pauley whose post-Christmas ruling erected a firewall for the activities of the unconstitutional fascist surveillance state should be carefully scrutinized. A recent article in The New Yorker entitled “The Al Qaeda Switchboard” poses some critical questions for arguments made to justify the intrusions on the telephone data of tens of millions of law abiding Americans. The story which was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning Lawrence Wright who wrote the book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" reports that both the NSA and CIA already had the information that could have prevented the attacks yet for whatever reason, the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency with an extensive history of subterfuge as well as a disregard for the law withheld the critical information from the FBI.

This is a very interesting and brief article and is of particular relevance after Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings where questions were posed to Obama’s surveillance review panel and prior to Friday’s speech outlining “smart changes” (translation: cosmetic bullshit) as far as implementing controls over a rogue agency. While the entrenched defenders of the fascist surveillance state continue to write their columns, appear on television talk shows to recite talking points and otherwise engage in the all too standard post September 11, 2001 use of fear-mongering to preserve their oppressive programs of which a formal explanation of exactly why all of that information on innocent citizens is needed. Before I go into the New Yorker column please note the following on metadata from a piece by former NSA analyst Kirk Wiebe over at Antiwar.com entitled “NSA’s Preference for Metadata":

Metadata collection can answer all but one of the five “W’s” of journalism: the Who, What, Where and When. Given time, it can even respond to “Why” someone interfaces with digital information systems the way they do. It can do this because it is possible to discern patterns of behavior in metadata.

A very simple example: You go to work via a toll road, taking essentially the same route five days a week, for about 48 weeks a year. A license plate scanner produces information about where your car was when it was scanned – and at what time. Your passive transponder (e.g., E-Z Pass) records your entrance onto the toll road at which ramp, and when you were there. The same transponder reports when and where you got off the toll road.

You stopped to get gas. Your credit card records where you were and when you bought the gas. You arrive at work and turn on your computer. Your Internet service provider (ISP) records when an IP address was given to your computer and what time it was provided. The IP address is associated with a server at a location with a specific address and is associated with your name.

So it is possible to know when you arrived at work. Or perhaps you called your wife to tell her you arrived safely. Your phone has locational information and the time of the call is recorded. Of course, the phone is associated with your account/name.

Similarly, any deviation from these patterns – for whatever reason – would also be apparent. A consistent deviation might reveal a significant change in your personal life (e. g. job trouble, health problems, marital difficulties).

Just a necessary and well-written bit of context as to what the actual data that the NSA Stasi and its serpents nest of defenders are fighting to keep gathering on American citizens - not terrorists - at least not yet until the day arrives when the crackdown comes and the elimination of dissidents and political problems is put into action. While this metadata and the pattern analysis could at least in theory be used to ferret out and monitor actual terrorists (as they are currently defined) the real underlying problem is that this is being used against all Americans and without warrants as well as through the authorization of a secret court that the actual judiciary powers of the U.S. that operate outside of such secrecy are now mounting a push to reject any oversight of.

Now to the Wright piece, "The Al Qaeda Switchboard" from which I will excerpt several paragraphs in the interest of the greater good so that this critical information can be shared:

Last month, two federal judges came to opposing conclusions about these issues. On December 16th, Judge Richard J. Leon, in Washington, D.C., ruled that the indiscriminate hoarding violates the Fourth Amendment right to privacy and its prohibition of unreasonable searches. Two weeks later, in New York, Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that the metadata-collection program was lawful and effective.

Judge Pauley invoked the example of Khalid al-Mihdhar, a Saudi jihadist who worked for Al Qaeda. On 9/11, he was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. In early 2000, Mihdhar made seven calls from San Diego to an Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen. According to Pauley, the N.S.A. intercepted the calls, but couldn’t identify where Mihdhar was calling from. Relying on testimony by Robert Mueller, the former director of the F.B.I., Pauley concluded that metadata collection could have allowed the bureau to discover that the calls were being made from the U.S., in which case the bureau could have stopped 9/11.

If he is right, advocates of extensive monitoring by the government have a strong case. But the Mihdhar calls tell a different story about why the bureau failed to prevent the catastrophe. The C.I.A. withheld crucial intelligence from the F.B.I., which has the ultimate authority to investigate terrorism in the U.S. and attacks on Americans abroad.

In August, 1998, truck bombs destroyed two American Embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania, killing two hundred and twenty-four people. Three days later, F.B.I. investigators captured a young Saudi named Mohammad al-‘Owhali at a hotel outside Nairobi. He had fresh stitches in his forehead and bloody bandages on his hands. In his pocket were eight brand-new hundred-dollar bills. Two skilled interrogators, Steve Gaudin and John Anticev, persuaded ‘Owhali to write down the number he called after the bombing. It belonged to Khalid al-Mihdhar’s father-in-law, Ahmed al-Hada, and was one of the most important pieces of information ever obtained in the effort to prevent terrorist acts in the U.S. It became known as the Al Qaeda switchboard.

The N.S.A.’s tracking of calls to and from the Hada household allowed the F.B.I. to map the global network of Al Qaeda. But not all the information was shared. In 1999, Mihdhar’s name surfaced in one of the recorded calls, linking him to Al Qaeda. “Something nefarious might be afoot,” an N.S.A. analyst wrote, but Mihdhar’s name was not passed on to the F.B.I.

Saudi intelligence also alerted the C.I.A. that Mihdhar and his friend Nawaf al-Hazmi, another future hijacker, were members of Al Qaeda. In December, 1999, the C.I.A. learned through the Al Qaeda switchboard that the two would be travelling to Malaysia for a meeting in early January. The agency broke into Mihdhar’s hotel room in Dubai and photographed his passport, which had a multi-entry visa to the U.S. That information was not given to the F.B.I.; nor was the State Department told to revoke his visa, or Immigration to place Mihdhar and Hazmi on the list of people forbidden to enter the U.S. The C.I.A. evidently had begun an operation, and it wanted no interference from other government agencies.

The meeting in Malaysia turned out to be an Al Qaeda summit to discuss plans for 9/11 and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, which took place in October, 2000. The C.I.A. had its Malaysian counterparts conduct surveillance of the meeting, but did not show that information—mainly photographs of the participants—to the F.B.I., in effect obstructing its investigation into the deaths of seventeen American sailors.

When the cable about Mihdhar’s U.S. visa and the Malaysia meeting arrived at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center, an F.B.I. officer sought permission to transmit the findings to the bureau. Although there was a protocol to allow the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. to exchange critical information, he was told, “This is not a matter for the F.B.I.”

Three months later, the C.I.A. learned from Thai intelligence that Hazmi had arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. If the agency had checked the flight manifest, it would have found that Mihdhar was travelling with him. Mihdhar and Hazmi moved to San Diego and began taking flying lessons. And Mihdhar began calling Yemen.

And-

Judge Pauley cites the 9/11 Commission Report for his statement that telephone metadata “might have permitted the N.S.A. to notify the [F.B.I.] of the fact that al-Mihdhar was calling the Yemeni safe house from inside the United States.” What the report actually says is that the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. already knew that Al Qaeda was in America, based on the N.S.A.’s monitoring of the Hada phone. If they had told the F.B.I., the agents would have established a link to the embassy-bombings case, which “would have made them very interested in learning more about Mihdhar.” Instead, “the agents who found the source were being kept from obtaining the fruits of their work.”

The N.S.A. failed to understand the significance of the calls between the U.S. and Yemen. The C.I.A. had access to the intelligence, and knew that Al Qaeda was in the U.S. almost two years before 9/11. An investigation by the C.I.A.’s inspector general found that up to sixty people in the agency knew that Al Qaeda operatives were in America. The inspector general said that those who refused to cooperate with the F.B.I. should be held accountable. Instead, they were promoted.

And

The intelligence community has since been reorganized to prevent such closeting of information. Many terrorist schemes have been discovered and prevented. But questions remain about how the C.I.A. handled events leading up to 9/11. What did the agency intend to do about the Al Qaeda operatives in America? The former national-security adviser Richard Clarke believes that the C.I.A. hoped to recruit them.

Edward Snowden broke the law, and the Obama Administration has demanded that he be brought to justice. No one has died because of his revelations. The C.I.A.’s obstruction of justice in the Cole investigation arguably also was a crime. Its failure to share information from the Al Qaeda switchboard opened the door to the biggest terrorist attack in history. As long as we’re talking about accountability, why shouldn’t we demand it of the C.I.A.? 

Mr. Wright asks some very valuable and insightful questions in "The Al Qaeda Switchboard" and none of them have been answered by the defenders of the NSA metadata collection programs. It would seem that were the CIA to have acted in good faith as well as the interests of American citizens that the information that could have potentially stopped 'the day that changed everything' but then again, maybe they didn't want to stop it for whatever reasons served their interests. It does beg some questions and not the state-corporate media and corrupt establishment's fitting of those who ask them with the cone-shaped tin-foil dunce hat and then sent to sit in the corner with a sign upon the pejorative "conspiracy theorist" is written and taped to their backs.

Drone Hunting Permits On Hold for Colorado Community

The town of Deer Trail, Colorado, a small farming and ranching community that lies 50 or so miles east of Denver has a novel idea when it comes to combat the creeping fascism of the surveillance state. In July town trustees decided to think outside the proverbial box in issuing drone hunting permits against the invasive government aerial spy vehicles. Deer Trail which claims that the first rodeo in the world was held there back in 1869 is on the cutting edge with the innovative idea of actually selling permits at 25 bucks a pop to those looking to send a message to the rogue leadership of this country as well as the multitude of private companies that will benefit off of the coming drone gold rush.

The idea was set to go to voters and had attracted a good deal of outside interest. As of early September town clerk Kim Oldfield was quoted in this Reuters story as saying that “I stopped counting when it hit 985” in reference to applications. While the drone permits garnered mixed feelings in Deer Trail with resident comments ranging from the positive “What has me fired up is it’s trespassing”, “I would shoot a drone down if it’s peering in my window, scanning me and it’s within elevation where I can nail it” and to a detractor (probably a liberal) who said “that’s a federal offense to destroy government property, and on top of that it’s a ridiculous thing and embarrassing the town”.

The government certainly is not down with it.  The FAA reportedly issued an ominous statement that “shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in criminal or civil liability, just as would firing at a manned airplane”. Translation: “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists”.  Deer Trail resident Phillip Steel nails it in his response that “There are many things that are illegal, but the United States federal government declared war on us…this is our response.”  With the obvious government pressure being brought Mayor Frank Fields has postponed the vote for the time being until a district court is able to determine the legality of the proposed ordinance.

With the public relations machine always in heavy spin cycle to immerse the already brainwashed American sheep into further submission a happy face is being painted on the coming drone explosion. While the blasting into bloody chunks of human hamburger of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of them women and children banished from the state-corporate media here in The Homeland we get silliness and propaganda like “Fifteen ways drones will change your life”, “Bad laws could hurt good drones” and CBS propaganda organ 60 Minutes trumpeting Amazon’s benign delivery drones. Criticism sure does put a bug up the ass of not only the big government surveillance hungry fascists put the big money behind the drone industry as well. In the Orwellian newspeak so pervasive in America since September 11, 2001 allowed for the reset button to be hit on over two centuries of democracy on ‘the day that everything changed’ calling a drone a drone is just too negative. The preferred establishment nomenclature is UAV for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

Knowing the way that things work in this once great country regarding the respect of personal freedoms, respect for the Constitution and general corruption of the system I would predict that the Deer Trail drone hunting licenses will be (pun fully intended) shot down in short order.  I would also venture to say that any Deer Trail residents who would dare to actually follow through and down one of those invasive little mechanical bastards will invite a massive police state response resulting in the one square mile town being incinerated by government goons very much like David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound faster than you can say Waco.

Patriot Act Creator Seeks to Slay His Monster

It is the most fascistic piece of law since Hitler’s enabling act. It is the stuff of which tyranny is made. The granting of free reign to the state and its agents to spy, arrest and disappear critics and foes and to justify it all under fighting a very vaguely defined “terrorism”. In an Orwellian fashion that completely suits its name the USA PATRIOT Act was sold to fear-stricken Americans, reeling from the September 11, 2001 attacks under the guise of keeping them safe. As the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin so aptly put it – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”. The law is the very cornerstone of the modern fascist USA and all of the evils and abuses of the state are dependent upon it. There must be a concerted effort to repeal or otherwise nullify this abomination while the news of the NSA Stasi and its growing list of transgressions against liberty are still able to elicit outrage and protestation.

The enabling act was rammed through congress in the immortal words of General George S. Patton “like shit through a tin horn”, many didn’t even bother to read it. Some who could have opposed it, the at the time Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Judiciary Committee head Patrick Leahy were sent anthrax letters, the envelopes ridiculously and crudely made up to cast aspersions on Muslims, a national scapegoat in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. “DEATH TO AMERICA”, “DEATH TO ISRAEL” and “ALLAH IS GREAT” were among the comments contained in the letters. The message was sent that there would be no opposition to the post-9/11 transformation of The United States of America into The Homeland. The culprits behind the letters have to this day never been sufficiently identified with the exception of the official government patsy, a former Fort Detrick scientist named Bruce Ivins who conveniently ended up dead while under investigation. But this is a long and complex story for another time. The point is that the message was received that the USA PATRIOT Act would be the law of the land – forever.

Times do however change and the glimpse into the darkest bowels of the national surveillance state thanks to the revelations of government contractor Booz Allen’s former employee Edward Snowden has allowed for a small window of opportunity. The chink in the juggernaut’s armor may be the last chance to exploit an opening against a hydra what will quickly reconfigure and to fight for changes that will establish accountability and shine light upon secrecy.  While tea party Republicans are currently being vilified by the establishment over the government shutdown and the entrenched opposition to raising the limit on the national credit card it was one Justin Amash, a Michigan Congressman who recently gathered enough support to send the warning shot across the bow of Leviathan with his LIBERT-E act that would have effectively defunded the NSA state voyeurs. This sent the establishment hacks, in a bipartisan manner that united Pelosi and Boehner, Cantor and Hoyer, Reid and McConnell to circle the wagons to defend their financial benefactors within the police state who keep them elected.

While congress has been holding hearings and parading the heads of the NSA surveillance machine, primarily General Keith Alexander a delusional megalomaniac who is infatuated by Star Trek and serial perjurer James Clapper in front of panels it has all been lip service. Just another one of the imperial dog and pony shows scheduled to provide the sheeple with the illusion that they actually live in a functioning democracy – they don’t.

So it is encouraging when someone like Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner who was responsible for the USA PATRIOT Act to come out and try to drive a stake through the heart of the monster that he himself was instrumental in creating. According to a story in The Guardian, Sensenbrenner has had enough of the wanton abuse of what was at least in his mind intended to be a legitimate program to prevent catastrophes like the September 11, 2001 attacks from happening. He was particularly galled by reports that government goons at the NSA were using secretive and highly sophisticated surveillance tools to spy on former spouses and lovers. Sensenbrenner is working on the USA Freedom Act, a nice jab at the duplicitous newspeak of the American fascist Magna Carta. I excerpt from the Guardian piece:

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.

It seeks to limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects; to end "secret laws" by making courts disclose surveillance policies; to create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests; and to allow companies to disclose how many requests for users' information they receive from the USA. The bill also tightens up language governing overseas surveillance to remove a loophole which it has been abused to target internet and email activities of Americans.

Many lawmakers have agreed that some new legislation is required in the wake of the collapse in public trust that followed Snowden's disclosures, which revealed how the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.

In July, a temporary measure to defund the NSA bulk collection programme was narrowly defeated in a 217 to 205 vote in the House, but Sensenbrenner said the appetite for greater privacy protections had only grown since.

"Opinions have hardened with the revelations over the summer, particularly the inspector general's report that there were thousands of violations of regulations, and the disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses or significant others, which was very chilling," he told the Guardian in an interview.

Instead, the main opposition to Sensenbrenner and Leahy's twin-pronged effort is likely to come from the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, who is supportive of the NSA but who has proposed separate legislation focusing on greater transparency and checks rather than an outright ban on bulk collection.

Sensenbrenner and other reformers have been scathing of this rival legislative approach, calling it a "fig leaf" and questioning the independence of the intelligence committee. "I do not want to see Congress pass a fig leaf because that would allow the NSA to say 'Well, we've cleaned up our act' until the next scandal breaks," he said.

Additionally he is calling for the prosecution of Obama’s Stasi commandant James Clapper for lying to congress about the extent of the NSA’s warrantless collection of the telephone records of millions of law abiding Americans. Again, I excerpt from the Guardian story:

"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution," said the congressman.

Clapper has apologised for the incident, but reformers expect a fierce backlash to their proposals to rein in his powers in future. "I anticipate a big fight, and Senator Feinstein has already basically declared war," said Sensenbrenner. "If they use a law like Senator Feinstein is proposing, it will just allow them to do business as usual with a little bit of a change in the optics."

He is absolutely correct, Feinstein is one of the most disgustingly corrupt and two-faced member of a loathsome congress as well as a perfect example of why the legislative branch is only slightly less popular than genital herpes. There will be fierce resistance at any attempt to derail the big money gravy train of surveillance, domestic oppression and militarism and Feinstein, the impenetrable firewall of cellulite will be a reliable bulwark for the fascist state. Any reforms or restraints of these cancerous surveillance programs will be a huge struggle and the state-corporate media along with the usual foreign lobbies will go after their opponents with extreme prejudice. There will be some cosmetic changes out of the need to preserve the smiley face of friendly fascism but any real change will be painful, slow and costly. Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com provided his usual on the mark commentary in his most recent column about the very subject of reigning in the surveillance colossus entitled NSA ‘Reform’: The Limits of Legislation. I excerpt the following from Raimondo:

“Furthermore, I would add, the success of this phony "reform" effort is virtually assured, since the conditions that led to the NSA’s usurpation of the Constitution have yet to be ameliorated, or even widely understood.

The official response to the revelations of Edward Snowden, as reported by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and others has been, as Greenwald puts it: "THE TERRORISTS!!!" Twelve years have passed since the 9/11 attacks, an entire generation has grown up in the shadow of endless war, and yet waving the bloody shirt is still effective enough to ward off attempts to rein in the Surveillance State. That’s because hanging over even the most convinced civil libertarian in the Senate is the looming question of what happens if another 9/11-type attack occurs, perhaps on an even greater scale. In that event, if the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act passes – an unlikely outcome, see below – won’t its supporters be blamed for purportedly blinding the NSA to the next incoming threat?”

The establishment always holds the trump card – the control of their media to propagandize and brainwash the lemmings into submission with their never ending supply of alerts, plots, attacks and swarthy Muslim fiends. They hate us for our freedom will be the message repeatedly hammered home by the disinformation organs of the state – and few will ever stop to realize that we truly are no longer as free as it is advertised. We will never live in a free country again as long as the decidedly anti-American USAPATRIOT Act is allowed to stand and the ongoing militarization of the police permitted to continue unopposed.  The deck is stacked against those who believe in the principles upon which this country was established and they are few in number compared to their fellow Americans whose idea of a crisis would be running out of cheese dip in the middle of Dancing With the Stars.

It Just Keeps Getting Creepier at the NSA

With the national crisis of the moment being the rush to enter into yet another illegal war in Syria our most serious problem, at least from a civil liberties standpoint has not received much attention as of late.  The deafening beating of the war drums, the state media propagandizing for an attack and the Putin problem have served to distract from the mounting evidence of just how far out of control that Obama’s NSA Stasi has become. We have recently learned that the NSA has undermined American free enterprise by intentionally destroying the effectiveness of internet encryption codes, you know those allegedly secure payment methods? Well thanks to the rogue surveillance state they are no more. The same big government agency has also been outed for spying on customers of credit card companies and providing the purloined data on law abiding American citizens to a FOREIGN country. Let’s just face it, the NSA and it’s tentacles are the greatest threat to this country since it’s inception, worse than King George’s Brits, the commies, Hitler and yes even al Qaeda. There is no way that even in his juiciest of 72 virgins wet dreams Osama bin Laden could never have even fantasized about doing this much damage the now defunct free and democratic society that we used to enjoy in the United States of America.

The rapacious carnivores in the surveillance/intelligence deep state have eradicated any form of privacy that exists outside of our heads and you can damned sure bet that they are at this very minute secretly working on a way to mind rape the citizenry as well. They have destroyed whatever vestiges of what was left of capitalism that the Wall Street looters were unable to take down with their schemes that waere aided and abetted by their moles in the government. Do you really believe that in the sane world that exists outside the borders of what can adequately now be called the United States of Dancing With the Stars is going to do business with American based tech companies? It is a real tragedy thanks to big government run amok and especially those who have spent countless millions on building the cloud based infrastructure that has been sold as the future of commerce. Think again because the rest of the civilized world actually bothers to read, is not already born half-stupid and given their lack of exposure to the corrupt corporate state media here in Der Homeland are well informed. They will be building their own cloud computing companies and the biggest selling factor of all will be that they will actually be SECURE and not subject to the whims of corrupt authoritarian power freaks who happen to also be bureaucratic drones and military voyeurs. We still do not know exactly what else that all of that data is being used for. There are already reports of probable industrial espionage out of Brazil and you can sure as hell bet the farm that much of this data is being provided to political cronies and their corporate backers to provide that competitive advantage that just can’t be gleaned from actually creating a better product. So much for that global economy, it shows just how badly that our once great American business ethic and all of the brilliant entrepreneurs that it created have given way to a corrupt elitist class that only cares about winning and to which cheating, bribery and subterfuge are the tools of doing business.

It is also pretty much a certainty although yet to officially come out that the NSA and it’s private contractors along with God knows how many other  foreign countries (one of which we already know about) are using this data for more nefarious reasons. Think about blackmail, the best way to ensure that the game stays rigged is to snag those with predispositions to perversion in utterly shameful (and likely illegal) sexual forays. This especially works well with politicians. One could imagine that the programs are being used for silencing those who are deemed to be threats, certain journalists who have perished in strange accidents or mysterious ‘suicides’ come to mind. It is no secret that big banks, lacking even the scruples of a crack whore engage in the laundering of drug money, just imagine how much juice that access to the most monstrous and powerful spy machine in the universe could bring to the bottom line. Again, these are speculative comments at the current time but truly, given what we already know is it going to be any surprise when the other shoe finally does drop?

But wait…

As horrifying that it already is it gets worse. In possibly the most disturbing and bizarre tale of the gross perversions of the NSA Stasi yet it has now been revealed that General Keith Alexander, the head of the surveillance colossus is living in a fantasy world with the Tribbles and Hobbits.  According to a recent story in the Guardian (where else?) by Glenn Greenwald that extensively references other sources and is entitled Inside the mind of NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander we may be more screwed than even the doomsayers are espousing. Because this story about arguably the most powerful man in America is about as batshit as it gets – what was only suspected, that a psychopath was running this entire spying machine is pretty much confirmed.

To excerpt from the material, in this case a reference to a PBS piece which has now mysteriously (or not so) been disappeared down the memory hole:

“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

 ”‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”

Jesus, this guy is not only section eight material but to quote Kevin Costner’s title character in the post-apocalyptic film The Postman – “The General is a fucking lunatic”.  I would wonder just how much money was the average hard working taxpayer shaken down for so that this freak could get his rocks off by building his Captain Kirk command chair? Where the hell is the accountability? With all of the idiotic politial theater between Obama and the House Republicans over shutting the government down in order to defund Obamacare (and it is theater) it is pretty obvious that there is a REAL reason to close it all down and it is in charge of the NSA. I still anxiously await the great Darrell Issa (the John Stossel) of politics to convene hearings on the NSA’s unconstitutional and fascist usurping of the right to privacy. Again to place a bit of emphasis on this we aren’t talking about some dork who frequents Star Trek conventions, names his dogs “Tiberius” and “Khan” and gets his kicks by prancing around while wearing a set of waxen Spock ears but arguably the most powerful man in the country if not the world. This is no laughing matter!

Anyway, according to the Foreign Policy Magazine piece,The Cowboy of the NSA that is referenced in the Greenwald story Alexander is indeed quite the “cowboy” who plays fast and loose with the law. This a real understatement about our self-appointed guardian of the galaxy given the torrent of stories that have emerged over the last several months chronicling his agency’s flouting of the laws.  But here is where it really gets twisted – Federation Commandant Keith Alexander may not even be the worst of the NSA Stasi capos. According to a Washington Post story,  during a speech the uber-creepy General Michael Hayden, the personification of what Hannah Arendt once referred to the “banality of evil”not only defended the Constitution shredding NSA programs but took a foray into the same bizarre territory that Alexander exists in when lounging in his command chair. Among other delusional dispensations of his perfect fascist utopia Hayden proclaimed that there are terrorists on Gmail (and under the bed, behind the curtains etc..) which means that by now if you have managed to read this far you are now within my own personal NSA 3 hop query network. Congratulations.

Excerpts from  the piece which reveals the very troubling contents of a very troubled mind – a necessity for holding any sort of leadership position in Obama’s NSA Stasi:

—

Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden stood on the pulpit of a church across from the White House on Sunday and declared Gmail the preferred online service of terrorists. As part of an adult education forum at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Hayden gave a wide ranging speech on “the tension between security and liberty.”

 During the speech, he specifically defended Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which provides the legal basis for the PRISM program. In doing so, Hayden claimed “Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide,” presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: “I don’t think you’re going to see that in a Google commercial, but it’s free, it’s ubiquitous, so of course it is.”

Asked whether the United States’s promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet’s origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA’s conduct. If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for “the way the Romans are remembered for their roads.”

“We built it here, and it was quintessentially American,” he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government “takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes.”

 —-

Rest assured that we WILL be remembered by history and the analogy of Rome is a bit more fitting than the dirty little fiend Hayden may otherwise have intended.  Not that the planet will last for anywhere near 500 more years given the bent for destruction of the elites but if it manages to beat the odds historians will marvel over how the greatest empire since Rome rotted from within abetted by the same forms of moral decay, bloodlust, greed and perversion as well as bread and circuses that destroyed that which was at one time indestructable. Like Rome the proverbial Senate baths are filled with naked little boys greased up with olive oil, our ‘leaders’ drunkenly frolic unimpeded by shame while our imperial overlords have the starship coordinates set for the center of Hoth the ice planet with the controls at ramming speed.