Snowden Declares Victory, Calls out Rogers and Feinstein

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA…I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

-Edward Snowden

In an extensive interview former government contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton employee turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden proclaimed that in the battle over the exposure of unconstitutional spying programs that he is the victor and it would be hard to argue this point. The interview, conducted by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman was published Monday following what has arguably been the worst week for the American Stasi at Fort Meade since the initial leaks were published. It was not a festive holiday season for fascists across the fruited plain as CBS propaganda vehicle 60 Minutes NSA puff piece was met with ridicule, federal judge Richard Leon ruled that the activities of the rogue agency were likely “unconstitutional” and “Orwellian”, Barack Obama was read the riot act at a White House meeting with tech executives and the NSA review panel report was less the total whitewash than expected. Mr. Snowden certainly deserves his props for risking his life to out the darkest machinations of the post September 11, 2001 fascist Homeland and has to this point avoided being abducted and imprisoned at a CIA black site where he would assuredly be tortured six ways from Sunday.

The published comments and story are a part of a 14 hour series of interviews granted by Snowden from Russia where he has been chased and trapped by Obama and Holder’s police state goons who are without a doubt desperately working to get him into a U.S. secret court for a show trial and public vilification by a corrupt state-corporate media. It would be Orwell’s “two minute hate” 24/7 if the government managed to somehow abduct Snowden and he would be utterly crushed by the full fury of the state in order to discourage more patriotically inclined Americans who have had it with the ruination of a once great country by corrupt sociopaths and may be encouraged to reveal the vast institutional con games of a government gone to rot.  It would take ten Guantanamo Bays to hold all of the criminals within the system, the abusers of the public trust and the war criminals were the rule of law to ever be restored in this collapsing empire of greed, vileness and hate and the hijackers of the system would never allow that to happen least they end up occupying those cells or in the words of neocon war criminal John Bolton find themselves swinging from a tall oak tree.

In Snowden’s published comments he not only declared victory: “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated” but reclaimed that most lamentable two word phrase so abused by former President George W. Bush in 2003 when he stated that: “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished.” Bush’s enormous waste of taxpayer money for a staged event where he landed in full military gear on the deck of the aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego was a propaganda coup that would have been choreographed by Leni Reifenstahl herself and such garish shows were instrumental in laying the foundations of the NSA fascist programs and the public acceptance of them. The Iraq war of course has been a historical disaster and now over ten years after Dubya’s costly publicity stunt and subsequent proclamation of “Mission Accomplished” the country is roiling with violence again and Uncle Sam is once again sending arms into the area that could and will likely end up in the hands of Islamic militants, this was revealed in a story in today's New York Times. That however is a still developing, ugly story that will receive its due very soon.

Snowden also managed to get in a few shots at two of the most contemptible fascists in a rotten congress with his great denouncing of Republican House Intelligence Committee head Mike Rogers and the impenetrable firewall of cellulite that protects the NSA from scrutiny Senate Intelligence Committee queen Diane Feinstein:

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

Touche. The failure of congress and particularly powerful committee heads to enforce oversight is a stunning example of the degree of the contempt for the Constitution and the very principles of American freedom and liberty that is held by those who are at least in theory supposed to provide representation to the people. It is very obvious by now exactly who Rogers, DiFi and their ilk truly represent and that is the mega-money of the military industrial complex and the surveillance state. They are long overdue for a public shaming and deserve far worse, removal from office, a trial and a jail cell would be far more appropriate for that sort of treasonous scum.

Let the new year bring even more revelations of what the NSA's real purpose is now that it is being revealed that these programs haven't a damned thing to do with preventing terrorism as advertised.

With NSA Stasi on the Defensive Obama Panel Releases Report Early

Wednesday’s early unveiling of the ballyhooed NSA review panel report was pretty much another attempt to put a positive spin on a now careening national disaster over unconstitutional data collection/spying programs by the American Stasi.  It’s been a tough week for Obama’s electronic goon squad, their 60 Minutes infomercial has been widely mocked and Monday’s ruling by Federal Judge Richard Leon that the phone metadata collection program (alone) was "Orwellian" and "likely unconstitutional". The jig is up for General Keith Alexander and his mountain of gross violations of the civil liberties and privacy rights of millions of Americans and nothing is going to stop the coming wave of pushback. There will be no escape, especially when the really good stuff is eventually revealed and the realization finally hits home that all of these programs are not about stopping 'terrorism’ at all.  Hell the definitions in the post-9/11 Homeland have become so corrupted that anyone and everyone is now a suspected ‘terrorist’. Been to an airport in the last several years? It is unsurprising that according to a recent Gallup poll that more Americans now find that the greatest threat to them is their own government rather than whatever foreign bogeyman happens to be conjured up as the official rationale for increasing loss of freedom and never-ending wars.

The panel itself was an obvious whitewash of the problems  given its composition and the inclusion of government go-to guys like Richard Clarke and Cass Sunstein and at the time of formation which was well before the cascade of damaging stories on the NSA abuses was suspected to be more of a lipstick on a pig type of exercise to just keep the sheep from becoming too restive.  The official report of The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies logs in at a tad over 300 pages the report “Liberty and Security in a Changing World” at first review appears to offer some meaningful suggestions for ‘reforms’ including stopping the NSA from engaging in such practices as the collecting and storing of bulk telephone metadata (which would be held by private telecommunications instead) and halting the NSA's manic pursuit at the breaking of all encryption putting a serious dent in internet commerce.

That the report was released early is a clear sign that Barry and the boys are feeling the heat, especially after that great no-bullshit bitch session with Silicon valley executives at the White House the other day where it was made very clear to El Presidente that his NSA Stasi is bad for business. It was a desperation move to calm the growing furor in the aftermath of the last several days. Now that the cat is out of the bag it is totally up to Obama and his administration on whether to actually implement some of the 40 “recommendations” and it is going to also be incumbent on a U.S. Congress that has proven time and again that it views the American people as at the very least a nuisance and with some of the more fascist members as an enemy. So for the time being at least the government gets to punt the ball and find as many ways to undermine even the tepid reforms proposed by the panel.

Obama is to take the report with him to Hawaii on his taxpayer funded Christmas vacation and ponder the contents making an announcement when he returns. Put more accurately a few weeks is an eternity to Americans, most of whom have short attention spans and that is when it isn’t Christmas week. In other words don’t expect any serious changes because the panel did not make really serious recommendations to begin with.  The only change that truly would matter would be the complete de-funding of the NSA pending a thorough audit, General Keith Alexander should be suspended immediately - without pay pending judicial review and then busted down to buck private and mustered out of the military. Let him go and live in one of the nation’s tent cities - after he has done his time in the stockade of course. The the trials could then begin in earnest, not only for NSA and DNI officials past and present but also the scum in congress who have allowed this abomination to continue and expand without any sort of oversight or accountability to the law. What I wouldn't  give to see DiFi's fat ass in an orange jumpsuit stuffed into one of those chicken coop cages at Gitmo.

The state-corporate media is in fine form today though, any substantive discussion on the NSA has been pretty much relegated to the memory hole as Americans are being fed stories of critical national importance such as some bigoted backwoods asshole on “Duck Dynasty” spouting off and an unclaimed multi-million dollar lottery ticket - move along, nothing to see here.  That is of course the job of the ‘mainstream’ media, to lie, distract and cover the asses of the criminals in high places with their ongoing pillaging of the treasury to fund their outlandish schemes. The media provides the necessary cover, like that absurd 60 Minutes hagiography the other night that provided General Alexander with a national forum from which to obfuscate and lie his ass off during an interview with a man with a huge conflict of interest. The entire two-segment barrage of bullshit was so ridiculous it bordered on a parody but never more so when the nefarious Chinese “BIOS Plot” was brought up. The gist of which being that China was to roll out a devastating bit of malware disguised as firmware updates that was to destroy or in geek terms “brick” every computer in America. Like it is as if the Chinese government would not be commiting national suicide by bringing down the entire U.S. economy but the tale ignores the sad reality that we are in hock out of our asses to China thanks to a rogue government that spends and borrows like a pack of drunken sailors.

I more than half-expect to see NSA Stasi Commandant Alexander call a press conference sometime today to come out and blame the massive data theft of 40 million Target customer’s debit and credit card information for the two weeks following the Thanksgiving/Black Friday festival of greed on the yellow menace in Beijing.  The man should be in seclusion following his week of shame and the belated pillorying of his rogue agency but ever the opportunist he will be prepared to pounce on any opportunity to dance a dervish of spin and distract from the wanton criminality of his army of snoops and voyeurs.

Somewhere In Russia Edward Snowden has just got to be laughing his ass off and justifiably so given the despicably rotten treatment that he has received from U.S. government thugs, their media lickspittles and of course from Barack Obama himself. All for telling the truth about the criminal activities at NSA HQ. If he reads the satirical Borowitz Report he may even be inclined to use this idea - "Snowden Offers to Fix Healthcare.gov" - to deliver a good running drop kick in the balls to Barry. The conniving bastard sure as hell deserves one.

Does Snowden Have a Dead Man’s Switch?

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:

--

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.