The NSA War on Privacy Rages On as Tor Project Users Targeted

With Glenn Greenwald's spectacular fireworks show having been quashed by the US government mere hours prior to publication on the increasingly suspect website The Intercept, we have been deprived - at least for now - of really big and shocking revelations but that doesn't mean that stories of the rampage of the NSA aren't getting out through other forums. In the most recent non-shocking disclosure of the war on privacy by the American Stasi anyone who attempts to use encryption and privacy tools in order to circumvent their prying eyes is on the ever-growing list of suspects. In a story from the German websites Das Erste and Tagesschau (you will need Google Translate) that is cited in stories on the blog Boing Boing and on libertarian financial website Zero Hedge the criteria that is used by the hive of scum and villainy at Fort Meade to cull the herd for those meriting the most attention via the XKeyscore program that was exposed by Greenwald based on documents provided to him by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.

According to the German stories, in which the deep packet inspection rules as revealed by authors Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz specifically target internet users who search for and utilize privacy tools such as the Tor Project browser and the Tails operating system. According to the story on Boing Boing, entitled "If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance":

Since the start of the Snowden story in 2013, the NSA has stressed that while it may intercept nearly every Internet user's communications, it only "targets" a small fraction of those, whose traffic patterns reveal some basis for suspicion. Targets of NSA surveillance don't have their data flushed from the NSA's databases on a rolling 48-hour or 30-day basis, but are instead retained indefinitely.

The authors of the Tagesschau story have seen the "deep packet inspection" rules used to determine who is considered to be a legitimate target for deep surveillance, and the results are bizarre.

According to the story, the NSA targets anyone who searches for online articles about Tails -- like this one that we published in April, or this article for teens that I wrote in May -- or Tor (The Onion Router, which we've been posted about since 2004). Anyone who is determined to be using Tor is also targeted for long-term surveillance and retention.

AND

One expert suggested that the NSA's intention here was to separate the sheep from the goats -- to split the entire population of the Internet into "people who have the technical know-how to be private" and "people who don't" and then capture all the communications from the first group.

Goats and sheep - how apropos, considering the overwhelming number of the latter the NSA's job will be much easier, these are the sort of low-information, self-centered, living in denial ignoramuses whose standard reply to the unprecedented scale of domestic surveillance is usually "I don't care if they are spying on me because I am doing nothing wrong" who can be pretty much eliminated in that they gobble up the state supplied bullshit biscuits and therefore are low maintenance. Goats on the other hand - and I include myself as well as all of you readers in that particular group - are very dangerous in that they are able to understand the grave violations of the Constitution and extrapolate into the future of star-spangled totalitarianism that is coming soon.

Let's face it, the Goats have the ability to make life difficult for the criminal classes and their fascist protectors in agencies like the NSA and therefore they need to be identified and tracked very closely to prevent them from organizing, gaining popularity or penetrating the propaganda system and gaining the crossover appeal that could rapidly trigger the tipping point. The Goats have very sensitive bullshit detectors and fully understand that the apple pie authoritarianism won't resemble the classical fascist and totalitarians of the past. 

I have always agreed with the comments of former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (he was played by Kevin Costner in the Oliver Stone movie JFK) from a 1967 Playboy Magazine interview from which I excerpt:

Over the years, I guess I've developed a somewhat conservative attitude --- in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to the thumbscrew-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right --- particularly in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the state and the individual's own responsibilities to humanity. I don't think I've ever tried to formulate this into a coherent political philosophy, but at the root of my concern is the conviction that a human being is not a digit; he's not a digit in regard to the state and he's not a digit in the sense that he can ignore his fellow men and his obligations to society.

I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I've always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I'm concerned about all of this because it isn't German phenomenon; it's a human phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change and there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow man.

What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.

In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.

I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

Garrison was absolutely right, fascism has come to America in the name of national security and the NSA serves as that all-seeing eye at the top of they pyramid and from it flows all of the information that drives the machinery of the police state. Ironic that today as I write this it is the Fourth of July, the day of an orgy of excess of blindly-obedient flag-sucking and worship of the fascist state. The sheep will gather at their celebrations of the glories of their red, white and blue Leviathan swilling beer, stuffing their faces with hamburgers and hot dogs and flying high off of the jingoism and subservience to a system that they have no inkling of what it really stands for, its true history of murderous wars, suppression and imposition of corporate friendly dictators upon those who were once identified as Goats but had the misfortune of living in a country policed by graduates of the School of Americas.

In a way it is hard to fault them for their "American Insouciance", the indoctrination of the exceptional people has been drilled into their brains since their formative years when they were taught to stand with their hand over their hearts and to pledge allegiance to the flag. Such a thing has no place in a free society but neither does massive warrantless surveillance nor paramilitary police shock troops.  It is just easier not to think and just watch the fireworks displays though rather than tax the brains of lemmings with existential questions that contradict their false belief systems. 

Obama Circles the Wagons to Defend American Stasi

This week’s informal congressional hearings that were to have been held as a forum for NSA critics were called off according to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald who was to appear via video link, likely to avoid falling victim to an extraordinary rendition. The hearing was cancelled due to El Presidente Obama's choosing to meet with ever feckless and corrupt House Democrats and their leader Nancy Pelosi. The pope of hope's presence was to reassure, cajole, threaten and lie his ass off to put down the jackass party's insurgent contingent that supported the Justin Amash LIBERT-E Act amendment. The absolute last thing that the establishment, especially the debauched Obama regime wants is any chance that the truth gets our and that legitimate privacy concerns over the NSA spying and warehousing of data be addressed. It is a damned shame because you could really see some momentum growing, the proverbial worm was turning and psychopathic voyeurs like General Keith Alexander and the serial prevaricator James Clapper were starting to panic. Alexander the great was grabbing headlines (again) by showing up and speaking at a hacker's convention where he defended that which is indefensible and unconstitutional. He did face a few hecklers but they were far outnumbered by potential future employees hoping to hitch a ride on the fascist gravy train.

Prefacing a week of spin and propaganda It was launched by yet another anonymous government source that the Ameican Stasi would declassify data on surveillance programs (only not the good stuff) to falsely present a new openness and not risk breaking the slumber of the lemmings and sheep. The double-dealing Obama also is seeking to line up support for his latest version of the "Grand Bargain" where more tax cuts will be given to job destroying corporations, likely the same ones that have been offshoring American jobs to low wage third world shitholes for over a decade now. Obama never ceases to amaze with his serpentine ability to not get pinned down along with his shamanism used to maintain his hypnotic control over loyalists while he continues to bestow government favoritism in the truest manner of 21st century American crony capitalism. By torpedoing the informal hearing Obama is buying time by stalling until this every worthless member of this putrid Congress can slither out of Washington for yet another five week vacation, all on the taxpayer dole too - nice work if you can get it.

Thursday morning, assisted by a blatant and criminally complicit media there was the launch of a public relations offensive as the administration made a big show out of rolling out the previously heralded and now declassified NSA documents which contained nothing new. The message was to be that this onerous rogue regime really does respect the constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people and that it was just a matter of "a number of technical compliance problems". This is of course a variation of the a few bad apples defense that is inevitably invoked whenever government, corporate and high finance are caught breaking the rules. Without having to worry about Greenwald in front of a congressional panel and with the already in the bag Senate conducting it's own hearing it was a day for the chief executive and his goons to make hay. Leave it to Greenwald who broke another huge story in The Guardian revealing even more invasive NSA spying techniques to be the fly in the ointment and a constant pain in the ass to Obama and his minions.

The latest revelations are about a program called XKeyscore which can be (and is) used to track just about everything that anyone does on the internet. All online conversations are easily tracked without any serious oversight and queries can be made based on IP addresses, keywords, the type of browser used, phone number, websites frequented and all email monitored. The Guardian story also presented a number of official documents that provided instructions and touted the program's multi-faceted abilities to snoop on law abiding citizens which are then stored for some vague and ominous future usage by an outlaw state. Knowing full well that the latest story pissed on Obama's parade the White House dispatched chief flack Jay Carney to do what he is paid to do, spin. According to this piece at NBC News the "paid liar" dissembled that "some of the claims made in that article are false."  Per the piece the former Time Magazine Washington Bureau Chief and regular participant in the Beltway circle jerk went on that:

"As we've explained, and the intelligence community has explained, allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are false," said White House spokesman Carney.
 "Access to all of NSA's analytic tools is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks," he continued. "And there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent those who don't have access from achieving that access."

Really though, as a professional bullshitter Carney just offers up the same obfuscations, half-truths and standard redirections that any White House spokesperson does simply because his paycheck depends on covering his boss's ass. What Carney does not bother mentioning in his rebuttal of the Guardian story are the legions of government contractors who have top secret level access to NSA data ans what controls exist to prevent them from abusing it. The contractors operate with impunity and by all indications  have next to zero accountability. There is no oversight of any substance and a mega-billion dollar cash cow has been created (and now is protected) that has been incessantly milked by lobbying, funding political campaigns, preaching fear and is still expanding exponentially like a ravaging societal cancer. Greedy surveillance industry contractors hit the jackpot when history was reset and democracy vanished. Ever since their sheer luck that a pack of lunatics in airplanes smacked the gold-filled pinata on September 11, 2001 thereby justifying war and all of its offshoots the jackals have been groveling in money, stolen from the taxpayers and used to fund their own enslavement. The inflating of the post-9/11 security bubble is for the most part all based on hogwash, fear-mongering, the trotting out of bogeymen and the filling of political slots with the most morally vacant, money-grubbing sociopaths who have walked the earth since the last days of the USSR.

So of course they will defend their big con because it is their bread and butter. After all, they being Obama's stooges and the rest of the corrupt Congress and Judiciary will never have to be subjected to the secret police harassment, the judgement of secret courts, being disappeared without Habeas Corpus into a for profit gulag system that has as an appendage a foreign network of black site torture prisons. That stuff is for the little people, people like the rest of us. It is ironiic that so obvious was their greed though that the lax pre-employment screening practices of the notorious Booz Allen, so intent at packing their surveillance centers to gorge on taxpayer money. diverted away from necessary social and infrastructure programs that they hired a guy named Ed Snowden who turned out to be their worst fucking nightmare. This is a man of principle who was able to insert himself into the belly of the beast with the savvy of a seasoned intelligence operative/mole and to then purloin the crown jewels which he has since unleashed upon a world that had been for far too long bamboozled by flim flam men like Bush and Obama to jettison liberty for security. And it was all a series of lies delivered by a series of paid liars just like Mr. Carney.

Which brings me to another very, very serious question that has yet to be asked which is exactly what else is being done with all of that data and by whom? As is now evident with the lack of any sort of oversight on any of this how exactly does anyone know that the contractors or the NSA itself are engaged in their cloak and dagger operations are not also selling or providing information to other institutions? This is of course all not only being done for the bogus official reason of preventing terrorism, that has always been a crock and with the billions spent over the years given the number of so-called "terrorist plots" that the government has claimed to have been stopped the cost vs. benefit ratio is a massive failure. So what else is Obama's Stasi using this data for:

Is this data being provided/sold to corporations to provide a competitive advantage?

Is this data being provided/sold to the Federal Reserve to keep their Ponzi scheme going?

Is this data being provided/sold to foreign countries and their agents? Possibly even U.S. adversaries?

Is this data being provided/sold to actual criminal organizations to elude law enforcement?

Is this data being provided/sold to big banks that launder drug money for profits?

Is this data being provided/sold for the purposes of internal industrial espionage to political patrons?

Is this data being provided/sold or used for blackmail of politicians and other officials?

Is this data being provided/sold for the purposes of insider trading on the already rigged markets?

These questions need to be asked but don't count on the state media her in Der Homeland to ask them, as the legendary muckraker Upton Sinclair once so eloquently put it - "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it".  When you have an entire system where every institution has been corrupted, a history of crony capitalism, a failed political system, a debauched and corrupted economic system and a government that lies about everything (especially their surveillance) then it is easy for all but the simplest of rubes to smell a rat. In fact, I submit that this entire thing has the stench of an army of the disgusting rodents.